According to UScellular marketing chief Eric Jagher, going up against your direct competitors may not be the best way to break through. “Sometimes the right thing to do is challenge something bigger than the category,” he said. For Jagher, that meant spearheading the brand’s multi-phased “Let’s Find US” campaign earlier this year, which explores the relationship between consumers and technology by addressing the issue of cell phone overuse.

So, it encourages consumers not to use the service… sort of. “As we were looking at the research, one of the things that popped up, ironically, was that people are struggling with the relationship that they have with their devices,” Jagher told Chief Marketer. “They love the technology. The problem is when the technology gets out of place and it starts to dominate people’s lives. So, if we’re a carrier that’s going to connect people to what matters most, how can we help them to manage that relationship with technology in a better way?”

The campaign initially tapped AI technology during Super Bowl playoff games to detect approximately how many people in the stadiums were missing major plays while they were face-down in their phones. The next component included a “Phones Down for 5” pledge that encouraged people to put their devices down for five days, hours or even minutes, as well as messaging to help users control the technology by pausing notifications or phone calls.

It also included a partnership with nonprofit Screen Sanity, which guides parents and children on developing a better relationship with digital technology in general. And most recently, the brand launched a Smarter Start Toolkit to help parents facilitate a discussion about better managing the technology.

We spoke with Jagher—our Marketers on Fire pick this month—about the program’s origins, startling stats about cell phone usage in America, strategies for setting the brand apart within a hyper-competitive category and the campaign’s positive results surrounding brand consideration and Net Promoter Scores.

Chief Marketer: Why did you feel the need to create a campaign that’s about using your cell phone less?

Eric Jagher, CMO and SVP at UScellular: We are all about connecting people to what matters most. And obviously, cell phones would be a big part of that. As we were looking at research, one of the things that popped up, ironically, was that people are struggling with the relationship that they have with their devices. They love the technology. The problem is when the technology gets out of place and it starts to dominate people’s lives. And so if we’re a carrier that’s going to connect people to what matters most, how can we help people to manage that relationship with technology in a better way? That might mean putting the phone down sometimes, or setting the phone to limit distractions, notifications.

CM: In what ways does the brand facilitate that specifically?

EJ: It started with the Super Bowl. For the first campaign that we did, “Missing the Big Game,” we used AI during the Super Bowl to show people in the stadium so connected to that technology that they were missing big plays. Something like 16,000 fans missed touchdowns during the game, 6,000 fans were watching the phones or the halftime show by Rihanna, 4,000 people-plus missed the winning field goal. That was a way to create awareness.

The first important thing we did from a marketing perspective was, “Phones Down for Five.” I did it, our CEO did it. We had celebrities doing it, like Ashley Tisdale. Put your phone down for five days, hours, even five minutes, just to get a sense of what it feels like to put the phone aside. The second step was, how are we going to help you solve it? Ninety-five percent of people never change the default settings in their devices, but there’s a lot of great capabilities in those devices, including modes you can use to shut off things like notifications during certain hours of the day. So the second phase was to help people to control the technology, what we call “US mode,” which is using technology native to the device.

The next phase came in our Screen Sanity partnership, an international nonprofit focused on helping parents and kids have a better relationship with digital technology in general. Recently we’ve launched a Smarter Start Toolkit around back-to-school so parents can talk to kids about how to manage technology better, because it’s not a conversation that parents enjoy having. This is a way to help them facilitate that discussion.

CM: How did the AI work exactly?

EJ: We tested the AI over a few of the playoff games before the Super Bowl, the division rounds and the conference championships. We used a Microsoft AI to look around the stadium and catch people looking down into their phones. That’s how we were able to get those stats. When there was a big touchdown, we could then see how many people had their heads buried in their phones as opposed to watching the game.

CM: What other research stats informed the campaign?

EJ: The average person spends more than five hours a day staring at their phone. Most Americans reach for their device between three and 400 times a day. Forty-seven percent of Americans say they’re addicted to their phone. Parents say that the number one battleground with their kids is these devices, and how to get off them. A more humorous one, but still very serious: It’s the number two thing people give up for Lent after chocolate.

CM: What are your strategic marketing goals with the campaign, and how are you measuring its success?

EJ: First and foremost, we’re trying to drive reappraisal of the UScellular brand. In some markets in our footprint we’ve had a little bit of market share deterioration. So we want people to have another reason to look at our brand and say, I see them differently and I want to come back. Love for the brand is our number one goal. And then, getting people to take action off of seeing this. Through June, we have some really interesting stats: a third of UScellular customers say they’re aware of us promoting healthy relationships with technology, and 34 percent of those customers state it improved their opinion of us.

So we’re seeing some really nice lift with existing customers, and even non-customers who were aware of the campaign felt that it improved their opinion of us by 18 percent. We’ve had over 358 million brand impressions to date since the launch of the campaign. Over the last two months in a row now, our Net Promoter Score is number one in our footprint ahead of all the other big three carriers. And we’re really proud of that because that’s been something we’ve been working on for a while. A year ago we were last by a decent margin, and then in the last two months we’ve been first since we’ve launched this campaign.

CM: In general, what is your strategy when it comes to setting your brand apart from your main competitors?

EJ: Our competitors seem content to fight each other constantly about wireless. One of the key insights we had during the development of this was that we wanted to talk about something bigger than the category. How do we help people to connect better? Let’s not fight against each other. Let’s fight about the technology getting out of place. When we think about building brand value and loyalty, we want to focus on something customers care about. That’s where the shift came in. We’re focused on setting the brand apart by having a strong value proposition. We’re always going to have competitive promotional offers in the marketplace, but really building that brand around a strong value prop and competitive offers.

CM: What are your brand’s greatest challenges, and how are you tackling them from a marketing perspective?

EJ: This is a hyper-competitive industry. You can’t go a set of commercials, whether it’s streaming content or linear TV, where you’re not seeing a wireless commercial. So that makes it challenging in the sense that the pull is to always do a transactional or performance marketing spot that’s focused on the device you’re selling today, how much off, and what’s the price plan. We’re certainly always going to do our fair share of that. But my role as a CMO is to make sure we’re continuing to develop the brand, and make sure people understand what UScellular is all about and what we stand for. And that’s where developing this healthy relationship with technology is really important. And then all the offers and everything else sits below that. The pull is to use all of the media to focus on the transactional or the performance, but you have to keep some of the focus on the brand and the equity.

The other thing is, and it’s probably very obvious to most, is that we are—depending on the day—the fourth or fifth largest carrier. It’s a David-versus-Goliath-type situation. AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile are always going to have a lot more to spend on advertising and media than we are. So we have to be nimble, to react. I’m very proud of my team and what we do in terms of how we structure hyper-local offers. Maybe it’s different in this state versus that state. The execution and the operational excellence of the team has to be top-notch, and it is. We’re constantly trying, testing different things to make sure we’re optimizing our offers in the marketplace.

CM: Lastly, in your view, what should modern marketers be focusing on to advance their careers?

EJ: Obviously the digital landscape has become more and more important over the years. A lot of marketers are figuring out how to address this notion of a cookie-less future. We’re certainly talking about it internally. My advice is to not lose focus on the quantitative aspects of marketing and how important financial analysis is to becoming a really strong marketer. It’s an important skillset, and the people I see who are most successful around me have that skillset set as well.

In marketing it’s easy to want to challenge the other person in your category. One thing we’ve learned in this process is that sometimes the right thing to do is challenge something bigger than the category. There are other great examples. Dove didn’t go challenge Irish Spring, or other soaps. They challenged this notion of toxic beauty. Chipotle doesn’t go against Taco Bell. They go challenge GMOs and freshness, and make that their stance. We’ve learned a lot through some of those examples: that sometimes the best thing to challenge is something bigger.

The post Marketers on Fire: UScellular CMO and SVP Eric Jagher appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Topgolf is on a mission to make the sport of golf a lot more accessible. Traditional barriers to entry—a country club membership, a set of clubs, a rigid dress code—are crumbling fast, and the sport’s gamified version is front and center in that effort.

“If you think about entering golf through the traditional lens, it can be a very intimidating introduction to the game,” said Topgolf CMO Geoff Cottrill. “And if you’re not good at golf, you have to really invest.” But the sport is in the midst of a major shift, he says. It’s becoming more accessible and diverse, and the way people are entering and experiencing the game is changing.

Topgolf itself is expanding rapidly, with plans to open 11 new venues a year for the next five years. That amounts to three to four million new Topgolf players per year, Cottrill estimates. “We’re trying to make the game of golf more accessible by removing the barriers, making it more fun, with music, food and just a good time,” he said.

We spoke with Cottrill about how the game of golf is changing; Topgolf’s new brand campaign and zany animated spot; the company’s plans for growth; his approach to influencer marketing; and more.

Chief Marketer: What’s the purpose behind your most recent campaign?

Geoff Cottrill, CMO at Topgolf: Our core conviction as a brand is believing in the unlimited power of play. We live in a world where the older you get, the less you’re encouraged to have fun, let go and play. About a year ago, we launched our first-ever global campaign with the tagline, “Come play around,” and a visual representation of what an experience at Topgolf’s like, the unique combination of golf and not golf. It helped us build new awareness in the marketplace. Then we went back and said, what’s the next phase look like? The first time we just showed people playing. This time we wanted to do it with a different representation, visually.

CM: What was the marketing goal with this second phase?

GC: For this version we wanted to amplify the spectacle and the joy that you feel when you play at Topgolf, the bigness of the venue, yet the intimacy of what happens in the actual bay itself. The goal was to make it playful, memorable, a little bit outlandish, animated. We’re building awareness in the marketplace. We’ve been around for 20-plus years, but we still have relatively low awareness. So we’ve got to step out and disrupt a little bit. You’re going to start to see a number of interesting things coming out over the next couple of months.

CM: Where did the animation idea come from?

GC: We decided to create a whole new world and set of characters that are based on real people, but fun and engaging. We’re introducing a group called the “Hand Head crew.” We shot a bunch of film with real people playing Topgolf and then went back in and put Hand Heads on them instead. And then used the expressions of hand emojis and hand signals—high fives, low fives, handshakes—to express the joy of how it feels to play golf. Instead of showing someone’s face, it amplifies and brings these things to life. Why hands? They’re expressive. We live in an emoji culture. It’s also a golf glove. You eat and play golf with your hands, and they’re a humongous part of the experience itself.

CM: Are you creating any extensions to the campaign, like merchandise?

GC: With our partners at Callaway we’re doing a whole set and series of golf gloves that match the heads. Then we’re doing Snapchat filters and we’ll do some stuff on Instagram as well, so you can turn yourself or your friends into Hand Heads. We’re doing a full-page in Vogue to be a little bit disruptive and have a sense of style.

CM: How are you distributing the campaign to consumers?

GC: We’ve got the :60, the :30 music-only, a :30 with voiceover and a whole bunch of :15s that talk about families, going out with friends and our half-price Tuesday platform. Then we’ll have a whole bunch of six- and seven-second pieces for social. We’ll do out-of-home. We’ll also do some print; we’ll be in Hypebeast, Golf Digest and Vogue, for a bit of a record-scratch moment. Then we may pop up and do some fun stuff during Fashion Week.

CM: What’s your pitch to people who’ve never played golf before, or to those who may be intimidated by traditional barriers of entry to the sport?

GC: Most of the people who come to Topgolf have never played golf before. And a lot of people that come to Topgolf will never go on to play golf. But golf is a sport that’s got a long history, a lot of great traditions, but also a lot of barriers to entry for people to be able to even attempt the game for the first time. We’re trying to make the game of golf more accessible by removing the barriers, making it more fun, with music, food and just a good time.

The game of golf needs to be and is becoming more diverse. And we’re one of the driving forces around that. And then as the game becomes more diverse, it becomes more fun for more people. We’re constantly inviting people in to play for the first time. A lot of people come for a first date. A lot of people come in through our leagues. A lot of people come in through a company corporate event. We want that experience to be one that you remember is fun and associated with laughter.

If you think about entering golf through the traditional lens, it can be a very intimidating introduction to the game. You go to the country club or the place to get lessons. Are you wearing the right clothes? Do you have the right shirt? Is your shirt tucked in? Do you have your clubs? If you’re not good at golf, you have to really invest.

This past year there was a shift: off-course golf—for the first time in history—is bigger than on-course golf. And more than 80 percent of off-course golf is represented through Topgolf. So, the way people are entering and experiencing the game is very different. And the result we projected out, in five-to-10 years, is going to be pretty profound on the game.

CM: What are your plans for expansion?

CG: We’re building 11 venues a year for at least the next five years. Every year, with those venues, we’re adding somewhere between three and four million new players, new golfers, new people coming into the sport. We’re growing internationally as well. We just opened a massive venue in China. We’re in Germany; we’ve got plans to go into Spain. We’re in Australia and Thailand.

CM: Have you targeted specific types of consumers?

GC: I don’t use the generational labels that most people use. Gen X, millennials… we don’t use those ways of thinking. We’ve done personas. We’ve got seven different personas that we’ve developed that all are entering the game of golf or looking for leisure and entertainment activities in different ways. We’ve gone deep with each of those seven and we know where they’re living, what media they’re using, what social media they’re using. It’s young people, it’s families, it’s people who play golf, but it’s also parents who play golf and have young kids that want to experience something new. We just announced a huge relationship with the Special Olympics. Topgolf will become a medaled sport in the Special Olympics. We’re already hosting practice competitions across the country.

CM: What other actions are you taking to make Topgolf more inclusive and diverse? And how does influencer marketing factor into that strategy?

CG: We’ve developed what we call “friends of the brand.” I don’t use the word influencer. I know marketers are so fascinated and enamored with that word. I think it’s ridiculous that we’ve gone so deep on that. Everyone has influence. Everyone you interact with and meet and do things with has influence. We went out and found 25 or 30 people from all walks of life who are somehow changing the game of golf and we’re working with them to do things that are important to them. Like Roger Steele, for example, a kid from Chicago. He’s breaking down some of the barriers, so we’re doing things with him.

We just did a big program with the Divine Nine, the original nine fraternities and sororities from historically Black colleges. We had a tournament on a Saturday in all of our venues across the country where people from those fraternities and sororities came and played against each other, with a leaderboard that was nationwide. We work with the folks at Eastside Golf, a couple kids who grew up on around the East Lake area of Atlanta—professional golfers dressed head-to-toe in Jordan who are literally changing the game of golf. It’s not about us doing stuff. It’s about us participating and helping these people that are changing the game of golf and providing a platform to help them do that. They’re the ones who are driving the change.

The post Brands on Fire: Topgolf CMO Geoff Cottrill on the Brand’s Awareness Play, New Creative and International Expansion appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Restaurant reservation platform Resy uses search intent to curate editorial content, segment users based on interests and onboard new restaurants to the service. An article in AdExchanger covers a chat with Hannah Kelly, the CMO of the American Express-owned brand, about the company’s digital marketing strategy, what channels are working best and campaign measurement.

Image credit: facebook.com/resy

The post Resy CMO on Leveraging Search Intent to Inform its Editorial Strategy appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Walgreens launched its first weeklong savings event this week, dubbed “myW Days,” which offers members of its myWalgreens loyalty program increased cash rewards, daily deals and other benefits for its more than 110 million participants. The marketing goals are twofold: new member acquisition and driving online and in-store transactions from current subscribers.

Aside from its duration, the promotion differs from others in its focus on rewarding loyalty and engagement, the richness of the rewards and the ease with which benefits are redeemed, according to Walgreens CMO Linh Peters. “This is the first time that we’ve done this type of promotion campaign,” she said. “It is focused on rewarding our members for their loyalty and engagement with us. Over the course of a week, our members can earn upwards of a hundred dollars-worth of myWalgreens cash.”

The other key component is highlighting convenience. “Sometimes when brands execute these types of things, there’s a lot of terms and conditions that go with it. We were intentional about making this as easy and as seamless for our customers as possible, so they’ll be able to earn across all of the channels and ways into Walgreens, whether they’re purchasing in-store or on the app,” she said. “We’ve made it so that they are getting the richest rewards on the categories that they personally shop the most with.”

We spoke with Peters about the promotional event; the brand’s recent pivot towards marketing itself as a more healthcare-focused company; her philosophy on launching loyalty programs and managing growth; and lessons learned while building a career as a diverse woman in marketing.

Chief Marketer: How is this loyalty promotion different from others you’ve done in the past?

Linh Peters, CMO at Walgreens: This is the first time that we’ve done this type of promotion campaign. It’s different than Prime Days, Walmart… and how some of the other retailers are doing it. It is focused on rewarding our members for their loyalty and engagement with us. It’s probably the richest program that we’ve done in our history. Over the course of a week, our members can earn upwards of a hundred dollars-worth of myWalgreens cash.

The other component of the program is that we’re making it really easy. Sometimes when brands execute these types of things, there’s a lot of terms and conditions that go with it. We were intentional about making this as easy and as seamless for our customers as possible, so they’ll be able to earn across all of the channels and ways into Walgreens, whether they’re purchasing in-store or on the app. We’ve made it so that they are getting the richest rewards on the categories that they personally shop the most with.

The final piece is that we’re also rewarding our team members. We have some very specific offers and promotions that our team members will be able to take advantage of. We want to thank them because they’re the ones that, on a day-in and day-out basis, are serving our customers in-store.

CM: So the rewards accumulate faster during this period?

LP: Yeah. It’s just the level of the reward. Our everyday program is a one percent earn, and a five percent earn on owned brands. One of the rewards [this week], for example, is 20 percent back on all of your purchases. That is significantly higher. It will be across the front of the store and across our pharmacy. If you’re purchasing in our pharmacy, we’re increasing the richness of the offer. It goes from one percent to five percent. And if somebody opens a credit card during this week, they’ll also get a $50 cash reward. So there’s multiple ways in; we wanted to allow our members to take advantage of what worked for them.

CM: What will make this a marketing success?

LP: Acquisition of new members is one goal. The other one is for our existing membership base, we want to drive traffic and transactions in-store. The myWalgreens cash comes back into the store at a later point in time, so we look at the incrementality on those rewards and what it drove.

CM: You’ve had experience launching loyalty programs and managing their growth at multiple brands. What’s your strategy there?

LP: Number one, loyalty programs absolutely need to be an enterprise priority, and they need to be thought of as a strategic growth driver. They are not just promotions and discounts, and they’re not just a thing that marketing owns. Where I’ve seen the most success, including Walgreens, is when you’re thinking about how each part of the business can help support it and enable that loyalty program or strategy.

The second piece is that when you’re defining a loyalty program, the value proposition around it and the benefits, it’s important to make sure that it is based on consumer needs and what you would need to drive long-term growth. Sometimes people see loyalty programs as a one-and-done or quick win. The best programs I’ve seen are focused on how do we create something that’s differentiated for the consumer, how do we think about driving long-term loyalty? It’s not just about creating a program that’s the least expensive to have.

The last piece is that you need to create flexibility in your program and the way that you run it, because you’re going to have to continue to address changing customer needs. You’re going to have to change your martech platform to keep up with whatever capabilities or experiences there. And even things like data privacy. There’s a multitude of things you’ll need to address, but making sure that you have flexibility in the strategy and also the operating model is really important.

CM: You’ve held the role of CMO for about a year. What has been your focus for the brand during that time?

LP: I focused on three things in my first year at Walgreens. The first one is our new purpose and vision: being a healthcare company of the future. That has required us to change our marketing, our brand and creative expression. We have started to put it out into the marketplace. If you look at the history of the Walgreens brand, it’s been much more fun. There’s been more levity and humor in it. In order to gain ground in terms of equity and awareness as a healthcare company, we focused on pivoting what the brand represents. It’s things around tone, look and feel, and exuding more empathy, humanity, trust, warmth. You’re talking about helping people take care of their lives and their families’ lives, and showing up in a more humanized and personal way.

The second piece is that historically we have focused mainly on our retail business. But now that we are going into healthcare, we need to connect the dots between the retail services, offerings and experiences that we have to our healthcare business as well as our pharmacy business. How do we bring those things together more cohesively so that the customer understands what our value proposition is? And how can we help them better manage their health? And then, how do we make sure that’s a much more seamless experience across the three different areas of the business?

The final one is more logistical. We made the strategic decision to increase our in-house creative studio. For a lot of our previous work, we were working with a multitude of agencies. We wanted to bring that expertise and creative strategy in-house, so we have really built up that team. Our head of creative is Jen Quotson, who previously led the creative studio at Starbucks. Her phenomenal background, expertise and creative thought leadership will be huge for us as we continue to pivot the brand.

CM: Walgreens recently announced store closures in the U.S. How will that affect your marketing approach?

LP: Store closures is a component of any retailer bringing in business. For us in marketing, it’s about proactively communicating and marketing to the customer so that they understand when something’s happening in their market, and then more importantly, making the transition to their nearest Walgreens pretty seamless. It’s everything from communicating operating hours to how to transfer prescriptions for them. Some elements of our marketing or customer experience are at the localized level and making sure that we’re getting ahead of that, if we unfortunately have to close doors.

CM: Lastly, as a diverse woman who built a career in marketing, do you have any lessons to share?

LP: One of the things I always tell people is that as I built my career, I focused less on titles. Sometimes when people focus on titles, you either narrow your opportunities, or you’re focused on the wrong thing. For me personally, it’s the roles themselves and what they entail. Am I gaining new skills? Am I gaining new experiences? How will this role provide a stepping stone to the next one to two roles that I might have in my career?

The other thing is, as a diverse woman I have built both an internal and external network of advocates and sponsors. It’s incredibly important to have that. But now as I’ve gotten higher up in my career, I am playing that role for other people and taking a more meaningful investment in people.

I always tell people you should take on the assignment or the challenge or the project that nobody else wants to do. Because there’s a lot of opportunity in doing the hard stuff, and that will generally bode well for you in terms of the experience that you get, but also you’re helping to solve a problem or an issue for the organization.

The final thing is that your personal brand and reputation really matters. What you do now and how you show up will continue to follow you throughout your career. A lot of the opportunities that I’ve had in my career were born out of roles or experiences or connections that I made from many years ago. It’s not just about how you show up currently. All of that stays with you and people will remember that many years after you left a company or left a job.

The post Marketers on Fire: Walgreens CMO Linh Peters appeared first on Chief Marketer.

If there’s one part of the business that’s connected to the consumer, it’s the marketing department. Closely monitoring shifting consumer behaviors, eyeing critical trends in the marketplace and the culture in general, and deftly communicating the value of your brand to potential customers are all table stakes for any modern marketer with C-suite aspirations.

Indeed, according to a recent PwC survey, meeting customer expectations for their brands, products and services is the biggest concern for CMOs, with 37 percent listing it as one of their top three issues. So in recent conversations with some of the best and brightest in the industry, we inquired about what it takes to land that coveted role, and how to turn those aspirations into reality.

Brad Hiranaga, Chief Brand Officer, Cotopaxi: I think for marketers that are coming up, if there’s a way to have experiences on both types of brands, legacy nostalgic brands that you learn a ton of stuff on in addition to smaller, digitally-native brands that are built that way, it’s important to have both those types of experiences. Because otherwise, you can eventually pigeonhole yourself into being just a performance-based marketer, or just a big brand marketer.

When you step up into CMO roles and C-suite roles, you don’t have to be necessarily an expert on every single thing, but you have to understand how all of those parts fit together for the bigger picture of what you’re trying to drive. You have to understand the consumer and where technology’s going. So being curious and constantly reinventing yourself and your skills is crucial. [Read more from Hiranaga here.]

Ana Andjelic, Global Chief Brand Officer, Esprit: I would recommend a strategic and holistic approach, which means looking at where the marketing connects with merchandising, where merchandise connects with design, where brand connects with the product, and where all of the above connects with physical retail and the experience. Look at the entire brand experience. That’s your job. Sure, you can use data, but why? To connect better with merchandising, to give direction to design the product better, to set the price. I recommend a holistic view in this role. [Read more from Andjelic here.]

Kristen D’Arcy, CMO of Homedics: The conversation that I’m hearing in the industry is about the cookie-less world and how do you build up your first-party data so that you can learn a lot about your consumers’ market in a personalized way. That’s number one. Number two is social shopping. That’s something that a lot of people are discussing right now. And then three is, what is the role of influencers more broadly? Going back to our strategy, which was mass diversification in terms of where we put our media, what role do influencers play in terms of helping drive sales online? [Read more from D’Arcy here.]

Tyrrell Schmidt, Chief Marketing Officer, TD Bank: Sometimes people think about their career in linear ways, like “I need to move to the next level.” It’s also about understanding what experiences you need to get to the C-suite. Be open, be willing to try new things. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to stay in that role forever.

I urge people to think about “the what and the how.” What you deliver is important. Taking accountability for your area is critical, but it’s also the “how.” I’m a big believer in building relationships. As companies look to build more agile structures, being able to work with different groups of people on aligned goals and aligned KPIs and outcomes is important. [Read more from Schmidt here.]

The post The C-Suite Speaks: Cotopaxi, Esprit, TD Bank and Homedics Offer Career Advancement Tips appeared first on Chief Marketer.

With 20 years of experience leading marketing teams across a variety of business categories, from CPG to retail franchising to B2B2C to nonprofit, American Lung Association CMO Julia Fitzgerald is sure of one thing: Regardless of an organization’s business model, the fundamentals of effective marketing are essentially the same.

It all starts with knowing the narrative, she says. “What is your value proposition, what is it that you do, who do you do it for, and how do you do it differently than everybody else?” she told Chief Marketer this week. Then it comes down to branding, followed by evaluating—and optimizing—the team structure.

Below is our conversation with Fitzgerald, spanning a plethora of topics, including common marketing mistakes brands make when measuring ROI; ways to analyze and pivot your current strategy for more profitable outcomes; lessons learned from marketing in the private sector; and why consumer sentiment and AI are the trends she’s paying most attention to.

Chief Marketer: This is your first role in the nonprofit world. What have you learned from your experience working in the private sector?

American Lung Association CMO Julia Fitzgerald: I’ve been a CMO for just about 20 years, and I’ve spanned all types of different business models. I’ve been in CPG, retail franchising, B2B, B2B2C, and now finally not-for-profit. Yes, this is a new business model, but what I find in marketing is that regardless of the business model, what makes effective marketing work is essentially the same.

CM: What are those commonalities?

JF: It starts with with knowing the narrative. What is your value proposition, what is it that you do, who do you do it for, and how do you do it differently than everybody else? And next comes down to branding. How does your target market identify you in the marketplace? What does your branding say about you both visually, and your voice? My next piece is to look at the team structure. Is the marketing team set up to do the challenge for the organization? Marketing changes so frequently. So, do we have the right combination of people and agencies to do what we need to do?

And then it starts to get a little boring. I do a calendar audit. Because I frequently find that, especially with midsize organizations, you’re out of sync. If your really big get happens in January, don’t chase the semi-big win in November and then not be prepared to win in January. It’s looking at the calendar. Are we backed off enough to really make this happen? And then, you get to the part where everybody wants to start—and that’s the digital ecosystem and digital advertising. Whenever I come into an organization, [people say], “are we going to do a TikTok? Are we going to use influencers?” Right down to the delivery system, skipping all those other steps that I just mentioned. And while that is the sexy new stuff, it needs to come later—and it also needs to come after the content strategy.

The other part of marketing that I find ubiquitous from one business model to the next is “content plus the delivery.” You have to have the message, and then it’s how you’re going to get it out there. I tell my team that it’s the music and the words to make the whole song. You’re working on a content strategy. What’s the message? What do we want people to do? How does this need to sound before we decide if we need a micro-influencer or a TikTok campaign? And then the last piece is using KPIs and reporting to motivate that virtuous cycle. Is this working really well for us? Or, this is not worth the time of day—and taking it back to the beginning.

CM: Let’s talk ROI a bit. In your experience, what are some common marketing mistakes that brands make when they’re measuring ROI?

JF: I would say the first mistake is not to measure. Number one is not giving careful thought ahead of time to how would you measure success. The other part is inconsistent measurement of your KPIs. If you’re only going in occasionally and checking, and not looking at through lines and trends, it’s hard to understand what’s happening. I see that a lot when we look at organic traffic to our websites versus the paid traffic. If you only pay attention to it once in a while, you don’t get the whole picture.

And then the other one is staying attuned to where you’re spending big dollars. I think most marketers these days see that with digital advertising—understanding what’s happening to the cost-per-clicks, what’s happening on the investment side, and then what’s happening on the conversion side. Is this channel still working as efficiently as it used to, or did something shift and now I need to shift my mix?

CM: How do you recommend analyzing your current strategy to find out what’s not working?

JF: This is where you can look at the qualitative and the quantitative. When it comes to digital, the numbers start to tell you. Where this is a little bit harder is on the metrics that don’t move as quickly, such as awareness or consideration or participation or building up a certain market segment, because you can’t get a week-by-week KPI that tells you the direction that it’s headed. That’s where it’s incumbent on a marketer to have some feedback. Who else is really interested in this KPI? Is it your retail partners? Is it your board members? Is it some of your best customers? Having informal feedback circles to tell you: Are you hearing more buzz about this? Are more people inquiring about this? Are you feeling better about our position with your existing customers? That’s where you need to look at your whole ecosystem, from your customer to your clients, to decide who else can tell you if you’re winning on this or not.

CM: How would you go about pivoting to a more profitable strategy?

JF: First of all, are the people on your team nimble thinkers? When the conditions change, whether it’s the pandemic or inflation or one of the major factors that impacts your business, how good is your team? Have you staffed up with people who can do this? In a midsize organization that is especially important.

The second is staying aware of what the other options are for you. If you go back to digital, it could be channels. Our performance on Facebook was changing dramatically for a while as people were walking away from it. And Twitter… that really took a hit. Not that we do much advertising on Twitter, but we even had grants and people that we’re working with say, “Hey, do not use this channel.” So then all of a sudden you say, what channel can I use?

We get pushback, because as a public health organization, we do some work with partners who are federally-funded and now prohibited from having anything on TikTok. It’s understanding where else the target customer is consuming information and how you can still reach them. And being aware enough of your customer and where they show up, so that if one option is now off the table or not performing, you can look at the other options and meet them where they’re showing up.

CM: How does audience engagement differ in the nonprofit world compared to the roles you’ve had in the past?

JF: In some of my past roles, it was selling something very concrete, a product or a service. And what we’re providing [at ALA] is something that I don’t have to sell. It’s just information for people who can use it. That took me a while. My call to action is, “Here, I think this can help you.” Then the other part is selling the concept of what the American Lung Association does for public health, and finding people who care enough about it that they want to help us along our way and donate. That’s very different. The parts that are similar is finding motivators. What is it about our mission that would motivate other individuals to help us?

The other great thing about working for the American Lung Association: At every company I’ve been with, you drive to have the best possible bottom line. At the end of my first year, we made more money than we thought we had. And instead of saying, “There’s the bottom line,” my boss said, “I can’t believe we had this much more money. We could have funded another research.” I just loved that, taking whatever surplus win there is for the organization to push more good out into the universe.

CM: What are your greatest challenges as the CMO of ALA?

JF: Budgets. Typically, when someone asks me about marketing budgets [in the private sector], I could say, on a year of a new product launch, I have about 20 million, or 12 million… With American Lung Association and a lot of not-for-profits, that depends. So much of our budget comes from grants, from partnerships, from the ebb and flow. So while there is some predictability, it’s about, what does this year bring? It goes back to that flexibility and the ability to be resourceful with what is available each year to try to hit the goals.

CM: Lastly, what trends should marketers be focusing on this year? What do you have your eye on?

JF: AI. I wrote a book called “Midsize,” and I finished most of the writing in June or July. It takes a while to get these things fully made. I was writing about the future of this chat GPT thing and how that was going to come sometime in the future. And then on November 30th, it came in hard. So, the future’s here. The first thing I did was grab my team together. We are all writers. We produce content, so we have to figure out how we use this as a tool. It’s not going to stay free forever, but this is a game changer. It’s not going to replace writers, but the efficiency is amazing. And I don’t think we fully understand yet how this is going to change the whole landscape.

The other thing we should keep our eye on is consumer attitude. Coming out of the pandemic was a dark time. That might be the biggest understatement that we have today, but the tone was more somber, more serious. And as we’re emerging out of that, you are seeing that consumers are responding to more upbeat messaging, more solution-oriented messaging, versus darker and focusing on the problem. Marketers should keep their eye on the overall temperature of the public, and especially different segments of the public.

The post CMO Corner: A Chat With American Lung Association CMO Julia Fitzgerald appeared first on Chief Marketer.

TD Bank locked in a 20-year naming rights extension this month with Boston’s TD Garden arena, home to the Bruins, the Celtics and hundreds of mega entertainment events each year. From a marketing perspective, awareness is the obvious play here. But it’s one tactic out of many that supports community-building in specific markets.

“Our brand health is incredibly strong as a result of the fact that we are actually present in the community,” TD Bank CMO Tyrrell Schmidt told Chief Marketer. “And community is core to what we do from a sponsorship perspective.”

In addition to the naming rights, TD has a slew of activations and incentives designed to connect with fans and locals, including $15 million toward community programs, TD-themed events, concession discounts and rewards, and more. We spoke with Schmidt about the sponsorship, digitization of the customer experience, how the brand is using CTV to drive consideration in local markets and its overall strategy for growth.

Chief Marketer: What are the strategic marketing goals of continuing with the naming rights for TD Garden?

Tyrrell Schmidt, CMO at TD Bank: We extended our marquee sponsorship of both the TD Garden as well as Boston Bruins for a further 20 years through an early renewal. It kicked off in 2005, so it’s a 40-year partnership, which we think is historic for sponsorship. It solidifies our commitment to the Boston community and retains the beloved Garden name, which is something that we brought back to Bostonians in 2005.

There’s a lot of passion around that. It also gives us critical opportunities to engage with our customers, with our fans and with our communities, which are important stakeholder groups for both organizations. We have alignment in terms of strategic priorities, how we bring this to market, and who we bring it to market for. It also gives us an opportunity to be part of the fabric of the community, to drive engagement through our shared passion around two of the winningest teams in sports, and from a TD perspective, it gives us great visibility for our brand throughout our footprint.

CM: What are the KPIs for this partnership?

TS: Sponsorship is an important part of our overall marketing mix. Firstly, it can be very local. We have over 750 local partnerships and sponsorships, and they all tend to meet the objective of driving brand and allowing us to engage with our customers, because sponsorship is one of those ways that you can come into contact with your customers. That’s critically important when we think about the TD Garden. We know that our brand health is incredibly strong as a result of the fact that we are actually present in the community. And community is core to what we do from a sponsorship perspective.

Through this deal, as an example, we will give $15 million back to local communities in and around Boston, which is important as we think about our community focus, about diversity and inclusion, and bringing our brand to multiple different segments across these communities. It allows us to deepen our business relationships. An example is our small business takeover, where we share our [ad] space for a night with a small business. Someone who we have a partnership or a relationship with will really benefit from that type of awareness and visibility.

We’ll also invest in what we call Access the Arts. One program under that is called TD Guest List, which gives complimentary tickets to events all year to groups that are nominated or individuals from an underserved or an underrepresented community. We also have the TD Garden House Artist program that commissions local artists from underrepresented communities to create transformative art in and around the TD garden.

CM: Can you talk a bit about your cause marketing strategy?

TS: Firstly, we don’t really think of it as cause marketing. We think about it as delivering on our purpose. And our purpose is around enriching the lives of our customers, our colleagues and our communities. We have a program that we call the Ready Commitment that serves to guide where and how we support our communities. For example, [with] diversity and inclusion, it’s making sure that we are building an inclusive future for all—things like housing for everyone. Giving access in communities where they might not have the same access to banking and banking products is critical to what we do in our communities. And sponsorship is just one way to do that, but it is a deeply-held belief at TD, holistically, that we are here to enrich their lives. That’s more than just selling products and services; it is about making sure that we are building that inclusive and sustainable future for all.

CM: How did the pandemic shift your marketing tactics?

TS: We’re in a rapidly changing world and environment. That is something we always pay attention to. We know that community needs change. We understand that consumers’ needs and expectations of banks and of other companies evolve regularly. Our customers tell us that they are looking for ease, for value and for advice.

From an advice perspective, 40 percent of consumers say that they are financially worse off than they were a year ago. We believe that we have a role to play there. That ties back to our brand, of being unexpectedly human and understanding that behind every transaction our customers have with us, there’s a story. That is what makes TD differentiated in the market: our focus on the human behind the story. We believe that people matter most.

One other important proof point around what’s changed is this: Consumers want to be able to access you when, where, and how they want to. Especially over the pandemic, when overnight everyone was doing banking online, we made sure that we were bringing our human proposition to bear, no matter how people interact with us. It’s not just in the person-to-person interactions.

CM: Following up on that idea, digital transformation has been necessary for most companies in the past few years. How are you digitizing the customer experience?

TS: We are looking at the digital experience, but looking at it within the context of an omnichannel experience. We know that consumers have different needs and they will use channels for different reasons. Historically, we were very much an in-person, go-into-the-branch environment. We still have customers who that’s really meaningful for, but increasingly we are seeing that people are doing less complex transactions, in particular online, and they want to be able to do that 24/7, at a time that works for them.

But if you talk to consumers, even younger consumers who we think of as digitally-native, they probably won’t [often] go into a TD store or a bank branch. Yet we know that there are times [that they will]. So if they’re getting ready to, for example, get a mortgage, something that’s a little bit more complex, or something they’re doing for the first time, they will want to come in and often seek advice in-person. We need to be able to serve our customers how they want to be served. And we need to make the experience feel more human.

For TD, one of the things that I think has made us stand out is our approachability. Regardless of how we’re interacting with our customers, we have what we call a conversationalist tone. Banking itself can have a lot of jargon; it can have some complexity. We aim to make the experience one that our customers find easy, that gives them advice, whether it’s what we call “big A” advice or “big wealth” advice, right down to needing a tip or some guidance.

CM: Are there channels you’re working with in the coming year that are new for you? What are you experimenting with?

TS: We’re constantly testing our media mix. There are more channels and different ways to reach consumers—and different consumers prefer different media. One example is CTV. It’s an interesting space for us. When I think about linear TV versus CTV, at the end of the day it starts with your objective. Increasingly, we are looking at local objectives, so looking at our core markets and understanding that in some markets we’re relatively new. We don’t have a big store presence, nor have we had a big marketing presence historically. So we need to focus on getting reach in those markets and building awareness.

But where we’ve been in a market for a long time, where we have a defined, prominent presence, we’re leaning into more consideration and further down-funnel activities, and connecting those. And evolving the media strategy to drive that. Something like CTV is great for a market where we have a lot of awareness but not as much consideration.

CM: What’s TD Bank’s growth strategy for the coming year?

TS: With the acquisition of First Horizon, TD will be a top six bank. We’re a top 10 bank currently, so growth in our core priority markets will continue to be critical. We see a couple of opportunities from a marketing perspective. One is to continue the growth that we’ve had in our core products across our customer base. And marketing plays a critical role in that. Internally, we’ve continued to work with our product partners in new and different ways through agile models, et cetera, to drive more and more growth through marketing where marketing is making an even bigger contribution than it has in the past.

Secondly, we’re a steward of the brand, and connecting that to customer experience. When customers do business with a brand that has values similar to their own, and then also delivers a customer experience in line with the brand promise, that drives loyalty and builds trust. Those are things that really matter to people as they look to deepen their relationship or expand their relationship with you. Marketing’s role is crucial in both of those areas. But it’s not just marketing who can own brand and the customer experience. It needs to live across the organization.

The third area for us is to move beyond customer acquisition and deepen engagement with our current customer base. Currently, we have a wide customer base. By understanding customer needs and being able to make seamless, connected, relevant personalized experiences, we will drive a better experience for our customers and be able to expand our relationship with them.

CM: Being a CMO of a large bank, what kinds of trends are you looking at right now? What should marketers be paying attention to?

TS: Obviously from a bank perspective, constantly looking at the landscape, how it’s evolving, what’s going on in the macroeconomic environment is critically important. And making sure that you’re building product services and being there to help your customers as they navigate some fairly uncertain times. That’s important in banking, but it’s important beyond banking. It starts with understanding consumer insights, staying relevant and staying up to speed with those trends and with those insights, because customer behaviors are evolving faster than they ever have before.

There is also a trend toward a much more personalized experience. I don’t think customers look at one category any longer. They are judging every company by a “best of the best” [mindset] and defining who the best of those companies are. And then thirdly is purpose. Especially in an uncertain and evolving world, purpose really matters to consumers. Understanding what your purpose is, what gets you and your colleagues up in the morning, why someone should be a customer or come to work with you and stay, is crucially important. Increasingly, we all see consumers wanting to do business with companies who have aligned values.

CM: Lastly, what are some qualities or attributes a marketer aspiring to reach the C-suite should be honing?

TS: One of the things that I constantly talk about is being open to different and new experiences. Marketing is evolving pretty rapidly, so getting breadth of experience is important. Sometimes people think about their career in linear ways, like “I need to move to the next level.” It’s also about understanding what experiences you need to get to the C-suite. Be open, be willing to try new things. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to stay in that role forever.

For me, in our culture at TD and at other companies that I’ve worked for in the past, I urge people to think about “the what and the how.” What you deliver is important. Taking accountability for your area is critical, but it’s also the “how.” I’m a big believer in building relationships. As companies look to build more agile structures, being able to work with different groups of people on aligned goals and aligned KPIs and outcomes is important.

And then, be open to change. We often talk about change like it’s something bad. Change can actually be so energizing and exciting. So, it’s not being afraid of it. We are always changing, we’re always evolving, and that’s not going away anytime soon.

The post Brands on Fire: TD Bank CMO on Sponsorship, Supporting Local Communities and CTV appeared first on Chief Marketer.

The future of marketing depends upon two critical functions, according to Broadridge Financial Solutions’ Global CMO Dipti Kachru.

“You’ve got to obsess over your data strategy and your tech stack to be able to optimize and automate,” she told Chief Marketer this week. “That foundation is what’s going to help you deliver value, help you measure and prove that value add, and help you know what’s working and what’s not working.”

In addition to that, it’s important for companies—particularly those with brand marketing stories that are less obvious—to harness the power of storytelling. “We’re spending a lot of time with the team on how to break through the complexity of our business and make it more intuitive to people—because we have a significant role in driving the markets, but most people don’t realize that,” Kachru said. “We’ve got to work a little bit harder to be able to define how and why we are relevant, not just to the people buying our products, but to the industry at large.”

The former J.P. Morgan Chase CMO discusses her strategy for growth since joining the company seven months ago, the marketing tactics and investments CMOs should be prioritizing amid economic headwinds, how the democratization of investing is influencing the firm’s insights and solutions, and more.

Chief Marketer: Who do you count as your customers, and where are you looking to expand?

Dipti Kachru, Global CMO of Broadridge Financial Solutions: We’re a global fintech that provides technology infrastructure and communication solutions, so we primarily sell our solutions to asset managers, wealth managers, capital markets, firms, hedge funds. We’re talking to technologists, to operations and to the front office, because of our range of products, [which are] technology solutions as well as data and insights to help make better decisions around business strategy distribution. We’re also doing a lot of innovation on the client communication side and now talking to CXOs, chief digital officers and marketing leaders to think about how essential, critical communications, or even regulatory communications, can be leveraged as touchpoints to add value with our customers. We’re also doing a lot of work in healthcare now from a communications perspective.

CM: How are you are approaching brand marketing? What are the challenges there?

DK: A lot of people know us from being a premier player in the corporate governance space. We’re reframing the brand to be relevant to some of the newer audiences we’ve been talking about. It’s not this big brand effort that you expect to see in B2C, but rather a very surgical effort to continue to refine how we talk about ourselves, how we tell the stories around what we do and how we do it.

CM: Can you provide an example of that fine-tuning?

DK: Our wealth management business has multiple facets, where front-to-back platform providers help broker dealers and financial advisors operate in their roles. In the broker dealer ecosystem, what an advisor needs on their dashboard to help serve clients and how that connects through the processing and the back end is something we’re a market leader in. We’re being very specific in how we showcase what we do to that audience. It’s not just, “these are the set of products we offer.” It’s to help visualize what benefit that brings to market and to see it from the point of view of the user. In this case, our products are helping the financial advisor engage in more personalized ways with their client and use data to make better decisions to how they’re spending their time. The visualization of that is part of our journey of storytelling.

The other place where we’re starting to make a lot of inroads is in our insights business and how we’re using thought leadership specifically to bring through the intellectual capital that resides within the firm, given our unique vantage point within the industry and the amount of data we see through the clients we interact with. How we package those insights to then reach out to the audience is another way we’ve continued to harness the power of the firm.

CM: How does that thought leadership come through?

DK: It’s multichannel. You clearly find it on our website. We’re partnering with our PR firms to make sure that we develop the intellectual capital and it is being distributed in the right way. Social is a big strategy for us, which is something we’re building more muscle around, to distribute our content both from an organic as well as a paid perspective. The last thing is, we’re really building out our martech stack and our data capabilities to be able to understand both interest and intent from our customers to deliver more personalized communications to them, whether it’s relevant insights, news about what we’re doing or case studies we can share.

CM: How does sustainability factor into your messaging and the products that you offer?

DK: It’s a large part of it, as we play a significant role in the investor empowerment process. With the democratization of investing, more and more investors are coming into the market and want to know what they’re investing in. They’re very actively engaged around ESG topics. So, we are creating both solutions as well as insights for our clients. Whether it’s issuers or asset managers, we’re designing new products to understand what some of those critical data points are, what investors care about and how you deliver on those.

CM: What are the marketing tactics and investments CMOs should be prioritizing amid economic headwinds?

DK: I’ve been in the marketing business for 20 years, and there’s always ups and downs. Here’s the three things I think CMOs need to focus on. One is to have the ability to optimize and really understand marketing performance. It gives you the capability of being surgical when you need to pull back, and you need to know what’s working, what’s not working and be very aware about the strategic priorities of the moment. You’re not making sweeping changes; you’re being very specific.

The second is being agile as a marketing organization—being very planful in how we go to market, but building in the agility to be able to pivot and turn when you need to so you can capture both the moment as well as the opportunity, whether it’s to lean in or pull back.

The last thing I’d say—and we tend to do less of this, especially in headwinds—is to lean in to places where we can better deliver on the customer sentiment at the moment. So, by keeping your ear to the ground, very close to the consumer, whether it’s through individual interviews with clients, which we often do with pulse surveys, or just spending more time with the sales force. You start to understand how your clients or your customers are feeling and the role the brand can play that’s associated with their values, and being more empathetic versus being tone deaf. Also, when other brands and your competitors are pulling back, it creates white space for you to go in and establish or reestablish a connection with your most critical audiences.

CM: How are data and analytics reshaping the customer experience? And what role does privacy play?

DK: Data is critical to driving an improved customer experience. What we do with our clients, especially on the communications side, is about helping them harness the power of data to make the communications more relevant and engaging. Going the direction of more privacy-oriented rules is not in conflict with that. I think it actually gives organizations an opportunity to engage with the customer in a more authentic fashion. It creates greater trust when it’s the customer that’s giving you access to information. It reinforces that data belongs to the end user versus the organization. And by acknowledging that, it opens a channel of communication with the customer where, by earning their trust, you are on the hook for delivering value. And that drives more connectivity, and if you can deliver on it, certainly more loyalty. It’s a great opportunity for firms to continue to use data to better serve clients in more personalized ways.

CM: From your perspective, how has the pandemic has reshaped the B2B2C customer journey?

DK: The pandemic has been horrific for a lot of people. But as a marketer, one of the silver linings I’ve seen is the acceleration in digitization and digital adoption. In my current role, I see that happen everyday; we send about seven billion touchpoints of communication in a year. We’re seeing that migration from print to digital. It’s something we’re actively helping our clients through. Our data also reinforces that people are willing to go digital as long as it’s not just a replication of the print experience. You need to be able to rewire that experience to make it more engaging and add more value. There’s an acceleration in organizations investing in the transformation of their stacks, their data architecture, to be able to deliver that quality of engagement.

CM: You were recently CMO of J.P. Morgan’s Wealth Management division. What have you taken from that experience that you’re applying to your current role?

DK: I’m a big believer that marketing is a driver of growth for the firm. If you think about traditional B2B, that hasn’t always been the central driving reason that people fund a marketing organization. But my experience at J.P. Morgan only reinforced and strengthened that. I had a great privilege of leading marketing teams in the wealth space, the asset management space and in the consumer banking space, where we could take a lot of B2C principles on how you use data and automation to deliver value to the customer through the sales cycle and apply that to B2B.

A lot of what I spend time on with the team now is how are we building our data strategy and our technology to be able to facilitate the right outcomes in partnership with our sales teams. A large part of my focus is building that deeper bridge with the sales organization, not just philosophically aligned and in the trenches together and understanding what customers need, but importantly, does our technology work together? Are we able to power them with critical signals and beacons that help them be more effective at their jobs? And can we capture critical signals that they’re capturing as part of the sales process to make our marketing better?

The second one is the brand storytelling side. As a B2B brand, and a very complex one that serves many different clients with many different solutions, how are we strengthening our storytelling and going beyond just the words of what we do to better showcase what we do, whether it’s in video, whether it’s in the demonstration of our capabilities, whether it’s product demos. The third is bringing a sharper lens on the activation of digital strategies across the firm and how we go to market. There’s a strong foundation with incredible work that’s been done, but as we’ve grown and gotten more complex, we’re on a journey of marketing maturity as well.

CM: What are your goals for the company in terms of growth?

DK: We’ve got some work to do in building out our measurement infrastructure to be a little bit more predictive in the value we add. We look at performance as a marketing organization across three different areas. There’s work we’re doing on the brand side to drive perception of various critical segments that we are newer in. Are we engaging with certain customers more? Are they engaging with us through our content and our intellectual capital? Are we showing up with the right share of voice compared to our competitive sets?

The second one is enabling demand generation. We’ve got a demand generation ecosystem and we’re trying to light that up even more by understanding the connectivity of where the demand is being driven and how the demand is being converted so we can start to optimize. The third one is defining the scorecard around the sales nurture process. Marketing can help make the sales cycle more efficient by delivering relevant communications to complement the sales organization.

CM: Lastly, what are the trends that financial marketers should be following right now?

DK: It’s an evergreen trend you’ve got to obsess over: Will your data strategy and your tech stack be able to optimize and automate? Those are the two critical functions and the way I think about the future of marketing. That foundation is what’s going to be able to help you deliver value, help you measure and prove that value add, and help you know what’s working and what’s not working.

Second, while I’m obsessing over our segmentation strategy, targeting and tech stack to be able to get smarter and more effective, I also love the storytelling side of it. We’re spending a lot of time with the team on how to break through the complexity of our business and make it more intuitive to people—because we have a significant role in driving the markets, but most people don’t realize that. We’ve got to work a little bit harder to be able to define how and why we are relevant, not just to the people buying our products, but to the industry at large.

The post Marketers on Fire: Broadridge Financial Solutions’ Global CMO Dipti Kachru appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Claiming that your brand’s marketing philosophy is “social-first” is one thing. Truly walking the walk is another. Boardroom, the sports business media network founded in 2019 by Kevin Durant’s investment company 35V, is a shining example of the latter.

What started as a series on ESPN+ has evolved into newsletters, podcasts, premium video, written editorial and daily news that garners millions of monthly unique views and boasts tens of thousands of subscribers—all accrued in less than three years. Critical to the network’s growth was a test-and-learn strategy to pinpoint what content—and in particular, what format—worked best on social, and then applying that to developing its editorial strategy.

“While it sounds a little crazy to have done it that way, it was extraordinarily helpful because by the time we were hiring a full editorial staff, a full video staff and an audience development team, we already had these great use cases for what really worked for us on social,” Boardroom and 35V CMO Sarah Flynn told Chief Marketer. We spoke with Flynn about Boardroom’s growth strategy, its three-tiered target audience, experiential marketing plays and next steps for the brand moving forward.

Chief Marketer: Boardroom launched just prior to the pandemic in 2019. Today, it brings in 2.3 million unique views to its website, 216 million impressions and 8 million video views monthly. Discuss your growth strategy for the brand and how you achieved this success.

Sarah Flynn, CMO of Boardroom and 35V: When we first started growing the network, the most important thing was making sure that we had a differentiated voice and that we weren’t just another sports platform. People cover things on social media; there are a lot of different perspectives in the world. We needed to establish the “whys” of our existence. Once we started doing that, we were able to galvanize our network organically, through word-of-mouth, and have the athletes, entertainers, executives and people in our circles understand what we were trying to do and support it and promote it, which provides a halo effect and starts the initial organic growth.

Then, once we went through phase one, we were able to put our foot on the gas a bit more with an organic and paid social media strategy, digital marketing in general, and continuing to create awareness through the way that we cover different athletes, executives and entertainers, and making sure they’re sharing and reconnecting with their audiences. As well as starting to be more constructive about where we see ourselves out in the world, like being at VeeCon and the upcoming film we have, “NYC Point Gods,” and having that be affiliated with Boardroom rather than going full 35V. It’s being thoughtful about the places that we can be in the world, in addition to the “always-on-ness” of marketing on social media and continuing to drive people back to our site.

CM: So, the athletes and executives you cover are a key part of your word-of-mouth strategy.

SF: Athletes, executives and everybody in our network. We couldn’t do what we do from an editorial coverage standpoint if we didn’t have some of that buy-in from the early days. When we first started, we knew we had access and understanding. We used that as an asset on the content side, and it was also how we were thinking about it on the marketing side, because we knew that if we had buy-in from a lot of those people, they would start talking about it. They would subscribe to our newsletters. For a little while at the beginning, the core of our audience was actually the people that we were covering—and they were telling their fans.

And obviously, we have the force that is Kevin Durant. His fans knew early on, and that helped us get a jump start on follower and traffic growth, but also helped us understand what that audience and fans really want to see so that we were able to craft our content strategy around it. And the content piece and the marketing piece have to go hand in hand.

CM: After establishing your voice, how did you determine what your fans wanted?

SF: We did a lot of testing on social, and not just topic testing, but format testing, seeing what worked organically, seeing what performed well, if we put paid spend behind certain things. There was almost an entire year around building the social strategy where we didn’t have a full editorial strategy in place or a full internal team. We had not ramped up hiring yet because we wanted to do a lot of that content-type testing and make sure that the things we thought people wanted to see were really the things they wanted to see—before we actually grew our team and understood the needs that we had internally.

While it sounds a little crazy to have done it that way, it was extraordinarily helpful because by the time we were hiring a full editorial staff, a full video staff and an audience development team, we already had these great use cases of what really worked for us on social. [We would say] here’s some of the things that we’ve done, from a video and interview perspective, that have really worked well. And here’s how we think those things can translate to the larger editorial and content sphere.

CM: You used a social-first strategy to help build your content strategy.

SF: Yeah. Boardroom started out as a show that we did with ESPN, but even as we were doing that show, we knew we wanted to do more. We wanted to make it a network. So, piggybacking off of what we did with that show and transitioning it into something that was social-first was that initial incubation phase.

CM: You launched Boardroom just before the pandemic. How did that factor into your growth?

SF: The pandemic helped us focus on the things we knew we could do and what worked. From a sports business perspective, while it became very hard for places with live sports to understand where they needed to pivot, how they were going to make up for things financially, our coverage and our network is built off the business in and of itself. So, we were able to cover where people were putting sports spending dollars now that you didn’t have traditional sports on live TV, such as the NBA doing a 2K tournament on broadcast TV instead of having live games.

The business of it never stopped. A lot of people had to figure out how to innovate and do different things. We were really early to doing one-on-one interviews with people on Zoom, [and asking questions like] what are you doing? Are you thinking about your business? What does this look like? Being able to have those kinds of conversations early on helped us cut out some of the noise from a focus perspective, because we were able to double down on what was working.

Max Verstappen (Red Bull) -150
Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) +145
George Russell (Mercedes) +1800
Sergio Perez (Red Bull) +2400
Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) +2800
Carlos Sainz Jr. (Ferrari) +5000

A breakdown ahead of the Baku Grand Prix. https://t.co/sJa5Nd0ILS

— Boardroom (@boardroom) June 12, 2022

CM: What is your current target demographic? And how do you see it expanding?

SF: There are three buckets of fans that we speak to in slightly different ways. One is what we like to call the modern day sports fan, which is somebody who can be a more casual fan, but who’s really interested in the sports business in and of itself. They might not watch every single game on TV, but they’re probably seeing the highlights on Twitter. They’re scrolling through their Instagram and understanding what’s going on. They do care about who’s the GM of this team, or who’s buying this team, or what’s my favorite player doing off the field. It does skew largely male, 18 to 34, but we’re seeing an increase in female followers as well.

Then there are two sub-audiences. One is young entrepreneurs—people coming out of college who are thinking about business and the world of work in very different ways. They want to know what’s going on in Web3, in crypto, and they want to know what’s going on in new verticals, new sports tech, things like that. The content that we provide can help educate them on that. They’re not going to get that kind of information at a place like a CNBC or a CNN anymore. They’re going to a place like Boardroom. They’re having conversations on Reddit.

Then the third I call the sophisticated audience, which is people who just want to be really well read. That audience skews a little bit older. They’re subscribing to New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, and want to consume strong information and be informed. That’s an audience that people market to a bit less, but it’s one we think about all of the time. And then from an expansion standpoint, we’ve started doing a lot more music business coverage in addition to sports business coverage, and finding the right inflection points from a culture standpoint. A big goal of mine is to make sure we have the same strategy for music fans/music industry people that we did on the sports side.

CM: How have you shaped your testing and content strategy specifically? How do you find those inflection points?

SF: It’s three things. One, seeing how content performs across all different platforms, what’s hitting and what’s not hitting, and how we position it. Two, we’re always going to go back to that word-of-mouth and that our-network-is-educated strategy, because the more that our network is educated and excited about it, the more that translates eventually to fans as well. And three, A/B testing how content is presented on our site and who’s coming back for what kind of stuff, as well as paid strategy. If we are targeting new music audiences and we’re bringing people to the site, are they staying? Is that meaningful, and why or why not?

CM: Are you planning on experimenting with any new platforms beyond the ones you use now?

SF: Definitely. We’re in the process of revamping our website and doing some other things that will help galvanize and foster more of a community piece. I’m looking at platforms and strategies right now that will help a community conversation and perhaps unlock some experiences.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Boardroom (@boardroom)

CM: How is Boardroom planning to play in the metaverse?

SF: The metaverse is such an interesting conversation for us because it is a little meta: We’re covering what other people are doing in the metaverse. And then from a larger, 35V company perspective, we know what’s going on in the marketplace and we have brands and companies that we work with that have been extremely early adopters.

We’re being very cautious about the strategy that we craft there. The one thing that I would hate to do from a brand perspective is what a lot of the metaverse conversations are doing right now—which is a press play. [They] created a thing in the metaverse that you get press around. It doesn’t live, it doesn’t do anything special that you can’t do in Web2. We don’t want to create that. We want to use the metaverse and Web3 technology to actually cultivate community and do new and interesting things. I don’t think consumers’ heads are where they need to be yet for that to happen.

It helps us have constructive conversations about where we can be and how we can build, but I’m not going to jump into something just to jump into it. Everything that we do needs to be really thought out and well planned. We have the information and the tools that we need, but we’re not going to just show up tomorrow in the metaverse.

CM: What’s your experiential marketing strategy?

SF: Experiential marketing is really important to us, and there are three different ways that I’m thinking about it. One, we can approach any kind of experience from an editorial perspective and that can be very valuable. We look at where the conferences and events are, and how our editorial team can cover them on the ground and come back and tell fans about it.

Two, especially over the course of the next year, as you know, events are now really back to normal—in the way that we said they were going to be last year, but weren’t. We’ll start to appear thoughtfully and strategically in places where we know that there are fans and new audiences that we convert. A great example of that is we had a section called Boardroom Bleachers at VeeCon last month that was a targeted area for people to book meetings and network with each other, and have a space away from like the fray to have meaningful conversations and get business done.

Then three is, what are the opportunities that we have as a company to create our own events? The “NYC Point Gods” film that’s coming out with Showtime in July is a 35V project, but it is also a film about the cultural impact of the ’80s and ’90s, New York City point guards, how incredible they were, how they changed the culture and the sport, and the world around them. You’ll see Boardroom branding on that when it comes out. We’re doing a special premiere event in New York. Being able to create smaller touchpoints and connect them back to Boardroom is something that I’m always trying to figure out how we capitalize on.

CM: When it comes to marketing as an industry, any thoughts on what qualities a modern CMO should have?

SF: It’s about so much more than marketing than it ever used to be. The old school way of thinking about a CMO was, this is the person that’s going to come in, they’re going to spend a lot of money on flashy campaigns. They’re going to do a lot of paid opportunity marketing and they’re going to do whatever they can for brand awareness. And then that’s also the first person who goes on the chopping block when there are budget cuts, because they were spending all the money.

I am a marketing person first and foremost, but I’m a product person. I’m a business development person. I’m always figuring out what our revenue strategies look like. I have my hands in every aspect of this business, very necessarily. And I think that it’s true across all C-suite and executive jobs that, especially at organizations that aren’t huge, those roles are no longer as siloed as they used to be. And they can’t be. If you want be a successful, modern day CMO, you have to be willing to learn other new skills and be willing to put your hands in other territories in order to make things work.

The post Brands on Fire: A Chat With Boardroom CMO Sarah Flynn appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Statistics about the importance of brand purpose and its impact on purchasing behavior abound in the marketing industry. Here’s one: 66 percent of online respondents would consider a company’s purpose when deciding to make a purchase, according to Porter Novelli’s 2021 Purpose Perception Study And the numbers increase when considering trust, loyalty and even forgiving a company if it slips up.

So, when Elizabeth Drori joined as CMO of Sperry footwear last November, she begin establishing a purpose platform—grounded in its 87-year history—designed to break through beyond the boat shoe. Following is our conversation with Drori about the evolution of the Sperry brand, fashion merchandising strategies tapped from her Walmart days, how the company uses data from product launches to optimize consumer messaging, and more.

Chief Marketer: For your new “Make Waves” brand campaign, who is the target audience and what are the strategic marketing goals?

Elizabeth Drori, CMO of Sperry: We launched our brand campaign “Make Waves” with the goal of driving brand awareness and desire for Sperry. It’s the first time in a few years that we’re really investing behind the brand and not just product stories. It speaks to a lot of what we stand for, but it’s also a rallying cry for our consumers and encourages people to make the most of every moment, make your own path, make a difference. From a targeting perspective, we’re serving it to households ages 18 to 34.

CM: Is this target a shift for you?

ED: It’s a shift from where our current customer is. We had this audience 10 years ago and now we’re looking to get there again. Brands often reach a cycle where they have a target audience and they grow with that audience. And now that audience is the next generation and you need to reach a younger consumer again. That’s where we are. Our current customers are a bit older, so we’re looking to drive that resonance with younger consumers in the next generation today.

CM: How are you accomplishing that through specific channels?

ED: From the media standpoint, the brand campaign is running on YouTube, for the demographic targets we talked about, as well as interest segments. But then we also market on other channels that resonate. We have been experimenting on TikTok. We do a lot on Instagram. We use influencer marketing.

CM: How are you evolving the brand to recruit those younger consumers once again?

ED: We’re doing a few things differently. First we updated our visual look and feel, which ranges from modernizing our logo, which we refreshed at the beginning of the year, to colors, fonts, the topography as well as styling. We’re trying to portray a younger, more fashion-forward audience just through our creatives and how you visualize the brand, no matter of the channel. We’re also partnering with brands and people of influence. As I mentioned, we work with influencers and style leaders.

We’re also doing a lot of product collaborations. One example is a collaboration with Warm and Wonderful, which is the British brand known for the sheep sweater Princess Diana made famous. That collaboration’s coming up later this summer; we shot a campaign with them and Madelaine Petsch of “Riverdale.” We have some of that creative out in the marketplace right now. And then finally, investing in the brand through the Make Waves campaign and also through a new purpose platform that we call “All for water, water for all.” We’re trying to create a desirable brand by making it more purpose-driven and more of a lifestyle brand.

CM: What are the challenges of marketing to a younger audience with a brand that has an 87-year history? How do you tap into its history while also refreshing it for new customers?

ED: Sperry has an incredible heritage and backstory. We were founded by Paul Sperry who had a passion for sailing and yet a problem with slipping on boat decks. Our story is that he noticed one winter day how easily his dog was able to walk across an icy pond without slipping, and after looking at the groves in his paws, he decided to invent boat shoes and sneakers that have those grooves cut out as traction. We have this powerful story, and it is still the foundation of our brand in terms of being innovators, adventurous, explorers.

We’re a brand that gets passed down from generation to generation, so we have a lot to build on. How do we stay close to our roots, but then make the brand feel relevant for today? This story gives us is a connection to the water. We’ve done a lot of research and exploration on what an association with the water means for consumers today. How do we unlock that power of water and harness the joy and associated emotional well being to the water for consumers today?

The second aspect of it is our role in fashion. Post-World War II, Sperry became known for an association with nautical, preppy-style. JFK wore us, Paul Newman wore us. We have these amazing associations, but we still need to modernize how to stay relevant in fashion and culture today. What’s wonderful for us is that preppy fashion is returning in a more modern aesthetic–more diverse, more open… we’re trying to hone in on that. How do we take this amazing legacy and focus on what it means to be connected to the water, and how do we unlock that? And then how do we continue to lean into the preppy trend in a way that feels current?

CM: You’ve had experience launching new brands at Walmart in the past. What did you learn that you’re applying at Sperry?

ED: At Walmart, we were focused on building fashion credibility. We had a strategy that we called “borrowing fashion credibility.” You can advertise yourself, but it’s even more impactful when other people talk about your brand and your product. At Walmart, we leaned heavily on influencers and content partners to change perception. At Sperry, to the extent that people perceive the brand as something only for the elite, there’s still a perception challenge to address. We’re leaning into partners and influencers in a similar way.

And then we’re also paying very careful attention to how we show up. We want to portray the brand in a relatable, youthful, approachable way, but we still love the water. We’re optimistic. We seek adventure. We don’t take ourselves too seriously. We’ve done a lot to portray ourselves as a much more open and democratic brand, and then also leaning into partners to drive that fashion credibility.

CM: How has Sperry’s brand purpose evolved?

ED: I mentioned that we have a new brand purpose platform, “All for water, water for all.” Before I got to the brand, we didn’t have a purpose platform. We were doing some things in the sustainability space. We supported the LGBTQ+ community, but we didn’t have anything that tied all that we were doing together. This platform was meant to create a purpose-driven strategy that’s grounded in our heritage. “All for water” is the sustainability piece. Water is the world’s biggest playground. How do we ensure we protect it? We have really great goals: By 2024, we want half of what we produce to be made from primarily recycled materials. We have a collection that we call “SeaCycled.” That’s growing more and more, and we’re very close to achieving that goal.

We work with Waterkeeper Alliance, which is the world’s largest nonprofit dedicated to clean and drinkable water. We’re doing a lot with them this year and making the sustainability piece a bigger part of our brand. And then “water for all” is something we’re activating this year. It shapes our vision for a world where everyone, everywhere, has access to the water and feels welcome there. When we came up with this platform, we started digging into some of the reasons why people of color don’t have access to water. It’s complicated. They’ve been excluded because of discrimination. There’s fear that dates back to slavery. There are socioeconomic factors. There’s so many reasons.

What we started to learn is that the solve is very grassroots. There isn’t one national or global organization that’s doing anything here. So we partnered with a media organization to create documentaries telling stories of entrepreneurs that are making a difference in the space in their own way and in their own communities. We’re starting to roll that content out this summer and will look to amplify their stories, and we’re really excited about having this conversation, learning ourselves, and then having that conversation more publicly later this summer.

CM: How does Sperry use data to achieve marketing goals?

ED: One of the biggest ways is through our product launches. We are launching new products regularly and we use data to assess their performance. We’ll track data that we get from Sperry.com to understand if we’re bringing in a new consumer. And if it’s an existing consumer, what are they cross-shopping? What’s their demographic information? And then we’ll also be tracking how fast product is selling through across all points of market, whether it’s Sperry.com or through our wholesale partners. Those pieces of information give us a solid feedback loop for how we can optimize our advertising and how to lean into what’s working and understand for future launches.

CM: Lastly, what are some marketing trends that the industry should be watching right now?

ED: One, for fashion in particular, continues to be influencer marketing. We see that evolve as new channels like TikTok come up and content changes. It’s an important validation mechanism and it can also drive sales. And it requires a lot of test-and-learn. There’s really no one-size-fits-all approach. The metaverse and everything that’s happening there is also a trend that people need to pay attention to and figure out if there’s a way in or not.

The post Brands on Fire: Sperry Footwear Chief Marketing Officer Elizabeth Drori on Building Brand Purpose appeared first on Chief Marketer.