Category: Interviews

A 150 Year-old Brand Takes a Fresh Look at Storytelling

Posted on by Drew Neisser

I have to admit that I went into the conversation about storytelling wondering “what’s the story here?”  How could something as old as storytelling be a hot new topic in marketing.  Darren Marshall, CMO of Steinway & Sons, was kind enough to set me straight in preparation for our panel Storytelling and Branding: Does Story Trump Data (also featuring Aimee Munsell of IBM and Douwe Bergsma of Georgia Pacific) at The CMO Club Summit.  I could add a more robust preamble but that would simply get in the way of the good stories that lie ahead.

Darren MarshallDrew: So Darren, our given our panel title, does story trump data?

I think it’s the balance to be honest with you. I wish I had more data. I am glad I have a good story, but I’d love to have a little bit of both. But you know, with the lack of data, then story is where I am going.

Drew: Steinway has been around a long time. What story are you telling?

What’s interesting about Steinway is that it’s an old company that really has a pretty incredible story because you don’t think about how pianos are made, the artistic expression they bring, or the emotional connection that people have with them. And not only the beauty of what goes in, but the beauty that comes out, as well. And to realize that this level of craftsmanship happens in New York City to this day, much in the same way that it did a 100 or 150 years ago is pretty incredible, particularly in a world where disposability is the norm.

Drew: I have to say that the made in NYC part really struck home for me. Do you see storytelling as something different than you would have done as a marketer 10 years ago?

Not really, I don’t think. At the end of the day, I believe that stories are engaging. Bedtime stories are all about captivating someone’s imagination and taking them someplace else so that you can relax and calm yourself and go to sleep. That’s what any advertising or communication should be about. And whether it’s a presidential speech or whether it’s a story about a brand, there are groups of people who are buying the technical elements of products. But the real value of a brand is telling the story of that brand and where it’s come from and why it’s come from there and how it’s made and who made it. That’s the irrational piece where you can exchange value. When you think about antiques, it’s one thing to say this is an antique revolver, but to say that this was the revolver General Custer used during the Battle of Little Big Horn — that has a story that goes along with it and there’s huge value. Whether it’s true or not is a separate thing. But it takes you to that place that is new and different and imaginative.

Drew: Tell me about your target audience and how this impacts your story.

At the end of the day, we address a very small group of humanity, people who have the buying power to buy one of our instruments and who have the interest in our category. It really is a very thin group of people. So the level of engagement needs to be much deeper than broader. I need to be able to really help them understand what the brand stands for and why it’s three times more expensive than other alternatives that may look the same. The value of what we do is not necessarily seen to the naked eye. And we need to be able to tell the story of what it is, particularly for people who don’t know what Steinway does in quite the way that others do. So as an example, a concert pianist would know exactly what a Steinway does. But you or I look at the Steinway versus its next alternative and they look very similar. You’ve got to be able to bring that to life why it is different for mere mortals like you and I.

Drew: So how does the storytelling enter the picture given your target?

We’re going to be much more about depth than breadth. The media choices that we use are going to be much more focused. I spent, as you may know, a long time at The Coca-Cola Company. And if you’re buying a Coke and you’re making those sorts of decisions very, very frequently, then your level of engagement and your risk of purchase are very, very low. And you’re making those purchases very frequently and you can change your behavior quite quickly. But when you’re buying something else of great expense and lasting value, and you’re doing it once or twice in a lifetime, then there is a lot more research that is done. I’d like to say that it’s an impulse purchase and it is for some people — for a lot of people, but not for everyone.

Drew: I know that you’ve just started marketing again after a long hiatus. Have you looked at new kinds of metrics to get a more complete understanding of the impact of storytelling?

To be honest with you, ours is a very small company. It’s very entrepreneurial; it is not the world that I used to work in at Coke. There’s a lot more subjectivity. Although the process is very similar, in terms of just finding the North Star if you will or the story arc that is essential to your brand, and then bringing it to life across the various different touch points, we don’t have the resources to be able to measure the effectiveness of every message at every touch point. By the same token, it’s a much smaller organization, so we can quite easily determine whether the content is on brand or not.

Drew: So how do you decide whether to tell the story from the brand’s perspective or from that of the customer’s?

For any brand, there needs to be a framework that considers the true essence of that brand, its values, its benefits which I’d call a traditional packaged goods creative brief. It really gets to the essence of the brand, which we have done and as most other people have done as well.

And getting to that story comes not only from a couple of different vantage points, but then also gets to the different stakeholders as well. And each of those, if the brand is true to its set of values and it’s North Star, then that story will be similar but told from three different angles. So in our case, we talk about the craftsmanship of our product, the artistic expression that it empowers, and the beauty it adds to homes and lives.

We talk about those things and values from the artist’s perspective. Showing how that craftsmanship then leads to nuances not just in a physical product object, but in the music that then flows from that product, which is really the end benefit in another way.

We talk about the owner, those who may or may not be players, but those who appreciate what our brand stands for, and that same set of values, but seen from another set of eyes. And there are probably few other perspectives. But all of that content is what brought them to life. It’s the same story, but told through different lenses. It’s almost like the books of the Bible are the same story, but told from different apostles’ perspectives. And so it’s the same sort of idea.

Drew: Okay, I am a believer.

 

If Marketing is War, I Want Kylberg as My General

Posted on by Drew Neisser

It is hard to be a student of history and not be fascinated by leaders.  And as some of you may have picked up by now, I spend a lot of my spare time reading books and listening to courses on American History with a special concentration on Ben Franklin and the American Revolution.  Starting about a week ago, I took a break from the 18th century and jumped into the mid-19th to try to fill a huge knowledge gap on the Civil War.  As told by Professor Gary W. Gallagher, this is a story of leadership and often the lack there of on both sides of an epic confrontation. Ultimately, two leaders rose above the others, Lincoln and his final Commanding General, Ulysses S. Grant.

Now since you probably didn’t come here for a history lesson, let me explain why I’m talking about these two leaders before I introduce you to Rich Kylberg,Vice President of Corporate Marketing and Communications at Arrow Electronics.  Well, first Rich and I talk about leadership and the challenges of reinventing and transforming Arrow, a 75 year-old company. Lincoln’s United States was just a decade older (“four score and 7 years”) at the time of his Gettysburg address, when he looked to transform the nation. Second, Rich seems very much a man of action, the very reason Lincoln made Grant his main man in March 1864, a decision that cemented the Northern victory just about a year later. Third and hopefully more to the point, Rich uses warfare as a metaphor in one of his answers paving the way for this grandiose introduction.

Given this history-rich if not historic preface, you may rightfully expect an enlightening interview and indeed you will find one below.  Kylberg, for the record, was awarded the Leadership prize from The CMO Club late last year.

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Drew: How would you describe your leadership style?  

Optimistic, passionate, and entirely “out of the box.” Offering a teenaged German song contest participant 1,000,000 euros to alter her lyrics from a love song to a ballad about the nobility of engineers raised eyebrows.

Drew: Do you have any role models that you’ve admired over the years and if so, what did you pick up from him/her?  

Mom, Dad, and Walt Disney: altruism, entrepreneurship, and creativity.  I can’t walk through a Disney park without being stunned by the imagination and creativity brought to bear in an effort to create happiness (and, I suppose, cash flow).

Drew: Can you talk about some of the actions you took as a leader in the last couple of years that were particularly challenging? 

Working to try to reinvent and transform a very large and already successful industry comes with a great deal of resistance, reluctance, and (when we get it right) reward.  Over around 75 years Arrow revenue grew to over $20 billion with very few people knowing about the company; we built a brand message, architecture, and platform that resonates across all of our business units, all around the world.

Drew: How important is your peer to peer network to your on-going success?  What are the biggest benefits of having a peer network?  

My peer to peer network has been critical to my journey.  These friends have flattened my steep learning curves, and kept me from going way off the rails.  Participating within the best organizations in my profession (the CMO Club!), our industry (IBM Amplify), and the broader business community (YPO International) is essential to keeping me relevant and connected.

Drew: What’s the best advice you’ve been given to guide personal / career success?

Pick your battles. Win the war.  I’ve had dozens of individual initiatives shut down within Arrow, I’ve seen my team grow from 6 to 70 and back down to 30, and yet our main focus on propagation of the united Arrow brand continues and only grows stronger.

Drew: What is the single biggest challenge that you’d like to overcome? 

I’d like to expand the scale, scope, and impact of the great work that we do to continue to transform our company and make this world a little better place for us all.  Last year to promote our brand we toured a race car that’s driven by a quadriplegic, and we built a computer lab in a shipping container for orphans in Tanzania –I encourage our small team of professionals to dream of what we can do in 2016 and beyond that will make life better for others, while further defining and disseminating the company brand.

[Bloggers Note: For those of you interested in more on Lincoln’s leadership style, I have a spare copy of the timelessly brilliant Lincoln on Leadership at the office OR feel free to borrow my copy of US Grant’s autobiography, a surprisingly fascinating and well-scribed book.]

CMO Insights: The Extraordinary Power of Focus Even with CSR

Posted on by Drew Neisser

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Whenever I meet entrepreneurs, they often pick my brain for marketing wisdom usually asking one or all of the following questions:

  1. How do we get the biggest bang for our marketing bucks?
  2. What are the most effective marketing channels?
  3. Is social media worth the time and effort?
  4. Does guerrilla marketing still work?
  5. Tell me Obi Wan, what is the secret to marketing success?

Avoiding questions 1-4 until I have a better sense of their overall go-to-market strategy, I jump all over #5.  “The secret,” I say, “can be found in one word–focus.”  Somewhat rattled by the simplicity of this seemingly obvious counsel, I wait for the notion to sink in and then offer real world stories of how businesses, large and small, have achieved success through laser-like focus on their product/service offering and target audience.

These stories are not always easy to come by which is why I’m so excited to share with you an interview I had with Diane Scott, Global Chief Product & Marketing Officer at Western Union.  In her responses, you will discover how a deliberate focus on one charitable activity (Education for Better) has helped Western Union impact more than 1 millions lives around the world and gain 75% employee participation. It’s an impressive approach that not surprisingly garnered Scott and Western Union a Social Responsibility Award from The CMO Club.  Prepare to see for yourself the power of focus in action.

Drew: Congratulations on winning the Social Responsibility Award. How do you define Corporate Social Responsibility?

Western Union defines itself as a purpose-driven company. Our business drives social and economic growth by promoting financial inclusion. In 2014, WU moved $185B, more than the GDP of 147 countries. Cross-border remittances provided needed funds for education, housing, health care and more. WU also provides better ways to move money for NGOs, universities and SMEs, which are an economic engine.

At Western Union, we use the term “corporate responsibility,” since responsible companies engage in far more than socially-oriented programs. For us, the term “corporate responsibility” typically refers to a fairly specific focus on responsibility in our core operations – e.g. how we treat our employees and promote diversity, how we focus on governance issues, how we prioritize ethics and compliance in our operations, and more.

Yet I think your question is getting at something broader than responsible operations alone. At Western Union we also seek to coordinate our corporate resources for both business and social impact, and engage our business, consumers and employees in this work. We seek to marshal all our assets – e.g. products and services, cause-related marketing, executive leadership, employee volunteerism, philanthropy and our core operations – for both business and social impact.

For the last three years our focus has been on supporting education through a program we call Education for Better. In fact, Western Union just publicly renewed our company-wide commitment to education through 2020.  As a company whose mission is to help create global economic opportunity and growth for individuals, businesses, communities and economies, education is a natural focus for our citizenship efforts.

Drew: Can you provide a short recap of your CSR initiatives in 2015?

Two achievements that stand out are:

  • The Western Union Foundation surpassed a major milestone, since it’s inception, donating more than US$100 million in support to more than 2,700 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to provide support to thousands of families and individuals in more than 135 countries and territories.
  • We also marked the three-year milestone with our Education for Better program, and renewed that commitment to help meet global education goals over the next three years. That programs has focused on secondary and vocational education for marginalized populations, including girls/women and migrants/refugees. 

Drew: How do you measure the success of these programs? (Please provide specific results if you can.)

Each corporate initiative has its own metrics for success, and of course the Western Union Foundation has its own metrics to measure the success of its philanthropy. Yet generally we’re looking to measure both social and business impact through our social responsibility work.

To give you an example, we’ve measured the following with Education for Better:

  • Social Impact
    • Moved more than $7 billion in principal for education (WUBS), exceeding our original target of $1 billion.
    • Provided more than $11.6 million in philanthropic funding to support educational programs in 53 countries, impacting more than 1.1 million students, teachers, and administrators.
    • Through the UEFA PASS program, enabled more than one million days of school for disadvantaged students through UNICEF.
    • Provided more than 11,000 hours of employee volunteer support to education.
  • Business Impact
    • Our education products saw double-digit revenue growth in 2014.
    • Education-related cause promotions help assist our growth initiatives. A Mother’s Day promotion between the U.S. and Mexico, promotions in India and China, and a Ramadan promotion in Germany all contribute to our growth. Consumer engagement online soared over 100%_
    • Nearly 75% of Western Union employees have participated in the cause, either through the employee giving campaign or volunteerism, building employee pride and increasing understanding of our cause.
    • We engaged 72 WU agents, deepening our business relationships.

Drew: Building a business case for CSR initiatives can be tricky. What were the keys to gaining management support?

The second key insight was that while Our World, Our Family had been effective, it was largely philanthropic and had not benefited from the full resources of the company. The next strategic initiative would be imagined differently to leverage not just our funds and volunteer hours, but the whole of our business, including marketing and products.

Drew: When it comes to sharing your company’s CSR initiatives is there a fine line between letting the world know about it and overplaying the contribution? Where do you sit on this spectrum from letting the good action speak for itself and broadcasting it from the treetops?

I think one of the first questions is whether the work itself is authentic. Is it just writing a check, or does it tie to the company’s values, operations and brand identity? For WU, our community commitment goes back to the 1800’s, and today is stronger than ever. In some ways, I think that gives us “permission” to communicate about corporate responsibility.

Over the years, studies by Cone, Inc., Nielsen, Edelman and others have consistently shown that up to 91% of global consumers are likely to switch brands to one that supports a good cause, given similar price and quality, and 57% would purchase a product of lesser quality or efficacy if it was more socially or environmentally responsible.

That suggests it’s important for consumers understand our responsibility commitment. It’s probably not possible for companies ever do enough to tell consumers not about what they do, but also why they do what they do. That’s particularly true for WU, since I think our commitment to “moving money for better” is a meaningful brand differentiator. That said, it takes a lot to raise awareness – let alone build deep brand association. That’s another reason why we focus on a single cause company-wide. That focus is critical to enabling us to both track and deepen our impact and speak loudly with one voice that can be heard.

Drew: Looking ahead, what is the single biggest challenge that you’d like to overcome?

Like most thinks in life, our biggest challenge is our biggest opportunity from a marketing perspective – for WU, we have more channels than ever before, and more data than ever before…

200 countries, 500k locations, 100k atms, kiosks, mobile apps, online presence, ability to send from and to accounts to mobile wallets or with cash, 130 currencies. A brand and technology platform built to drive simplicity, security and reliability of cross border money movement – for consumers and businesses alike.

Given the brand’s 160+ years young existence, many times people and businesses think they know this brand and really don’t. 2016 is all about continuing to onboard and innovate around more cross border customer use cases for consumers and businesses than ever before – whether to fuel cross border payments for a small business in Bangladesh, a large bank in London, an NGO in Lagos, a University in New York, an ExPat in Dubai or a recent migrant from Nigeria.

How Anheuser-Busch is Riding a Digital Workhorse

Posted on by Drew Neisser

If ever there were brands built on the backs of traditional media, it would be Budweiser and Bud Light.  These stalwarts of sports broadcasts, joined us in our living rooms and bars, reminding us years back who this Bud was for and more recently, inciting us to be up for whatever with Bud Light. But just because TV was the big horse they rode in on doesn’t mean that Anheuser Busch isn’t making tracks on the digital frontier.  In fact, Lucas Herscovici, VP of Consumer Connections at Anheuser-Busch, reports that A-B’s investment in digital is growing rapidly and with good results.  Here’s our interview on that and more after Herscovici received the CMO Officer award from the The CMO Club.

Drew: Looking back over the last 12-24 months, what initiative under your leadership really worked well? What were some of the challenges you had to overcome? What were the results?

I’m proud about the work we’ve done to make Anheuser-Busch one of the top CPG companies in digital. In order to do that, we had to shift the way the organization looked at marketing, increase investments and ultimately prove that it helps drive sales. I’m happy to say that it resulted in success. Bud Light and Budweiser are now recognized as CPG leaders in digital by external parties and platforms like Tinder and Snapchat are choosing our brands to be the first brands to advertise on their platforms.

Drew: Effecting change beyond the marketing department is not easy and is often met with resistance from other departments.  How did you make this happen? Looking back, what do you wish you knew a year ago that you learned “the hard way”?

Changing the way we negotiate sports team sponsorships initially met with some resistance due to some historical partnerships between the company and teams. By delivering a few quick wins and demonstrating results, other departments got on board with the strategy. One “key learning” was that we need to involve all the stakeholders early. When everyone is part of the process from the start, it is easier for them to get behind a new way of doing things.

Drew: Did any of your marketing initiatives involve employee activation?  If so, can you describe what you did and how it worked? How did you get employees to care?

At Anheuser-Busch, one of our core beliefs is that everyone should act like an owner. We created the rock star of the month award within our new media agency team to extend that sense of pride to not only our employees but to our marketing partners. The award recognizes great contributors and ultimately drove high engagement within the extended team.

Drew: When advising members of your team on cross-departmental initiatives, what do tell them to do and not do to ensure success?

We’re in the business of bringing people together, and that holds true within our marketing team. I encourage all of our employees to go to the field, meet with people face to face to understand how things work and come with solutions in a collaborative way.

Drew: What is the single biggest challenge that you’d like to overcome?

While we’re pleased with our success in digital marketing for Budweiser and Bud Light, there is still room to improve on how we connect with our consumers. For 2016, we’ll be focused on strengthening all of our brands by further enhancing the way we connect with consumers and shaping the culture for each brand.

CMO Insights: Focusing on Innovation

Posted on by Drew Neisser

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In part one of my interview with Rich Smith, CMO of Ditech Financial, we focused on Ditech’s sponsorship of NASCAR and how that helped build broad awareness for the brand. In part two, we’ll broaden the lens and explore the brand’s overall strategic approach, internal training to improve the customer experience and a program that aimed at improving brand loyalty (offering another great example of the power of “marketing as service” in action).  There’s a lot of meat in here so I’d encourage you to read the interview carefully but I would be remiss if I didn’t point out a few highlights:

  • Ditech is gaining customers without being the low cost provider;
  • Increased employee training helped to remove the friction from the buying process;
  • By delivering an unexpected progress report to current customers, Ditech improved loyalty;
  • While CMO’s can’t be expected to control the entire customer experience they can be the “voice of the customer” across the organization.

All of this should leave little doubt why he won the Marketing Innovation Award from The CMO Club late last year.

Drew: Let’s talk about some of the innovative things you initiated in 2015.

I think we’ve done a lot of innovative things with our brand message and how we are reaching consumers.  Most brands in the industry either compete purely on price or they compete purely on a quick and easy transaction. We’re certainly very competitive on price, but we’re not the lowest. We also strive to provide a very convenient transaction process. Taking it one step further, we position ourselves as a partner that can be trusted in the mortgage process, who understands customer needs and won’t put them into the cookie cutter, one-size-fits-all, thirty-year fixed product. Customers are trying to find the best fit for them and we think Ditech offers that. Our Home Loan Specialists are educated to work with customers by asking questions, building rapport and finding solutions.

Drew: How did this translate to into you brand messages?

We have a certification program for our home loan specialists that helps them take a more personalize approach with each customer and we’ve found a way to work that training into our brand message. For example, we mail our current customers a “report card” on their current mortgage that tells them where they are and how they could change their plan by refinancing. These report cards could also tell them about the value of their home and even when there is no opportunity for them to refinance. We call this our Smart Watch Report and it’s a health of your mortgage report. You don’t see that from other providers. We are really transparent with our customers when it comes to what they currently have and what their opportunities are. That’s the theme we strive for throughout our business. We find that transparency with customers generates trust.

Drew: I suspect social media customer service is lot harder in the financial services industry because you have so much sensitive data. How do you use social media as customer service?

We definitely have to be sensitive to that and we have. We are very good at responding to the common issues we hear from customers on social media but if they’re upset, we then try to get them offline as quickly as possible and service them in a way that’s private such as on the phone or e-mail or gather more information and provide a solution to their situation.

Drew: How do you handle privacy on social customer service?

We have a customer care team that handles all the escalations. But certainly any time that somebody posts something like an account number, social security number or any private or secured information we either delete it or advise the customer to do so because you can’t have private information like that out there. And then we also obviously try to get the conversation offline as fast as we can.

Drew: Can you give me a specific example of how customer-centric approach to marketing has translated into some form of out-bound marketing, whether it’s TV or print?

The one I just mentioned was our direct mail campaign with the Smart Watch Report. That is one of our most successful retention marketing programs because people really appreciate getting that information. They call our home loan specialists about their options; it’s very engaging for the customers. And we are in the midst of taking that beyond just one direct mail medium to make it digital in the future which is very interesting.

Drew: Interesting. And so, how important is retention to the acquisition process?

That’s a very interesting question. It’s important in not necessarily a direct way but it’s important perhaps in an indirect way for a couple of reasons. In as much as you do a great job of servicing and retaining customers you have happier customers who then write more positive reviews about you and influence other people to seek you out or consider doing business with you. So that’s a nice indirect benefit. Also, the better job you do at retention the more financially sound your business is and the better base you have from which to grow. Any company that can’t do a good job of keeping its own customers probably is not going to do a good job of acquiring new ones.

Drew: I think that’s a fairly safe bet although I have worked with clients who put all their energy into acquisition and just kept watching the retention numbers decline.

Yes, you can’t fill the bathtub if you have a big hole in it. Just from an ROI perspective on marketing campaigns, the ROI on retention campaigns are many multiples higher than the ROI on acquisition campaign. It’s been true in every business that I’ve worked in my entire career.

Drew: One of things I’ve seen happen to other brands when they start advertising on TV is that their cost per clicks go down on Google Adwords. Increased awareness translates into better SEM performance because people are more familiar and click faster and therefore you can bid lower. Have you seen this?

We are seeing growth but it is a little hard to identify direct impact in SEM. We are definitely seeing more and more organic growth throughout the year, which is a clear indication of rising brand awareness. We did an extensive brand awareness study right before we launched and we repeated it about six months ago and saw major improvements in overall brand awareness and brand favorability. So, we know that it’s having an impact; it’s difficult to parse that out from the other things that we’re doing.

Drew: How much control do you have over the customer experience as CMO? How much influence do you have on this other areas?

I would say that the only person in any organizations that has complete control over the customer experience is the CEO. I can’t say that I control it. One of the most important roles that I play on our leadership team is to be the voice of the customer. I take on the responsibility of bringing the customers insights forward so that they are considered in all of our decision making. As we look to make changes in the future on both the origination side and the servicing side of our business, I definitely have a prime seat at the table to influence and emphasize the importance of the customer experience.

Is Mark Hanna the Tom Brady of CSR?

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Mark Hanna, CMO at Richline Group, is a diehard New England Patriots fan and like all of his brethren is in a good mood as the Pats rack up more post season victories. I try not to hold this kind of fanaticism or misplaced loyalty against Mark — I mean you can’t really blame a guy for where they were born, right?  And in a genuine display of largesse given that my football loyalties lay elsewhere, I even went so far as to feature his thoughts on “Retooling” in my recent released book!

Mark’s passion for the Pats is almost matched by his passion for Corporate Social Responsibility, a subject about which we have no disagreement. As you will see in our conversation below, Mark has quarterbacked a number of “winning” initiatives for Richline, which if you don’t know is one of the largest makers of jewelry in the world and a highly successful Berkshire Hathaway-owned company. Does this make him the Tom Brady of CSR?  Well The CMO Club thought so at their annual awards last year.  Read on and you can decide for yourself.

Drew: How do you define Corporate Social Responsibility?

In summary, it is a socially responsible company’s efforts that go beyond what may be required by regulators or environmental protection and based on the conscious contribution to promote positive social and environmental change. The standard answer of leaving a better world than we have now works perfectly for me.

Drew: Can you provide a short recap of your CSR initiatives in 2015?

Our efforts are diverse and each a journey toward improvement but a few highlights are:

  1. The installation (started 2013) of over 180,000 square feet of solar panels which fully power our major Albuquerque facility and supply a surplus for the State of New Mexico. This equates to a four acre roof treated with energy conserving coating that reflects 80% of heat and UV rays.
  2. Additional energy saving initiatives through utilization, in our facilities here and abroad, of efficient lighting and generators plus measured traffic management.
  3. Numerous initiatives for the elimination of conflict region gold while funding and assisting artisanal mining through legal supply chains of custody and the elimination of hazardous mercury in the process.
  4. Board membership and directional influence on the industry’s largest proponent of responsible supply chains, the Responsible Jewelry Council.
  5. Lead company in the industry in the conservation efforts for Wildlife and Biodiversity through the elimination in all jewelry plus industry and consumer education.
  6. Various philanthropic support starting with Chair of Jewelers for Children.

Drew: How do measure the success of these programs? (Please provide specific results if you can.)

We truly believe in Return on Responsibility…so much so that we influenced the Berkshire Hathaway Sustainability Summit to adopt this as the 2015 meeting theme. It is important that we act as leaders because it’s incredibly meaningful to our industry position and reputation value. The “return on responsibility” from such involvement exceeds that of pretty much anything else we could promote for our Brand…. It’s that significant. We chose to pursue a “Return on Responsibility” model that both holds our firm to a clear “glass house” discipline and communicates our trustworthy journey to true corporate responsibility.

Drew: Building a business case for CSR initiatives can be tricky. What were the keys to gaining management support?

I believe sustainability initiatives have to be driven from the top and integrated into the culture….they must become a way of doing business, require the participation of all company resources and are not just one-off operations’ projects. As keepers of the firm’s reputation and in a world demanding trust and authenticity, it is a necessary strategic goal. We should be committed to showing that an investment in sustainability is an investment in our Brand. Employee advocacy will follow and add to the value..

Drew: There are an unlimited number of options when it comes to CSR. How did you narrow the list down?  

We set strategic goals for our Sustainability/CSR initiatives:

  • Insuring our ability to meet current and future environmental requirements
  • Reduction of energy use (also an economic win)
  • Responsible supply chain management to strengthen our B2B partner and supplier relationships
  • Cradle to cradle processes including advanced recycling capabilities
  • Community support and satisfaction to enhance local and national government relations
  • Enactment and dissemination to all associates and stakeholders of a “best practices” Code of Conduct
  • Employee attraction, motivation, innovation, retention and productivity

Drew: When it comes to sharing your company’s CSR initiatives is there a fine line between letting the world know about it and overplaying the contribution?  Where do you sit on this spectrum from letting the good action speak for itself and broadcasting it from the treetops? 

We are very conservative here. Our strategy has been to celebrate our Richline Responsible program leadership and accomplishments only to the trade and B2B…no consumer programs or promotion at this point.

Drew: Looking ahead to 2016, what is the single biggest challenge that you’d like to overcome? 

Sticking with the Responsibility theme, I believe in the future of transparency as a requirement by the upcoming generations of consumers. Therefore, in 2016 my challenge is to expand our true chain of custody supply documentation to a significant mass for the creation of a brand based on such transparency.