Following up on my last post, I wanted to share my key takeaways from the last two days of ANA’s Masters of Marketing conference:
- The importance of authenticity remained a key theme throughout the rest of the presentations. David Jones of Havas Worldwide talked quite a bit about making sure your brand genuinely connects to real issues consumers care about. According to Havas research, 86% of consumers expect companies to stand for something other than profits. (MLC members who are interested in creating these types of connections with consumers should click here to see the Council’s approach.)
- Don’t underestimate the power of outdoor. Both Charles Schwab and Dunkin’ Donuts said outdoor advertising was crucial to keeping their brands top of mind with consumers.
- Marketing leaders need to be deeply involved in the management of the business to establish credibility with peer functions. During the CMO Panel on Saturday afternoon, Mark Addicks from General Mills and Barry Judge from Best Buy both talked about the importance of having some role in managing the P&L, as doing so helps build internal support for long-term marketing investments. Joan Chow from ConAgra, said that–at the very least– Marketing needs to be accountable for its spend and how that impacts the business. (MLC members interested in learning more about tying marketing investments back to P&L should check out our Net Marketing Contribution metric—p.19 of this white paper.)
- The importance of integrating social media into existing marketing efforts. I don’t mean to sound like a broken record, but every single presenter over the final two days of the conference talked about the importance of social media for creating real connections between the brand and consumers. Brad Casper from Dial Corp. put it best when he said that social media levels the playing field between challenger brands and the bigger players in their industries. A couple of my favorite social media anecdotes:
- Fender’s “Show Us Your Fender” initiative asked guitar players to submit pictures of themselves playing their guitars along with their story, helping Fender to collect insights and engage with customers at the same time.
- Dunkin’ Donuts’ group ordering iPhone app and website, which enables individuals to tell their coworkers that they’re going on a coffee run and collects orders quickly, lets that person become the “Office Hero,” which aligns with some of their in-store messaging. Now if only we had a Dunkin’ Donuts nearby……
