ANA Marketing Maestros

Marketers in the Blogosphere

By Will Waugh

I like to keep track of what ANA members are doing in the blogosphere. I get asked who's blogging all of the time by our members . Marketers' appearance in the online world plays an important role with consumers and end users that demand transparency in the companies they give their loyalty too. Thanks to PRWiki for keeping me up to date as more marketers are set to enter this space in 2007. A brief list:

• McDonald's VP of Corporate Social  Responsibility hosts Open for Discussion focusing on what this major advertiser is giving back to the community
• Oracle has so many blogs that they actually have a directory of blogs
• Wells Fargo and their popular Guided by History blog
• Southwest's Nuts About Southwest is a perfect representation of their brand in the blogosphere
• Cisco's High Tech Policy blog
• Marriott's CEO Bill Marriott on a plethora of issues, including brands.

We are just scratching the surface here. There are many more marketers who have jumped in and jumped out. I expect to see more involvement here in the coming months/years as it gets harder and harder for marketers to communicate with their audiences.

Technorati tags: blogs marketing consumer

Great Ideas Will Create Relevancy

By Barbara Bacci Mirque

A recent ANA survey highlighted that integrated marketing now tops the list as the issue that keeps senior marketers up at night. You have heard me say before that ANA members tell us that the best way to tackle this is to start with the idea and let the idea be the media channel integrator. That was emphasized at the recent 2007 ANA Advertising Financial Management Conference. Bob Lachky, EVP, Global Industry Development & Chief Creative Officer, Anheuser - Busch Inc., talked about how the “Wassup” campaign (here are few of the ads along with some interesting consumer generated versions) began online then spread virally, eventually running on television.

Jeff Hicks, President, CEO and Partner, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, told a similar story for Coke Zero and its very funny campaign with Coke attorneys (again, thanks YouTube). Great ideas will create relevancy so the media should be an outgrowth of the idea, not the other way around. Both of those campaigns were extended into television once they were picked up in the conversations occurring online and it was the consumers who said these campaigns should also run on television. So once again, advertisers should be aware of and participate in the conversations happening around and about their products and services. Start with a terrific brand idea and let that determine which media channels you use. This is great learning from some very smart advertisers.

Technorati tags: budweiser marketing coke creative

Tidbits from Advertising Financial Management

By Will Waugh

I am out in lovely Phoenix at the Arizona Biltmore for our Advertising Financial Management Conference. For those of you who are not familiar with the show, it is a gathering of marketing, finance and procurement/sourcing types congregating over the latest in agency compensation/relations.

So the first topic on Monday's slate - the Net Promoter score. Or, in a nutshell, "How likely is it that you would recommend our product/service to a friend or a colleague?" This is the core of how Enterprise Rent a Car's customer research. It is also a major component of the organic growth of the organization which has more vehicles on the road than its three nearest competitors - combined.

Bob Parsons, the CEO from GoDaddy.com was the tail end of the morning. Here is an extremely interesting character with a fascinating story....fifth grade flunky, factory worker, Vietnam vet, accountant, successful entrepreneur. He is also, as we know, the architect behind some of these most talked about advertising in recent history. Apparently, he also has the most read CEO blog in the blogosphere.

Technorati tags: advertising godaddy

Brawny Academy: A Consumer Insight Success

By Barbara Bacci Mirque

For marketers- consumer insights are king. Understanding our consumer inside and out is integral to what we do as marketers and marketing organizations need to have a clearly defined, sustainable and repeatable process, to gather them. The 2006 ANA Marketing Accountability Task Force report lists this as a key to what constitutes a totally accountable organization. At the ANA we are frequently asked how to plan in today’s world of fragmented media options and emerging communication channels. At last year’s Integrated Marketing Conference we heard how over and over again from ANA members– start with a blank page and in the center list the differentiating consumer insight – that insight should lead the media channels that you choose, not the other way around. Using the insight as integrator leads you in a natural progression as to communication choices. Recently the ARF asked me to be a judge for the Ogilvy Awards. I was asked to judge one of my favorite categories – household cleaning products! I fell in love with the case study that could have been written about my household and which ended up being the category winner – "The Brawny Academy: Where Women Send Their Husbands to Clean up Their Acts"(here is the trailer) from Georgia Pacific. The Brawny paper towel brand artfully took what could be considered a commodity and made it resonate with consumers based on a compelling insight - and one that exists in my own household. Conducting ethnographic research they discovered that women were more likely to compare "husband cleaning efficacy" than paper towel cleaning efficacy. From the insight they updated the Brawny man icon, developed the Brawny Academy and used this transformative insight to pick the appropriate communication channels. Read more about this terrific case study.

Technorati tags: brawny marketing insights