Tag: innovative marketing

3 Strategies to Build a Quality Brand, Live from PSFK Part 1

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Recorded live from the PSFK conference, Drew speaks with two professionals that explain 3 strategies on how to build a quality brand. Both guests focus on how a brand can help people think about big ideas and create change in their own lives and in their communities.

Jordan Schenck, Head of Global Consumer Marketing at Impossible Foods, explains how a brand can spark change across multiple business platforms. She and her team are always trying to go the extra mile by creating a brand that transcends the consumer world and focuses on starting important conversations that are continuing to make the world a better place.

Amber Case is a Research Fellow at MIT and is an expert in “calm tech,” an area of research that focuses on eliminating unnecessary tech systems by keeping the element of the human touch. She wants to see every marketing professional avoid distracting systems, and get back to the heart of working for a quality brand.

Click here to listen to these inspiring conversations.

What You’ll Learn

Creatively market your mission-led brand

Jordan explains that in order to effectively market a mission-led brand, you have to go beyond spouting off your values. People are always willing to follow a quality brand, but you have to first get their attention. Your job as a marketer working for a quality brand is to get people into the headspace of getting behind a message they can support.

Help people make beneficial decisions they can feel good about

Quality brands push people towards decisions that are better for their communities, themselves, and the world we all live in. That the mindset Jordan and her team believe in at Impossible Foods. They are always trying to go beyond being a consumer brand and start bigger conversations about how the brands we follow can ultimately influence and change the world.

Know when to use AI to make your life easier, not full of distractions

Amber is a supporter of calm tech – a method of using technology that allows you to still be human and not become immersed in complicated technology systems. She explains that quality brands are well designed and built for optimal human use. Truly great products take more time, but they can help people do tasks in a more focused, efficient way. If you choose to use artificial intelligence (AI) in your company, understand that AI systems still require human insights. If not, your data will be flat and not useful.

Timeline

  • [0:01] Drew’s overview for this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite
  • [1:38] Jordan Schenck from Impossible Foods is Drew’s first guest
  • [8:27] How Impossible Foods maintains brand integrity across multiple platforms
  • [10:49] Impossible Foods is helping people make decisions they can feel good about
  • [15:04] Jordan’s key insight into marketing a product brand
  • [17:14] Amber Case, MIT Research Fellow, is Drew’s second guest
  • [22:00] AI is not about replacing humans
  • [25:29] You have to know what can and cannot be automated

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Connect With Amber Case:

Resources & People Mentioned

Connect with Drew

CMO Insights: How to Build Customer Loyalty

Posted on by Drew Neisser

As you all know, I never pass up an opportunity to sit down with a marketer and hear which practices worked and which didn’t work for their company. I mean, what better way to learn more about this ever-changing industry than to listen to leaders in the field share their insight, the lessons they’ve learned, and the strategies they stand by. Through these conversations, I’m able to add value to my company and our clients.

On the blog today is former CMO of Time Warner Cable Business Class Stephanie Anderson, a friend of mine, president of The CMO Club New York chapter and a veteran of TheDrewBlog. I spoke to Stephanie in 2012 when she first joined TWCBC, and although much has changed since then, her stance that “knowing your customers and prospects will never go out of style,” still holds true. I’m sure Stephanie would agree that this way of thinking is largely responsible for the success of her team at TWCBC. It was interesting to talk to Stephanie as she wrapped up her time at Time Warner Cable, and to partake in a much different conversation than the one we had in four year ago. Now, we’re talking customer communities, loyalty programs, content marketing,  and the way television has strengthened digital.

Drew: You’ve been in the job about 4 years now. Can you provide an overview of your overall approach to marketing at Time Warner Cable Business Class?

Stephanie: When I arrived at Time Warner Cable, we were many businesses and we were marketing at a very local level- which I believe in- but we were missing an overarching message and communications methodology.. The goal of my team was to find the place where localism mattered, and then compliment that with a consistent campaign across the country. We had to find the best breed of each of those local areas and then pull it up to one common message.

Drew:  How did you decide that the consistent campaign was going to focus on your customers and get to a point where you thought that would be effective?

Stephanie: It started with a focus on what we called an “outside-in approach.”  This meant we could never lose sight of our customers and our competitors. If we weren’t doing that, then we’d be missing the boat.  By always thinking about our clients we knew we had a chance of developing programs the competition would fear.  From there it was an easy step to testimonials, telling customer stories online and on television , which ended up being great for all parties.

Drew:  How did you find the customers to feature?

Stephanie: We initially identified a few companies largely because they were loyal customers of ours. They also had interesting stories to tell and were hugely popular in social media, which demonstrated a lot of energy and engagement.  So we focused on finding those kinds of customers, and then telling their stories on television, print, and digital.

Drew: Did this have an impact on their business?

Stephanie: One of the companies we actually became quite close with is Beekman 1802. They have an online service that they we’re really trying to grow with a very unique product base. Once we put them on TV, their popularity grew significantly. We even did a follow up story with them, which was thrilling for both parties.

Drew: Did your approach to finding customers for the campaign evolve?

Stephanie: Yes.  We’ve been using an online resource we created for customers called PerkZone to help us find more great stories, and then turn those into testimonials.  In this case, the customers nominate themselves by submitting their stories.  The response has been amazing and these small business success stories are truly inspiring.  When we do our long form testimonials, the story “inside the story” is always amazing.

Drew: What’s the story behind PerkZone?

Stephanie: One of our partner agencies is Renegade and they helped us create this retention strategy and loyalty program for small businesses called PerkZone. Accessed through our “MyAccount” portal, which customers use to pay their bills and manage their account, PerkZone has two areas, “Deals and Discounts” and “Ideas and Community.”  In the first area, small business can find discounts from national brands as well as post deals for their local customers.  It is in the other area that we were able to source hundreds of stories, a few of which were featured in our TV campaign.

Drew: Wow, so you could go from the online portal to become a star on TV?

Stephanie:  Yes, like the Voice or something; it still happens. The best talent sometimes comes right to you.

Drew: Has Perk Zone had a material measurable impact on loyalty as far as you can tell?

Stephanie: Absolutely. Like many companies, we’re very focused on Net Promoter Score (NPS) and we’ve seen a really strong correlation between any digital engagement and customer satisfaction.  Customers who use our MyAccount portal are significantly more likely to recommend us than those that don’t.  The numbers get even better with PerkZone users.  My gut told me that this was the right thing to do, and it was nice to see that the data proved me right.  We’re continually trying to think of ways to engage with the customer, and we know we need to continue to invest in these areas.

Drew:  Let’s zoom back to the big picture.  How has all of this customer-centric marketing paid off?

Stephanie: TWCBC been very successful from a B2B standpoint having had 18 quarters of consecutive quarter-to-quarter growth!  That’s remarkable considering TWCBC not a small business–it has over $3 billion in revenue and it gets harder to grow when you’re big. The company is not only acquiring customers, it’s also keeping customers, and some of these tactics that TWCBC has been talking about like establishing this community and getting to know its businesses better has actually helped our results considerably.

Drew: Pundits have been saying, “TV is dead” for years yet here we are in mid-2016 talking about how well TV has worked for your B2B brand?

Stephanie: First, we’re TV people and TV is still very much part of our culture. But more importantly, TV does really work.  It does exactly what it’s supposed to do. It guides the inquiring person to your website, or wherever you want and helps get them engaged in the process. That is what it’s meant to do, just like a print ad or something else. Some of these traditional tactics get people motivated to go see more or engage with you, and that’s what we’re trying to do.

Drew:  So TV gets the conversation started and then they go online. How are you making the two work together?

Stephanie: We have a great vendor partner that we use in the digital space that can make real time adjustments based on how much traffic TV is driving online. It’s amazingly sophisticated.  Making sure that our offline and online tactics are coordinated has really profited us.  It’s one thing to be coordinated with campaigns; it’s another thing to be coordinated on the delivery side, making sure that people are going where you want them to go. It saves both parties time.

Drew: I’ve heard you talk about a fifth P beyond Product, Price, Promotion and Place. Can you elaborate on it?

Stephanie: Everyone knows about the 4 Ps, and they are very important in marketing, and I think they fulfill most of everything that’s going on out there. I contend that there is this 5th P that is Proof. This probably comes from my long history of being in sales at different levels in technology. Notoriously, there was always this moment in the demonstration when the tables turned and the customer says, “okay I get it,” or “okay I’ll take it.”  That was the moment we provided the Proof, when we helped people really see how others were using the technology.

Drew: Let’s shift gears here.  TV and digital were not your only tactics.  You also got into content marketing, right?

Stephanie:  Absolutely.  Working with our partner RSL Media, we actually created a publication called Solve that goes to our 160,000 customers and prospects in the mid-market space.  It’s both a 24-page printed magazine and an e-zine, with content that’s relevant to that mid-market space. With highly topical and informative stories, we’re able to keep the conversation going by delivering really useful information that just happens to from Time Warner Cable Business Services. The response has been great – we’ve had customers actually call us to make sure they’re subscribers and to get other employees on the list.

Drew: Why not just create a digital version of Solve? Why go to the expense of printing it?

Stephanie:  Some of it stems from years back when I needed to accumulate a book of testimonials for our sales force and also links back to my early point about Proof.  Sales people need to be able to demonstrate proof of what you’ve done for other companies.  Solve is great for that since many of the stories feature customers.  It gives the sales person something physical that can help start a conversation.  It’s really hard to do that with a digital-only version.  Also, our customers felt more important being featured in a well-produced magazine.  It was prestigious enough that customers started asking how they could be featured!  In this case, the medium was also the message.

Drew: What would you say was the biggest lesson you have learned that you would pass along to future marketers in your industry, or any industry?

Stephanie: I think going back to the customer or competitor focus, and keeping your eyes set on the external. Whether that be your competitors, or your brand or your prospects that are so important. It’s so easy in marketing to get distracted by the stuff or the creative, or the results. Sometimes you need to step back and think wait a minute, who am I trying to talk to? And if I were them, would I listen, or if I were the competition, would I be afraid of what they’re saying?  Those are the things that we are committed to because they work. If you keep that forefront on your mind, you will be successful.

CMO Insights: Innovative Marketing

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Geoff CottrillConverse is the creative world’s favorite party guest, which may be why it has so many friends—over 37 million on Facebook, to be exact. Just how did the sneaker brand get so popular? Not by being the life of the party, but by practicing good people skills and good social etiquette, says CMO Geoff Cottrill. Rather than stepping on toes and dominating the social conversation, Converse lets its audience guide the dialog, knowing that the brand belongs to those who wear it. Geoff shared these insights and more with me during this year’s CMO Club Awards, where he won honors for innovation in marketing—and after you read our conversation, you’ll understand why.

Drew: Have you been able to link your innovative marketing activities to the kinds of business metrics favored by CEOs?

We are fortunate to have a massive and loyal following who is willing to post content on our behalf. To know that we have millions of friends on Facebook and hundreds of thousands of photos tagged #Converse on Instagram is humbling. But for us real success is defined by our ability to build meaningful relationships that are true to our core values, spark creativity and inspire advocacy.

Drew: The Converse page currently has more than 37 million likes – one of the top 10 most popular pages on Facebook. How did you build such an active following on social media?  

As a global brand that speaks to personal style and expression, social media presents itself as a natural forum for us to communicate with our consumers. It’s absolutely a focused part of our overall communication efforts but at the same time we understand that we are not leading that communication, nor do we want to. We are a welcomed party guest. We keep it simple.  Be interesting, think creatively, think globally, believe in what we are saying, and take a step back to listen and watch.

Social media is a tremendous vehicle to learn about your consumers, what they like (or don’t like about you), what they are interested in hearing from us, what they’re doing in their lives, and what they are saying to each other. This brand belongs to the people who wear it.

Drew: We love your campaign to support up and coming musicians by giving them free recording time and promoting them via social media. How did you decide to get involved in the music industry?  

One of our goals as a brand is to give back and help inspire a new generation of musicians.  We talked to a lot of musicians and it became apparent that studio time was costly and unaffordable for many emerging artists who had turned to home studios and their bedrooms to record.  By opening Converse Rubber Tracks, it’s a way for us to say thank you to musicians all over who have helped us become the brand we are and to provide a place for new artists to have access to resources they may not be able to afford. It is Converse’s way to invest in the future of music.

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?

We don’t see it as being complex because our philosophy hasn’t changed. We strongly believe in building goodwill in communities and creating long-lasting brand ambassadors for the brand. It’s not just about selling sneakers.

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?

In the next few seasons, Converse sees a huge potential of opportunities within avenues such as our wholesale accounts and securing key leadership positions with these important retailers through exclusive partnerships and product offerings. Another category with tremendous opportunity is young men and to truly get after the young male consumer from a head-to-toe perspective, encompassing footwear to apparel to accessories. The plan to reach them will be through the re-launch of the CONS segment, targeted specifically to their street culture, sport-inspired lifestyle.

Drew: Have there been any big surprises in terms of what’s worked really well and what hasn’t?

Our consumers are always surprising us! But we see these surprises in a truly positive way because we can always do better and are constantly seeking improvements.

Drew: What’s your perspective on content marketing?   

Our philosophy on content marketing is built on driving meaningful relationships that are true to our core values, spark creativity and inspire advocacy. Whether it’s about showcasing a musician that has just recorded at Converse Rubber Tracks in Brooklyn, a showcase we put on at SXSW, a street art exhibit in Beijing or a Three Artists One Song collaboration – we focus on developing stories that are compelling for our consumers. 

Drew: Converse has been in business since 1908. How do you balance respecting the tradition of the Converse brand with innovative marketing?

Converse has a long history in music. It has been worn on stage by legendary punk bands in the 1970s and adopted by kings of hip-hop, new wave, rockabilly, grunge and others throughout the decades. Musicians and creative people are our core audience, and we need to do everything possible to foster this community. We want to be useful to the community and never take advantage of it or overstep our place. We want to bring cultures together and celebrate music. In other words, we want to be in it, without getting in the way.

Drew: How do you evaluate/measure the success of your marketing?  

We believe that success is not measured in the traditional sense (i.e. ROI).  The number of deep relationships we can foster with the creative community—not media impressions, and content views, measures success for the brand.

Drew: Do you agree with that notion that marketing is everything and everything is marketing?  How do you as a marketer impact the entire customer experience? 

Marketing is not everything and everything [is not marketing] to Converse. It’s has always been the brand’s intention that our products and consumers drive the marketing, not the marketing driving our product. Our approach to the consumer experience is to invest and grow our connections to consumers. As a brand, Converse is on a mission to own “sneakers” and this will be communicated across all our messaging. We want the word “sneakers” to become synonymous with unleashing the creative spirit.

 

CMO Insights: Providing a Meaningful Customer Experience

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Jonathan Becher, CMO of SAP, sees innovation as absolutely mandatory, to be approached by organizations in leaps and bounds rather than baby steps. In his world, ROI means “return on innovation,” and the culture of innovation at SAP is an essential foundation for providing an innovative, meaningful customer experience.  Its little wonder that Jonathan won The CMO Award for Innovation from The CMO Club.  Here’s our interview:

Drew: In your presentation at The CMO Club Summit in April, you mentioned that innovation isn’t a buzz word; it’s an imperative for marketers. Can you explain why innovation is so important, particularly for CMOs?

Jonathan: For all good business leaders, there comes a day when you realize: “what got us here, won’t get us where we need to go.” We all know that the way customers consume information, products, and services has completely changed. It follows that the way we need to engage with customers must also change. However, incremental changes will not be sufficient; we need to innovate the discipline of marketing.

Drew: Real innovation requires organizational change. Can you talk about the changes you made to your marketing organization to institutionalize innovation?

Jonathan: A few years ago, I created a group called “Innovation Marketing.” The charter of that group was to try new things, break rules, make people uncomfortable, and change the status quo. The team generated tons of ideas, many of which were very interesting and impactful. However, it didn’t accomplish what I expected, as we were essentially segregating innovation to one small group. In fact, it created some resistance to change and innovation. We disbanded the group and focused on creating a culture of innovation instead. Now, we highlight efforts throughout marketing that push boundaries and embrace change, even ones that are not completely successful. In some sense, we’re reinforcing our corporate motto of “Run Better” – the quest for relentless improvement.

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?

Jonathan: Luckily for me, I run marketing for a company that specializes in using technology to solve complex business challenges. For example, I have a mobile dashboard where my leadership team and I have real-time visibility into all parts of our marketing business. We can see what’s working and what isn’t, then redeploy resources and budget as necessary.

Drew: Have you been able to link your innovative marketing activities to the kinds of business metrics favored by CEOs?

Jonathan: Innovation is an investment, so you need ROI for it as well. Return on innovation.

We try to run marketing like a business, which means that we need to be able to prioritize between all of our initiatives. From an analytics point of view, we distinguish between the macro view (crunching data on a scale unheard of a few years ago) and the micro view (data equivalent of a focus group).

At the macro level, we apply marketing-mix modeling to get a holistic understanding of marketing performance across channels. We can then tie marketing investments directly to corporate objectives, and reallocate the mix accordingly. Based on this type of analysis, we have shifted unproductive spend to tactics where we have seen higher ROIs.

At the micro level, we’re constantly trying to optimize each interaction with our customers. Whether it’s an outbound marketing campaign, a customer event, or an inquiry on our Web site, we apply statistical analysis to the wealth of information we have about our customers to predict what’s relevant to them and to personalize the engagement. This level of customer-centric targeting, along with a test-learn culture, allows us to measure the effectiveness of everything we do and maximize ROI at the micro level.

Drew: SAP seems to be in the midst of a brand transformation. Can you describe that transformation?

Jonathan: I’m not sure whether you should call it a transformation or a brand expansion. For many years, our approach was talking about how big, successful companies run SAP. You didn’t know what exactly we did for the companies, but you knew we were somehow linked with their success.

Now, we’re taking a much more human approach that’s closely linked to our company mission to “help the world run better and improve people’s lives.” We’re telling stories of how we create value, not only for our customers, but for our customers’ customers. For example, rather than talking about how a big bank benefits from an SAP deployment, we talk about how a man in a very rural area who can’t physically get to a bank is now able to bank on his mobile phone. This access to banking opens up entirely new economic possibilities that weren’t previously an option to this man and improves his life. SAP makes that possible.

It’s not just “business runs SAP”; it’s also “life runs SAP.” You can sum up the change as moving from B2B to P2P – people to people.

Drew: As CMO, have you been able to address the entire customer experience? Were there any organizational challenges you needed to overcome? 

Jonathan: In my view, the customer experience is the responsibility of every single employee at SAP. That said, marketing must be the champion of the overall customer experience across all channels.

While marketing doesn’t own all the customer experience channels, it can help make the experience consistent. For example, we know that, if we invite a group of executives to one of our briefing centers for a day of meetings, we’re obligated to deliver a consistent experience – from the messaging on the invitation to the car ride from the airport, and everything else until our guests are back in the airport to go home.

Marketing doesn’t manage the briefing centers, but we provide counsel to the facilities managers and the sales teams that run the meetings to help them understand the story they want to tell and provide them with the right assets to help them tell that story.

Don’t Sell Chocolate Broccoli: Serious Games Turn Play into Revenue

Posted on by Drew Neisser

The argument raged until 2am when the guy stormed out. The guy, an MBA student at UNC insisted that “games are for kids and IBM isn’t going to buy it,” while the demure Phaedra Boinodiris, also a first year MBA candidate, stuck to her guns, knowing the case challenge posted by IBM “screamed for a business SIM.”  Just a few hours later, Sandy Carter of IBM was asking Phaedra to build a prototype of her idea, an idea that became Innov8, a highly successful “serious game” that explains business process management to non-technical people and is my new favorite example of Marketing as Service.

In retrospect, it wasn’t really a fair fight. Phaedra was not your typical MBA student with ten years of entrepreneurial experience under her belt, having founded two companies including WomenGamers.com, now a popular portal for female gamers.  Thus, her expertise on the gaming world was substantial and while Sandy Carter’s request would have tripped up most students, Phaedra was up to the challenge.  In my interview with Phaedra at Impact 2010, IBM Software’s annual conference, her experience with IBM over the last two years provides a gripping playbook for innovators, especially “intrapreneurs” seeking to build “start ups” within large companies.

1.     Pursue your Passions

Phaedra got into the gaming business back in 1999 because she was a gamer, her sister was a gamer but not one of the industry publications addressed the category from a female perspective.  Knowing that 35% of women play video and computer games, she leapt into the void by setting up WomenGamers.com. She became an activist for the cause, starting the first scholarship program for women to get degrees in game design and development in the US, helping to share her passion with others.  After two years full-time with IBM, her passion for the power of games remains strong, adding that, “through self-discovery and experience consumers can better understand what you’re selling.”

2.    Find a Champion

When Sandy Carter first approached her at the Case Competition, Phaedra wasn’t sure what to make of her prototype request.  Now she knows that Sandy is the kind of internal champion that every “intrapreneur” dreams about finding.  “What amazed me is that Sandy attends the Case Competition’s herself instead of delegating this to a junior person,” marveled Phaedra.  “That takes real cajones and reflects Sandy’s commitment to find innovative ideas,” added Phaedra.  After the Case Competition, Sandy offered Phaedra an internship that lasted the rest of her time at business school and led the way to the now successful Serious Gaming group at IBM.

3.     Partner with Pros

Given only three months to build a prototype, Phaedra and her team at IBM knew they needed great partners and aligned with Centerline.”  “There are so many bad games out there,” noted Phaedra, “you really have to find a developer with a light touch,” to create an engaging experience.  In fact, Phaedra notes that of the three key ingredients of entrepreneurial success; people, process and ideas, people is by far the most important.  “A great idea without the right people will fail, whereas even an okay idea could succeed with great people,” she added.   Phaedra’s confidence in Centerline was thoroughly justified as they turned the initial idea first into a prototype and later into a simulation game played now played at over 1000 colleges and business schools around the world.

4.     Start with the Low Hanging Fruit

Once Innov8 was produced, it was quickly adopted and lauded by teachers, students and the press.  USC’s Marshall School of Business soon required every student to play Innov8.  Phaedra noted with understandable pride, “One class at a Turkish University uses Innov8 for its final exam!”  Teachers thanked Phaedra because “BPM is not an easy thing to teach.”  “We took something that was highly technical and made it more intuitive,” added Phaedra.  “Students were the low hanging fruit but they also represented future business opportunity,” which would eventually help to get Business Process Management software adopted by more and more companies.

5.     Build from Success

Once Innov8 had gained traction with graduate schools, Phaedra got approval to develop a flash-based online version of the game that could reach and engage a wider audience.  Adding social networking elements like a leader board, the online version soon became a lead machine.  Currently thossands of potential and current customers play Innov8 2.0 Online per month generating thousands of leads, many of which have been converted into sales.  In fact, Innov8 online generates many times more leads for IBM’s BPM software than any other source, creating an ROI that even “VCs would love.” “We took baby steps, building our case internally, showing ROI of each subsequent project, just like we would have to external investors,” offered Ms. Boinodiris.

6.     Don’t Sell Chocolate Broccoli

One of the happy by-products of the online Innov8 game was that it introduced the idea of serious gaming to a broader audience.  Soon IBM’s business partners were asking if they could customize Innov8 for their customers.  And eventually a new group within IBM Global Business Services was set up to do just that!  This speaks to the power of selling by educating as well as the quality of the game itself.  As Phaedra opined, “people can smell chocolate broccoli from a mile away,” so even educational games have to be extremely well crafted.  This insight is a truth for all such marketing as service programs, if the experience isn’t top notch, the customer or prospect simply won’t engage.  On the other hand, if the experience is rich and educational, there is simply no better way to sell.

7.     Revel in the Naysayers

Since her late night argument with a fellow MBA, Phaedra has reveled in the challenge of selling games as a serious business tool and formidable marketing weapon.  Some have resisted the idea, calling games “fluff” and “kids stuff.”  When I asked her about sales force adoption, she noted that there has been some resistance there too. “Sales has their lucky underwear and don’t like to change it,” she winked. Fortunately, her continued emphasis on proving ROI internally has been rewarded with the green lighting of a next gen simulation game called CityOne that will launch Fall 2010.  CityOne is already being lauded by the press, with Gizmodo saying “if SimCity introduced legions of gamers to the world of urban planning, then IBM’s upcoming CityOne game looks to take that education to the next level.”

Final note: I consider myself lucky to have met Phaedra.  As proud as she is of her accomplishments thus far, she remains humble.  She states with realistic clarity that “games won’t displace anything; they will supplement other sales tool, driving people down the purchase funnel.”  My guess—the potential for games as educational sales tools for highly technical products is truly unlimited and Phaedra will remain on the forefront for quite some time.

CMO Insights: The Importance of Innovation

Posted on by Drew Neisser

In October 2008, Barbara Goodstein, Chief Marketing Officer of AXA Equitable was only slightly nervous as her company launched an unprecedented customer retention program called MyRetirementShop.com.  Creating a “retirement portal” more focused on “value add” than lead generation, Ms. Goodstein was moving her company into unchartered territory, delivering a “marketing as service” program that became far more successful than even she had anticipated.

Since its inception, MyRetirementShop.com has attracted over ½ million visitors who spend a whopping 11 minutes browsing highly relevant content from top experts like Kiplingers, Service Magic and MyRecipes.com.  Current customers were quick to thank AXA for this resource with not just words of praise but also by buying more AXA products, generating revenue far beyond the program’s cost. The press responded to this innovative marketing approach with over 200 stories that yielded an equivalent of $4.0mm in paid media coverage.

Since the old proverb “success has many fathers but failure is an orphan” also applies to marketing, it is often difficult to get the real story on what it takes for innovations like MyRetirementShop.com to come into being.  In this case, however, after an extensive interview with Ms. Goodstein in which she reviewed the development process, it became very clear that her journey has provided a textbook case on innovation, yielding the following seven critical elements of success.

1. Innovation Starts at the Top

Ms. Goodstein is no stranger to innovation.   Having guided the highly effective 800-Pound Gorilla advertising campaign for AXA into being four years ago, she knows a big idea when she sees one and she knows how to stretch a budget for maximum impact.  But she is also the first to acknowledge that “innovation more than anything starts at the top” and that if her CEO, Kip Condron, didn’t encourage and support innovation, her efforts would never see the light of day.  With senior management saying, “We should try multiple creative options and see what’s going to work,” and encouraging innovation with financial incentives, the virulent skepticism that typically inhibits new idea development is diffused if not silenced.

2. Listen to Your Customers

The impetus for MyRetirementShop.com sprung from an annual study AXA conducts among its customers. According to Ms. Goodstein, “We built MyRetirementShop.com on years of data that revealed the topics that were most relevant to pre-retirees, so we just had to take all of this content and make it accessible.”  Pre-retirees noted their interest in everything from home and family to health and fitness, from travel to finance, from self-improvement to entertainment.  So it came as no surprise to Ms. Goodstein that these topics gained traction with their target.  The only surprise was divergence between the expressed interest in volunteering and concierge services in the research versus the actual behavior on the site.  Ms. Goodstein speculates that disinterest in these areas may be more a reflection of current economic realities than the ultimate value of the content.

3. Make Sure It’s Truly Innovative

Before developing MyRetirementShop.com, Ms. Goodstein and her team did an extensive review of retirement portals and competitor’s websites.  When it was clear there was nothing like it out there, the AXA team then “did our own screening to find the best possible content providers.” According to Ms. Goodstein, “It took over a year to line up all the partners, and an internal SWAT team dedicated to every area of the site” to pull it all together. To insure relevance, they insisted that all the content had national reach and users could even “drill down by zipcode.”  And though much of MyRetirementShop.com content exists on other sites, AXA is the first to aggregate it all in one place, and is the only retirement portal without highly intrusive advertising.

4. Service First, Then Branding

The intention of MyRetirementShop.com from the beginning was to be a service – not an advertisement, a service that would help retain existing customers, and one that would reflect the deep expertise of AXA Equitable and its sincere commitment to help consumers with retirement planning.  “We wanted the site to be value add” noted Ms. Goodstein, “and we didn’t want it to be a commercial for us.” This commitment to service had a strong influence on the design of the site, which has almost no AXA ID other than their 800-pound gorilla who serves as “branding anchor and host.” The now familiar gorilla sits on top of each section and offers a “pithy audio message” that Ms. Goodstein anticipated “would create more of a connection” with site visitors.

5. Service First, Then Sales

Once the site was launched, AXA representatives were provided with a number of tools to share it with existing customers.  Direct mail, email and brochures described the content and invited customers to visit the site.  Then the unexpected happened, this so-called retention program started generating sales. “For $40 worth of DM, our reps generated an incremental $60,000 in sales,” added Ms. Goodstein with glee.  Suddenly the sales team that usually put the kibosh on programs considered “non-revenue generating,” embraced the site, acknowledging its power to increase sales among existing customers and even to attract new ones.  By providing a genuine service to its customers and prospects, AXA found a friendly way to break the ice and renew the conversation about retirement with a now receptive target.

6. Innovation Requires Perseverance

MyRetirementShop.com took over two years from conception to launch, with multiple hiccups along the way.  Getting the technology right was challenging and the site, which was developed by internal IT resources, went through several iterations.  “It took us a while to get it right,” acknowledged Ms. Goodstein and of course, she did not have “universal support initially.”  Importantly, AXA Global and top management voiced their confidence in the project, which Ms. Goodstein gained by outlining a clear vision, defining the content with crisp wireframes and by providing prototypes that fueled expectations.  By demonstrating what it would look like and never wavering from the quest, Ms. Goodstein and her team were able to build consensus from top to bottom, setting the stage for its ultimate success.

7. Don’t Rest on Your Laurels

Despite exceeding expectations on every metric, Ms Goodstein and her team continue to seek ways to improve MyRetirementShop.com.  New original content is in the works that will simultaneous enhance the visitor experience and increase the natural page rankings on the search engines. New content partners that could increase consumer appeal are being evaluated.   “We are also going to change the enroll button so interested visitors can reach us more easily” added Ms. Goodstein who marveled at the unexpected benefits of a true “value add” program, “Because we are willing to work so hard, people want to connect with us.”

Bottom line: Marketing innovation is neither easy nor linear, requiring support from the top, a clear vision from the start, steadfast determination along the way and ultimately a desire to do right by the consumer, a consumer that will thank you many times over with not just words of praise but also their pocketbooks.