Category: Show Notes

Happy Holidays, Now Do Something!

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‘Tis the season to be jolly! As much as we cherish renegade thinking, family comes first. There’s nothing better than spending time with loved ones during the holiday season, especially when you can get the kids involved in the fun. Michele Fino of DoSomething.org talks about some terrific activities your family can do to bond for good causes during this special time of year – or any time of year for that matter. You can listen to the mini episode here.

Remember to take those renegade thinking caps off when your family gathers around the dinner table. Instead, try using those outside-the-box thinking skills to come up with some neat games and activities everybody can play. From all of us here at Renegade Thinkers Unite, Happy Holidays!

Preparing for the 2018 CES

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If you’ve ever attended Consumer Electronics Show (CES) then you know it is a beast of a show with more than 4,000 exhibiting companies and covering the 2.6 million square feet of exhibit space is next to impossible especially as you are fighting through crowds of 170,000+. It might sound too overwhelming but having attended regularly since 1988 and as a marketer hoping to spot trends, I can assure you it is always worth the trouble. Inevitably, I leave CES with some new ideas, at least one new friend and a dousing of Vegas silliness.

With the 2018 CES right around the corner (Jan 8-11, 2018), I thought it would be helpful and interesting to record a special episode with the legendary tech guru Shelly Palmer.  I first met Shelly back in 2010 (when I wrote about him as the prototypical personal brand on FastCompany.com) and have spotted his ubiquitous signs at CES ever since. [Blatant unpaid plug — if you are new to CES, have a limited time frame or just want to make sure you don’t miss the big trends while you’re in Vegas, then you’d be wise to sign up for a tour of the show by Shelly and his team at The Palmer Group.]  As for my earlier point about Shelly being interesting to talk to, he didn’t disappoint!

In the podcast, we discuss why he’s excited about this year’s show and why expects to see more evolutionary products than revolutionary ones. We dive into hot topics like drones, cars, VR and AI among others. You’ll also hear Shelly school me on why I’m wrong to call Alexa (Amazon voice activation system) dumb just because she can’t infer the request Dear Evan Hansen from Evan Hansen when a Google search does that handily!  The tech challenge aside, I still think she has some cognitive development work ahead of her!  You can listen to the special episode here.

Here are a few other highlights from the interview:

Drew: What should marketers be paying attention to at this year’s CES?

Shelly: This year at CES, we’re going to have a really good look at integrations between the natural language understanding tools and the physical world. I’m pretty sure you’re going to see a lot of augmented reality because that is the toolset that is most flexible. You need great programming skills but it also yields amazing benefits – everything from a doctor looking into an incubator and seeing a heads-up display of all of the vital signs of the patient to gameplay and 100% of everything in the middle. You’ll see a lot of augmented reality. Drones and machine learning. Drones are now self-flying for the most part and there’s a bunch of companies who have taken to creating machines that not only fly themselves but with either high definition or 4k cameras in them and in some cases 8k cameras in them. And in some cases infrared cameras in them. They’re doing materials processing in the air. They can look at an insurance company like Travelers, who are the number one user of drones in the United States, and put a drone up in the air to look at the exterior damage. They can understand what happened to your roof in the air and file and process your claim without having someone go out to your house. When you think about a hurricane like we’ve had and the ability to quickly process and quickly get people the help they need who are insured, you’ll see a lot of that at CES. A lot of drone companies showing off their ability to have not only self-flying drones, but drones that can carry bigger payloads, can take better cameras with them, and fly in inclement weather or in adverse conditions that you wouldn’t have seen before. The drone story is going to be pretty big.

Drew: What else is going to be big?

Shelly: The cars are going to be out in force – driver assistance of every kind. Autonomy is coming. There’s never a lack of cool cars at CES. It’s more fun than the auto show because for us who are all semi-geeks about the technology, they come and they put their tech foot forward as opposed to their design foot forward or this guy with 500 horsepower or whatever. You’re going to see great TVs, but we haven’t had a year with a bad TV in 20 years. Let me tell you about the TVs. I can tell you I haven’t seen them yet. Let me tell exactly what I’m going to say when I get to stand in front of any TV; it’s bigger. It’s thinner. It’s got a brighter picture, higher dynamic range, wider color gamut, bigger screen, thinner. That’s sort of the joke at CES. It used to be a TV show. Now the TVs just get better.

Drew: Is there anything new that’s coming to CES?  

Shelly: What you will see this year that you haven’t seen so much before is how well integrated the home is becoming. Honestly, it is Alexa’s voice services and all of NLP systems that have caused this. Because if you think about it, when you walk in the house you have to open an app, tap a couple of buttons, open another app, and press a couple more buttons. It’s like, “Oh come on, stop it! I’ll just turn the light switch on.” But now you walk in and you say, “Alexa, lights on. Alexa, daytime scene.” Whatever you want. And boom, the house is set. The value proposition for consumers is so great. Everybody’s jumping on that. Look for integrations in ways you’ve never seen them.

The Power of Crystal Clear Positioning to Turnaround Your Brand

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Retail is not exactly rich with turnaround stories these days but that’s exactly what’s happened at Pearle Vision. CMO Doug Zarkin provides a step-by-step review of how the brand has gone from stagnant to revitalized, indicated by same-store sales growth, new store openings and a jump in ranking from >100 to #24 among best franchises to own.

Through a number of small but ultimately significant changes like renaming customers to patients, employees to eye care professionals and stores to eye care centers, Pearle Vision has been able to shift the conversation from deals on glasses to professional eye care. Most significantly, Zarkin and company figured out that people who come in for eye exams are far more likely to buy glasses and become repeat customers than those that are just shopping for new glasses.

 

On this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite, Zarkin tells Drew Neisser about the methods by which Zarkin and his team embraces customers and keeps them in the fold.

You can listen to the episode here.

These are some of our favorite moments from the episode:

Drew: When you first got to Pearle Vision and recognized the need for a new positioning, how long did you give yourself?

Doug: If you know anything about retail there’s a sense of urgency. I essentially had six months to crack the code. In fact when I joined the company my predecessor actually remained on the team to essentially keep the business going while I was working on crafting the future state. And so within six months we had to find what the brand was going to stand for. We identified that we needed to update the iconography, that we needed to update the store design and we began the journey. But by no means does the journey begin and end in six months — it’s a journey that you have to continually press on every day. 

Drew: So that gives you three months to research and three months to execute. Talk about the positioning that you landed on.

Doug: The positioning became “genuine eye care from your neighborhood doctor” which came about from a philosophy that I learned from my first client-side job at Avon – you have to go out in the field. Any marketer worth his salt knows that a positioning that doesn’t make for great execution is just words on paper. And so looking inward to what we stood for as a brand required me to look outward from the boardroom and get into our locations, talk to our doctors, talk to our franchisees, understand what we really were embodying in a three dimensional way and then bringing that back and looking at what we as a brand could really own. As a brand founded by a doctor, Dr. Stanley Pearle in 1961, we had a heritage that we could stand for – eye care. We needed to do it in a way that was authentic. We wanted to be that brand that owned the neighborhood–that could win the battle for patients at the 5 to 9-mile level. And so every part of ‘genuine eye care from my neighborhood doctor’ means something. It most importantly means the art of sacrifice — there’s a lot of things we couldn’t do.

Drew: Some brands worry about circling back to their founder because it makes them feel old-fashioned. How do you keep your brand from appearing outdated?

Doug: A founder brand has inherently an authenticity to it. Some of the best in class marketers are always looking for that emotional connection point. We’re storytellers. We want to connect with the consumer on an emotional level and present them rational reasons to believe. When you have a founder brand like Pearle, if you actually do what many marketers don’t which is to have the humility to realize that sometimes taking a step forward is taking two steps backward, what you actually have is something that you can build a plan off of. Ralph Lauren is a great example of a founder-led, founder-driven brand. Ralph Lauren has a very distinct look on fashion. When Ralph started to go awry as a brand was when it got away from its DNA. Pearle did the same thing. Dr. Stanley Pearl was not there talking about buy one get one free. Dr. Stanley Pearle’s vision started with that best in class doctor and I see my job really is to a degree getting out of the way and allowing his legacy to continue in a way that’s modern, in a way that’s contemporary, and in a way that resonates. But why fight it? If you have it, embrace it! Leverage it; lead with it. That’s how you win.

Drew: Let’s talk about Pearle’s social media philosophy. What is your execution strategy?

Doug: For us, social media is really an opportunity to continue the conversation. It’s turned actually into one of the most effective platforms for driving exam growth. If you look at the marketing ROI in our category there are few things that are as efficient as search (trademark search as an example). Social media is really up there in terms of efficient ways to drive people to schedule their eye exams. We’re talking about paid. We’ve got a fantastic agency on board, Energy BBDO out of Chicago, who handles our social content for us. The healthy balance between leading the conversation, listening to the conversation, and actually having a conversation. Facebook is not a one-way communication platform. It’s actually an opportunity to do what you and I are doing right now, which is to talk. And so you’ve got to think about that as a dialogue. It’s a tennis match. Not every point in tennis, not every forehand or backhand is a winner. It sets up the next shot. We look at social media as an opportunity to essentially engage our consumer in a tennis match. Sometimes we’re going to win the point; sometimes we’re going to lose the point. Sometimes the points just go on and on and we’re going to wish that it would just end. The respect that we have for social, in particular, Facebook leading that charge, it is one of our strongest marketing platforms.

Special 50th Episode: Lessons from 200+ CMOs

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If all CMOs thought alike, Renegade Thinkers Unite wouldn’t stand a chance at reaching 50 episodes. The vast diversity of marketing approaches is part of what makes the field so interesting. After interviewing 200+ CMOs over the years, Drew Neisser has learned a thing or two about perspective.

This special RTU episode takes bit of a twist, as Drew sits down for the first time as the interviewee. Marketing Today podcast host Alan Hart asks Drew about his experiences speaking with a wide array of marketing professionals. You’ll learn about some of the common themes many of Drew’s guests have discussed, as well as several marketing strategies that have stood out to him.  Click here to listen to the episode. [Show notes by Jay Tellini.]

Here are some of our favorite moments from Drew’s interview with Alan:

Alan: The role of CMO is challenging. What do you think about the role? Why is it challenging?

Drew: Well it’s challenging for several reasons. One is that they don’t really speak the language of the CEO. The CEO rarely comes from the Marketing Suite. They come from finance, they might come from law, they come from operations, COO or something. And the marketing person has often dealt with ethereal as well as measurable things but they don’t have control over everything. And so the CEO says, “I want revenue and I want profit.” The marketer says, ‘Well I want awareness and I want engagement. You can have your revenue and your profit but we’re going to need proxy measures.’ They’re disconnected. So that’s one.

Alan: What else?

Drew: And then there’s this other whole frickin’ issue which is, there’s nothing like a great marketing campaign to kill a bad product or service. And we had several times where we had clients who we were killing it on the front end and then their customer service was so bad that they would lose them on the back end. So churn was really high. Is it the CMO’S job is to fix that? It could be. One of the guys that I interviewed that I loved was Manny Rodriguez who totally understands storytelling. This was after I interviewed him but he told me that he started to notice that customer experience was a problem in UC Health. And they said, “Great Manny, you fix it.” So he’s doing customer experience too. He was already doing brand story, was already doing positioning and marketing and now he’s a responsible customer experience.

Alan: What do you think it’s important for a CMO to be doing or focusing on?

Drew: Let’s talk about strategy for a second. I think for a CMO, this is the unfortunate part of their job. When you hear the words, “I’m building the plane while I’m flying it,” I get worried about it because a really brilliant marketing campaign can live for 20, 30 or 40 years. We were talking about this earlier that Geico’s “15 minutes will save you 15%.” How long have they been using that? Forever! And guess what? They’re not going to stop and you know why? Because it really works. We don’t have the capacity to remember 20 things and we don’t need to. We like them and we remember them and we know their value proposition. If you’re going to invest 20-years worth, you better spend enough time on the strategic foundation.

Alan: We talked a lot about story. Tell me your perspective on brand story.

Drew: I think that it is the most overused word in our business. Everything is a story. Every brand has a narrative. Every CMO is using the term and I’m guilty of this, so I apologize to you and all of the listeners that we’re even using that term. We’re using that term because we can’t come up with a better one. Unfortunately at our shop we talk about Big S and Little S. Big S storytelling is when you really boil down your brand to an essential conflict like Georgia-Pacific did with Angel Soft.  For Angel Soft the essential conflict boils down to how something can be both strong and soft. That’s a conflict. We now have conflict and we can build stories around that may or may not have anything to do with the product but you get the idea of strong and soft and that’s the benefit of the product. That’s Big S storytelling. And then you have to take that essential conflict and then you have to execute it everywhere. But the good news about it is if you do, it’s consistent. But it’s not necessarily the same 30-second video as a social media post. If you get it right and you have an idea that will hold it all together, then it really works effectively. So far, it is the only way that we have seen to hold content marketing and social media together is by having an overall story idea.

Alan: What’s Little S?

Drew: Lowercase S is, “hey did I tell you about the time that we hung out together at the bar?” It has nothing to do with anything. It’s just a story. And that’s to me what is confused between the two. It’s very tricky. And I know many brands don’t like “conflict,” so they can’t even use that term. It’s a very complicated issue and I can’t wait until we have a new word for it.

Alan: I want to talk a little bit more about you, Drew. What drives you?

Drew: The notion of courage drives me. I feel like I can help CMOs think a little bit differently about their jobs. To me, that’s the most exciting part of what we’re doing right now. We’ve gotten to know all these CMOs. And this is the thing – the CMO is in the position, they have all the levers. If you can get them to pull all those levers as not just a force to cut through the crap, but as a force for good, I feel like that’s a good day or a good week or a good year or a good life.

The Intersection of Marketing & Storytelling

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A little tenderness goes a long way when trying to reach an audience. If you want to develop a brand message that has meaning, emotional storytelling could be the key to your next marketing campaign. As bestselling author Chris Bohjalian illustrated in Part I of this Renegade Thinkers Unite episode, storytelling is all about touching the audience on a personal level. [Show notes by Jay Tellini.]

In Part II of this episode, Bohjalian talks about the mechanics behind some of the deeply emotional themes he has communicated to his readers over the years. The author’s eloquent words are sure to inspire your marketing team, as he provides narrative advice that can help your brand convey a powerful story. You can listen to the episode here.

Here are some of our favorite moments from the interview:

Drew: How do you market your books when you’re on the road?

Chris: First of all, the book tours changed a lot in the last 25 years. And it’s changed a lot because of the digital era. The digital era has done two things to the book tour. First of all, it has dramatically decreased the number of hardcover books you will sell on a book tour because so many people will buy the book digitally from either Apple, Amazon, Kobo, BN.com. That means that each event is likely to sell fewer books. Secondly, it is meant—tragically—that there are fewer book stores. We all know that independent bookstores lost a lot of bricks and mortar faces when Amazon started in the late 1990s. We all know that Barnes and Noble is beleaguered right now as it tries to manage these beautiful superstores that were built in the 1990s, pre-Amazon, pre-BN.com with how many books they can really move in a 200,000 square foot store. A book tour is different now.

Drew: How is it different?

Chris: You have different expectations in terms of how many books you’re going to sell, but you’re doing two things. You’re being an ambassador for your publisher. You’re being an ambassador for yourself or your brand. You’re getting a chance to connect one-on-one with your readers. And yes, you are getting a chance still to sell books because I sign a lot of napkins, Kindle cases, posters, flyers at book tours now by people who read on a tablet. And that’s fine. It’s all reading. It’s all savoring stories, but it’s different. The days when you might sign four, five hundred books at a book event are waning. At least there are for me. I know that there are authors out there who will sign 400, 500 books at an event but those events are pretty rare for me.

Drew: You’re teaching master classes at Yale and Rutgers. What are you teaching your students?

Chris: I believe television and the digital age have changed how readers approach novels. You need to immerse them fast into what the story is, why the stakes matter, and why it’s emotionally relevant to them. And so what I like to focus on is, how do you begin? What’s your point of view? What’s your tense, and what’s going to create either that sense of dread or momentum or enthusiasm to cause your reader to pick this book up off the table or download it when there are so many other choices? What’s going to hook them on page one.

 

If Marketing is Storytelling Then Learn from a NYT #1 Bestseller

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Marketers are mini-authors in the sense that they seek to spark emotional connections with audiences through storytelling. Ideally, every element of a marketing campaign needs to feel near and dear to the consumer. As the array of platforms on which marketers can make impressions expands, it’s essential to maintain a voice that is consistent, adaptable, and—above all—genuine. In order to hit these points, we need to understand the anatomy of a good story. [Show notes by Jay Tellini.]

That’s where #1 New York Times bestselling author Chris Bohjalian comes in. Character-driven anecdotes dominate Bohjalian’s work, as his descriptive prowess has made him a master of sentimental narration. The wordsmith’s writing style affirms the tenderness that so many brands try to articulate in their ad campaigns.

In Part I of his conversation with Drew Neisser, Bohjalian shares insights for telling a rich and personal story. The author explains how he manages to draw dedicated crowds both in his books and on his social media channels, offering unique advice from a perspective that’s fresh to many marketers. You can listen to the episode here.

Here are some standout questions and answers from the interview:

 

Drew: Can you talk a little bit about your writing routine?

Chris: Being precise, being careful, being thoughtful, and being responsible—really trying to understand what you want to say, whether it’s a whole report about Listerine antiseptic or some marketing research on Clorets, the breath deodorant. I was writing between 5 and 7 a.m. in the morning before going to work at Thompson and then Monday and Tuesday nights when I came home from work. When I left advertising once and for all in my early 30s, I continued to start writing at about 5:00 in the morning because that was my habit. And then we had an infant baby girl and it was important to get as much writing in as I could before it was time to help get her up and out the door to daycare and then to preschool and then to elementary school. These days I don’t start at 5:00 in the morning anymore, I probably start at about six but I’m at my desk until at least 11 or 11:30 until noon or 12:30.

Drew: What are your writing goals for the day?

The goal is to write a thousand words a day. I don’t always write a thousand words. But as Jodi Picoult observed, it is a whole lot easier to edit garbage than a blank page. And so it’s important to get something down on paper. Every 50 or so pages I print out what I have and then I edit by hand using a fountain pen because fountain pens are messy and it forces me to think more slowly. To really find that right synonym for “red,” whether it’s burgundy or claret. I always also write with the understanding that the first draft isn’t the final draft. My books will usually go through seven or eight or nine drafts. I never know where my books are going. I depend on my characters to take me by the hand and lead me through the dark of the story. 

Drew: Storytelling has jumped from the domain of novelists like yourself into brand marketing, and social media has leapt from my world into your world of bookselling. Can you tell me about your storytelling techniques?

Chris: Sure. First of all, I think novels are changing and I believe they are changing because we are in the midst of a wonderful renaissance in television drama (The Sopranos, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Handmaid’s Tale). Certainly television drama at its finest impacts the way that I write today. And that gets to my second point; the digital world has changed our attention spans and our expectations. I think it’s utterly fascinating that when we think of Les Miserables, we think it begins with Jean Valjean stealing the candlesticks. That’s how the musical begins. That’s how the movie begins. The reality is that Jean Valjean steals the candlesticks on page 104 of my edition of the novel. The first 103 pages is a lengthy discussion of the goodness of the archbishop. That novel has 60 pages about the sewers of Paris. Thanks to the Sopranos and Breaking Bad and Mad Men, we’ve got a very different craving for narrative drive and storytelling, which is why when my books work, and heaven knows they do not always work, they are in part about dread and they are in part about a narrative drive that must begin from page one. That doesn’t mean that I don’t want characters that are deep and real, because heaven knows that I do. But you want to meet those characters quickly. You want to feel their pain quickly and understand why you’re going to be emotionally invested in that story quickly.