It was one of those rare Los Angeles days — smog free, blue skies and the air was crisp. A perfect set up for what I hoped would be a perfect pitch. We were sitting in a diner right across the street from the bank headquarters in Pasadena and we were the opposite of stressed out. Like well-prepared boxers, we…
Category: Marketing as Service
CSR: Global Food for Thought
With the Empire State Building glowing in the background, I wondered what was on my own horizon that evening. The cocktail party in a chic midtown hotel had just begun, the award-winning CMOs were pouring in and my curiosity was starting to peak. Who were these people? Sure I could read their name badges but what were their stories and more importantly,…
Reading v. Viewing: Which is Better?
Let’s do a little test together. Watch the video below which features Trish Mueller, CMO of Home Depot and Pete Krainik, founder of The CMO Club, and make note of the marketing insights you gained. Next, please read my interview below, also with Trish Mueller. Then jot down your key takeaways. You’ll have to trust me that both are well worth…
CMO Insights: Focusing on Innovation
In part one of my interview with Rich Smith, CMO of Ditech Financial, we focused on Ditech’s sponsorship of NASCAR and how that helped build broad awareness for the brand. In part two, we’ll broaden the lens and explore the brand’s overall strategic approach, internal training to improve the customer experience and a program that aimed at improving brand loyalty (offering another great…
Finding the Right Elements for Your Brand
A couple of weeks ago, I had the good fortune to be interviewed by Dan Raviv, a correspondent for CBS Radio. During our conversation, Dan asked me what “elements” he should mix together to help build an audience for the CBS News Weekend Roundup radio show. I hemmed and hawed a bit, suggesting he start with his target audience. He probed…
CMO Insights: Drilling into Content Marketing
Hu-Friedy is a mouthful of a brand name which may or may not have been on the mind of Hugo Friedman when he founded his dental instrument company back in 1908. More than a century later, Hu-Friedy is a global leader in its category and yet, quite remarkably still completes 80% of the manufacturing process by hand. According to their website, “they meticulously…
Gearing up for Gen Z: The #Selfie Generation?
Just when you’d thought you’d wrapped your marketing minds around millennials, along comes Gen Z to really mess with your head. Born between 1996 and 2013, the oldest part of this group is just now entering college, wreaking havoc with their multi-tasking mobile mindset and no doubt, creating huge challenges for the marketers trying to engage with them. One such…
Why CMOs Should FLAIC Out on Their Personal Brands
Whether you call it Cobbler’s Children Syndrome or just basic neglect, talk to a cross-section of CMOs and you’ll discover a startling anomaly—though they dedicate their careers to building brands, very few have made time to take care of their own personal brands. This oversight leaves many a senior executive poorly positioned – especially when they become suddenly unemployed around…
Branding, Content Marketing & Reverse Osmosis
Marketing never gets boring to me because each company, brand and sub-brand has its own unique challenges. This is certainly the case for Snehal Desai, Global Business Director of Dow Water & Process Solutions, a division of Dow Chemical. Snehal and I had a long conversation about the subtleties of marketing a sub-brand with multiple product lines aimed at multiple verticals…
CMO Insights: Digital Marketing and Customer Centricity
Before taking the job as SVP, Head of Integrated Marketing at Wells Fargo, Michael Lacorazza was cautioned that it might take a while to get things done at this huge bank. Much to his delight, he was able to push through a number of new initiatives in his first year that had a profound impact on the business. Though he…