Tag: CMO Awards

CMO Insights: Corporate Social Responsibility

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Admittedly, I’m a bit of a romantic when it comes to the notion of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).  I really truly want to believe that companies that are driven by a purpose that includes the betterment of the world will outperform those that simply want to make a profit.  As the theory goes, a clear mission translates to a more aligned and motivated workforce, a superior product/service offering that delivers against the “triple bottom line.”  

This is not just wishful thinking on my part. Robert Safian, Editor of FastCompany tackled this subject in his fascinating look at some mission driven companies that are indeed doing well by doing good.  So it was with great interest that I interviewed Alison Lewis SVP and CMO of Johnson & Johnson on the subject of CSR.  J&J has had its ups and downs in the last few years so I was quite curious to get an insider’s view on how a huge business can approach CSR without coming across as self-serving or insincere.  Read on and it will be clear why Lewis is a Social Responsibility award winner at The CMO Club’s CMO Awards.

Drew: “Doing well by doing good” sounds like a great idea but it is much harder to put into practice given the complexity of running a public company with quarterly earnings reports and ever-hungry competitors. How have you approached Corporate Social Responsibility? Do you have a distinct set of metrics for CSR (vs. product sales) that help rationalize these investments?

As a healthcare company, caring for the health of the planet and the communities in which we operate are natural extensions of who we are. Therefore, Johnson & Johnson has been setting goals to improve the sustainability of our business for decades. Currently, our Healthy Future 2015 goals are our broadest set of goals yet. They include goals related, but not limited, to:

  • Safeguarding our planet by reducing waste disposal, water consumption, and reduced fleet and facility carbon emissions
  • Commitments to responsibly source ingredients throughout our consumer supply chain
  • Including product sustainability information on all our beauty and baby care brand websites
  • Educating the public on recycling bathroom products
  • Engaging all employees throughout the company on how to live more health-conscious lives

We measure these goals in our annual progress report that is available at: http://www.jnj.com/caring/citizenship-sustainability/performance/healthy-future-2015.

Drew: CSR activities are often handled outside of the marketing team’s purview yet the hope is that these activities will provide a positive halo for a company’s brands.  What is your role related to CSR and are there some initiatives that you think have been particularly effective?
Sustainability is an end-to-end value chain effort. When we make progress, our brand marketing teams can help translate that progress in a meaningful way to our consumers. Marketing can play a key role to engage consumers and help brands make a difference – Our NEUTROGENA® Naturals brand is an example of how a brand can build progress on sustainability into its consumer communications.

For the third year in a row, NEUTROGENA® Naturals launched its Every Drop Counts campaign, where the brand educates consumers on the importance of water conservation. This year, throughout the month of October, NEUTROGENA® Naturals will contribute 10% of the purchase price of the NEUTROGENA® Naturals Purifying Cream Cleanser to the Nature Conservatory to support its water conservation efforts*. In 2013 the NEUTROGENA® Naturals brand exceeded their goal of saving one million gallons of water by more than 300%, over 4.2 million gallons of water were saved based on consumer pledges – – that’s the equivalent of a swimming pool the size of nearly four football fields!
*up to $50,0000

Drew: J&J received more than its fair share of negative publicity before your arrival.  How did you make sure that your CSR initiatives came across as a sincere versus self-promotional? What advice would you give to fellow CMO’s who are just getting started on CSR programs?
The key is consistency. Regardless of the business climate, our values and commitment to social responsibility have remained steadfast. One of Johnson & Johnson’s early leaders, General Robert Wood Johnson, spoke about social and environmental responsibility long before the term “corporate social responsibility” or “sustainability” became well-known in corporate circles. My advice to other CMOs is to embed your CSR commitments into your core values (what you care about) and your business strategy (how you focus) and your brands will have a strong foundation to make a meaningful difference.

Drew: Handling organizational change can be tricky particularly if it involves reorganizing / replacing long-time staffers.  What advice do you have for fellow CMOs when it comes to handling reorgs?
Just as marketing must continue to evolve to keep pace with our consumers’ needs and expectations, so must marketing organizations. When it comes to change, the important thing is to always put the consumer at the center. At Johnson & Johnson, we have a long history of being guided by Our Credo values, the first tenant of which is our responsibility to the people we serve – everyone who uses our products. Change for the sake of change doesn’t work but changing to meet consumer needs is always right!

Drew: How have you used social media to advance your brand’s overall marketing efforts? Are there any social media channels that are working better for your brand than others? If so, please elaborate.
Social media is about connecting with your target audience, therefore, every Consumer brand at Johnson & Johnson has a different “formula” for how to successfully engage and connect on social channels.

One example of how a Johnson & Johnson brand has utilized social to evolve our marketing efforts is on our teen focused CLEAN & CLEAR® Brand – – here, we recognized that social media channels at the core of a teens world. Knowing this, CLEAN & CLEAR® was an ideal brand to build the interconnected ecosystem of owned, earned, shared and paid content that would enable the CLEAN & CLEAR® See The Real Me™ campaign. By launching and activating several social media channels (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram), we are able to listen to what teens want, engage in direct conversations with them and entertain, educate and inspire them with authentic content.  By engaging with teens in the social space the brand is able to forge an emotional connection and become part of their everyday lives. We have coffee with them in the morning, provide advice to them on the go, and help them relax before bed while celebrating the confidence that they portray on a daily basis by just being themselves.

Drew: Storytelling is a big buzzword right now.  Is your brand a good storyteller and if so, can you provide an example of how you are telling that story for one of your brands?
JOHNSON’S® is one recent example of how we’ve enhanced the story of one of our most beloved brands. Increasingly, we heard from our consumers that they had concerns about certain ingredients in our baby products. All the ingredients used in our baby care products have always been safe, and meet or exceed government standards for safety. But trust is at the heart of our baby equity, and we wanted to communicate to our consumers that we listened to their concerns and we know their trust is something that we must continue to earn. We knew that our actions would speak louder than our words, and we made the decision to reformulate our baby products for trust. As our reformulated products hit shelves, we launched a new campaign, “Your Promise is Our Promise” to illustrate our heartfelt commitment to the moms, dads and families that use our products.

To tell the story behind our promise, we launched our biggest social media campaign with more than 40 informative and entertaining videos that speak to our JOHNSON’S® brand promises, baby care education and the parenting journey. We’ve seen millions of consumers interact with our video content, comment on our social channels and learn more about what our brand stands for due to our ability to connect through storytelling.

CMO Insights: Campaigns and the Customer Experience

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Given that Lisa Bacus, EVP of Global Marketing at Cigna is a recent winner of The CMO Award for Content Marketing, one might assume that our conversation would stop there especially given my somewhat obsessive interest in the topic.  But fortunately for you, that is not the case as Lisa also provided insights into Cigna’s recent agency change, global campaign launch and the importance of addressing the entire customer experience (CX).  In fact, my favorite quote in this interview is “I believe that CX is everyone’s responsibility,” as she describes CIGNA’s approach to dealing with this thorny challenge–one that is all too often left off a CMO’s responsibility list.  But enough of the preamble, here’s Lisa.

Drew: Can you describe your primary content marketing initiatives this year and how they benefited your company?
Most of our content marketing has been through web/social/mobile platforms, and through co-branded partnerships. We are also fortunate to have authored several white papers on emerging trends, that we have turned into helpful content — videos, on-site advising, infographics, live chats — plus a host of personalized content delivered through our customer web portal.

Drew: Do you think you are doing a better job than your competition with content?  If so, how so and what does take to get to this level?
I can only speak for Cigna, and while I don’t believe anyone has mastered content marketing in our industry, we are very happy with the level of customer and consumer engagement we have had to date.

Drew: A lot of companies are just getting started with content programs.  What advice would you give them overall?
I’d start by looking within. There are probably a lot of great things that the organization is currently doing — you just need to harness it, synthesize it, and create it in a way that is compelling and consumers can easily digest it. And with good analytics/insight, you can deliver it in a way they want to receive it.

Drew: How are you as CMO staying on top of all the new digital marketing techniques and opportunities?
There is a lot to stay on top of! Personally, I do a lot of reading to understand emerging trends and technologies in order to identify those that may be able to deliver on the things we are exploring. We test a lot of new ideas and new technologies. Some that are working well, and others, though they didn’t meet our needs, provided good learning.

Drew: The trade press reported that CIGNA went through an agency review earlier this year–how did that process work for you and what lessons would you give to other marketers who are considering changing agencies?
In an industry that has been going through quite a bit disruption, we had the opportunity to strengthen our branding efforts and really leverage our global brand. Until recently, our branding was managed locally, through multiple agencies operating independently. By uniting our marketing efforts across markets and across the globe, and with the support of a global agency, we were able to gain scale, consistency and greater effectiveness in our branding efforts. We were fortunate in that we had great business partners to work with, and had a strong roster of global agencies. We started the process with the end in mind, and defined the process upfront, which served us well. Also, in the second round, we presented a challenge to the finalists, to see not only the strength of their capabilities, but how they interacted with the team in the process. It was a collaborative effort all the way around and we are very happy with the results.

Drew: Your new campaign tagline “Together, all the way,” seems to represent a major shift from CIGNA’s previous “GoYou” campaign.  Can you talk a little about the thinking behind the new campaign and how you rolled it out?
The spirit of GoYou lives on, as we believe in inspiring and championing the individual. At the same time, our research told us that we needed to tell more of our story. Those who were familiar with the brand were 19 times more likely to choose us. Among our most passionate advocates, were those who talked about Cigna helping them either get well or stay well. They talked about partnership over the long haul and Cigna having their back. We knew we had an opportunity to demonstrate to others, through many proof points, how we do this, and convey that we know how hard it is to stay well on your own. This is why we’re in it with them — together all the way.

Drew: Was there an internal component?
Absolutely. What makes this easy is that our 35,000+ colleagues live the brand every day. In fact, we feature our own employees in our ads, talking about how they have our customers’ backs. Additionally, from a series of brand rallies, to personal commitments to the brand promise from every employee scrolling on our intranet, to a crowd-sourced contest where employees could share how they partner with charities in their community to win micro-grants for the charities — the level of engagement has been terrific.

Drew: Customer experience (CX) does not always come under the control of the CMO yet can have a dramatic impact on the brand and ultimately the believability of your marketing initiatives.  How have you been able to impact the customer experience in your current role?
I believe that CX is everyone’s responsibility, though it is in my accountabilities. We have a team that is dedicated to CX to ensure that we understand what the most critical levers are that we can pull to have the greatest impact on the customer experience. We measure NPS across all of our businesses and all of our markets, and it makes the short list of most critical KPIs at the enterprise level. By identifying the top 3 parts of the customer journey that are creating the least amount of joy for our customers, we can be focused, and somewhat surgical, in our approach to improve key processes and customer impacts. The other interesting thing we do is match these up against our employee engagement survey results, to see where we have common areas of opportunity and can reshape key processes that directly impact customer and employee satisfaction.

Drew: What were a few of the major lessons you learned related to launching new campaigns that you might share with fellow marketers?
The basics — know thy brand, know thy customer, know thy market. If you do the work to understand the current state, and what your current/prospective customers need, you can build upon your assets to ensure the brand is relevant and desirable, to drive greater consideration.

Drew: In your experience, how do you know when it’s time to make changes to an organization or department?
When a team is no longer delivering optimal value for the customer or the company, it’s time to take a look at what you are doing and how you are doing it. I believe that most people come to work wanting to be great, so when the marketplace changes, or the business needs change, they are often quick to know it’s time to take action and change/improve the current approach.

CMO Insights: Investing in Culture Before Strategy

Posted on by Drew Neisser

A marketing strategy is only as successful as the company behind it. From the product to the placement to the people, every part of your company has to back up your marketing claims or its all just a house of cards. For Phil Granof, CMO of Black Duck Software, this meant creating a new company culture before launching any new campaigns. As he put it, “culture eats strategy.”

As a result, when Black Duck Software released its new campaign there were already brand evangelists eager to spread the word. This kind of big picture thinking is part of the reason why Phil was awarded a Leadership Award via this year’s CMO Awards, presented by The CMO Club. In the interview below, Phil’s covers how to build that internal culture while providing an overview of Black Duck’s 2014 marketing initiatives.

Drew: Congratulations on winning the Leadership award.  Some people are dubbed “born leaders” while the rest of us have to learn these skills.  What are some of the lessons (about leading) you can share with aspiring leaders especially of the marketing variety?
I’m not sure anyone is actually a born leader. I think there are those that are born thinking they can or should lead, but that only gives them one advantage, which is the confidence to seek a leadership position, and it most certainly does not guarantee success. What it does guarantee is continuous demand for books that contain the “secrets” to leadership. I’ve read many of them, to be honest, but boiling it down, I think successful leadership requires a simple and easily overlooked aspect: quality people must want to work for you. Talent is free to move where it will, and technology fuels this mobility. So as a leader, my goal has always been to win the hearts and minds of the most talented team I could find. That means trading value for value. Leaders must provide as much value back to their people as they provide the organization, or the best talent will sense an imbalance and move on. The value equation for everyone can be quite different, but it tends to fall across three dimensions: intrinsic return, extrinsic return, and collective return.

Intrinsic return is the value a person receives cognitively and emotionally. Are they growing as a person? Are they feeling a sense of accomplishment? Are they developing and learning? If the position you create for an employee lacks this return for effort, you can say goodbye to holding on to good people. The remaining will be grumpy, disenfranchised, and resentful toward even the idea of hard work.

Extrinsic return is the value a person receives materially, and so is the most important and least important of the three dimensions; however, it is more than whether they are compensated fairly for their effort. It also means they are given the tools they need to succeed in their job, and the cost and complexity of these tools tends to rise with a person’s talent. Have you ever seen someone begging for a better computer? The best people know exactly what they need to do their job. Get it to them, if you value them.

Collective return is achieved when a person sees its organization providing value to the people around them. These can be co-workers, family, colleagues, customers, or community. This is the most undervalued dimension by leaders, and separates not only great leaders from average leaders, but great companies from average companies. When a person “believes” in a company, I surmise it really is an assessment of whether or not she observes a benefit to her social ecosystem.

Drew: One oft-stated trick of being a good leader is just hiring great people and then getting out of their way. As a CMO, however, you often have to lead (or at least influence) other parts of the organization for which you don’t have hiring / firing responsibility.  What are some of the techniques you’ve used to lead beyond your direct reports?
My approach to successfully influencing people across divisions is to learn where to begin my conversation. I divide companies into two types with respect to Marketing: those in which conversations about marketing begin with “Why is marketing important?” and those more enlightened companies that ask, “What is the best marketing approach?” This split is true of departments, their leaders, and their teams. You are never going to be effective convincing someone of the right marketing approach if his or her going-in premise is that marketing is worthless. Similarly, don’t waste your time justifying marketing to those that already get it. They’ll think you don’t. Underlying this approach rests a belief that effective lateral influence requires education.

Framing the task of leading beyond your direct reports as educational is really instructive. Think back to your own education. You’ll undoubtedly remember teachers that made you proficient in a subject, and those that inspired you to change your life with a passion for their topic. Be the latter. Marketing needs to inspire in order to change behavior.

Drew: As CMO, what have been your two biggest challenges and how have you addressed these?
My two biggest challenges were both cultural. The reason I joined Black Duck Software was that I saw huge potential for the brand. To elevate the meaning of Black Duck, I had to begin internally. Culture eats strategy, and as with many successful software companies, Black Duck has a thriving engineering-driven culture. The challenge was to inject a new perspective into that paradigm rather than overturn it. My message was simple: products, patents, and people come and go, but the brand can outlast them all. My evangelism, however, didn’t begin in engineering. It began in HR. I worked closely with the VP of HR to underscore the connection between corporate values and brand. My second beachhead was product management and engineering, where I aimed to help them understand how future value could be created within engineering through a shared vision of the company. I slowly introduced the word “brand” as the idea took root that we needed a shared heuristic for product development. Brand became that basis for judgment. Finally, I ended every single presentation with the same three slides: The first was a slide that read “Think Like Apple.” The second read: “Act Like Disney.” The final slide was a mantra: “Make Everything the Customer Touches a Reason to Love Black Duck.”

The second challenge surfaced unexpectedly with a CEO change five months into my tenure. We had just begun to rally around a new big idea created by marketing, and were days away from launch. More than anything, the brand embodies a CEO’s vision for what he believes is the future of the organization. A new CEO either takes the mantle as steward of a strong brand, or sees an opportunity to take it in a new direction. The new CEO, Lou Shipley, quickly evaluated the previous CEO’s vision, which had more to do with the social aspects of coding with open source software (OSS), and saw a different future. Lou’s vision was to see Black Duck as an integral part of how every modern enterprise develops software. Marketing not only had to start over from scratch, but also there was the not-so-surprising senior management turnover that often comes with the arrival of new leadership. My only advantage was that the organization had already taken the first steps toward integrating a brand-driven mindset, and so we were much further along culturally than when I first arrived.

Drew: Did you launch any new programs in 2014 that you are particularly proud of? If so, please provide a brief overview including goals, tactics & results.
The arrival of Lou Shipley as CEO was a turning point. He asked me to think differently about how to approach the market, more in alignment with his view that Black Duck should be as integral as SAP, Salesforce, or Oracle. While he shared my intention of elevating the brand, he was seeking a way to make Black Duck a necessity, not a choice.

The first step was where I had begun all assignments in my past life as a brand consultant. (All CMOs need to be their own brand consultants, at some level. If you totally outsource this, it is hard to embody a brand vision.) I took a deeper look at the language we were using that was successful in driving subscription revenue. Having some background in the science of metaphor analysis, I uncovered a surprising aspect to the Black Duck brand. If one stripped away the Black Duck name from all of our spoken and written communications, what remained was a company story that sounded more like UPS and Amazon than HP and IBM. We were using the language of logistics: selection, scanning, approving, cataloging, automating, securing, and delivering. We even produce a Bill of Materials. It seemed there might be an entirely new way to reposition not just Black Duck, but also the whole industry. As trial balloon for the concept, I wrote an article that appeared in Wired called: “Think Like Linux, Act Like UPS, and Smile Like Amazon.” In the article, I offered up a concept, for companies to successfully incorporate open source software (OSS) into their applications, what they really needed was an OSS Logistics solution, and not another application development solution. With this novel combination of recognizable terms, we instantly elevated ourselves from a mere software scanning solution to a business process solution that allows companies to build software faster, better, and cheaper. To borrow the UPS slogan, “We love logistics, too.”

Once the article drew positive attention, we tested the OSS Logistics concept among analysts, customers, employees, supply chain experts, and even Jim Zemlin, who runs the Linux Foundation. He saw OSS Logistics as a way to manage a company’s “external R&D,” a concept he has been promoting for a while now.

With validation under our belt, internally and externally, the marketing team developed programs around launching OSS Logistics, from an easy to comprehend video that we integrated into our nurturing campaigns to a sweep of every word of content from the past three years. Finally, we undertook training with sales and channel partners, and surprisingly the universal reaction was “Yes! Finally, we’ve captured what Black Duck does!”

Since the launch of OSS Logistics in the beginning of this year, marketing has produced a 30 percent increase in qualified leads over 2013, a 44 percent increase in unique web visitors, an across-the-board increase in social media stats, and more importantly, it has completely changed the internal discussion around product improvement and new product development.

One interesting note: We decided explicitly not to trademark the term OSS Logistics. As the market leader, we have the greatest interest in seeing broad comprehension of the value our industry produces. We would like everyone to use it, from analysts to competitors. A longstanding frustration with past leaders at Black Duck has been poor market comprehension of exactly what is meant by open source governance, compliance, and risk mitigation. “OSS Logistics” has swept that away.

Drew: What tool, product, or service (if any) has provided the greatest improvement to your digital marketing efforts over the last year? Please explain a bit about why you chose it and how it has worked out.
One great improvement we’ve seen has been a result of a tool called Demandbase. Demandbase is a real-time targeting and personalization platform offering marketers company-targeted display advertising, website engagement, and conversion modules for a consistent view of accounts from spend to revenue. We not only have a view into exactly who visits our website, a huge source of leads, but we have been able to reduce our form fields by nearly 50 percent and still collect all the data we need for targeting. Also, we send beautifully clean data into Salesforce, which our sales team appreciates. Our next step is to tailor the web experience based on a prospect’s company and role. Demandbase will allow us to do this.

Drew: Handling organizational change can be tricky particularly if it involves reorganizing / replacing long-time staffers.  What advice do you have for fellow CMOs when it comes to handling reorgs?
I believe it is critical to understand if the long-time staffer is a “tipping point” in the organization, or simply an overlooked issue. If they are a tipping point, and have a great deal of influence on the culture, then you have to be extremely careful – assuming you want that element of the culture to remain. My other advice would be to view a re-org as a treasure hunt. I personally found three hidden gems in the organization that had been overshadowed and overlooked for various reasons, and now they are thriving. Had we blindly seen quiet people as underperforming, it would have been a big loss. Outside of the business world, my favorite example is Big Papi on the Red Sox. On the Twins, Ortiz battled inconsistency in field and at the plate. However, in a new context with the Red Sox? Well…the rest is baseball history.

 

CMO Insights: Relaunching Brands

Posted on by admin

Relaunching an old and established brand is tricky business.  There’s always the risk that you will alienate your long-time customers as you try to appeal to appeal to a new generation of potential buyers. Knowing this, the marketing team at Hillerich & Bradsby Co. (the parent of Louisville Slugger) decided that rather than steer away from the brand’s illustrious past, they would embrace it while finding fresh ways to engage a new generation of consumers. Coming from Procter & Gamble, H&B’s new CMO Kyle Schlegel had to figure out how to put this plan into effect despite working with a modest budget (by P&G standards) and an entirely different corporate structure.

In the interview below, you will learn how Schlegel and the H&B team revitalized the Louisville Slugger brand by taking a “grass roots” approach, listening to their customers and engaging consistently in social media.  You will also quickly understand why Schlegel was voted a Rising Star at last year’s CMO Awards.

Drew: You face a similar challenge with the Louisville Slugger brand that you faced with Old Spice: younger, “hipper” brands are infringing on your market share. What do you think Old Spice did in terms of marketing that made its resurgence so successful and how do you plan to apply those same lessons to Louisville Slugger?

On Old Spice, the team realized three critical dynamics to the future success of the brand.   The future of the brand had to be rooted in its past in some way, it wasn’t going to happen overnight. We also had to be comfortable with a generation of consumers that may have been lost and focus instead on the entry point consumer that would be the lifeblood of the brand for decades to come.  In restaging the brand around 2000, we explored the full history of the brand and worked closely with consumers on which, if any, of those elements were relevant moving forward.  We next laid out a multi-year plan that would help get us get ever closer to the goal of the #1 brand in the market and, more specifically, the #1 brand with young men.   Finally, we identified a couple of programs that helped expose and sample the brand to the next generation of consumers, including a sampling program in middle schools, where more than 90% of 5th and 6th grade boys received a sample.   These choices set in motion the changes over the next decade and the global success that followed.

On Louisville Slugger, we are taking a very similar approach.  Our team explored the history of the brand and the sport to understand exactly which elements of the foundation would stay in place and where evolution – or even revolution – was necessary.   Next, we looked at a plan over a 3-5 year window where relevance could be regained, consumer by consumer.  Finally, the team had to make changes to the brand and focus in ways that wouldn’t allow us to attempt to regain the “lost generation”, a necessary but difficult choice to instead focus on the next generation of players. 

Drew: You just updated the Louisville Slugger logo for the first time since 1979. How do you balance modernization with respecting the traditions and history of the brand?
We did not take the change and steps to get there lightly.  Throughout the journey, we engaged with every key stakeholder, from pros to amateurs, from retailers to employees and from ages 8 to 80.   Each of these people are “players” when we think about our brand purpose…”we exist to make players great”.    We quickly learned which elements of the brand were sacred (i.e. the oval within the logo) and which elements could cease to be used (i.e. TPX & TPS sub-brands) in service to the ultimate goal of rebuilding relevance with today’s players.

Drew: A CMO has a lot of choices in terms of where they invest their time.  What have been your top priorities in the last 12 months?
I joined a company and team that had not placed a significant focus and investment on marketing in past years.  My first 18 months in the role have really focused on building marketing fundamentals, clarifying strategies and helping to narrow these strategies on the most impactful activities.   The brand restage was job #1 and took energy from everyone in the organization, leading into market in April 2013.  Last fall, the full impact of capability building and the restage took center stage as the brand launched the first fully integrated marketing plan across retailers, grassroots, media and PR, supporting the 2014 product line launch.

Drew: Have there been any big surprises in terms of what’s worked really well and what hasn’t?
Going from Procter & Gamble to Hillerich & Bradsby, Co. has come with a learning curve for sure.  Overnight, the structure, funding, scale and capability of P&G went away.  In its place, a new set of circumstances took its place.  While the reduced scale and funding are certainly challenges, the autonomy, flexibility and focus are refreshing.  This biggest positive surprise was in the restage.  We were able to pull off the biggest change in the history of a 129 year old brand, supported fully by a new campaign, and do so in less than 12 months; an incredible achievement by the full organization.  On the flip side, we have made a choice or two that I anticipated would work better.   One example was email marketing with top young players.   Through our grassroots relationships, we thought access to databases of thousands of young players would allow great scalability in communication but we learned quickly that this generation of player was not receptive to email marketing campaigns and we had to quickly shift to more one-on-one communication.

Drew: You operate in a relationship-based business. How do you improve loyalty among your customers?
Quite simply…show them you’re listening.  We are working more and more with young athletes and reaching them in more channels.  Each time, this gives us an opportunity to cede some control for where the brand is going and give them a say.  When we show them we’ve heard them by baking their ideas into our brand, loyalty comes with it.  This will be a bigger focus for us going forward.

Drew: One of the big challenges a CMO faces is organizational given all the different marketing channels.  How are you addressing these organizational challenges?
We’ve taken a long look at our marketing organization and how the roles are split, leading to an evolution in the team and the responsibilities.  We increased our staffing by nearly 40%, better clarified tasks (especially things like social media) and worked to provide the right training and the right time to help folks succeed.  Our industry has some natural segmentation and we’ve addressed that within the organization but then, on top, gotten people into new roles that allow for future focus areas, like social media, graphic design and retailer marketing.

Drew: Innovation is a sexy word but not as sexy to a CEO as ROI.  Have you been able to link your innovative marketing activities to the kinds of business metrics favored by CEOs?
The other big surprise, going from CPG to sporting goods, is the relative lack of timely, in-market data.  At P&G, ROI could be broken down to every element of the marketing plan and was available within 2-3 months of execution.   In my new life, shares cover only a portion of the market and often trail my more than 12 months.  We’ve sought to offset some of these challenges by trying to triangulate around some of our biggest spending areas, including working closely with our field sales reps to help provide insight into what is happening at the store level and how that is being influenced by our marketing efforts.  We have also shifted dollars into more digital programs (SEO, social) that allow us to better connect those activities with conversion data to aid judgment and future planning.   Transparently, we’re not there yet, but we’re attempting to add new tools each quarter.

Drew: Marketing seems to be getting increasingly complex in terms of ways to spend and ways to monitor. Has it gotten more complex for you and if so, how are you dealing with that complexity?
My change from P&G to H&B has come with a good balance of increased and decreased complexity.   The significantly smaller budgets led to a reduction of touchpoints (i.e. TV not possible) but the introduction of a robust grassroots focus comes with new challenges and decisions.  So far as grassroots are concerned, we are a part of nearly 400 individual events but limit this complexity by working with partners in this space that work closely with our team to preplan, execute and track.

Drew: How are you integrating social media into marketing efforts at Hillerich & Bradsby? Have social platforms proved to be a valuable channel for your brands?
Social media was not part of the marketing focus 18 months ago but has become one of our top two marketing priorities, including our #1 media investment.   In that period of time, we have increased our social following by more than 30X to nearly 500,000 fans across channels.   With our limited media budget, we’ve used the majority of that spending in SEO and in driving increased engagement in social media.   We now have an incredible audience and, in a sport where something newsworthy happens every day, we have a treasure chest of content and the highest engagement rate of any brand in the industry.

Drew: Do you agree with that notion “that marketing is everything and everything is marketing”  if so how have you extended the boundaries of your job beyond the normal purview of the CMO?  Asked differently, as CMO, have you been able to address the entire customer experience?  
I completely agree with the sentiment.  Anywhere and everywhere someone comes in contact with the brand should reinforce the brand purpose, the identity and should help get someone closer to demonstrating their allegiance.    Beyond the marketing department, we’ve worked very closely with all other functions.   The two where the most energy has been spent are with Sales and the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory.   With Sales, we now have strategic marketing discussions with each retailer and have increased our priority here by creating the new position of Director of Retail Marketing.   In the Museum & Factory, we have a built-in competitive advantage.  With over 270,000 guests per year, this provides us with an opportunity to tell the history of the brand and provide a sense of the sport and where the brand is going next.  With consumers from 8 to 80 “in house” every day, we’ve worked closely with the Museum staff to ensure the customer experience is complementary and additive to everything else we do.