ANA Marketing Maestros

Advice from the “Celebrity CMO”

By Adrienne Tallacksen

I recently had the opportunity to see Jeffrey Hayzlett, now former CMO of Eastman Kodak, speak at an industry event for a second time. His presentation was one of the most popular at ANA’s 2009 Masters of Marketing Conference last year, and he spoke again at a recent forum of the Mobile Marketing Association. Hayzlett is an engaging and dynamic speaker who is known as the “Celebrity CMO” and who challenges marketers to be leaders and grow the bottom line. If they’re not doing those things, why are they even around, he asks. Hayzlett introduced a couple of new themes in his most recent speech.
 
The 118 Speech: This is the new elevator pitch. Marketers have to have a value proposition, and they have to be able to sell it. The average adult attention span is just eight seconds; the average elevator ride in New York City is 110 seconds. With the 118 speech, you’ve got eight seconds to hook your listeners and 110 seconds to sell your value proposition. 

Be a Change Agent: When asked how people who haven’t yet reached the rank of CMO can be change agents in their organizations, Hayzlett told the story of the weekend he spent cleaning carpets at his company and then tearing up the carpets after finding beautiful marble floors underneath all because he was told that it was too expensive to get the carpets cleaned. Don’t just stand around saying “woe is me, I’m not powerful enough to change anything.” If clean carpets are what’s needed to grow the bottom line, get a six-pack and some friends and spend the weekend cleaning the carpets. Hayzlett advises marketers to be the change they want to see, and if they get fired for doing the right thing, all the better.

Has Social Media Overtaken One of the Biggest TV Advertising Events of the Year?

by Adrienne Tallacksen

Is it April already? I could swear this is an April Fool’s Joke. It turns out that Pepsi is sitting out this year’s Super Bowl and is instead focusing on social media. Rather than spending millions on a Super Bowl ad, Pepsi has opted to promote its Pepsi Refresh Project campaign using social media tools including Facebook and Twitter. The campaign is aimed funding community projects through grants distributed by Pepsi. The projects are submitted and then voted on by visitors to the campaign’s website.

   
Pepsi’s agency, TWBA Worldwide, is quoted as saying, “The Super Bowl is just too extravagant for something like this.” This brings to mind a number of issues—cause marketing, social media, and a post-recession backlash against excess are just a few. Now that companies aren’t feeling the pinch of the recession as much, will more turn back to cause marketing? How will traditional media play into Pepsi’s campaign, if at all? Does corporate responsibility mean being frugal with your ad dollars?

Obviously, many brands feel that the high prices of Super Bowl ads are worth it. Pepsi says it’s trying to create a movement through this campaign.  Is social media the only venue brands can use to create movements, or is there a place for traditional media in movement marketing, too?

Are You Relevant?

By Adrienne Tallacksen

More marketers are turning to social media as a way to reach consumers, as shown in the recent ANA study “Harnessing the Power of Newer Media Platforms”. In 2007, 20% of survey respondents were using social media. The 2009 survey found that 66% now use social media platforms. Just over half of marketers surveyed are funding newer media spending with dollars shifted from traditional media.

When moving into the newer media space, marketers must continue to remain relevant to consumers. In a presentation at the June Central Region Digital Marketing Meeting, Google’s Jim Lecinski spoke about staying relevant in a presentation titled “Connecting with the Recession Shopper.” Lecinski said marketers must be useful, helpful, and relevant; not interruptive, shocking, or annoying.

If I’m looking for tomorrow’s weather forecast, I am definitely not interested in a candy ad taking up half of my screen. I’m trying to think of a situation where this ad might be relevant, and I’m coming up with nothing. However, an ad for shipping services on a social networking site for business professionals could be useful. I might not have an immediate need to ship something, but the ad is at least in the ballpark of relevancy.

Drawing Attention to Yourself by Going Local

By Adrienne Tallacksen

My daily commute takes me past a local gym. I always look forward to checking out the latest advertisement they have to get people in the door, which is posted on a chalkboard easel on the sidewalk. The handwritten ads sometimes feature quotes (always altered in some way to play up the fitness angle), sometimes verge on offensive (needling those who might not be physically fit), and sometimes they aren't ads at all (a simple "YAY!" was posted on November 5th after President Obama was elected). The messages are often targeted to the Jersey City, NJ audience with references to local restaurants and even our most recent political scandal. Above all, the ads are clever and witty and almost always get my attention.

The gym is part of a small New York/New Jersey chain, so it may be easier for it to target the local audience than it would be for a national advertiser. But new tools are making targeted ads possible on a larger scale. At a meeting of the ANA's Television Advertising Committee Meeting in March, committee members learned about how Canoe Ventures is using community addressable advertising to target television viewers in different markets.

When an ad is targeted at people who live in my community, I feel like I can relate to the advertiser, even if I might not be interested in its product. This can be a powerful connection for marketers to make with consumers.

Doing Well by Doing Good, Even in a Tough Economy

By Adrienne Tallacksen

Commercial media has advertising; public radio has underwriting. Those of us who listen to public radio are all too familiar with the phrase “Support for this program comes to from…” Recently I heard the following underwriting message:

Scotts Miracle-Gro, supporter of the 'Gro Good pledge,’ asking backyard gardeners to plant extra vegetables to help feed the hungry—at GroGood.com.

Many advertisements today are focusing on a product’s price or value. Fewer are focusing on a message of altruism. This underwriting spot reminded listeners that even if they’re not feeling the impacts of the down economy, their neighbors may be suffering. The spot was also relevant to the product, which is used in many gardens. The only problem is that I had a lot of trouble finding the web site—GroGood.com. As a listener who isn’t very familiar with Scotts Miracle-Gro, I had assumed the name of the web site was GrowGood.com with the conventional spelling of the word “grow.” (I’ve often heard the URLs of web sites spelled out in underwriting spots, but that wasn’t the case here.) Nevertheless, it was nice to hear a message about helping your community instead of another ad focused on low, low prices or the down economy.

Out of home, out of mind?

By Adrienne Tallacksen

A few weeks ago I was coming out of the subway station at Grand Central and noticed that the turnstiles looked different than usual.  On second glance, I saw that the turnstile bars were wrapped with ads for an unnamed airline.  As far as I could tell, there weren’t other ads for this airline in the subway station.  Granted, I didn’t go running around the subway station looking for more ads (who has time for that during her morning commute?), but it appeared that the advertising was limited to the turnstile bars.  I may not even have remembered the campaign, except that later in the week as I walked through a different part of Grand Central, I saw ads for the same airline on the walls.  Were these two campaigns related?  Maybe, but I’m not sure. 

Another more effective example of out of home advertising in New York’s subway stations comes from UPS. Senior VP and Creative Director Andy Azula discussed the campaign at this year’s TV & Everything Video Forum.  In this case, UPS wrapped underground subway pillars to look like whiteboard markers and used nearly-blank white wall ads that resembled whiteboards.  Consumers could see how the wall ads and the ads on the pillar were connected.  This was an engaging and interesting campaign.

I still wonder if the two ads for the airline were connected or not.  If the turnstile bar wrappers were only one piece of a campaign, where was the rest of the campaign that I missed?  Was the campaign really spread throughout Grand Central?  Or were the turnstile bar wrappers the entire campaign?  If so, it wasn’t entirely effective.  While the wrapped turnstile bars caught my attention, more than anything, I was puzzled by them and certainly wasn’t moved to do business with the company.  I think this was a lost opportunity for the airline to create an exciting out-of-home campaign.  Instead of being engaged, I was just confused. 

Links:
http://www.ana.net/conversation/miccontent/ss_azula_021209
http://www.ana.net/events/conferencemtg/TAF-FEB09

Respect Your Customers or They’ll Look Elsewhere

By Adrienne Tallacksen

I don’t own a TV. It wasn’t really a conscious decision—after my husband’s TV broke and I had to give a borrowed one back to its owner, we just didn’t bother to replace them. I can’t say I’ve missed having a TV all that much, but there are a few shows I still like to watch, and like many others, I watch them online.

There’s one show I’ve been watching online for a couple of years. The network, which will remain nameless, was nice enough to post the entire first season so I could catch up with the program after I’d missed the show’s broadcast television debut. I’ve enjoyed watching the show in an online setting. I can pause and rewind if needed, and while there are the same number of commercial breaks online as during the TV broadcast, there has been only one commercial per break…until now.

I don’t mind commercials—that’s not the problem here. In fact, I’d rather watch a program with a few commercials from a legal source than go to the trouble of looking for illegal downloads. My problem is that instead of getting the expected single 30-second commercial, it’s now followed up by another 15-second commercial. This may not sound like a big change, but it was startling and surprisingly annoying that commercial breaks are now half again as long as they used to be. I know, 15 seconds is next to nothing compared to a 45-minute program, but as a viewer I felt disrespected.

One 30-second commercial seems to have been the standard, but apparently the standard has changed. Now that there are two commercials, I’m more likely to spend the commercial break annoyed that there are two commercials, rather than give any of my attention to the commercials that air.  When I knew there was only going to be one commercial, it did catch my attention, especially when one company advertised throughout the program. In my mind, this is a double whammy for advertisers—the consumer is annoyed and is also not paying attention to their ads.

This change isn’t enough to make me stop watching the program entirely, but it was enough to make me switch to Hulu.com, which carries the same program. And, for now at least, Hulu has stuck to one commercial per break, so that’s where I’ll be going to watch TV online.