Tag: NASCAR

How Arrow Electronics Reinvented Storytelling Marketing and the Importance of Taking Risks

Posted on by Drew Neisser

In order to achieve storytelling marketing success, CMOs have to be willing to take risks. Even with all of the data and metrics available to evaluate, sometimes the best ideas come directly from human intuition.

On this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite, Drew interviews Rich Kylberg, Vice President of Corporate Marketing and Communications at Arrow Electronics. Arrow is a $24 billion global supplier for a wide array of technology and products, and Rich has helped them break into new ways of communicating internally and externally.

Throughout this podcast, Rich explains how his background in literature allows him to see marketing campaigns in new ways and why casting a vision internally is needed before you can communicate identity externally. Arrow’s groundbreaking SAM vehicle technology is revolutionizing many industries, and you’ll be inspired by Rich’s explanation of this pursuit.

Their conversation is a perfect mix of marketing knowledge and inspiration – you don’t want to miss it. Click here to listen!

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts – Stitcher – or Podsearch.

How Rich helped Arrow create a common identity

When Rich joined the Arrow team, they had recently acquired over 130 companies and many hadn’t yet fallen in line with the overarching Arrow brand. Arrow was on the verge of becoming a holding company too comfortable in their own success, but Rich was determined to take some risks and create a guiding theme that would direct every employee and customer interaction. Thus, the phrase “guiding innovation forward” was born. Rich explains that “you have to inspire your employees before you can market your company externally” and this progress was essential for Arrow to continue growing. It created a conversation starter that is still being talked about today. To hear exactly how Rich achieved this lofty goal, be sure to give this episode a listen.

Why risk taking in marketing is so important

Rich and Drew are adamant about risk-taking in marketing – it’s one of the key aspects of being a Renegade Thinker. On this episode, Rich explains that the opportunity to attain exponential rewards are worth taking substantial risks and that the fear of mediocrity is often the driving force behind risk-taking. CMOs in any B2B environment should ask themselves these questions: What risks am I willing to take in my marketing? What will be the source of my courage? How am I going to prepare? After you consider these questions, remember that as a marketer you need to be empowered to try ideas, keep what works, and move past what doesn’t. Without risky marketing decisions, Rich and his team never could have developed the storytelling marketing campaign that moved Arrow into the future of connecting with clients and telling great stories. Be sure to discover the story on this episode.

Arrow’s innovative storytelling marketing campaign and how Rich and his team burst through the barriers they encountered

Arrow Electronics recently unveiled their latest storytelling marketing campaign, and it’s one that resonates with people across the country. When Rich and his team were connected with a former Indy Racing League race car driver who was sadly diagnosed as a quadriplegic after a crash in 2000, they came up with the SAM car technology – a car that would allow drivers with disabilities to regain their independence. When asked about the project, Rich’s team explained that “We hope the SAM car continues to drive technology innovation forward and inspire people to dream big because anything is possible.” Had Rich and his marketing team forgone risk-taking and stuck with what is “normal” and expected in the marketing industry, this amazing project never would have left the idea board. It’s sure to inspire you and your team to take marketing risks and delve into the unknown so be sure to get all of the details by listening to this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite.

What You’ll Learn

  • [1:25] Drew introduces his guest for this episode, Rich Kylberg of Arrow Electronics
  • [2:48] Rich’s favorite risk-taking story from his childhood
  • [8:00] How Rich’s educational background impacts his current career
  • [13:18] The story behind how Rich joined the Arrow team and how they created a common identity
  • [17:45] Taking the internal identity and transforming it into an external message
  • [21:55] Arrow’s program that brought their innovative ideas to life that enhance humanity
  • [27:30] The barriers Rich’s team encountered while developing the SAM technology
  • [33:00] Rich shares the best lessons he learned through the SAM journey
  • [37:13] Why you should bring in an outside firm to assist your company in storytelling
  • [39:51] The power of a plan on a page
  • [42:07] Drew summarizes his conversation with Rich

Connect With Rich:

Resources & People Mentioned

Connect with Drew

 

How NASCAR Revs up Marketing for Ditech

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Ditech Drive Down Your Mortgage

I think we can all agree that cutting through is hard these days. There are more brands than ever vying for our attention across a myriad of platforms and channels.  Consumers have become extremely adept at tuning out all these messages, time shifting to avoid TV ads and using ad blockers to avoid their digital brethren. So what’s a marketer to do, especially one wanting to reach a truly mass audience?

This was the conundrum facing Rich Smith when he took the reins as CMO at Ditech Financial in 2014. Without going into all the gory details, Ditech became a household name in the mortgage business in the 90’s, got acquired by GMAC in 1999, was merged and submerged over the next 14 years and then re-emerged as a standalone entity in 2014.  Given this circuitous history, it was important to Rich that the brand regain lost ground quickly, capitalizing on any familiarity with the name while adding on a new sense of energy.  To do this, Ditech turned to NASCAR, an effort that worked remarkably well as you will see in our interview below.

[Please note that this is only part of our extensive interview after Rich was awarded the Marketing Innovation Award by The CMO Club late last year. Part 2 will be posted shortly.]

Drew: What led you to sponsoring NASCAR?

We signed the deal with Stewart-Haas Racing of NASCAR in September 2014. It really didn’t get big at all until 2015. It’s been a great relationship for expanding our brand awareness in a relatively low cost way. We’ve gotten a lot of bang for our buck out of it. The days of people gathering around TV at 8:00 o’clock at night to watch a certain primetime show are kind of gone with the advent of the DVR and Netflix streaming and time shifting. So, one of the best places to invest brand building advertising dollars are live events, like sports. In many ways we’re a start up, re-launching a brand and we don’t have the really deep big pockets of other larger advertisers. The NFL, NBA and MLB are extremely expensive and it is hard to do both on a national and local level. NASCAR is the fourth largest sport in the United States in terms of reach and as I said earlier, it’s been a really cost effective way for us to build brand awareness.

Drew: Interesting. Tell me more about your NASCAR relationship.

The beauty of NASCAR is it’s a sport that completely gets the sponsorship model. Just watch a race and you’ll see the logos of Fortune 500 companies everywhere. The entire sport gets that sponsors make the sport go around. The fans understand that sponsors make the sport go round. Even though it might be fourth largest in terms of fan-base size, it’s number one in terms of brand loyalty with sponsors, without a doubt. It is also has a very good overlap with our target market and relatively low cost inventory. They race 38 out of 52 weekends a year, so it’s almost year round. And there is a home game in a different city almost every weekend. So, you get national coverage at a relatively low price point. It’s definitely helped us grow brand awareness with a relatively modest budget.

Drew: How do you evaluate the effectiveness? Is it brand tracking that simply shows that pre and post awareness went up as a result of this program?

We track it in a lot of different ways and we’re working on refining and getting even more analytical about how we do this. We do pre and post brand awareness surveying and analysis. We also do direct tracking through our websites during events and the resulting activity of that traffic. We monitor the impact of social media through the sponsorships. We have separate social properties that we use for the sponsorship. We look at engagement rates on various pieces of content. I would say that even though our social following is relatively small, it’s growing rapidly and we’ve achieved much higher engagement rates in social media than most of our competitors do. People attend, interact and engage with our content at a much higher rate than most of our competitors. Some of that content is related to the sponsorship, most of it isn’t but they work well together.

Drew: Interesting. What if your CFO walked in the door and said, “All right, we’re spending X thousands of dollars on NASCAR can you actually show this pays out?”

It is difficult to correlate exactly to new customers.  That said, there are lots of quantifiable metrics. For example, we do track all of the exposure we get through the sponsorship. We track every time our logo appears on the screen, how many seconds was it there and how many people saw it. And we know the value of that media. So we can show the cost of the sponsorship relative to the value of the exposure we’ve received.