Tag: Emily Culp

How 100-Year Old Brands Stay Relevant

Posted on by Drew Neisser

share a pairLast Saturday I had the pleasure of witnessing Duke’s first bowl victory in 54 years.  By all measures it was a momentous occasion as two basketball powerhouses battled it out on a gridiron carved out of the baseball diamond that is Yankee Stadium!  Indiana University, whose founding dates back to 1820, has a long track record of success both on and off the field and its fans, turned out in red & white droves to cheer on their Hoosiers. Duke University, which traces its roots back to 1838 though it didn’t actually get its current brand name until 1924, also attracted several thousand delirious Blue Devils who were thrilled to learn about an obscure rule in college football — field goal attempts that rise above the goal posts can’t be reviewed after being called fair or foul.  It was upon this rule that Duke’s victory was sealed and history rewritten.

So why perchance am I sharing this scintillating bit of trivia in what is perhaps my last blog post of the year? Of course, there’s the reveling part but fortunately for you there’s more to it than that. As I mentioned both of these institutions are household names, have weathered the test of time and occasionally risen to the top of their competitive set–JUST LIKE KEDS. (Bet you didn’t see that one coming!)  Turning 100 in 2016, Keds is indeed a well-known brand that has played the fashion game effectively, getting hot at times without the usual melting away.  No doubt many have contributed to this success over the years, yet like new players on a college team, big gains often come with the new arrivals, a pattern I expect to see repeated with the arrival of Emily Culp, who was kind enough to spend time with me just before receiving The CMO Club’s Rising Star award.  This is part two of our winning interview (read part 1 here).  In it we cover the gamut from social listening to emerging channels like Snapchat, a marketer’s need for passion and the challenges of global initiatives.  I certainly got a big kick out of talking to Emily and I’m sure you will too.

Drew: I was at a customer service conference recently and one of the things that really struck me was how social listening and social customer service has advanced in the last couple of years to the point that not only are these people listening, obviously for the product issues but they’re also preemptively recommending changes to products based on things they hear. In some cases they even have a seat at the table for new product development because they’re so close to the customer. I’m just curious if social listening has played a part at all in your program or what role it does play?

It absolutely does. We listen to our consumers, engage them & make real-time changes to programs and products. We strongly believe our customers have the most important insights, hence we invite them to participate in Beta releases of new services and seed products early on to get feedback.

Because we have these amazing customers who love us and who are vocal when things go well and equally vocal when they don’t go well it is important to provide them with the level of engagement they desire with our brand. So this could take the form of providing feedback on advertising, testing to price elasticity, to literally just saying, “we’re between these two product names, which one do you like more?” And that way you create a loyalty, a genuine loyalty because you invite your customers into the process and you’re listening to them and asked upon their feedback.

Drew: It sounds like that could also be beginning of an influence service/advocacy program was well?

Yes, you’re right, there is nothing in exchange for it. Meaning, it’s just genuine love. I do this myself for three or four other brands that I’m ridiculously passionate about. I want to give feedback because I love to create products that I need or that would be slightly modified to my taste. In turn, if a company listens or engages me, then I will be a vocal advocate for them forever. I have told one story about Patagonia (100s of times) and their customer service simply because I love the brand and how they treated me.

Drew: You mentioned Snapchat. Every brand wants to figure out how to use it, but a lot have struggled. What’s working for you?

I fundamentally believe in Snapchat. So when I joined within the first 30 days, we officially launched our presence on the platform. For us right now, we are in the test and learn phase. Hence, I don’t think there is any secret sauce to share unfortunately, but we will learn quickly because it is where most of our 18 or 28-year-old woman are spending their time. Snapchat has became her favored platform along with Instagram and she has left Facebook for other uses, so that’s why it’s really, really important to me that we fully embrace this and drive forward with it but we’re still learning.

Drew: When you talked about your passion for other brands and how you get actively involved, how much does that impact how you attack your marketing and your approach to marketing at Keds?

I have loved Keds for decades. So when the opportunity arose to join the team it combined all the key elements that are important to me: a brand with rich heritage, a brand I personally love to wear, a brand that stands for female empowerment & a brand with an amazing senior leadership team. So a large aspect of my job is to tap into other people who feel that way about our brand and how do I give them a megaphone or at least an opportunity to share their feedback with us. Because somebody who’s worn Keds, even if they just switched from another product to ours or just rediscovered them, I love to hear from them. And my job as a marketer is to make sure that I do hear from them and I provide them platforms to share with us whether it’s on social, it’s in e-mail, you know, comment cards in store.

Drew: Lets talk about the challenge of global branding — the desire to be consistent on a global level yet still somehow localize as necessary has to be difficult.

It’s one of the most intriguing Rubik’s cubes you can work on. There is no question about it. As a marketer I think it’s very humbling and important to understand, you can have the perfect strategy, the perfect brand campaign, the perfect messaging and then you need to enter what I affectionately call the double helix matrix which is the global domain. And what I mean by that is all of these things that you’ve been very methodical and strategic about sometimes go out the window because I was not born and raised in X country and I didn’t understand the cultural nuance of a color, symbol or styling choice. So what may resonate visually or from a techy perspective in one market isn’t going to work than another but what’s amazing about this is your global partners who are in different regions teach you about what these things mean and help you think about the brand in a different way and help you think about how do you adapt to their market to have the same kind of same DNA and messaging but in a way that’s culturally relevant to them. So I actually really love it. For me a big reason is I am extremely curious, so global brands and messaging has always kept me on my toes.

CMO Insights: How to Handle the 1st 100 Days

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Passion will take you far in just about any job in any industry.  In marketing, passion for the customer, the product and your company will take you very far indeed.  You may recall my interview with John Yembrick, the head of social media for NASA and how his passion has yielded astronomical success for that organization’s social program.  In my book, The CMO’s Periodic Table, Sharing Passion is in the elemental category Inert Fundamentals along with elements like Showing Courage and Always Innovating.  Also in that category is Listening, which brings me to the subject at hand: Emily Culp.

Emily Culp, the new CMO of Keds, is bringing two powerful elements Passion and Listening to bear on a remarkably cool 100-year old brand. Her passion for Keds is contagious and her expressed desire to listen and really understand the Keds customer is more than just lip service — she used a recent promotional event to personally interview dozens and dozens of Keds fans from multiple generations. It is this kind of hands on ears open research that helped Emily get off to a running start at Keds and makes it easy to understand why The CMO Club recognized her as a Rising Star.  But don’t take my word for it, read on.

Drew: As the new CMO just coming into Keds, what were your goals for your first 100 days?

That’s a great question. I just hit the 90-day mark and some of the most important things that I have sought to accomplish are making sure that I’m clear on the strategy of the brand from a growth perspective, a heritage perspective and a product perspective and just really emerging myself those aspects of the business. Additionally, I am enjoying building relationships with my team and peers in product development, international, sales and strategy. To me, teamwork is one of the most critical aspects of business.

Drew: So, as I was looking at the Keds site I had the realization that, “oh my god, Keds are cool again!” When did that happen?

I would argue it’s been cool since it was founded in 1916.

Drew: Oh, stop! Come on, it was cool and then it wasn’t cool.

You know what? That’s the beauty of heritage products. They ebb and flow but there is a DNA of the product that is substantial and that’s the reason it’s been around for 100 years. Next year is our centennial and it’s because it’s a great product. To answer your question, when did it become cool again? I can’t really pinpoint that. But when you look at Yoko Ono to Lauren Hutton, to Audrey Hepburn, to Marilyn Monroe and then “Baby” in Dirty Dancing and then Taylor Swift, it’s a pretty amazing mix of women wearing our product. And that’s where you can see the cool factor thing cycle. I think it also is important to note that we created sneakers just for women to empower them to be free to pursue what they wanted to and this gives us an unbelievable credibility with women. So fashion cycles may change but there is something just beautiful about the simplicity of our product and you know, we always update it with different materials or collaborations such as Liberty of London and Kate Spade but we are true to our DNA.

Drew: You know it’s funny; it does very much look like a shoe I might have seen on kids in Newport Beach in 60s and 70s.

Exactly but it’s back. That’s what I love about fashion. For example, jumpsuits are back. Who knows when that happened, but it did happen.

Drew: It seems like you’ve done a lot to infuse fresh energy like the Keds/Kate Spade partnership or Taylor Swift designing her own pair of Keds.

That’s exactly it, it’s a multipronged approach and there is a lot more we’re going to do in this coming year around our centennial. We are excited to announce more specific details around it later this year.

Drew: So I’m curious, is there anything in particular that you’ve done at Keds in the time that you’ve been there that you would like to talk about?

I started at a great time which was right around when we were focusing on a women’s equality day initiative where we really were amplifying our Ladies First since 1916 platform. On August 26th, in NYC we did a popup activation in Washington Square Park where we gave out one thousand nine hundred and sixteen pairs of shoes to women so they could conquer the world. We also asked them to pause & think about “today is women’s equality day. What about tomorrow?” and we got some amazing responses. We were all so moved that we captured the responses and created a short video to inspire women everywhere.

It was a terrific way to start at Keds, because it meant that I could personally speak to the first 100 consumers in line and it was multi-generational and there were people who were telling me nicknames that they would call Keds since they were kids etc. So it was phenomenal experience and what was even more fascinating to me was the idea around what does women’s equality mean and what does it mean to each individual. In order to capture this content and really honor the innovation that women are driving forward we made sure that we had content on Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and Periscope. This approach meant that the event was not only a big success with people physically present in NYC but also around the US as they could participate in many of the elements remotely.

Drew: And how do you measure the success of a program like that?

It comes down to social engagement, impact on sales in retail doors, dotcom traffic and of course, PR exposure.

Drew: Is there a person in your career that’s been particularly helpful or acted as a mentor?

I’ve been so fortunate. I have a number of mentors and I think the question comes down to “what is a mentor” and I think a lot of people have this vision of someone who you’ve worked with for 20 years, who you see every week for an hour. Personally, I reach out to a wide range of friends and colleagues from all different walks of life whether it’s past bosses, to good friends in private equity, to people who are in theatre. I reach out to each of them for different types of advice. So I’ve been very lucky in that regards and I think having such diverse counsel has served me very well and frankly I try and pay it forward. I actively mentor people in Columbia where I went to business school and WIR (women in retail) etc.

Drew: Looking ahead for 2016 (besides your 100th anniversary) what’s the biggest challenge that you’d like to overcome?

As a marketer, for me one of the biggest challenges I always face is– how do you get into a woman’s psyche and become part of their DNA? So to me it’s all about driving brand heat and doing that in a meaningful and sustainable way. So that’s one of the largest challenges I would say I have but I’m beyond ecstatic about having that as a challenge and frankly, I’m honored to work on a brand that’s been around for a 100 years. When you actually look at the history of the shoe, it’s spectacular. Maybe it’s because I’m a mom–I have a daughter and a son but it’s the idea that these shoes were actually created to free women and empower them. That idea is very timely. So it’s how do we make sure that people understand what the brand stands for and also making sure that they think we’re a cool brand and want wear us.