ANA Marketing Maestros

Stengel - Communications Specialist in Demand

By Will Waugh

We recently interviewed Jim Stengel, P&G's Global Marketing Officer, for an upcoming publication we have coming out tentatively titled Marketing Thought Leaders: Conquering the Growth Frontier. When asked for his predictions on specialized positions for the new marketing world, he only gave one - a communications specialist role. I thought the definition for this was interesting so I thought I'd share it:

It's someone who is a bit of a consumer researcher and a bit of an advertising agency planner type - someone who is an integrated thinker; someone who understands the communications world. And I think someone who also understands the content world. It's a much more complex planning skill -- strategic thinking you might call it.

There you have it. The world's top marketer on what sort of skill sets a new marketer needs to have. I have talked about content as a killer app  as well as the renaissance marketer and how these traits are neccesary components of the evolving marketing world. The challenge, of course, is finding the talented individuals with a varied skill set across this spectrum. 

Technorati tags: stengel marketing communications

A Customer's Story - What Bad Employees Do To Your Brand

By Barbara Bacci Mirque

During a winter trip to the lovely Whistler Blackcomb Ski Resort in British Columbia, Canada, I learned firsthand about the dark side of one to one marketing. No, not the digital type this term invokes but the good old fashioned one on one, personal sale that built companies such as Fuller Brush and Avon.

My experience was with a vacation timeshare and the outcome was not pleasant, but now that company is going to learn about the power of the conversation and how in the digital communication world we inhabit, the customer has a voice – a loud voice. I can express my displeasure with this company not to a few friends but to many hundred through blogs, social network sites, etc.

So what happened to incur this wrath? As my husband and I sat warming up in one of the ski lodges, we were scoped out by a marketing person since we fit their demographic (stable looking couple, in the age bracket of those who might be induced to purchase a timeshare at this fabulous resort – how is that for traditional targeting?!). When the pleasant young man started chatting us up, whereas this hardened New Yorker would have ignored him back home, we began conversing and were ultimately invited to a vacation timeshare presentation. Since we had never participated in one before we accepted (and the offer of 2 free lift tickets was enticing!) Little did we know what we were getting into when we later arrived at the sales office– the hard sell began. Ultimately our twenty-something salesman - a former self-acclaimed champion snowboarder - became very offended when we steadfastly refused his incredible price incentive. He ended the session by loudly insulting us and berating us for attending "just for the free gift" (Well of course – but they offered!)

So what are the lessons here?

• For one, be sure you thoroughly train all of your touch points. Your most customer facing among them should not insult your customers. The well honed marketing campaign about this company’s charming accommodations at this terrific ski resort can all be for naught when up against a rude employee.
• Second, monitor the conversation and respond – read the blogs and track what is being said about your company and correct negative perceptions. I plan to post negative comments about this company on communities that I frequent such as TripAdvisor and I will actively seek out other relevant blogs on which I can complain about them.

Don’t let this happen to your company and if it does for legitimate reasons, react to it and correct it at the source.

Technorati tags: timeshares marketing blogs

What's on the Minds of Senior Marketers?

By Will Waugh

A survey that the ANA released found the top concerns on the minds of senior marketing executives are "integrated marketing communications" and "marketing accountability". The ANA asked over 100 senior marketers to select from a comprehensive list of subjects to rank their top three issues that directly impact their marketing decisions and plans.

Integrated marketing communications (Wikipedia) jumped from the fourth spot in 2006 to the top of the list this year. Marketing accountability, which had topped the list for the previous three annual surveys, slipped to second place.

The ANA will use these findings to help shape the content of its Annual Conference: The Masters of Marketing scheduled to take place October 11 – 14, 2007 in Phoenix, AZ.

The entire selection of questions is below. The top 4 are switched around but remains consistent with what senior marketers and CMOs are telling us. Integrated marketing being number 1 does not surprise me, nor should it anyone else in this space as the marketing landscape continues to transform. The real question for those of us marketers out there is, should we be concerned that "attracting and retaining top talent" is the least of their worries?

Issue	2007	2006
Integrated marketing communications	1	4
Accountability	2	1
Aligning marketing organization with innovation	3	2
Building strong brands	4	3
Media proliferation	5	5
Consumer control over what and how they view advertising	6	8
Globalization of marketing efforts	7	10
Growth of multicultural consumer segments	8	6
Advertising creative that achieves business results	9	9
Attracting and retaining top talent	10	7

Technorati tags: CMOs marketing IMC

Bob Wehling - Lessons Learned from a Marketing Legend

By Barbara Bacci Mirque

I am fortunate enough to meet the top marketers in the world through my employment at the ANA. Every day is an incredible learning experience for me as I interact with these marketing mavens. But I don’t just learn about marketing from them – I learn about leadership. One of the marketers with whom I have interacted at the ANA was just inducted into the AAF Advertising Hall of Fame. Bob Wehling, former Global Marketing Officer at The Procter & Gamble Company, accomplished many things in his 41 years at P&G but counts among his most cherished accomplishments marrying Carolyn and being the father of six daughters - and now the grandfather of 23. There he learned true insights about marketing to women, he said at his induction ceremony on March 20. He is also very proud of his community service work, particularly in the area of education and children’s issues.

One of the most compelling things I have heard about Bob from folks who were lucky enough to work with him or for him, is how he started every meeting with the question - "What can I do for you today?" Here is a person at the top of his game, commanding hundreds of millions of dollars in marketing spend, who was seeking to help those with whom he came in contact. That is the leadership lesson we can all take back from Bob Wehling. Similarly, what struck me as I listened to the biographies of each inductee was how they all seemed to have a similar style to Bob and were more concerned about others than themselves and their own career trajectory. So that is a key success attribute we can all start employing in our interactions with our staffs and marketing partners. I can’t wait for the folks who work for me to fall off of their chairs when I start a meeting with that line! You can read their inspirational stories and learn more about Bob and the other Hall of Fame inductees at this marvelous website.

Technorati tags: wehling marketing procter & gamble

Holy Chip

By Kaitlin Villanova

Apparently Doritos had the right idea when they gave consumers the opportunity to create there own chip commercial for the Super Bowl (although Bob Garfield wasn’t impressed), now Pringles is up to the same thing with their jinglesforpringles contest. In this contest they are giving the consumer the chance to write a Pringles jingle hoping to spark some brand awareness and engage the chip-loving consumer.

At the TV Forum on Tuesday, Beth Comstock of NBC Universal talked of the “viewser” those who live in an “always on world,” they are connected, engaged, and in control. This brings me back to my point on the Pringles, in this contest they are hoping to reach this group of techy viewsers who, may or may not eat Pringles, but certainly watch American Idol (most likely on a 20 minutes delay so they can skip the commercials with their DVR), cast their vote via text, and are savvy enough to whip up a witty, comical skit about potato chips on their Mac computer in under an hour. This viewser is going to see the value in participating in a community activity such as the jinglesforpringles contest.

I know we are all getting tired of hearing about “user generated content” but I was perusing my bloglines when I came across an article in The Opine:

“The User Revolution [is] largely driven by the proliferation of media options, the emergence of    the Internet, and the growing sophistication of consumers. If you have been keeping up with the web and consumer trends, this is no surprise. Consumers no longer have to succumb to brand clutter and noise. They know what they want and they know how to get it. The niche is king and the choice is theirs.”

Okay, now what do you guys think about jingles for…..Pfizer??

Tripodi's Pet Peeves

By Will Waugh

At yesterday's TV Forum, Allstate's illustrious CMO Joe Tripodi told a compelling brand story and shared his pet peeves of advertising. He urged advertisers not to be:

• The Class Clown - Thinks everything is a joke with nothing really tying to the brand or product
• The Jock - An advertiser who is lost in strained sports analogies and attaches product or brand where there is no real linkage.
• The Prom Princess - An advertiser who is all about image with no real product or substance -
• The Slacker - No goals or measures.
• The Geek - In love with all the new media and technology (this might hit a sore spot to this audience). He feels these people are trying to be ingredient branders.
• The Drama Queen - All emotion, all the time. These are advertisers who attempt to inject emotion where there is none.
• The Heavyweight - He mentioned that it is good to go on intuition some time, but not all the time. My favorite quote here: "If you go with your guy all the time, you will be out of a job." The overriding concept here is you absolutely need consumer insight and analysis.

Ad Age is hosting some video of Joe Tripodi here.

Technorati tags: tripodi marketing TV Forum

Out at TV Today

By Will Waugh

We will be hosting our annual precursor to the Upfront today we call the TV Forum. I will attempt to post from there but am not 100% sure on the hotspots at the Marriott Marquis. So that being said, I will report back on what our friends at Allstate, Nissan, NBC Universal, et al. have to say as soon as possible. Also on the slate is Andy Jung from Kelloggs delivering the ANA's commercial ratings stance. This is the area I hope to see some debate on. Most of the chatter about this subject states that our advertisers are fighting a losing cause. Sorry, it's a fight that needs to be fought. Vietnam can do it, why can't we? My favorite quote comes from Chris at Open the Dialogue:

Nielsen's system isn't actually going to be able to track commercial viewing because it only tracks viewer numbers every 2.5 seconds, a time gap that's too wide for accurate measurement. That's just fine with most parties involved in this discussion, though, since ad agencies seem to be paranoid about their commercials actually being judged with hard numbers. They like those fuzzy numbers, but their media-buying counterparts are wanting the same accountability for TV that they're finding online.

Another call from the ANA's paper is that some of the bigger brand names want "brand-specific" ratings, but it's hard for me to fathom the extent to which this won't happen.

Technorati tags: commercial ratings television

Engagement Making Progress

By Barbara Bacci Mirque

Max, you have broken my heart! That is Max Kalehoff I am talking about, the VP Marketing of Nielsen BuzzMetrics who made me a star (to my family and friends that is) by conducting a video interview with me (and others) about engagement that he ran last September on the video blog, Engagement by Engagement. Recently Max commented about engagement in a MediaPost article in which he questioned if engagement has stuck or if it is a passing fad.

The ANA is an industry partner in an important initiative about engagement metrics, spearheaded by the AAAA and the ARF. I agree with Max there was a lot of initial press hype and lately press about engagement has been "quiet," but the fact remains that advertisers are clamoring for information about what and how to measure in a world of fragmented media options and consumer control and our industry group is making enormous and carefully calibrated, progress.

Recently, an ANA poll of senior marketers found that accountability, usually the top issue on senior marketers’ minds, was now neck and neck with integrated marketing communications, specifically "how to bring together the various marketing channels," as what is keeping them up at night. The old purchase behavior paradigms don’t work anymore, we now live in a "feel, think, do" world which has important implications for marketers. Here is what Joe Plummer of the ARF, for whom I have immense respect, has to say about the work of the industry consortium on engagement and about Max’s post:

...the primary strategy for our combined effort is creating brand demand by "turning on" (or engaging) prospects in the brand idea enhanced by the context, this summary is valuable baseline knowledge. The vast majority of the research supports our research and thinking to date, in that much of what occurs between brands and prospects/customers is emotional and behavioral with minimal amounts of cognitive problem-solving and "rational man" economic-decision making. The research confirms that go-to-market components combine with the brand idea signifiers and meanings in a powerful (and possibly complex) process…the lack of buzz in the press reflects the short attention span of journalism in general and the ad industry in particular. It may also reflect a shift to a more applied phase in the engagement journey.

Stay tuned for a dialogue between Max and Joe in an upcoming Engagement by Engagement blog.

Technorati tags: engagement marketing accountability

Twitter Wants to Know: What Are You Doing?

By Kaitlin Villanova

Want to learn exactly what your consumers are thinking and doing and when? Twitter.com allows for that kind of intimacy. The community of “connected” users can communicate to friends their up-to-the-minute activities via IM, text, or email. Think of it as shorthand blogging.

Rather than writing a blog about how you are eating lucky charms cereal, then searching online for an image of the familiar leprechaun on a red box, just text message your Twitter account and save yourself a whole lot of time.”

Some Recent Twitter posts:

“BTW [by the way] I am in the apple store right now”

“Going to get a haircut, it is so warm out”

“Designing second life for you!”

Blogger Kevin Dugan writer of Strategic Public Relations Blog admits “Thousands of geeks texting random thoughts and keeping us up on their mundane status probably has value.”

Example of Twitter's usefulness in the community from Israel Hyman's Twitter microblog:

Robert Scoble wanted to have Kathy Sierra’s speech from SXSW (South by Southwest a music festival in Austin Texas, that has attracted a strong following amongst web creatives and entrepreneurs) so he asked via Twitter if anyone had a link to the audio. Within a couple minutes, someone gave him a link, which he posted via Twitter, and a few minutes later I was listening to the talk in Arizona. Twitter is microblogging at lightning speed. It’s an “always on” chat room.”

Now that you  have a better understanding of Twitter, it’s your turn to upload an image, invite friends, and answer the twitter question: What are you doing?

Technorati tags: twitter community social networks

Why We Need Brand Specific Commercial Ratings Right Now

By Will Waugh

The ANA Television Advertising Committee released a position paper yesterday supporting the industry’s growing movement towards television commercial ratings. Today’s marketing executives are pressured to justify and evaluate their media investments in meaningful and precise ways and this development helps achieve that by providing marketers with a deeper understanding of program and commercial viewership.

The Committee believes the need for accountability is especially great in television advertising, where $70 billion is spent annually on commercial time. Here are some more reasons:

• Serving as a copy testing tool to identify the stronger and weaker executions within a commercial, enabling advertisers to pull (or fix) weaker spots and heavy up on stronger ones.
• Functioning as an indicator for commercial wear out.
• Providing a better understanding of impact differences related to such factors as pod position, length of creative, and national versus local placement.
• Establishing the value of in-program and in-game features and sponsorships.
• Helping marketers understand how DVR usage habits impact all of the above.

I have sat in on this debate since I joined the ANA two years ago. There is a lot of finger pointing back and forth. One item that sticks out in my mind is the voice of one advertiser who controls several hundred millions of dollars.

"If TV does not become as accountable as all of the new media, then advertisers will leave. When we can't explain to our executives where $100 million in TV is going but can get extremely granular with a million dollar online or mobile execution -- there's a problem."

MediaPost talks about it here. The New York Times expands on the topic here. And the International Herald Tribune even moreso here. As a reminder, Andy Jung of Kelloggs will expound on the issue further at next week's TV Forum.

Technorati tags: commercial ratings television