A Big Idea is Bigger Than Your Brand

Guest: Eric Reynolds CMO, The Clorox Company

Packaged goods companies are well known for their marketing discipline and not the place you’d expect to hear a CMO express the need for “tolerating a lot more chaos and ambiguity in the culture and the way we work in order to get to the good stuff.” But that’s just the starting point with Eric Reynolds, who among other things advises against using influencers on a broad scale and believes that unless your brand gets talked about via the “holy trinity of the brand story, the message, and the content” then the idea isn’t big enough to cut through.

Meet the Guest

Reynolds oversees marketing for a wide range of brands including Brita, Burt’s Bees, Formula 409, Glad, Hidden Valley, Kitchen Bouquet, KC Masterpiece, Soy Vay, Kingsford, Liquid-Plumr, Mistolin, Pine-Sol, Poett, Tilex, S.O.S., and Fresh Step, Scoop Away and Ever Clean cat litters.

He was named CMO in January 2015 and according to Clorox, “As CMO, he has global responsibility for all marketing functions, including brand strategy and management, personnel staffing and development, consumer insights, advanced analytics, agency management, consumer promotion, digital capabilities, media planning and buying, commercial production, and graphic design.” In short, he’s the real deal.

What You'll Learn

  • How to engage thought leaders and influencers
  • How even in a data-rich world, successful marketing still begins with a clear strategy and a brand idea that people want to talk about
  • The importance of staying focused on the outside world (consumer, retailer, etc)

Quotes from Eric Reynolds

  • We seek experts or influencers who will authentically tell stories in their voice that incorporate our brand or product messages.
  • We want [influencers] to really engage and think about it and help shape the communication or product attributes.
  • We don’t believe influencer [marketing] is best when it’s used in a broad scale.
  • Nothing ever gets better until you’re really clear with yourself about what your brand stands for, why it even exists.
  • For our brands and categories that tends to be on the medium side of things, we find that unless you get that holy trinity of the brand story, the message, and that content, the work is noticed but it's not talked about.
  • State of the art means a very strong commitment to brand fundamentals, and then harnessing all the amazing data and technology as a means to an end to have that work in the background to bring to people in this really seamless way.
  • Digital and technology and partnerships have really democratized our ability to get intimate with the consumer.
  • A radical commitment to external focus is probably your greatest resource.

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