There’s a lot of hate going around. Cases in point: A tournament to determine “the most hated college basketball player of the last 30 years,” or a new app called Hater that allows users to flag what annoys them. We say, enough with all this hate, and instead, offer five timely ideas any marketer could love. Think of them, if you will, as your preparation for March Gladness.
Rapid Experimentation: Not Every Shot Goes In
| This one comes from Intuit, which has built a culture of innovation around the notion of “rapid experimentation.” The idea, according to Kaaren Hanson, VP of Design Innovation at Intuit, is to give employees the freedom to try new things; to succeed or fail quickly by “falling in love with the problem, not the solution.” |
Sponsored Content: A Cinderella Story
| According to Steve Rubel, Chief Content Strategist for Edelman, “Sponsored content is poised to become a significant, possibly even major, new advertising format.” For marketers, this opens the door for a collaborative approach with media organizations, shifting the emphasis from ad placement to content dissemination. |
Mobile Ads: Turns Out, They're Winners
| Columbia Business School professor Miklos Sarvary conducted a three-year study and found that “mobile display ads seem to influence many stages of the decision funnel.” Sarvary also found that mobile ads work best for utilitarian products like refrigerators but not so well for the hedonic variety like alcohol. |
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Big Data: Big Scoring
| Making the case for the potential of big data, professor and author David Rogers shared how IBM’s Watson, once famous for playing Jeopardy, is now assisting doctors around the world with cancer diagnoses. Rogers predicts, “Truly successful leaders will see data not just as a tool to assist decision-making, but as a core strategic asset.” |
Emotional Branding: Winning in Overtime
| With so much talk of big data, it would be easy to lose touch with the irrational beings who happen to be your customers. This is not the case with San Diego-based Jack in the Box, which is on an 18-year run with its humorous Jack’s Back campaign. Explains Terri Funk Graham, their long-time CMO, “What drove the campaign to continue to last is that we tapped into the emotional branding side.” |
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Final Note: One paragraph can hardly due justice to each of the grand concepts scribed above. For the thoroughly enlightening interviews with Hanson, Rubel,Sarvary, Rogers and Graham, click on any of the links provided. And for you CMOs out there, you can meet Terri Funk Graham at The CMO Club Summit on April 11 at the Plaza Hotel. Tell her Drew sent you! |
