VII. Inert Fundamentals
As we come to the end of the Periodic Table, I’d like to look back to the beginning. We started on the Basic Elements, ten fundamental concepts every marketer with aspirations of CMO-level greatness ought to master.
I want to conclude with ten more fundamentals, but these ones are different from the first ten in an important way. These are the Inert Fundamentals.
In chemistry, an inert gas is one that is mostly or completely non-reactive with other elements and substances. Under most typical circumstances, inert gases are “self-contained,” which is to say they perform whatever function they perform on their own, instead of in tandem with some other element.
The Inert Fundamentals on this Periodic Table have a similar self-contained nature. They are the fundamentals that exist inside the CMO’s brain (and spirit, if you believe in that sort of thing), rather than the externally-focused, highly-reactive ones that kicked off this book. As discussed by the ten marketers I had the privilege of interviewing for this section, they don’t require much if any participation from the rest of the company or even the rest of the team.
These Inert Fundamentals are mindsets, not tactics. They are disciplines, not nuts-and-bolts. And they are personal qualities that have a strong tendency to positively spill over into our lives outside the office.
To return to inert gases for a moment, one of their common commercial uses is to protect perishable goods from oxidative reactions that might spoil them. For example, all that “airspace” in a bag of potato chips? Believe it or not, it’s not there to make the bag look bigger. It’s a protective layer of inert gas—usually nitrogen—that blocks oxygen from degrading the chips and ensures they’re fresh when you crunch into them.
When you master the Inert Fundamentals of marketing, you will be similarly protected against many external threats...ugly things like self-doubt, creative stagnation, and even office politics. Marketing can feel like a battlefield at times. Your Inert Fundamentals are your “armor,” and it’s up to you to keep it strong as iron.
On that note, we’ll kick off with Sir Terry Leahy, a knight who may not literally ride to the office on a mighty steed, but wields courage worthy of Arthur’s Round Table. Later, my former colleague Trip Hunter offers a clinic on what it means to truly listen, and Roberto Medrano gives the lowdown on what it means to constantly evolve as a CMO. Closing things out is an interview I’m very proud to present with GE CMO Beth Comstock, focusing on the all-important subject of innovation.
The Inert Fundamentals are the foundation of every successful chemical reaction we marketing scientists mix up. If they’re not understood and practiced every day, little else is going to work. Please take your time with these insights, absorb them well, and let them become the foundation of your future success.
CMOs of the Roundtable
“If this had gone wrong, as many predicted it would, I would have been finished.”
Hear ye, hear ye! A lot of marketing pros will happily talk your ear off about the role courage plays in their work, and some of them might even tell you something worthwhile. But I’d rather listen first to what an honest-to-goodness knight of the realm has to say on the topic of courage, and I had the rare chance to do just that when I interviewed Sir Terry Leahy after his keynote address at the IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit.
Sir Terry’s courage was apparent from the start of his career at the British grocery titan Tesco, and it eventually propelled him out of the CMO seat and made him the clear choice to captain the mighty ship as CEO for fourteen years. We discussed this promotion in our chat, unearthing insights that are “Excalibur” for any marketer with executive ambitions. We also delved into big data, as well as when and when not to ethically borrow ideas from your competition.
A lot of companies seem to lack the courage to make big bets, and do things tentatively instead. Talk to me about the importance of courage and big bets, and the risks of such an approach.
Courage is an unusual word in the context of business. But, I think it’s at the heart of business. And in fact, I think entrepreneurs would understand that. They place the biggest bet of all—their livelihood—when they start a business. But in an organization it still applies. Many people are fearful of upsetting their boss and affecting their promotion prospects, when the truth is that you’ve got to be prepared to risk everything.
What’s an example of a big bet you made in your career?
One was the launch of the Club Card, which gave us important information about our customers. In order to do it, we had to incentivize customers to use it. That was going to cost us a quarter of our entire profits at the time. If this had gone wrong, as many predicted it would, I would have been finished.
If you were starting out now and strategizing how to land a CMO job ten to fifteen years in the future, what would you be focused on?
Well, I think it’s a really exciting time now because back when the Club Card started, Tesco was one of the first in the world using data, as soon as computers were powerful enough. Now the opportunity to access data from social networks, from shopping data, from operations, and from so many other things, it’s without limit. And, yet, organizations don’t fully use that data. They don’t bring it in and use it to inform the way products are developed, to drive the direction of the business. So I think that still is the opportunity: How do we make business decisions on the basis of knowledge—knowledge of the world around us?
You, a CMO, became CEO of a major company in an increasingly big data-driven business world—where CTOs often have the inside track to the top spot. How did you achieve this, and what could other marketers who aspire to be CEOs one day learn from your experience?
It is unusual. I was able to use Club Card and some other innovations to be the voice of the customer in the business. So I was able to give leadership for the company from the marketing position. And that, therefore, was a small step into the CEO office.
I think other CMOs can do that. I think that they can step forward and lead the business from the marketing position, particularly if they harness the customer. The customer is the biggest power base within an organization. And if you use it in the right way, it’s hard for a colleague from Finance or Operations to challenge the voice of the customer. If you have the customer on your side, you’re the most powerful person in the organization.
Does all the big data out there today make it harder to achieve simplicity, or does it make it easier?
Well it potentially makes it harder. There’s a real danger that an organization can be flooded by data. And information can get in the way of actually accessing the things that really matter for the consumer and what will really drive your organization forward, if you make decisions on those things. Our data is so complex now. So powerful. It’s even a danger that it can become detached from most ordinary people. And that can be very harmful for an organization. You want data to be more accessible and to be placed right at the heart of the organization. Right where the decisions are made.
When some companies see what their competition is doing, they try to replicate it. How does one strike the balance between ethically borrowing ideas from competitors while remaining true to oneself?
In the first ten years of my career, essentially I copied the competition because our competitors in my industry were outstanding firms—the best in the country and arguably the best in the world at what they did. So, I didn’t have to look far for ideas. I just copied them.
But what I found as we got closer and closer to this benchmark was that we could never overtake them. Because if you’re just like the original, people will always choose the original. And it was only when I stopped copying the competition and started following our own customers and letting them be my lead that we overtook them...within a year.
It was an amazing thing that I learned. From that day forward I respected and learned everything I could from the competition. But I never followed competition. All the focus was on the customer, which made what we were doing much more original, and more importantly, more authentic. Customers spotted that we were doing it first and doing it for them—we weren’t doing it because some competitor did it first.
Further reading:
Terry Leahy, Management in Ten Words: Practical Advice from the Man Who Created One of the World’s Largest Retailers
Let’s Get Personal
“A personal brand is in the way that you carry yourself as an individual in every walk of life.”
As one of two Y-chromosome bearers (i.e., men) in attendance for the Women’s Luncheon at IBM’s Amplify Conference in San Diego, I felt just a little conspicuous approaching Maria Winans for an interview after her panel discussion on personal branding. But I knew I had to hear more from this remarkable executive, who had maintained her individuality over a 25-year career at one of the world’s largest businesses.
Maria, whose title is CMO, IBM Commerce, Mobile and Social, is a believer in the power of “and.” By that I mean she is a business executive and a mother; a friend and a trainer; an artist and a boxing student; a first-generation American and a Latina...and all this merely scratches the surface of her indelible identity.
Lucky for us, she is also incredibly generous when it comes to sharing her keys to personal branding. In short, it’s all about substance. Reputation, as she points out, cannot be purchased. It must be earned. And a willingness to abandon fear of failure and reject well-traveled roads are priceless assets. Read on to get the details on how to start building your personal brand so that one day it may shine as brightly as the one proudly worn by this truly “Renegade” CMO.
Talk to me about your personal brand.
I take great pride in what I do, how I lead a team, and what I stand for. I grew up in an environment of tremendous respect for my parents, for actions they took in bringing us to the U.S., for encouraging personal growth for my siblings and myself. So I came from a very strong culture of achievement and the understanding that diversity is something that you should embrace, cultivate, and cherish as a gift. So my whole philosophy when it came to building my career at IBM very early on was that I wanted to establish goals, I wanted to be successful, I wanted to grow my career, and I knew that there were different stages of that growth path.
How did this play out early in your career?
I came into IBM with my eyes wide open. I didn’t know if I was going to head into marketing or sales or strategy or finance. And so very early on I told myself I needed to find my passions and learn as much as possible. But I also had a vision and a goal. I wanted to establish myself as a professional, I wanted to lead from the front, I wanted to become an executive, and I wanted to be a Vice President by the time I turned forty. I had very established goals, and with that I set forward on really understanding what it was going to take for me to continue to grow in my career.
So how did you differentiate yourself?
I looked for opportunities that were about new initiatives and were about creating new businesses. I started to develop a skill set as an innovator, somebody who took risks and looked for opportunities that were different and required finding new teams and developing new skills. I cultivated that, and with that, created an environment for people to see that through my actions, that collaboration was a top priority, bright ideas were welcomed, innovation was the priority, and no idea was a bad idea.
Did your personal brand evolve?
I think a personal brand is in the way that you carry yourself as an individual in every walk of life; in your business and in your personal life. And at the same time, I’m learning every day. I don’t think a personal brand is something that you create and then never changes. I think it evolves—if your career evolves, it evolves in the type of jobs. But I think the core of who you are, your character, stays true within that. I am avid believer in the need to never stop learning. And I think when you look at strongest leaders in business, you see most are lifelong students. They remain curious, and aren’t afraid to tackle new initiatives and seek new paths forward.
Many women seek your advice about personal branding. What’s the first thing you tell them?
In life you can buy anything except your reputation. Your reputation has to be earned. And so protect it, live it. For example, just because your title says CMO, just because you lead a very large team, you still need to earn your leadership every day. And this is what I reinforce to people that I mentor, especially in the business, your reputation is something you earn, something you work hard for and you stay true to.
And the second?
I always get asked about risk-taking because I’m a risk-taker. I love innovation, I love trying new things and putting projects with people and saying to the team, “Let’s go try it—the worst thing that can happen if it fails is that we learn from it and we move forward.” My biggest fear is regret. I fear looking back and saying ‘If we only had taken that chance.’ A lot of people fear risk-taking, especially women...[many are] afraid to take those chances and feel everything has to be perfect with T’s crossed and I’s dotted. My message is that risk-taking actually makes work and careers even more exciting.
Do you think there’s a point when it comes to personal branding that an individual can go too far in self-promotion? How do you avoid crossing that line?
There’s always that self-promotional risk that you’re talking about yourself too much. We’ve all seen people that are self-promoters; it’s all about them, you know, their photo on everything. But I think that sometimes, we as women hold ourselves back. Sometimes we’re afraid as women that maybe we’re too visible, maybe we’re too self-promoting, we’re talking too much, we’re showing too much aggressiveness. So I encourage women to be vocal, to be ambitious, to show what they know and who they are, to promote themselves through their work and with that their personal brands.
Further reading:
Peter Montoya, The Brand Called You: The Ultimate Brand-Building and Business Development Handbook to Transform Anyone into an Indispensable Personal Brand
Listening Is More than Waiting to Speak
“Listening is like searching for a gold nugget on the bank of a river. Somewhere among all of the worthless pebbles is the nugget you are searching for.”
Bias alert: Before he headed west to oversee Corporate Marketing for data innovator Fusion-io, the brilliant Trip Hunter sharpened his chops working with yours truly at Renegade. So needless to say, I’m a fan. But Trip’s success at Fusion-io is hardly a subjective assessment—to put it bluntly, he kicked butt over there.
There are a lot of things the man does really well, but the one that always jumped out at me first and foremost was his ability to listen—whether it was to a boss, colleague, assistant, current client, or prospective client. And in my view, that listening ability has been the linchpin of the great things he accomplished at Fusion-io. (Last year he parted ways with the company to launch his boutique marketing firm, Neuron Strategies). I’m glad you’re here to listen in as we discuss how he leverages new media to “hear” the things other marketers might not, and turn that information into decisive and impactful actions.
Can you give an example of how you “listened” at Fusion-io?
When Fusion-io turned its attention to growing market share in Europe, we had no awareness among the developer community, which represented a key audience for us. So we conducted interviews, held pizza nights, and became a part of local SQL user groups to hear about the top challenges they faced. A huge one was the bad code that was inherent in their environment and no good way to get it out.
So we created the Crappy Code Games. The objective of the Crappy Code Games was to encourage the best SQL developers in England to write code so badly that they could adversely affect the performance of a Fusion-io card. We launched the idea through social media and a golden toilet. On certain days throughout the week, we tweeted the location of a large golden toilet hidden in random pubs throughout the city. The first SQL developer who found the toilet and tweeted “SQL by the SEA” won a pass to the largest SQL developer conference in England. We would also host a happy hour for everyone who showed up.
These events were designed to promote the larger Crappy Code Games, held in five European cities, where developers gathered to write the worst code they could dream up. The Fusion-io cards were so fast, they literally flushed crappy code down the toilet. We generated a tremendous amount of buzz and press around the performance of our cards, and an incredible amount of good will among skeptical developers.
Since there is so much noise out there especially in the developer space, how did you identify the conversations that mattered?
We actively supported the communities we engaged with. We helped them achieve their goals, and listened to their challenges, so when we missed, there was an understanding of what we were trying to do for them, versus just trying to sell them something. This gave us a little leeway to make a mistake or two.
Do you think listening is a skill that can be developed and improved upon?
I credit my first wife with teaching me to listen better because she never stopped talking, but that’s another story.
The challenge to listening well is knowing what you are listening for. There is a quote that says, “Listening is the secret to discovering a great story.” This is absolutely true and telling compelling stories is our business, but in order to get the great story, you have to become knowledgeable about what is important so you can ask the right questions. Listening is like searching for a gold nugget on the bank of a river. Somewhere among all of the worthless pebbles is the nugget you are searching for. You just have to pay attention, and be patient.
The only other advice I would add is that I soon realized that most people know a lot more than I do, so if I am talking, I am not learning anything.
I think a lot of people get their ego caught up in what they do, and try and prove how smart they are by talking all the time. Marketing people are interpreters. We translate other people’s experiences and stories into experiences that a broad audience can understand. So put your ego away and stop trying to be the smartest, funniest, most interesting person in the room. Because it’s not about you.
Most companies struggle to develop engaging content and get their customers to pitch in. How have you been able to accomplish this?
Growing engagement with our customers was a constant effort, and we often felt as though we were not as far along as we would have liked to be. That said, we were so new that a broad understanding of our technology didn’t exist yet. People wanted to know more, so getting them involved wasn’t as hard as it might be for others.
We treat them like the intelligent, opinionated, passionate human beings they are. B2B companies’ customers are still consumers and human beings. We may not have the massive number of followers that consumer brands do, but our fans are just as loyal and passionate.
What did you hope to learn through audits of your social channels?
A lot of things, especially where we stood relative to our competitors. At one point we saw that even though we were much tinier than our largest competitor, we were gaining followers as a percentage of overall audience faster than they were. And in the area of measurement that really matters—shares—we were also ahead. People clicked on our links and shared our content on Twitter more than they did with our largest competitor, which was very promising.
We also wanted to find out what we needed to do better. B2C companies are known for creating very engaging content on channels such as Facebook and Twitter. We always were eager to learn a lot from them and how some types of B2C efforts can translate across to B2B.
Further reading:
John C. Maxwell, Good Leaders Ask Great Questions
Building Blocks
“You can’t effectively market something until you have a solid idea of what it’s going to be, how you want it to be perceived, and what the business goals are.”
When Tishman Speyer—one of the biggest players in the very big game of New York City commercial real estate—decided it was time to relaunch the famous Rainbow Room restaurant atop “30 Rock” (30 Rockefeller Plaza), it meant Senior Director of Marketing Kate Chinn and her team were going to have to master a few new disciplines. Naming? Experience design? Uniform selection? Operations? These hadn’t been among Kate’s responsibilities on previous projects, and lesser marketers may have panicked.
But as you’ll see momentarily, Kate’s rise as a marketing professional has always been rooted in her commitment to learning new things and stepping outside her comfort zone. So driving the successful reinvention of one of New York’s most venerable dining institutions just meant doing more of what she did best. And with the new Rainbow Room—plus its attached bar—SixtyFive—thriving, Kate’s commitment to lifelong learning is clearly paying off.
The science of marketing continues to evolve rapidly. How do you keep yourself up-to-date?
That is so true. The digital world is evolving so fast it feels almost impossible to keep up with it. We make sure someone from our team is attending all the marketing summits and conferences that luckily, usually, come to NYC to ensure we are on track with the latest and best digital marketing opportunities. I think you also just have to pay close attention to your competitors, and take note of any advertisers that find a way to move you, as an individual and not necessarily as a marketer.
What have you learned lately that you’ve been able to apply?
At Top of the Rock, we have learned that targeted social media ads convert for us, big time. At Rainbow Room, we have learned that good PR is more important than anything paid we could possibly dream up.
Are there brands that you look to for inspiration?
I am always paying attention to everything I see around me. Recently, a Whole Foods opened up in my Brooklyn neighborhood. They had an agency create a targeted campaign specifically for this Brooklyn audience. The look and feel was perfect, and separate from the national Whole Foods brand. The advertising placements were brilliant—subways, turnstiles, bus shelters, etc. I was inspired, both to be a better marketer and also to go spend all my money at Whole Foods!
What were the challenges of the relaunch of the Rainbow Room?
With this relaunch in particular, there were very high expectations, especially since the Rainbow Room is such a famous, historic, and iconic venue. For the last two years, the marketing team has closely worked with the operations/management team to define the business goals in order to correctly position each segment of the new Rainbow Room in the marketplace. You can’t effectively market something until you have a solid idea of what it’s going to be, how you want it to be perceived, and what the business goals are.
What made this even more challenging was the fact that it wasn’t just the Rainbow Room, it was the Rainbow Room as an event venue, the Rainbow Room as a Sunday brunch location, and the Rainbow Room as a destination for Monday night dinner and entertainment. At the same time, we launched SixtyFive, the brand new bar and cocktail lounge, with its own identity and marketing needs. Finally, there is an executive dining club that is by invitation only, which also required us to develop a look and feel, menu covers, invitations, etc. With new businesses, you find yourself doing anything and everything that needs to happen in order to get that business open, regardless of whether or not it is actually “marketing.” My team was involved in everything from logo design to uniform selection to actually naming the bar “SixtyFive Bar & Cocktail Lounge.”
Can you talk specifically about your channel strategy?
It was a different strategy for each of the businesses. For the events business, we began advertising a year out because we know that many weddings book over a year in advance, and we wanted people to know that the Rainbow Room was coming back. Once we set that opening date of October 5th, we pulled the trigger on advertising in some of the larger and more upscale bridal publications in particular.
Our biggest challenge was that we had absolutely no photography assets. We created a beautiful brochure out of complete air. Our ads were very vague, but at least contained the Rainbow Room logo and we had to have something for the sales team, so it forced us to be very creative!
Sunday brunch is a beautiful, elaborate set up with a round buffet table set up on the dance floor and every kind of food you can imagine from around the globe. It was so impressive that we decided we really couldn’t pay to market that until we had a photo of the actual brunch. Monday night dinner and entertainment also came later and are still developing as we continue to evolve our entertainment strategy. The first performance we had was The Roots. We managed to flip a New York Times full page out right before opening that made a big splash.
Is that kind of word of mouth sustainable?
Speaking specifically to SixtyFive, this has been my first time doing any sort of marketing surrounding a bar and we planned to do an initial push with PR. We have found that with Top of the Rock, word of mouth is so important and keeps people coming back. In fact, according to some audience research we conducted, over 50 percent claim that “word of mouth” was their main reason for visiting. I have to believe the same thing would be true for a premier cocktail bar at Rockefeller Center. So I think it’s a continual effort—and really relies on a great guest experience much more so than anything paid.
Further reading:
Donald T. Philips, Lincoln on Leadership: Executive Strategies for Tough Times
Natural Selection
“I felt the need to communicate Akana’s point of view as an industry thought leader besides just sending press releases or asking the press to take a point of view.”
Akana CMO Roberto Medrano didn’t seem like the type who would become an effective blogger for a California-based company. For one, English wasn’t his first language. Even in his native language, Spanish, writing was never a great strength of his. Oh, and there was also the whole “massive day-to-day responsibilities of the CMO” thing. But Roberto got to where he is today by constantly evolving, and he saw the value he could add to his career and his company if he committed to blogging and stuck to it.
Today, his blogging at http://blog.Akana.com demonstrates that Akana is a thought leader in the software industry, raising key issues and spotting opportunities before many if not all their competitors. Roberto’s writing also helps coalesce internal points of view on where the company and the industry is headed, and more recently has been looked to by the press as a source of content for their own stories. All because Roberto was determined to get outside his comfort zone and evolve.
Evolving is like “Learning 2.0,” and a CMO who fails to evolve gets left behind in the primordial soup. And evolving is a bigger-picture consideration than merely picking up new skills. Whether evolution for you means taking the plunge into blogging, public speaking, learning to write basic code, or whatever will get you to the next level, it has to be a daily practice.
How long have you been blogging and what motivated you to get started?
I started blogging about three years ago. I felt the need to communicate Akana’s point of view as an industry thought leader besides just sending press releases or asking the press to take a point of view. And there are less press reporters now. That motivated us to say, “How do we do that?” And we also saw that other companies were using blogs effectively. So then we said, “Okay. We’ve got to do our own” and I was the guy who started writing them.
How did you decide what to write about?
Whatever we thought would be relevant to our target. We wanted to provide insights about security, mobile, cloud, application lifecycle development, and some related business with the use of APIs. Now in the digital world everything is connected through APIs. We covered the technical aspects of building APIs and building applications. Or for companies looking to use the cloud, we covered what applications have to be able to be cloud-ready. We just wanted to make it easy for our customers and prospects to find relevant content, whether it was high-level or more detailed technology use.
A lot of senior marketers tell me they don’t have time to write or don’t like doing it, and these are folks for whom English is a first language. Was it particularly hard for you to get started given that Spanish is your native tongue?
I never really believed that I was a writer, but I’ve always had ideas to communicate. So I started thinking of how to communicate those to a broader audience in writing. At first, I felt very uncomfortable blogging, and I had to get some help from people who were actual writers and proofreaders to review some of the posts before they went live.
Did it get easier?
I have become more comfortable over the last three years as more and more posts went up. I do a lot more of the editing myself, but still pass the posts by others for comments or edits. The editing has been less and less in terms of style and more about the details of the points that need to be communicated.
Have there been results that surprised you?
Well, I didn’t expect that some press would read my posts and refer to them in their articles. That was not on my radar. Now I see more and more reporters referring to my posts, which is kind of interesting especially since we have never promoted the blog to press. Recently, a reporter asked, “Do you have a blog?” and told me they would wait for my post on a particular topic, and then quoted from it a day after it ran. That’s definitely a new thing for me, and it’s reassuring since it means the press believes there’s something of value in my posts.
The other thing that’s happened to me is that I get recognized at conferences! I’ll be walking around and then some people just come up to me to talk about something that I published. I don’t know these people, but they just see my picture and they recognize me. They want to talk to me about the blogs. So far, I’ve never had anyone come up to me to argue or be negative in a meeting like this, which is a relief!
Are there other benefits of having a disciplined regular blogging program?
Yes, because people subscribe to the blog and read it regularly, they have a deeper connection with us. And they want to connect to see what we’re thinking about. In many cases, even when they’re considering a product, they go to the blog and try to see what posts are related to what they’re thinking about buying or doing.
What would you say are the top benefits of consistent blogging?
The more content you create, the more ideas you have in the marketplace, and the more there is for people to find and read. The organic search benefits are huge. If people are looking for certain topics like APIs, SOA, and “enterprise service bus,” our blog comes up at the top. And if the content is good enough, people will subscribe and continue to share your content and your voice. That will establish you and your company as legitimate thought leaders.
Further reading:
Bob Gilbreath, The Next Evolution of Marketing: Connect with Your Customers by Marketing with Meaning
The Heart of the Matter
“It made me a better person because I could have that empathy, whether I apply it towards everyday life or apply it to my job.”
In our service-dominated economy, the standards of excellence continue to rise, impacting every industry from restaurant to retail and entertainment to travel. As consumers, we all appreciate great service and as social media-savvy sharers, we are collectively quick to point out when the standards slip below our expectations. Yet as marketers, we all too often forget the notion of service, preferring instead to focus on which message on what medium will drive the most leads.
For the healthcare industry, establishing a reputation for superior customer service is still very much a work in progress. Which is why I found my conversation with Alicia Jansen, CMO at MD Anderson, a leading cancer center based in Texas, especially enlightening (not to mention encouraging). Alicia was so appreciative of the service her mother-in-law received at MD Anderson that she applied for a marketing role at the company and landed it! Eleven years later, Alicia brings her heartfelt empathy for patients to every aspect of MD Anderson’s marketing activities.
You’ve been at MD Anderson for eleven years, but before that you were working at Compaq. Selling computers and selling cancer treatment are pretty different things. Were you able to take any of the things that you learned at Compaq and apply them to what you’ve been doing at MD Anderson?
Yes, I have. I believe that marketing is a type of job that you can apply to so many different industries. In my opinion, there are a couple of characteristics that you have to have in order to really enjoy it; one of them is that you have to be curious. You have to be able to raise your hand and say, “Let me learn as much as I possibly can about this business, because in order for me to be able to market it and tell other people about it, I need to know it.” You can do that in any industry. I did that with computers and software and found it very intriguing, and I find the same thing at MD Anderson. One thing about MD Anderson that I find very satisfying as a marketer is that we are doing something to help other people go through this cancer journey, and that’s very satisfying at a personal level.
I think marketers also have to be able to tell a story. They have to be able to learn what the business is about and understand who the audience is that you’re talking to so you can translate that to something that they can understand and that will move them in some way; whether it’s to move them to buy something, move them to talk about it, or move them to donate. I think good marketers have the ability to tell a good story and to get others to tell the story as well, and that applies to any industry.
When you are selling cancer care, the degree of empathy and the sensitivity required is quite a bit different than when you are selling computers or software. How does that factor into the story you tell at MD Anderson?
My story of working at MD Anderson probably influences the way I do my job. Many people who work for MD Anderson have similar stories. My mother-in-law was diagnosed with cancer in 2000 and I was the primary caregiver. I was at MD Anderson every day. I witnessed her journey and I was able to see what it is like to fight this disease. It made me a better person because I could have that empathy, whether I apply it towards everyday life or apply it to my job. It influenced me so much that when I heard a job opening was available at MD Anderson in the marketing department, I raised my hand, was hired, and eventually took over the department.
That initial experience of being with my mother-in-law through her cancer journey taught me the lessons of why people go through this and what I can do to make the journey better, what I can say, what programs I can initiate, what are the things that I can help MD Anderson do better in order to make it easier on our patients and their families. I realized that this is where I need to be and that’s why I took the job. I find working here very inspiring because of the customers that I work with every day.
How have you been able to impact the customer experience in your current role?
The patient experience to me is a passion because I experienced it with my mother-in-law and it is something that I am extremely excited about helping MD Anderson do better. A couple of years ago we started doing market research by talking to patients and their families while they were going through treatment here. We also spoke with members of the community to understand their needs and their expectations and how they would behave if they were faced with this decision to treat cancer. I took that information back to our leadership and said, “We have a lot of patients here who feel that we do a fantastic job, but when you peel back the onion there are a couple of things that keep surfacing, and I’m seeing a few trends of some things that we could be doing better.”
I truly believe that in order to be appreciated and have a seat at the table you have to be more than an order taker. You have to offer more than the latest ad or brochure or update to the website. You have to show that you’re bringing valuable information to the table that will enhance the decision-making process and help executives and yourself be able to make better decisions in order to satisfy the customer, exceed their expectations, and run the business better. Marketers today have to gather knowledge, and this goes back to being curious, knowing the business, and bringing information to the table that’s going to help the business.
Further reading:
Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
Wide-Angle Relationships
“When you’re not around marketing peers your confidence tends to drop, as others seem clueless and negative about the new ideas you have.”
Camera users, what do you think: Has “Smartphone Killed the DSLR” the way “Video Killed the Radio Star” at the dawn of MTV? The numbers are not terribly encouraging for the traditional camera industry, with annual declines as high as 40 percent in recent years and image quality from iPhone and Android devices getting better and better.
But for smart marketers like Matt Sweetwood, President of camera superstore Unique Photo, the sky is not yet falling. Through creative storytelling and massive investment in customer service and customer education, Matt has kept Unique Photo’s sales healthy and its niche in the world of photography secure for the time being. As you’ll see in our interview (and hopefully take to heart in your own work), a strong peer network is essential to weathering rough marketing seas.
Matt is a perfect example of what happens when you stop worrying about what you can’t control and devote your full talents to what you can control.
P.S. I don’t know about you, but I don’t see MTV playing too many music videos these days. Meanwhile, old and new forms of radio are holding steady...just saying, keep at it, Matt!
How important is having a strong peer network to your ability to do your job well?
Very. I use the ultimate peer network, The CMO Club, as an example. There have been numerous times when someone has simply said something at a CMO Club meeting that has spurred a new program or idea. As a business owner it is so very easy to “stay at home” and not get to see what others are doing or thinking.
For me personally, as the only marketer in my business, having a strong peer network reminds me there are others out there who think like me and that gives me the extra confidence to implement new ideas. When you’re not around marketing peers your confidence tends to drop, as others seem clueless and negative about the new ideas you have.
One of the things I’ve observed about networking is that “the more you give, the more you get” but the quid pro quo is rarely direct nor immediate. What kinds of things do you do on the “giving” side and do you ever keep a mental balance sheet?
I don’t really keep accounting of the things I give. Networking is not something you do, it’s a way of life. I wish all of my connections a happy birthday and I always offer advice (personal, photographic, parenting, marketing, etc.) when I can. I can’t usually quantify the value of this but my network and reach grow daily.
I heard someone recently say they’d rather have one deep conversation at a networking event than ten superficial ones. Do you agree with that approach and, if so, why?
That gets an answer of “not necessarily.” Sometimes you get caught up in a conversation because you find the person attractive or interesting in whatever way that may be. But that may never lead to anything useful. It is important to touch many people at a networking event because sometimes the simple exchange of a business card can lead to much more down the road than the person who you gabbed with for forty-five minutes. I try to touch as many people as possible at networking events. And I can say I have rarely walked away without something good.
Sustaining a large network is time-consuming. How do you keep up with your network?
Work tirelessly and be OCD organized. How badly do you want to be successful?
Some people try to keep their personal networks and their business networks separate. Do you?
A favorite topic of mine. I find that my networking is most successful when I present my overall personal brand to both personal and business contacts. And that includes all the networks and businesses I am involved with. For example, I may be at a photography event, but letting people know that I am a single dad of five or am writing a book on parenting leads to more memorable and useful interactions. In today’s connected world I believe all networks ultimately are connected in some way. People from my work networks have interacted with me on personal issues and vice versa.
How are you staying on top of all the new digital marketing techniques and opportunities?
Practice what you preach. I network frequently, I am very open to being solicited from digital marketing vendors as you learn when they present even if you don’t buy. I belong to The CMO Club and I have paralleled the company brand with my personal brand as I engage in digital techniques to build my own brand (which I consider somewhat successful). Basically, I am always out there looking and learning. To stay on top, you have to view knowledge like food. You need at least three meals every day.
What tool has been the single greatest improvement to digital marketing for your personal brand over the last year?
For my personal brand, it has been Facebook. I’ve leveraged my Facebook page to establish me as the most recognized figure in the photography business. That brings enormous benefits to me from vendors, consultants, customers, and media who regularly follow me.
What role does social media play in your marketing efforts?
It is a fundamental component of my personal and company brand. In 2014, Unique Photo reduced traditional advertising by 75 percent and increased our social media spend by three times. That trend continued in 2015.
Further reading:
Harvey Mackay, Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty: The Only Networking Book You’ll Ever Need
Upgrading Your Network
“If you put more energy into relationships, you can have a lot more productivity, success, and happiness.”
If you’ve had the good fortune to fly on Virgin America, I’m going to presume you “get it”...You get how Virgin offers a fundamentally different flying experience than pretty much any other domestic airline. It’s hip, it’s comfortable, they have purple mood lighting for Pete’s sake!
A key figure in helping Sir Richard Branson get his scrappy start-up off the ground was now-departed VP of Marketing Porter Gale. During her four years handling Virgin America’s marketing, she distinguished the brand with the original out-of-the-box seatbelt safety video, the no-hassle no-headache reservation system, and myriad points in between.
Since leaving Virgin, Porter has established herself as an in-demand marketing advisor to cutting-edge online and offline companies including Dollarshaveclub.com, WePay.com, and The Mina Group. Oh, and she’s also produced or directed documentaries that have aired on Lifetime, PBS, Channel 4/England, and in film festivals around the globe. Porter’s film work has been honored by the Directors Guild of America, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and Filmmaker Magazine.
I got to interview Porter during her whirlwind promotional tour for her book Your Network Is Your Net Worth. Porter has always deeply understood the fact that great ideas aren’t enough—a successful creative needs to pursue and solidify the relationships that will make those ideas reality. She divulged some of her power networking skills to me in this interview, and we also got to riff on how big data is changing the airline industry.
Give me the rundown on your book.
It’s all about the power of connections and networks and it talks about how important our relationships are but there is also a lot of digital media strategy and conversation about how the world is changing because of social. So it’s a fascinating book with lots of great interviews, and my mom loved it and I hope that you will.
Where is all this networking happening?
Networking can be inside the organization with just the employees and how they’re connecting and collaborating, and it can be with your customers too. What I really wanted people to understand is that if you put more energy into relationships, you can have a lot more productivity, more success, and more happiness. And that’s true both personally and professionally.
You mention it’s no longer “six degrees of separation,” or “of Kevin Bacon,” it’s four degrees. Where did those other two go?
That is actually a fact. I worked with PeopleBrowsr and they analyzed Twitter data from 2007 to the present and they figured out the number of degrees of separation between people. The analysis concluded that the old saying “six degrees of Kevin Bacon” is now four.
Got it. So what are implications of fewer degrees of separation?
What this means is that every single connection is more important than before. Because we’re more closely linked, we also have larger circles of empathy. This means that we’re connected to more people, our thoughts and our feelings are impacting more people, there are emotions that are spreading through social networks, and so the way that we connect and talk to each other and influence decisions has completely changed.
I like to think of it as the world getting smaller and smaller. So a connection that could change your life may very well be just one person away.
Let’s talk about this network and the role that big data plays in all of this.
Data is completely changing the game. Let’s take the example of an airline. We might know your seat preferences, your drink preferences, and what routes you like to fly. There are all sorts of opportunities for personalization. That personalization improves your potential for networking, because networking is really based on having authentic relationships that are connected and based on shared values and passions.
Is there an opportunity for small businesses to use big data?
I think there are some really great advantages for a small business. One, you won’t get into analysis paralysis because you don’t have the time and the resources. My advice for the small business would be to pick three core metrics that you want to focus on, then find an analytics platform that is affordable to you. It could be something as simple as Google Analytics, but make sure that you are checking your data and figuring out the important variables. Maybe your conversion rate is really important, or maybe it was the cost per acquisition. Whatever it is, figure out the metrics, track it, and make sure that you are staying connected and true to your customers.
Further reading:
Porter Gale, Your Network Is Your Net Worth: Unlock the Hidden Power of Connections for Wealth, Success, and Happiness in the Digital Age
Marketing’s Rocket Fuel
“It just hit me that these people cared and I wanted to engage with them.”
Go to enough social media conferences and you can’t help but become jaded. So many of the cases presented are fluff and the few true success stories are told over and over. That was certainly the case for me until I saw John Yembrick, NASA’s Social Media Manager, speak earlier this year at the Social Media Shake-up. John definitely “shook me up” with his honesty, innumerable examples of social media ingenuity, and, most of all, with his passion for both his product and channel of choice.
John’s passion for all things NASA and social media are truly contagious and reminded me how essential this element is to the success of marketers, both as individuals and as brands. With passion you are graciously sharing your ideas, products, or services. Without, you are selling, often with a lack of conviction that is readily apparent. Passion makes work less work-like and turns subordinates into comrades in arms.
Passion is transformative, as you will see in our interview below. Combined with talents like the ability to spot trends in the making and cleverly translate these into engaging content, passion has helped NASA become a true force in the social media landscape.
NASA is one of a handful of brands that have a Klout score of 99, a number that reflects both the size of their footprint (11 million on Twitter, 11 million on Facebook, and over 4 million on Instagram) and the degree of ongoing fan engagement. Here’s why:
Your passion for space and astronomy is palpable. Where did that come from?
I’ve always personally had a huge passion for space and I followed NASA closely before I ever worked for NASA. Honestly, I never understood why everyone doesn’t share my enthusiasm. I’m not so naïve as to think that everyone will, but that doesn’t stop me from trying. I feel like if you put content in front of people and show them why it is relevant to their lives and how cool it is, they will get excited. Yesterday I was showing someone I just met this photo of Pluto, and their eyes lit up and they were excited to learn about something that humanity has never seen before. And that happens all of the time at NASA.
How does this passion impact your ability to do your job?
One of the reasons why I think that our content, especially on the flagship NASA account, plays so well on social media is because both my associate Jason Townsend and I are passionate about this content and we think it matters. If you are working on a brand and don’t care about the product, it’s very difficult to really communicate it to the best of your ability. Mine stems from childhood, just loving space, playing with toy spaceships and looking up at the stars. I love them. I am one of those people who looks up at the nighttime sky wondering what I’m seeing, wondering what’s out there. And I love the fact that NASA is helping to answer those questions.
You mentioned in your speech that the press didn’t always tell the stories NASA wanted told in the pre-social media days. Can you elaborate on that?
Sure. In the pre-social days, the press was the filter. They might care about a spacewalk, a launch, or when something went wrong, but they didn’t care about 99 percent of the other things NASA was doing. Social media changed that, although back in 2008 I was a skeptic like everyone else. But I had a “Eureka!” moment when there was some downtime during a spacewalk on a space shuttle mission. I decided to look at Twitter and to my surprise, a robust conversation was happening around my recent tweet—and I wasn’t even participating in it. People were saying, “Oh my gosh, I can’t leave my computer, I’m on the edge of my seat, this is a coolest thing I’ve ever seen and I don’t want to go back to work.” It was in the middle of the workday and I wanted NASA to be part of the conversation, so I joined in and started answering questions.
And that was the moment. I just didn’t care about anything else. I thought this was the most important thing I should be doing even though I was only interacting with a few thousand people. It just hit me that these people cared and I wanted to engage with them. I wanted to make them happy with the content I was putting out. I thought, “Wow, you never get this kind of enthusiasm from the news media.” I could actually see real people caring about the work I was doing. And that was a really life-changing moment for me.
Do you think your passion is contagious?
I am passionate about the brand. I think this brand matters more than anything else in the world and in regard to advancing humanity forward. But I’m certainly not alone here. During the government shutdown a couple of years back we were not allowed to post anything on social media. But the great NASA social community we had built posted things while we couldn’t. That is one of things I’m most proud of. It just shows that we nurtured these ambassadors out there and they welcomed the opportunity to support our mission.
You all seem to be the masters of real-time marketing, particularly with big events like the Oscars.
I would say one of our most surprising successes really was with the movie Gravity at the Oscars. It was up for a bunch of Oscars that night and we were watching it. Throughout the whole Oscar program and especially when Gravity would win something, we would post real images from space with various relevant hashtags. These beautiful images looked like photos from the fictional movie like a spacewalk or the International Space Station but ours were the real thing. Our content ended up being one of the top trending topics during the Oscars—it was a hugely successful campaign.
When you look at your career trajectory, can you talk about the elements that have propelled your success?
I’m a little humbled by what you call career success. But I will tell you that throughout my career, I have always been willing to try new things, I’ve relocated several times, and when opportunities arose I embraced them. Also, I have always been willing to take chances, whether working for a space operation or at a field center, and then I jumped headfirst into social media.
Further reading:
Kate Newlin, Passion Brands: Why Some Brands Are Just Gotta Have, Drive All Night for and Tell All your Friends About
Marketing’s Holy Grail
“Innovation can’t just be about fun ideas or wonky theories.”
It’s convenient to think of companies like planets: The bigger they get, the stronger and more irresistible their gravitational pull. In this case, the gravitational pull is presumed to be a source of inertia—a force that resists novel thinking and innovation, stifling it under endless red tape and naysaying.
In such a universe, GE—the corporate equivalent of Jupiter if not the Sun itself—should have an overwhelming gravitational pull that crushes new and exciting ideas, right?
Not on Beth Comstock’s watch. With Beth in charge as both CMO and President & CEO, GE Business Innovations, GE remains at the forefront of digital innovations, running circles around smaller and presumably more nimble competitors. Beth’s outstanding work proves no marketer can blame a lack of innovation on company size.
For several years now, GE has been ahead of the curve when it comes to experimenting with new channels. What is the strategy behind all of this experimentation? Is the medium essentially the message?
GE’s a leading technology company so we believe it important to be aligned with leading edge technology channels. Our audiences expect GE to be where they are—they aren’t going to always come looking for us. We like to experiment as a way of learning, but our efforts have to align with our goal of connecting with our target audiences, which are largely industrial technologists and enthusiasts. And we’ve adapted our strategy around being micro-relevant—meaning targeting the right audience in the right way. It doesn’t have to be a big audience, just the right one.
As the CMO, is it a mandate of yours that GE explore all the newest, coolest channels? If so, how are you finding them?
We have an awesome media team that identifies themselves as digital explorers. We also take risks with new ideas and small companies as a way to learn and as a way to augment more traditional plays. I’m a big believer in carving out a percentage of your budget to develop new models.
Naysayers struggle to understand how a photo contest on Instagram or a promotion on Pinterest can help you sell GE products like aircraft engines. What do you say to those folks?
A jet engine is a complicated sale. Many people influence the purchase decision. And since GE is a company that traverses multiple industries, pretty quickly you’re targeting decision makers across a wide range of the economy and functional roles of business, which is why we believe in the importance of building a vibrant umbrella brand. In addition to those who buy our products, we target enthusiasts, recruits, and GE retail shareowners who want to experience GE in various dimensions. Industrial technology is exciting, yes, even fun...and some of these outlets allow us the opportunity to open up and express ourselves in new ways. People want to see that you are approachable.
GE is primarily a B2B company, yet you seem to act a lot more like a B2C company in terms of creating emotionally-rich consumer-friendly communications. Any thoughts on why that is?
Since when does B2B have to be boring? Businesspeople are people too. We are emotional beings, we don’t just rely on logic when it comes to business decisions. Good marketing is about making a connection and delivering perceived value. Period. In some ways, business marketers have an advantage in that they are closer to their customers and in theory should be more responsive and intuitive.
Marketing seems to be getting increasingly complex in terms of ways to spend and ways to monitor. Has it gotten more complex for you and, if so, how are you dealing with that complexity?
Yes, it is more complex—we have a multitude of outlets and a range of content types to consider. You need good partners, room for experimentation, and a good dose of curiosity. Trust me, it’s not about the size of your budget, it’s about the ability to use complexity to amplify your efforts, not stifle them.
What does “innovation” mean to you as GE’s CMO?
Innovation can’t just be about fun ideas or wonky theories. Innovation means new methods that yield results. The challenge is often that time, trial and error are required to get to scale. I’m a big believer in pilot projects to create proof points and staged development to make sure you get results. Innovation without process is chaos. Trendspotting without translation leaves you empty.
Besides your efforts on Pinterest and Instagram, can you speak about another recent innovative program that you are particularly proud of?
I’m especially proud of the work we are doing to help define what the industrial Internet can mean to business productivity. It’s a new category for business, not just GE. We’ve put a lot of science and analysis into connecting with our customers and new tech partners in this area. We’re doing much more in open innovation—meaning using digital communities to drive new methods at GE. A recent example is a data science challenge with Kaggle that is shaving off minutes and fuel from flight landings—something once thought unattainable. And we’re having fun with Vine, having had a successful #SixSecondScience effort this summer that shows how science can be fun and connects with tech enthusiasts.
I couldn’t help but notice you were an undergraduate biology major, which is not exactly the typical path of a future marketer. Did you imagine yourself being a marketer when you were studying biology?
Not at all. I was torn between anthropology, psychology, and biology and I picked biology because I thought I wanted to go to medical school. But it turns out that biology is actually a great background for marketing. Something that biology and marketing have in common is that they both deal with the interconnectivity of each individual living thing to a broader system and that’s the world we live in. We are all connected. We can’t innovate without partnership. I think my study of ecology and my study of systems has trained me to think in a more systematic way and view the world—and certainly the business world—more systematically.
I know you’ve talked about spending upwards of 25 percent of your time in Silicon Valley talking to your GE team out there. That’s a lot of time relative to all the things that you have to do. How do you rationalize that investment relative to other ways of spending your time?
Silicon Valley is kind of a metaphor for where innovation is happening. Just to give you an example, last week I was in Asia for a week and spent time in three cities in China and in Seoul, Korea. In every city I went to, 75 percent of my time was spent on GE or customer efforts, but I also made time to see what was happening in the marketplace. In Beijing, I spent time with the Xiaomi team. In Chengdu, I got to meet the Camera360 startup guys who have developed apps, and in Seoul, I participated in a roundtable innovation discussion with some incubators and founders. I do it with my venture cap, but more importantly I do it to keep the company tethered externally. It’s partly my job but it’s also a metaphoric way to describe that kind of sense of where innovation is happening.
Looking ahead either in terms of trends that you’re seeing or just personal things that you would really like to get a handle on next year, what is on your priority list for 2015?
For the marketing mandate, I think just continuing to create stories that connect and scale. I think the journey is never done. I want to continue to find these different partners, media, and ways to tell stories that connect them in scale. We don’t have a big budget so there’s a lot of ongoing pressure for us as a team to raise the bar. That’s always on our list.
I am a big believer in this idea of what we call the global brain. It’s this idea of using digital connections to tap into people who don’t work for us. It’s called open innovation but you can also call it a digital workforce. There are a lot of ways you can get people who have insights and capabilities to do work with your company and I think it will continue to take off.
We have a culture of speed and simplicity and a kind of delight in things that can explain what we do at GE. I feel very committed to being a part of that in this coming year. The discovery agenda is still looming large. By the end of 2015, I hope to find three new trends of things that are just absolutely exciting.
Further reading:
Brian Solis, The End of Business as Usual: Rewire the Way You Work to Succeed in the Consumer Revolution