Tag: The CMO Club

CMO Insights: Providing a Consistent Experience

Posted on by Drew Neisser

For The Camuto Group brand family, one thing is certain: luxury runs in their blood. But with such a diverse portfolio, including brands like Vince Camuto, Jessica Simpson, BCBG Max Azria and Arturo Chiang, how does the company know where to focus its marketing efforts?

In my recent conversation with Louise Camuto, CMO of The Camuto Group and recipient of a Marketing Innovation Award at this year’s CMO Club Awards, she explained how her company provides a consistent luxe experience for women around the world, no matter which designer they prefer.  Having never taken on the challenge of fashion marketing its always been a bit of a mystery to me but talking with Louise, its clear that there are those who’s success in this stylistic milieu is no accident.  Read on to find out why.

Drew: The Camuto Group is a family of 11 very different brands. How do you infuse The Camuto Group values and maintain consistent messaging across all of your brands?

Louise: At Camuto Group, We spend a lot of time thinking about how we can interpret product – from footwear to apparel – in the most on-brand manner.  We have been able to lead a brand-building effort with the development of footwear as well as develop product into an existing apparel collection that not just extends a brand into new territory but enhances the presence at retail.  In addition, I emphasize the importance of IMAGE and brand consistency daily with my team.  We work closely with our international partners to ensure that the way a brand is represented at every consumer and trade touch point not only reflects the DNA but also reinforces the message and aesthetic which allows for the brand experience to omnichannel.

Drew: How does new product development work at The Camuto Group? Does it report in to you? 

Louise:  Yes, the design teams report in to me for the 18 women’s categories. Our design process is extensive.  We have a team of people who shop all over the world for inspiration and they bring ideas, concepts and materials to the table for review.  We sit as a team and determine what items are appropriate for each of our brands and we spend a lot of time analyzing the marketplace for trend direction as well as what’s happening at the consumer level.  What I have found to be paramount is listening to customers.  When I am in any of our stores, I watch how the customer shops, how she selects product, as well as her purchasing process.  When we work on our campaign looks we collaborate with Vince, our marketing team and with PR to ensure we are on trend and delivering something exciting to the customer.

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?

Louise: My focus recently has been building the Vince Camuto lifestyle.   I have spent a lot of time working on our retail store roll out globally.  It is so important to have a strong store image that supports the brand direction and it has been my goal to create a luxe consumer experience for women around the world at this price point.  I am proud of the 30 stores that we have opened including the luxury flagship, VC Signature by Vince Camuto on Madison Avenue in New York.  I spend a lot of time working on the creative presentation of all of our brands.  We live in a world where the ways in which a customer can be reached are online, in-store, in print and of course through social media.  I have invested a lot of time over the past year ensuring that the brand voices are consistent with the brand DNA.

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

Louise: We have been so fortunate lately with our initiatives.  We haven’t experienced too many hiccups, nor have we had any product launches not succeed.  I think our biggest challenge is constantly innovating and being ahead of the curve in terms of our product offerings, assortments and design direction.

Drew: How are you using social media as a marketing tactic? (Awareness, customer service, etc.)

Louise: Social media continues to  be a significant portion of our business.  We have really invested in a team to build the brand voice cross-channel.  Today, customers spend a lot of time online looking at fashion.  The internet has really democratized the business which is exciting.  The influence of bloggers in today’s world is a breath of fresh air to me.  You really see how the customer actually wears and styles your product.  Delving into the online space has really helped with the design process as I continually think about the end use of a skirt, top, pant, dress and what she would be looking for coming up in the next season. It’s also a great way to share new product and immediately test the response. Louise Loves on our site has also reached a following. It has a selection of great items to make a look and we can follow how many hits we get and how it drives her to buy.

Drew: How do you evaluate/measure the success of your marketing?  Are there some channels that work a better for you than others?

Louise: I read all the selling reports and market recaps reports daily.  I am very engrained in the business as it is not about what I think works, it is about how the consumer responds to your brand and your product. I also look at how our advertised styles perform versus the items that are not included in our campaign.  I love market research as I think it helps establish a framework for understanding who your customer is and what she is looking for when she shops.  I love analyzing our online business as well because it is the purest form of analysis in the marketplace today.  You are able to understand how your direct mail, email blasts, print campaigns, celebrity support and editorial credits impact sell-through and in turn leverage the knowledge to further reach your customer and meet her needs.  Online has been very successful for us but we are also seeing a lot of positive results from our brick and mortar stores as well.

Drew: Content marketing is a hot topic at the moment.  What’s your perspective on content in terms of its effectiveness?  Are you increasing your investment in this area?

Louise:  We are investing in content and product marketing extensively as we find it highly effective in engaging with our customers.  It also allows us to be able to extend our brand message to a wider audience.  We utilize content marketing online to relate to the woman that is looking for fashion tips, advice and information.  It is another way for us to be helpful to our customers while not pushing product.  I think the balance between creating interesting content and achieving sales goals is important as content marketing is truly an extension of our commitment to customer service.

Drew: How do you see the retail design industry evolving over the next 10 years? What steps are you taking at The Camuto Group to stay ahead of the curve?

Louise: I think we are in a period of true innovation.  I think stores are creating experiential programs that allow for engagement with the customer at point of sale.  We have adopted several tactics in order to engage with our customers at retail.  When we build out a store, we have created a shoppable wall as the store barricade so that customers can shop the line and engage with the brand while the store is being built out.  Once the store opens, we utilize video to bring the brand to life.  We just launched men’s so this year we are able to have the woman interact with the man in order to tell the full brand story.  We also have ipads in store so that people can look at the total Collection, even if an item is not carried, they can style what they are purchasing with the total collection in order to create a complete look that is their own!

What’s the biggest marketing risk you’ve taken at The Camuto Group? How did it play out?

Louise: Several years ago, we relaunched Vince Camuto footwear and invested in a broad-based marketing campaign that crossed all channels.  It was important for us to get the message out and we immediately saw success through exponential growth in brand awareness as well as sales.  The marketing investment also allowed us to expand the multi-category licensing program rather quickly as we became a more significant brand for our retail partners almost overnight.

Drew: Do you agree with the notion that marketing is everything and everything is marketing and if so how have you extended the boundaries of your job beyond the normal purview of the CMO?   

Louise: I absolutely believe everything is marketing and marketing is everything.  You truly live marketing every day.  Marketing occurs across every channel and touch point and I think the total experience is what drives a customer to love a brand and become a loyal enthusiast.  I think we constantly need to push the envelope in marketing to be ahead of the curve and innovate so we are always an intriguing brand for our woman.  I believe in always trying to lead and not follow and I work closely with the team to always be at the forefront of what’s happening with the consumer so we reach her every day, in every way.

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.

Innovative Marketing and ROI

Posted on by Drew Neisser
Antonio Lucio, Visa
Antonio Lucio, Visa

A marketer’s work is never done. This is especially true at Visa, a company that’s not new, by any means, but has a full agenda ahead of it, especially when it comes to engaging with its customers. I recently spoke to the company’s Global Chief Brand Officer, Antonio Lucio, who walked me through Visa’s innovative marketing strategies, how it measures ROI and the future of its social communications.  (By the way, Antonio was a recent winner at The CMO Awards hosted by our friends at The CMO Club.)

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 couple of years?

Given the increasingly complex media landscape, deepening Visa’s focus and commitment to digital and social communications is a constant priority for my leadership team and me. The imperative has never been greater for us to better communicate the strengths, values and mission of Visa to our full range of stakeholders in an integrated way. This meant that some structural changes needed to be made to set us up for success. We have made significant progress on this front, but it is a constantly evolving ecosystem so our work is never done.

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

It’s not really a surprise, but what I’ve learned is that showing vs. telling is the way to go. Whether it’s addressing a question from our management by showing results and data, or teaching the organization how to do social by putting a team in place to show them what a best-in-class social effort looks like (i.e., our recent #goinsix social media campaign). Showing has a much bigger impact that just teaching alone.

Drew: How do you stay close to your customers when you operate in so many markets and have so many different types of customers?  

Social media is a great equalizer in so many ways. It enables global brands like Visa – and myself personally – to stay close to customers in markets around the world, understand what is important to them, what they are talking about and what they care about, all while providing the ability to engage them directly.

Drew: How do you evaluate/measure the success of your marketing?  Are there some channels that work a lot better for you than others?

At Visa the ultimate measure of success for our marketing is ROI – our ability to drive the business.  We break that down to three components: 1) reach (how many people can recall our campaigns); 2) short-term impact (the short-term usage lift of consumers); and 3) long-term impact (lift in our brand equity and our ability to influence consumer behavior longer-term).

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?

While the media ecosystem is definitely becoming more complex, our approach of putting the consumers at the center has not changed. We strive to understand how our consumers are using different devices, where they are spending their time and what they want to hear from us. And then we adjust our media mix and messaging accordingly. We want to ensure we are delivering unique and relevant experiences across all these screens by using the unique capabilities of the technology or platform the consumer is engaged with and delivering them a message that will interest them. Through technology we are better able to measure engagement with our brand and understand the impact of the experiences we are delivering to our customers.

Drew: How does new product development work at Visa? Does it report in to you? If not, how do you make sure you have the right “news” to market? 

While product development is led by our global product teams, our marketing and communications teams have strong partnerships with these teams – often sitting on their leadership teams. A collaborative work environment is essential to product development that registers as being innovative and relevant among clients and customers. As a team, we bring our respective areas of expertise across product, marketing and communications to ensure that we are bringing new products to market that will truly resonate with consumers.

Drew: Your “Go World” cheer campaign during the 2012 Olympics was one of the most successful examples of traditional and online marketing integration to date. What strategy did you use to integrate the various channels and what were some of the biggest lessons learned from that campaign?

We used our “Audience First” approach to develop a global campaign framework that directly engaged consumers through a global social platform that allowed fans to connect with the Go World marketing campaign by “Cheering” on athletes. London 2012 was heralded as the most social games ever and our Olympic Games marketing campaign was the most successful in our history – a true “game changer” in the way we drove engagement. We’re still applying the lessons learned from London, such as the benefits derived from engaging in social with concise, snackable content which inspired our #goinsix campaign.

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

Our key performance metrics evolve to address changing dynamics in the industry.  For example, we recently added metrics to address social marketing, which enable brands to build direct relationships with consumers. We added social KPI goals that are part of a select few KPIs known to drive the business.  We closely track our progress, and have timely and transparent accountability across leadership towards delivering against these business driving KPIs.

Drew: Visa has made a big push to integrate social media into their overall marketing efforts over the past few years. Can you comment on your current strategy and where you plan on taking the program in the future?

Visa believes we are in a social era that extends beyond any platform or community; social is a mindset that empowers consumers and connects communities. We are incorporating social in the very heart of our marketing, not merely during the execution phase. We strive to develop social-at-the-core campaigns by designing for share-ability and planning for conversations. We invite consumers to drive the conversation while structuring our ecosystem to make sharing frictionless.

Drew: Do you agree with that notion that “marketing is everything and everything is marketing” and if so how have you extended the boundaries of your job beyond the normal purview of the CMO?  

Everything is marketing when it comes to the customer experience because whether you are designing a product or a marketing campaign it is about designing it to be a more consumer centric, intelligent and seamless experience.

Insights From a Successful Marketer

Posted on by Drew Neisser

After defecting to the client side, former Renegade planner Tad Kittredge told me what he loved about being on that side of the fence, “I finally feel like I have all the marketing levers at my fingertips and now, its just a matter of pulling the right ones at the right time.”  I haven’t spoken to Tad in a while so I can’t be sure if he has found the right formula but one gentleman who has, without a doubt, is John Costello.  Currently President, Global Marketing & Innovation at Dunkin Brands, Costello has a long track record as a successful marketer with stints at Home Depot, Sears and PepsiCo among others.

Not surprisingly, Costello recently received the Officers Award from The CMO Club for his outstanding work at Dunkin and I had the pleasure of interviewing him before The CMO Awards event.  In this highly substantive discussion, Costello provides a clear blueprint for any student of the business, offering insights on strategy, TV advertising, measurement, mobile, building loyalty and much much more.  Its a bit longer than many of my interviews so grab a large cup of America’s Favorite Coffee and have at it.

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 (for Dunkin’) and if so, how are you dealing with that complexity?

John:  Marketing has become more complex as technology and consumer engagement continues to evolve rapidly.  A key factor in Dunkin Brands’ success has been the close partnership between our franchisees and the company.  This has enabled us to stay close to our customers and respond to the changing marketplace better than ever before. Our team has done a good job of balancing what has worked in the past with innovation.  We conduct very sophisticated ROI analysis on our marketing plans, but we also encourage our teams to try new things, such as our digital billboard in Times Square for Dunkin’ Donuts or our viral soft-serve video on Facebook with Baskin-Robbins.  On the product side, we’ve implemented a strategy called “Familiar with a Twist” that has combined old favorites like Dunkin’ Donuts’ original blend coffee and our breakfast wraps, along with innovative and fun new products like our turkey sausage breakfast sandwich and the glazed donut breakfast sandwich.

Drew: Pundits like to say that TV ads are dead yet every retail/fast food exec I talk to swears that TV is still the most cost effective way to drive store traffic. Are you still finding TV to be effective at driving traffic for Dunkin’ Donuts?  

John: Through the great work of our team and advertising agencies, traditional marketing tools like TV, out-of-home and in point-of- purchase displays still work very effectively for Dunkin’. However, consumer engagement is changing as consumers spend more time with their computers, tablets and smart phones and are using these multiple devices at the same time. Thus, while traditional marketing remains very important for Dunkin’,  our investments in digital, social, mobile and loyalty marketing are increasing even more rapidly.

All of these investments are driven by five key principles:  First, most great ideas flow from the consumer. Whether it’s B-to-B or B-to-C, there’s really no substitute for truly understanding your customers’ pain points and how you can address them. Second, building brand differentiation is the most important thing a marketer can focus on because it answers the fundamental question: why should consumers choose your brand over all their other choices? Third, building a strong team both inside and outside your organization is imperative. It’s not just about the people who report to you, but also about your peers within the organization and the key agencies and technology partners with whom you work. Fourth, tactics matter. While developing the right strategy is important, executing that strategy to the highest standards can really make a difference. And fifth, agility. The environment in which we compete is changing more rapidly than ever before, so it’s important to be agile and adapt your plans as needed. The bottom line is that, while the way consumers learn about brands, consume information, and decide where to buy brands has changed over years, they are still looking for better solutions to their everyday challenges. All five of these principles flow from the core principle of understanding your consumers’ unmet needs and meeting them better than anybody else.

Drew:  How important is mobile marketing to Dunkin’ in your overall marketing mix?  

John: For a company like Dunkin’ Donuts, mobile and marketing go hand-in-hand. The surge in mobile usage, coupled with the busy, on-the-go Dunkin’ guest, creates a very compelling business case for us. By launching the Dunkin’ App and offering mobile payments, we created an entirely new level of speed and convenience that further distinguishes our brand to current and new customers throughout the country.

While the majority of our mobile efforts are focused on adding value for our consumers through the Dunkin’ App, we do believe that it’s critical to optimize for mobile across all of our digital touch points. With consumers increasingly reliant on their mobile devices for information, it’s important that our website, online advertising, e-mails, social media communications and more, all be optimized for the mobile audience. Each month, we also host a number of fun promotions and programs for our consumers on mobile-friendly social media platforms. You may have seen our recent integration with ESPN’s Monday Night Countdown, where Dunkin’ Donuts has a billboard ad during the program that was created with Vine.  The billboard ad promotes a #DunkinReplay Vine, which re-creates a marquee play from the first half of each week’s Monday Night Football game with Dunkin’ food and beverages. The goal of creating the content and sharing it across Twitter and Vine allows Dunkin’ Donuts to engage with users who enjoy watching Monday Night Football while leveraging a mobile device to connect with others about the game.

Dunkin’ Donuts also recently partnered with Zynga’s Running With Friends for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, where we are providing players with in-game tips for perfecting their game, plus Dunkin’ coffee boosts to help keep them running past their friends and up the leaderboards. Guests can also earn 500 free gems to use during game play for checking in to a local Dunkin’ Donuts, further emphasizing how Dunkin’ keeps them running both in their everyday lives and during game play.

Overall, we are very pleased with the response to our mobile initiatives. The success of these programs supports the importance of taking a 360 degree approach and thinking thoughtfully about the best platforms that will help us to engage with Dunkin’ Donuts guests. The future of mobile for us is to continue putting Dunkin’ in everyone’s hands. We see a lot of potential for mobile to be an extension of the Dunkin’ Donuts experience. The Dunkin’ App has been very popular with our guests and we see a strong opportunity with mobile when we roll out our DD Perks loyalty initiative nationally in early 2014.


Drew: New products seem to be a really important part of QSR marketing yet in many cases product development does not report into the CMO. How does new product development work at Dunkin? Does it report into you? If not, how do you make sure you have the right “news” to market?

John: Our world class culinary team does report directly to me and is made up of chefs, food scientists, and operations folks.  They work very closely with our brand marketing group, supply chain, operations, and franchisee groups in a fast-moving, highly-collaborative, and highly-disciplined way. For example, we do sophisticated concept and sensory testing on our new products, and our culinary team has really embraced that as a key tool to help them get great new products to market even faster. I meet with the culinary team at least twice a month to review and taste our new products under development for the next 18 months.

Drew: At the start of my career, I worked on the Century 21 Real Estate account and became very familiar with the challenges of working with franchisees. How does the fact that Dunkin Donut shops are almost 100% franchisee owned impact your overall marketing strategy? How do you keep them all happy? 

John: Our franchisees are the core of our business at Dunkin’ Brands and we value their opinions and business decisions. I view our franchisees on both Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin- Robbins as a secret weapon in our product development and marketing efforts. These franchisees understand their markets in the U.S. and around the world better than anyone. They are a constant source of ideas, and we regularly review our product development plans with them to get their input.

Drew: How do you stay close to your customers with so many points of distribution (17,000 including Baskin-Robbins) in so many countries?

John: Because brand-building tactics and cultures may differ from country to country, people sometimes believe the principles may also differ. We operate in many different countries, in many different cultures, but we find the principle of understanding what our consumers want remains a constant around the world. We really try to adopt a global mindset that searches for the best ideas. It’s important to understand both the differences and the commonalities of countries around the world in order to remain close to our customers. For example, we sell a shredded pork donut in China right alongside a Boston Kreme donut, both of which are very popular. Green tea ice cream is popular in China, but so is French Vanilla ice cream.

We conduct extensive market research on key trends and get great feedback from our local teams and franchisees and business partners.  It’s also very important to visit local markets. I was in Europe earlier this year and will be rerunning to India and Indonesia next month.   Social media is another great way to stay in touch with customers. We understand that our guests like to use social media to interact with us, whether it be complimenting their favorite local shop’s crew members or telling us about their excitement for our pumpkin menu to return. We try to engage with our loyal fans as much as possible through these constantly growing channels in an effort to humanize our brand.

Drew: Consumers have lots of choices when it comes to coffee and donuts. What kinds of things are you trying to do to build loyalty?

John: The passion for Dunkin’ Donuts is unmatched and we believe the key to our continued success has been listening to our customers and evolving to meet their changing needs.  Providing great food and beverages at a good value, in a fast, friendly and convenient environment is the best way to build loyalty. We’re also planning to expand our enhanced DD Perks national loyalty program later this year. We believe that a customer-centric approach and ongoing commitment to evolving with our guests is why people have been coming to Dunkin’ Donuts for more than 60 years.

Drew: Do you agree with that notion that marketing is everything and everything is marketing and if so how have you extended the boundaries of your job beyond the normal purview of the CMO?

John:  I believe that everything that touches the consumers drives the success of your brand.  It’s not just advertising.  It’s the products you offer, the guest experience in the store, how we handle customer feedback and the stories about Dunkin’ in the media.  A key part of our success has been a strong cross-functional team culture involving our franchises and internal groups within Dunkin’ like Marketing, Culinary/Innovation, Operations, HR, IT, Corporate Communications, etc..  We may different points of view on various issues, but after we discuss things, we move forward as one team.

This touches back to something that I mentioned earlier in our interview. I also believe that there’s really no substitute for truly understanding your customers’ pain points and how you can address them. This mindset keeps me inspired as I lead my team. I also believe this is a common theme across the Dunkin’ Brands leadership team, which allows for us extend the scope of our roles and promote a highly collaborative, cross-functional work environment from the top down. Coming together to take a 360 look at the entire customer experience cultivates a culture of innovation and has resulted in a number of powerful successes. Like any organization, there will always be the occasional road block, but I’ve worked hard to hire positive, proactive individuals who are strong communicators and adopt a solutions-oriented approach. Our industry is incredibly fast-paced and ever-changing, so we can’t let road blocks slow us down. Leading by example and encouraging people and teams to take initiative, has been a powerful recipe for success.

CMO Insights: Digital Innovations

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Beth ComstockSmall brands innovate out of necessity. Their very survival depends on finding not just a fresh solution to a customer problem but also a distinctive means of getting their story out there.  Fewer naysayers correlates to fewer entrenched ways of doing things equals faster pivots and a natural openness to experimentation.  For big brands, however, innovation is a triumph of determination over institutional inertia.  Or think of it this way, organizations are like planets–the bigger they get, the stronger the pull towards the center.

In this scenario, as one of the largest corporations in the world, GE should have the gravitational pull of Jupiter, crushing innovators before they can take a single step.  But guess again, big bias breath! From a marketing perspective, GE has been on the forefront of digital innovations for the last decade putting many smaller companies to shame.  Curious about how this was possible and thanks to an introduction by The CMO Club, I was delighted to be able to catch up with Beth Comstock, GE‘s CMO (who won The CMO Award for Leadership).  There is nothing more I could say that would be as near as insightful as the counsel Beth provides below.

Drew: For several years now, GE has been ahead of the curve when it comes to experimenting with new channels.  What is the strategy behind all of this experimentation? Is the medium essentially the message?
Beth: GE’s a leading technology company so we believe it important to be aligned with leading edge technology channels. The other thing to consider is that our audiences expect GE to be where they are – they aren’t going to always come looking for us.  We like to experiment as a way of learning, but our efforts have to align to our goal of connecting with our target audiences, which are largely industrial technologists and enthusiasts. And we’ve adapted our strategy around  being micro-relevant – meaning targeting the right audience in the right way. It doesn’t have to be a big audience, just the right one.

Drew: As the CMO, Is it a mandate of yours that GE explore all the newest coolest channels and if so, how are you finding them?
Beth: We have an awesome media team that identifies themselves as digital explorers.  We also take risks with new ideas and small companies as a way to learn and as a way to augment more traditional plays.  I’m a big believer in  carving out a percentage of your budget to develop new models.

Drew: Naysayers struggle to understand how a photo contest on Instagram or a promotion on Pinterest can help you sell GE products like aircraft engines. What do you say to those folks?
Beth: Selling a jet engine is a complicated sale.  Many people influence the purchase decision. And since GE is a company that traverses multiple industries, pretty quickly you’re targeting decision makers across a wide range of the economy and functional roles of business, which is why we believe in the importance of building a vibrant umbrella brand.  In addition to those who buy our products, we target enthusiasts, recruits and GE retail shareowners who want to experience GE in various dimensions.  Industrial technology is exciting, yes, even fun… and some of these outlets allow us the opportunity to open up and express ourselves in new ways.  People want to see that you are approachable.

Drew:  How has your role as CMO evolved over that past decade?  With the advent of “big data,” are you spending more time on analytics that you used to?  
The role of CMO has evolved from defining what marketing can do to delivering it.  I’m a  big believer in marketing’s role as developing markets, and new models. We like to think our contributions are in mindshare, marketshare and margin.  We’ve tried to make marketing a driver of commercial innovation that sits alongside our technical innovators to deliver a range of value to GE customers.  Big data is a perfect space for marketing.  A customer wants to run their business better not just have lots data – those insights help focus the data scientists on analytics that matter most.

Drew:  GE is primarily a B2B company yet you seem to act a lot more like a B2C company in terms of creating emotionally-rich consumer-friendly communications.  Any thoughts on why that is?
Beth: Since when does B2B have to be boring to boring?  Business people are people too. We are emotional beings, we don’t just rely on logic when it comes to business decisions.  Good marketing is about making a connection and delivering perceived value. Period.  In some ways, business marketers have an advantage in that they are closer to their customers and in theory should be more responsive and intuitive.

Drew: Content marketing is suddenly a hot buzzword in the industry.   Are you investing more resources in content development?  
Beth: We’ve been on a path as a content producer for several years now. We’ve widened our definition of content to include data, experiences and yes, emotional connection and even humor.  Content has to be useful and relevant to be effective.  We’ve invested in a range of skills like data visualization and user interaction design as a way to drive content that is engaging and relevant. The marvels of science, engineering and manufacturing offer good fodder for content, and we’re constantly seeking out storytellers who get as excited about this as we do.

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? Yes, it is more complex – we have a multitude of outlets and a range of content types to consider.  You need good partners, room for experimentation and a good dose of curiosity.  Trust me, it’s not about the size of your budget, it’s about the ability to use complexity to amplify your efforts, not stifle them.

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?  
Beth: Innovation can’t just be about fun ideas or wonky theories.  Innovation means new methods that yield results.  The challenge is often that time, trial and error are required to get to scale.  I’m a big believer in pilot projects to create proof points and staged development to make sure you get results.  Innovation without process is chaos. Trendspotting without translation leaves you empty.

Drew: Besides your efforts on Pinterest and Instagram can you speak about another recent innovative program that you are particularly proud of?
Beth: I’m especially proud of the work we are doing to help define what the industrial internet can mean to business productivity. It’s a new category for business, not just GE. We’ve put a lot of science and analysis into connecting with our customers and new tech partners in this area.  We’re doing much more in open innovation – meaning using digital communities to drive new methods at GE.  A recent example is a data science challenge with Kaggle that is shaving off minutes and fuel from flight landings – something thought unattainable.  And we’re having fun with Vine, having had a successful #SixSecondScience effort this summer that shows how science can be fun and connects with tech enthusiasts.

Drew: How do you stay close to your customers with so many different types of customers in so many countries?  
Beth: You have to live with them, analyze them, listen and empathize with them.  This means putting good marketing people on the ground in  markets around the world and more importantly, helping engineers and other business teams understand that marketing skills can be added to their jobs too.

Drew: Finally, I’ve heard it said that marketing is everything and everything is marketing especially when it comes to the customer experience. Do you agree with that notion and if so how have you extended the boundaries of your job beyond the normal purview of the CMO?   
Beth: I’m a big believer in Peter Drucker’s view that without a customer there is no business.  That is a rallying cry for marketing if I’ve ever heard one. And I think business leaders who believe that marketing is just about advertising and go-to-market communications miss out on all the market-making skills we have to offer.  I do believe the new frontier for marketers is holistic customer experience.  We haven’t cracked it yet but I’m looking forward to seeing how we can – and I think digital technology is taking us there very fast.

CMO Insights: Risk-taking for the Marketer

Posted on by Drew Neisser

If you’ve been in this business awhile, you have seen many an ad campaign launch strong and then fizzle out in just a year or two. Perhaps this is why I was so bowled over when I heard Terri Funk Graham (at last year’s CMO Club Summit) tell the story of the  “Jack” campaign that is now in its 18th year of productive service for Jack in the Box.  As a student of marketing, I couldn’t help but wonder, how does such a campaign come into being? How do those in charge keep it fresh?  What role does the agency play?  What’s the secret sauce here?

I got the chance to ask Ms. Graham these questions and many more earlier this year and it was then that I realized she is truly a rock star in our industry. During Graham’s long tenure as CMO at Jack in the Box which ended at the end of 2012, the Jack campaign consistently drove product sales, introduced new menu items, helped overcome recessions and bonded with a new generation of fast food consumers.  Graham, as you will soon see, has the courage to take risks not just once but year after year, has the wisdom to stick with one “genius” creative partner and has the curiosity to explore emerging communication channels.  Here is part one of our interview:

Neisser: So tell me how initially the Jack campaign came into beginning back in ’95?
Graham: Well, it came out of the E. coli crisis. So the reality was the company needed to do something to revitalize the brand and make the brand relevant again in the marketplace.  And so it came from a crisis.

Neisser: Which must have been a scary and interesting place to start, right?
Graham: I think that when you’re in a situation like this, you’re willing to put a lot more on line.  And I so I think it actually it drove the ability to take more risks.

Neisser: Really interesting.  So you decided to bring Jack back? 
Graham: Yes, but let’s bring him back in a way that’s relevant and different and will catch attention.  So it was 1995 when we launched Bringing Jack Back.

Neisser: So tell me about those initial ads?
Graham: Well, the very first spot had some controversy around it because it showed Jack coming back.  He had had plastic surgery and he blew up the boardroom because the folks from the boardroom are the ones who blew him up in the ’80s.

Neisser:  I see. A little revenge.
Graham: So he blew up the boardroom and basically reintroduced himself in the marketplace as coming back, better than before with plastic surgery and that he was going to be a big advocate for the consumers. The message was Jack was back and he was going to give fast food customers what they wanted.

Neisser:  So did that seem like an idea that could endure 18 years?   
Graham:  Well, that’s where Dick Sittig, the creative mastermind behind the Jack’s Back campaign, comes in. We constantly challenged Dick to keep Jack relevant, and because he used this sense of humor that was a bit unconventional, described often as irreverent, he kept rising to the occasion and the campaign endures to this day.

Neisser:  So why do you think the ads worked so well?
Graham:  I think what drove the campaign to continue to last is that we tapped into the emotional branding side. I think that often that is not given enough emphasis. We tapped into the emotional side that really gave it a personality that people could connect to.

Neisser:  So how did Jack end up having Dick Sittig’s voice?
Graham: That was actually by accident. That wasn’t planned. When he did the initial pitch, it was in his voice and then when we finally went to casting, we had the actor and we’re putting everything together that we’re looking at all kinds of different voices and the problem was everyone liked Dick Sittig’s voice more than anything that was put in front.  So we decided to go with his voice.

Neisser:  What does it take to keep a campaign like this together for so long?
Graham:  I think there are a couple of things to consider. One is I was always willing to take a risk. So we were unapologetic about who we were. Dick Sittig would present things that would make us feel uncomfortable.  But we knew that it was going to grab attention that it wasn’t going to hurt the brand as long as we were true to who we were. And so it was a combination of being unapologetic about who we were. It was about allowing great creative work to be done. I am not a believer in dealing any sort of pretesting of advertising. We never did anything of that nature. I also think that approval by committee is the death of a campaign, you end up with mediocre work. And, I think that, we truly trusted each other in our work and I think that’s also what helped build that campaign. And so we would constantly challenge each other to keep it relevant.

Neisser:  Very few CMO’s are given permission to take risks.  You must have had a lot of management support?
Graham:  Yes, I had full support and I had permission. Linda Lang absolutely let me run with it and she always backed it. And, there would be situations where I would come up and say, “okay, I have got one that’s going to rile up some folks, prompting phone calls, e-mails and potentially, this all will need to be discussed in the board.” And she would say, “okay, is it worth the risk? And I’d say, “yes.” And she’d say, “I’ll back you, but you need to stand tall.”  So I would have to do all the explaining in the boardroom anytime something went a little astray.

Neisser: What do you think were some of your most risky efforts?
Graham:  Running Jack over  — that was a trying moment. We were essentially putting the most — the biggest brand equity that the company had, Jack, and putting him on the line to see if people cared because if they didn’t care that he got hit by a bus, we were going to be in trouble. So that’s when we had Jack Get Hit By a Bus and of course it proved out to be quite a success and that was in 2009.

Neisser: So how did this part of the campaign unfold?
Graham: We only showed the ad one time and it was on the Super Bowl. And then everything went basically digital and social from there. That was our way of stepping into the whole social media area. So all of a sudden it got millions of views on YoutTube and it was talked about all over the place. We had amazing press and impressions on that. And, we had people sending cards and teddy bears and everything that — flowers, everything that you could imagine for Jack’s recovery. And then we created a storyline. We created multiple ads that followed up afterwards that talked about how he was doing and it became a campaign within a campaign.

Neisser:  So what about the hallucinating kid who sees Jack on his dashboard?  That must of stirred things up.
Graham:  Yes it did. We really wanted to focus on selling our 99-cent tacos. And there is a real following to those tacos. And young people, after they’ve gone to the clubs tend to head to Jack’s for their tacos. And so we played off of that, if you will. And so we had, you know, a young guy in a van come up and he wanted to order as many as 30 tacos. And needless to say, that got quite a bit of attention.

Neisser: Did you end up selling a lot of tacos?
Graham: Everything that we did we also did with the premise of generating sales and driving traffic. I mean we didn’t do funny ads just for the sake of doing funny ads. Our goal was always to drive traffic to the brand. And that’s exactly what we start out to do and that’s what we accomplished each and every time. So in that case, we certainly sold a lot of tacos and we got a lot of buzz about tacos.

Neisser:  You know, I think you told the story of how on that one, some protestors were showing up at your corporate headquarters?
Graham: Yeah, and I turned on the sprinklers. Yes, then the true story — we were going to have protestors and media show up and at the time we had grass all around our corporate headquarters. And it was in the afternoon. And so my way of stalling that was we became a water park in the afternoon and we turned on the sprinklers and we didn’t have any protests that showed up at all the rest of the week!

FYI, After a 22-year run at Jack in the Box, Terri Funk Graham recently joined the Board of Directors at Hot Topic Inc., is working with The CMO Club as the Chairman of its President’s Circle and is consulting for HOM Sotheby’s Realty.  Fellow CMOs can meet Terri in person at the upcoming CMO Club Summit in NYC.