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.

For New York City-based consumers familiar with the FreshDirect brand, its orange and green delivery trucks may come to mind first. But the 20-year-old company wants to be known as a high-quality food and grocery retailer first—and a delivery service second. “We’re intimately knowledgeable about fresh food, curated experiences and culinary experiences,” CMO John MacDonald told Chief Marketer. “We just happen to think that the best way for that food to get to you is for us to deliver it.”

So to help tell that story, and to overcome the perception that “all food delivery is equal,” the company created a video series, dubbed “Sourced,” that highlights the stories, passions and motivations of the farmers and producers with whom FreshDirectpartners. We spoke with MacDonald about marketing the video campaign, brand awareness goals, the unique challenges of direct-to-consumer marketing and the company’s omnichannel approach.

Chief Marketer: Why did you decide to leverage vendor partners for this marketing campaign?

John MacDonald, CMO of FreshDirect: Spotlighting partners is something that many companies, specifically in food and grocery, do a lot. They showcase the relationships that process the quality of product. What I wanted to do with this one was turn the prism a little bit and show a different side as to why partnerships matter, especially for us. We show the quality of the food and we talk about the direct producer-to-table ecosystem we’ve built, but more importantly, the passion and reasons why these suppliers do what they do.

CM: How are you getting this message out to people? What’s your target audience?

JM: We created these as evergreens. These are partners who we’ve used for several years in many cases, so we’re promoting them on paid and organic social. We’re putting them on YouTube. We’re promoting them in pre-roll when people watch YouTube. We also have the ability to cut them down and do other things with them. We’ve taken this footage and given it back to them, to the farms and our suppliers as well. We’re hoping that they go back and start using it. They can use the still photography. We’re trying to get this in front of as many people as possible, but we’re also keeping it out there for a long time, so that if people happen to come to our site or our YouTube page they can see it.

CM: What are the campaign’s strategic marketing goals? And the KPIs you’re trying to meet?

JM: Very standard things, like engagement on my social channels and getting likes and views, but I wanted to go back and start telling the story of FreshDirect a little bit more than we have in the past, not just the fact that we’re out there and we’re packing groceries and fresh food and giving it to people. I’d love to start making headway on some brand breakthrough. I want some top-of-mind awareness and top-of-mind consideration. I want this to help people have a better perception of the kind of quality that we engage in, and engage with the brand not in just a functional way, but in an emotional way, and understanding what we do [beyond] delivering groceries.

CM: What are some of the marketing challenges of the grocery delivery landscape?

JM: The first thing I’d say is that FreshDirect isn’t a delivery service. We’re a high-quality food and grocery retailer first. We’re intimately knowledgeable about fresh food and curated and culinary experiences. We just happen to think that the best way for that food to get to you is for us to deliver it. We have temperature-controlled facilities and trucks that deliver the food in the best possible condition. I think the biggest challenge for me as a marketer for FreshDirect is to get customers to understand that, and to understand that not all food delivery is equal. And the relationship on how your food is stored and transported and how long it lasts at your home matters.

CM: What’s your social media strategy for this?

JM: We’ve done some research and we know that there are some awareness problems outside of Manhattan, specifically in the outer boroughs and the suburbs. So we’re using not only the social channels, but other mass media channels to reeducate people and broaden our reach. Social channels are going to be a mix of re-introductions to the customer and telling those great stories about our suppliers through the Sourced videos.

CM: Beyond this campaign, what channels and tactics have proven successful for your brand?

JM: I think anybody who is in our space understands that it’s a mix of the channels. Even though we’re an online, pure-play grocer, you still need to make sure that you’re reaching the customers where they are. And so that means a mix of digital and traditional. Things that work well for us digitally are paid search affiliate programs and very targeted, personalized, communications with our existing customers. But we broadly reach people, too. We still engage in very traditional methods, like direct mail, and this fall, we actually are doing our first broadcast TV [spot] for the New York Metro market. We’re doing a very wide media buy and going out there to try to tell that story and engage with the customer.

CM: Can you talk about your direct mail approach? Being New York City-based, I’ve noticed that your discount coupons have been around for years. How is that working for you?

JM: We use direct mail for a whole bunch of different reasons, and some of them are pure acquisition. We’ll go out there and say, this a group of people in the New York Metro market that we’ve never talked to before and we can target them. Sometimes we know customers who have shopped with us in the past, and some haven’t shopped with us before. So we’ll do some win-backs through those offers.

Acquisition is actually a success story for us through direct mail, because it introduces the brand and gives something people tangible to hold on to. And it also gives them a really good incentive to come into the brand and to shop with us. We still see value out of direct mail. But I think it’s in tandem with the other touchpoints. I’m encouraged to see that people still respond to that because you get bombarded every day with emails and texts. And sometimes it’s nice just to come home, have that piece of mail and sit with it for a little bit, or put it off to the side and then come back to it later, whereas an email or a text is deleted immediately. We see a longer-tail value to some of that direct mail.

But I think that’s the value of a fuller, broader type of funnel approach, where you may be sitting with a direct mail piece and maybe put it off to the side. But then you see our commercial and might go back to it. We want to continue to build that relationship, more than just, “Hey, I’m going to give you $50 off,” and it’s a performance marketing piece. We’re trying to find those areas of life where we can intersect with the customer.

CM: What are the challenges and opportunities of the direct-to-consumer market?

JM: Consumers in this world want us to solve their problem. [We have to] meet their expectations, meet them where they are, and consistently get them what they need–and then surprise them and give them quality. In a direct-to-consumer business, you have to deliver what you promise. We have to get the food to them on time, when they want it, in the condition that they want it in. That’s the bare basics of it.

The second thing is they want to know that you’re a brand that they can associate with this. There’s an aspirational element with brands like us, so we have to fulfill that. So if they’re looking for “grocery treasures”–these are finds that people can’t get too many places–we can get them those things. The challenge is making sure that we’re top of mind and that we are in their consideration set. I’ve got to be relevant to their life. I’ve got to solve their problems. And I’ve got to surprise them.

The post Brands on Fire: FreshDirect 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.

If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make it sound?

The age-old question, typically considered a philosophical thought experiment, can be applied to marketing as well—specifically the experiential industry—as a way to gauge the impact of your campaigns. Because if no one is really talking about it, and if it’s not generating buzz, showing up organically on social feeds and making headlines, it might as well have never happened.

That was the advice from Pepsi CMO Todd Kaplan at sister pub Event Marketer’s Experiential Marketing Summit in Las Vegas last week as he shared lessons learned from his more than 15 years at one of the most iconic brands on the planet. Following are his tips and considerations for the experiential industry.

Deliver a Cultural Impact. Think beyond the physicality of where you’re activating, what you’re doing and how the program and concept will actually work moving forward, Kaplan says. “There are more brand messages coming to consumers on a daily basis—an hourly, minute basis—than you’ve ever had to process before. And you’re simultaneously overwhelmed by the amount of choices you have. It’s a difficult context as a marketer to be coming in and giving a brand message and talking about something they may or may not want to talk about.”

Marketers should aspire to connect with consumers on a deeper level to break through the barrage of brand messages. “You might be there, but that doesn’t mean they’re digesting and engaging with your brand in the right way. Cultural impact is this idea of creating meaningful consumer connection and doing it at scale… You’ve got to think beyond the onsite footprints as well,” Kaplan says. Moreover, consider what’s happening around the cultural moment in which you’re activating. “What are consumers feeling and thinking in those moments, and how can you pair it to those exact needs?”

Lean Into Earned and Social Media. The marketing industry significantly underestimates the value of earned media, according to Kaplan. “If you were to think of all the content you watched throughout the day, how much of it is actually paid usage versus you reading your news feed? Organic social media is where you’re actually spending your time. If your brand is organically showing up in these places, you’re going to reach your consumer versus the skippable ads and things that you’re shouting at them,” he says.

From an experiential standpoint, it’s about far more than just sharing a photo. “You want to create things that are creatively interesting enough, Instagram-worthy enough…that [make] people want to organically share these things. That should be a must-have as you build your event.”

Create Opt-In Experiences. Given the multitude of options consumers have, marketers should create experiences that inspire people to willingly opt-in to participate. It’s “not interrupting people with an ad or with a flyer or with a sample, but actually having them seek you out as the content. And then stretching your brand beyond events and thinking about new ways to activate your brain. It’s not just through an onsite footprint, but in new spaces and new forms, new formats, ways that your audiences haven’t thought about,” Kaplan says. “And then when they opt-in, you want make sure it’s distinctive so they remember what brand it was.”

Give It the Good Old-Fashioned Bullshit Test. Take a hard look at your marketing programs and ask yourself whether or not you’d actually share them with your friends. “If you didn’t work on this experience yourself, would you participate? Would you wait in line to go do what you’re building? Would you remember what brand it’s for? Would you share it or see it organically on your social feeds aside from the people at your company?” Kaplan says. If the answer is no to any of those questions, “keep working the idea and refining and building.”

This kind of pressure testing will keep marketers honest about their programs and unlock the potential to impact culture in meaningful and memorable ways. “I think this industry can go to that next level,” Kaplan says, “as you think about the role of experiences, especially coming off the pandemic, where everyone is seeking more connection.”

The post Brands on Fire: Pepsi CMO Todd Kaplan Shares Tips for Building Culturally-Relevant Experiences appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Among the shifts in consumer behavior that have emerged over the past two years, the demand for convenience—particularly when making digital purchases—is most certainly here to stay. And those companies that have embraced this pandemic-fueled digital transformation with alacrity are reaping the rewards.

One such brand is Chipotle, Chief Marketer’s latest pick for our Brands on Fire series. At the start of the pandemic, digital sales accounted for 18 percent of the business. Today, it makes up a whopping 45 percent. It’s invested in a robust digital ecosystem over the past three years, featuring mobile pickup, delivery, a rewards program and a gamified app experience.

The company also engages consumers digitally through gaming activations, from a virtual job fair on Discord following its $15-an-hour wage announcement to a digital, gamified version of its annual Boorito Halloween promotion on Roblox. We spoke with Stephanie Perdue, Chipotle’s Vice President of Brand Marketing, about the company’s explosive digital growth, its gaming and esports strategy, merchandising, menu innovation and more.

Chief Marketer: Chipotle is pretty involved in the esports and gaming space, in particular with digital activations. Can you talk about how your marketing has evolved?

Stephanie Perdue, Vice President of Brand Marketing, Chipotle: We’ve made a series of investments and grown our presence in the last few years. It started with understanding the media behavior of younger customer segments. Below age 34, we were seeing less time spent with traditional media, more time spent in social and more time spent in gaming. Through social listening, we realized that a lot of the pro gamers had infinity for Chipotle. As a professional gamer, your performance is extremely important. And what you eat is really important, too, for your sustenance.

We first partnered with TSM and with 100 Thieves, a great lifestyle, professional esports and gaming organization. We started working with them on their streaming platforms, on Twitch and their channels, and sponsoring huge gaming events in person. Then COVID happened, and we had an opportunity to take our gaming strategy to digital.

So in 2020, we started making a series of investments in the digital gaming space, still carrying those relationships with esports teams, but doing more things, like creating our own branded Chipotle Challenger Series tournament online featuring major game releases—Call of Duty, Halo, popular mobile games like PUBG, Fortnite. We were giving amateur gamers access to pros in these tournaments. We continue to promote the Chipotle Challenger Series. We will do one in the second quarter with a very exciting game.

CM: You’ve also embraced new platforms, like Discord and Roblox, to reach these audiences.

SP: We love to show up in different platforms. For instance, we created a custom map for Fortnite where gamers could farm real ingredients to make Chipotle. We also got onto a new platform, Roblox, for our annual Halloween promotion, which historically has been in a restaurant. Instead of dressing up to get a free burrito in a Chipotle, we created a virtual Chipotle on Roblox where people could bring their avatar, get free prizes, get free burritos and do a maze. From working with Tony Hawk to new games to tournaments to new gaming platforms like Discord and Roblox, all of those things have fueled our gaming strategy.

CM: So today, it’s a combination of digital and in-person gaming and esports sponsorships?

SP: In the last two years it’s been more digital than in-person, although that’s something we’ll evaluate in the year to come as COVID restrictions have recessed and people come back to IRL experiences. Early on, IRL was very important to us, but almost half our sales are digital. We have a young adult customer who is very connected with their phone and spending time gaming, so it’s a really important segment for us.

CM: You’ve leveraged gaming for your rewards program as well.

SP: With our partnership with Halo this last holiday season, we gave our reward members the opportunity trade Chipotle reward points for gaming points for Halo, called Challenge Swaps, which gave them opportunities to level up their game. It was one of the highest-redeemed rewards that we’ve done, outside of free Chipotle food.

CM: Chipotle is active with merchandising, such as with your apparel line, Chipotle Goods. Does the inspiration for new products come mainly from social listening?

SP: The space is pretty crowded. When we came out with Chipotle Goods in 2020, the insight was that people wanted more sustainable clothing. They liked the idea that our clothes were made from a hundred percent organic cotton and that all the proceeds were given back to sustainable agriculture and farmers. We’re doing innovative things like upcycling our avocados and using them for natural dye. Chipotle Goods is extending our “food with integrity” to clothing that’s responsible as well.

We look at trends and what’s happening in social—like the rise of athleisure wear. We think about the sustainability aspect of those clothes and how they can make an impact, with all the proceeds going to further responsibly-made clothing.

CM: Chipotle has experienced explosive digital growth in the past few years. What percentage of your business is now digital?

SP: Around 45 percent. To give you the progression, in 2018 is was around eight percent, and just prior to the pandemic, it was around 18 percent. It was growing, and it was a significant part of our business. In the last few years, they added mobile pickup, they added delivery, they added rewards. And this was all in response to consumers asking for more convenience, to access Chipotle in different ways on their terms and to be more connected to the brand.

These things were added before COVID, and then, as you know, COVID created a huge shift in consumer behavior into digital channels. Our digital business went from under a billion dollars to three and a half billion.

CM: When considering new marketing initiatives, what are the key themes and through lines that you adhere to for the brand?

SP: Our positioning is all about being real. Over the last 30 years, Chipotle has been committed to a hundred percent real ingredients that are responsibly sourced and unprocessed and it’s committed to having some of the highest animal welfare standards in the category. All of our proteins have no hormones and no antibiotics. The founder was obsessed with what we call “food with integrity.” He saw that he could change the industry with different sourcing practices and culinary techniques in the restaurant—sourcing whole produce, hand mashing our guac.

Everything that we think about, when it comes to our brand advertising, our menu innovation, even how we talk about our recipes in social and TikTok, it’s about that transparency and showing how our food is made. We think about new menu items in that sense. How do we use real ingredients to transform? We have a new chicken that just launched, Pollo Asado. We use fresh lime juice and fresh-cut cilantro. So, all of our menu innovation goes through those filters.

In our brand campaigns, our own employees are featured in our advertising. They’re highlighting our fresh cooking and our commitments to responsible sourcing. At the end of the day, that’s why the brand exists and what we want consumers to take away. We love to find new ways to talk about what we stand for, and then connecting into culture in exciting ways with disruptive platforms, partnerships and finding avenues where Chipotle is different.

The post Brands on Fire: Chipotle appeared first on Chief Marketer.

BlackBerry loyalists were dealt a blow earlier this year when the company ended support of its iconic smartphones. Once hailed as the preferred devices for business executives, heads of state and other fans of handheld physical keyboards, the beloved “crackberry” is now a relic of the past.

In actuality, the company has not manufactured the phones for several years now, and for the past six it has been licensing other companies to do so. Marketing the services that it provides today is quite a different exercise. Effectively pivoting from a hardware focus to a software one, the company now specializes in providing cybersecurity software and embedded operating systems within vehicles, with an eye on securing automobiles within smart cities of the future.

We spoke with BlackBerry CMO Mark Wilson about the company’s pivot, the significance of competitor analysis in today’s business market, the role that brand equity plays in product differentiation and how compelling content marketing can help B2B businesses cut through the clutter.

Chief Marketer: Let’s talk about pivoting towards not producing BlackBerry phones. Were you involved in the messaging for sunsetting the product? What were the challenges of conveying that to the public?

Mark Wilson, BlackBerry CMO: It’s been six years since we manufactured a phone. Instead, we’ve licensed our brand to other people to manufacture phones and use our software. We’ve pivoted our business model from being hardware-focused to software-focused. It’s changed dramatically in terms of how we build things or support things. So in that pivot from hardware to software, we knew we would eventually stop supporting devices that were seven, eight, nine, 10 years old. We wanted to delay that as long as possible out of respect for our customers. In time, we needed to make a financial decision around what that meant, so eventually we ended support for those devices. We worked with our carrier partners to make sure that those customers knew that it was coming and they had ample time to kind of get ready for it.

CM: How are you involved in creating smart cities?

MW: Long-term, we see the IOT market and the cybersecurity market converging around the smart city. Everybody has talked about smart cities, but not a lot of people are actually delivering something for a smart city. But once you have all the automobiles and traffic signals and everything connected, in a highly secure way, we think that’s actually a sweet spot. Everything going on in the Ukraine right now is a great example of why you need that. They need to be secured because people can begin to take down the national power grids. The value of a smart city can quickly be eroded if that’s not secure.

CM: What’s the process for securing automobiles in smart cities?

MW: If you look at those electric vehicles, there’s more software in those cars than there ever has been. I think on average, there are a hundred million lines of software code now written into the car. So as these cars become more software-based, and as the experience becomes more software-oriented, you want to make sure you’re securing all of those types of smart things that are connected into the infrastructure of a city.

Our software is also in the signaling lights within cities. There’s something called vehicle-to-vehicle—how a vehicle is talking to another vehicle, as well as the cloud. We have a major partnership with AWS in terms of providing that car-to-cloud connectivity. Once you’re showing how all of those things are connected, that’s how you’re going to start to deliver into the smart city.

CM: When do you anticipate this becoming a reality?

MW: Things like vehicle-to-vehicle you can experience today. A lot of that will be government standards in terms of when those things get rolled out. We see it as several years away. It’s coming, and sometimes these things move very rapidly. With autonomous vehicles, it’s starting, but it’ll be a groundswell effect. We think that that’ll accelerate much faster. How far out is that? It’s difficult to predict. And then how quickly does it gain mass adoption? All of those things are to be figured out.

CM: Your business is primarily B2B at this point. Who are your primary customers and how are you marketing your services to them?

MW: Our customers are the largest banks, governments and auto manufacturers. In addition, we have a big focus on the mid-market, and we do this particularly around cybersecurity. We have an AI prevention-first approach to cybersecurity. We use AI algorithms to identify things that are coming into your organization that look like malware or ransomware. And then we stop them from actually executing in the first place. That works well with mid-market clients that may not have security operation centers or 24/7 support. Instead, we’ll deliver that as a managed service.

CM: What channels do you use to market your products and services to customers?

MW: We look at the buyer’s journey and then we map how we reach buyers at different parts of the journey. We’ll advertise in business publications like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal or Washington Post. We’ll do digital advertising and a lot across search marketing. We do a lot through social—organic and paid social, a lot of earned media. It’s omnichannel in terms of how we’re going after the market. We do a lot of thought leadership. We publish threat research reports that get picked up in the news and that’s also shared with our customers.

CM: What tactics are working well for you right now?

MW: We do incredibly well with content marketing. I’ve seen content marketing evolve in my career, and I think it’s a great tactic. The hardest part for marketers doing content marketing is having something interesting to say. They might fall back and create content that is not that compelling, which I think is a huge mistake.

For BlackBerry, we lean into our threat reports. We’ve done things like uncovering hack-for-hire organizations where nation states would engage for-profit companies to execute hacking campaigns and social engineering campaigns, as well as private companies using hack-for-hire organizations to go after competitors. We have our own research team that identifies these exploits and vulnerabilities, threats and actors, and we basically package that up and then go out and tell the world about it.

We do something called Threat Thursdays, where every week we’re sharing new vulnerabilities out in the market. Some of them are really big, like exploits in the mobile space. Some things are small that are more bespoke in terms of tactics, but every week we’re publishing something new. On a longer-term basis, every quarter we come out with very extensive reports.

CM: Let’s talk about trends generally. Are there interesting or up-and-coming trends in B2B marketing that you have your eye on?

MW: The digitization of marketing has been a boon for so many marketers. And your ability to understand your market has never been better. It’s not new, because we’ve been focused on it, but it’s becoming more and more relevant every year. Our ability to understand trends based on more data coming in has only gotten better.

The other trend is something we lean into a lot: understanding your competitors. If you did a competitive study 10 years ago, you would probably hire a research firm and do it once a year to try and understand what’s happening in your market. Today, we understand what’s going on with our competitors on a weekly basis. We’re much smarter about understanding what our competitors are doing, what seems to be working for them, what doesn’t work for them. We’re much more mindful of having an outside-in perspective in B2B marketing. I see this trend only picking up.

CM: What excites you most about the marketing industry right now?

MW: What’s interesting about B2B is product differentiation. That cycle only gets more and more compressed. Years ago, you might have a product advantage for several releases. Now, you have product advantage for a release. The differentiation at that offer level is more difficult to maintain or extend. I think that brand becomes more valued in terms of where you see the differentiation. Your ability to provide that level of trust as an advisor or as a trusted solution, particularly in the markets we’re in, where privacy and security matters, that equation of trust means so much from a brand perspective.

There are things that you want to build more brand equity in. If we can move past it being a nebulous concept into something that’s more concrete, that makes it more of board conversation. All of this is getting to more quantification of marketing. And marketing becomes a more strategic conversation

CM: How should marketers think about measuring that brand equity?

MW: I would do it across three things. We measure our brand awareness, brand perception and brand preference. That’s at the highest level as it relates to brand. If you know awareness deeply, and your awareness relative to your competitors, and if you know perception and preference, you can begin to get an idea how valuable brand is in terms of creating pull in that journey. Are you just pushing opportunities through the funnel or are you pulling them through the funnel? Once you begin to quantify that you can start to be much smarter in terms of how you allocate your investments across push tactics as well as pull tactics.

CM: Where do you see the greatest opportunity for marketers today?

MW: There’s so much opportunity for marketers right now. A lot of it has to do with all the data that we have access to and how we use it. There are more things that we can do now that we never did. That competitive analysis example: any marketer who’s not doing that, it’s a huge missed opportunity. Of course, they need to know their value proposition and the best way to get their value proposition communicated out to the market. But there’s so much more richness that marketers can do beyond just that.

The post Brands on Fire: BlackBerry CMO on Pivot From Mobile Phones to B2B Cybersecurity appeared first on Chief Marketer.

It may not come as a surprise that more than 23 million households got a new pet during the pandemic. We’ve all seen them: those first-time pet owners who seemed to be getting walked by their dogs rather than the other way around. What may be surprising, though, is that the vast majority were Gen Z and millennial owners. So, when it came to marketing Banfield Pet Hospital, the largest privately-owned veterinary practice in the U.S., the brand sought to reach the group on the social platforms they know and love.

Enter: the Banfield After Party, a digital, short-form video series made by and for pet lovers featuring guest influencers, artists and, of course, a collection of pets with extensive social media followings. The brand has seen a 400 percent increase in social followers thanks to the series and garnered 15 million impressions across Facebook and Instagram. “It was really a bonanza for pets. We were all stuck in our house, and the fellowship and love that pets provide was really needed,” says the company’s CMO, Lisa Stockmon. “It was a great time to tap into that energy in an entertaining way.” We spoke with her about marketing the hospital during the pandemic, growing its Gen Z base, generating brand awareness and leaning into the company’s relatability.

Chief Marketer: What was the inspiration behind the video series?

Lisa Stockmon, CMO, Banfield Pet Hospital: We wanted to reach out proactively and make sure that we were being relatable to our Gen Z and millennial owners. As we all know, videos of pets are often shared. So, it was tapping into all of that user-generated content and having fun with it. We’re doing all the social channels—Instagram, Facebook, YouTube. It’s hitting all the places where that consumer typically goes. And we are using our existing channels as well.

CM: How did you choose which pets to feature in the series?

LS: A lot of this was based on the popularity of some of the influencers that we used and the ones that had a successful following, or the ones that, quite frankly, we fell in love with. We’ve seen a lot of research about the animal-human bond, and we tried to find those that sparked some interest and were relatable. The love of pets has only grown during the pandemic, and that’s what we do for a living, so we tapped into that energy. This is the work that we do at Banfield. It’s mission-based. Everyone’s motivated by the love of pets, but during the pandemic it’s been especially meaningful.

CM: Since so there are so many more first-time pet owners, has your business changed at all during the pandemic?

LS: Absolutely. There’s a really great stat: Over 23 million households got a new pet during the pandemic. And the pet population is led by Gen Z and millennial owners, with 80 percent of Gen Zers currently owning a pet. Of the people who adopted pets during COVID, 13 percent were first-time pet owners. It was really a bonanza for pets. We were all stuck in our house, and the fellowship and love that pets provide was really needed. So, it was a great time to tap into that energy in an entertaining way. And we had some success. Banfield After Party media drove over 50 million impressions among Gen Z and young millennials. We saw a 400 percent increase in the growth of our social followers since launching the After Party.

CM: Did you accomplish the desired marketing goals for the campaign?

LS: There was certainly a lot of enthusiasm behind it. When I think about what we were hoping to accomplish, we were able to grow our Gen Z follower base, generate brand awareness and brand trust, further amplify our campaign and marketing efforts during a short-term period and increase brand recall.

CM: We talked a bit about how your business has changed. How has that affected your marketing?

LS: We’re leaning into the human-animal bond, and how best to leverage that relationship and support it. We are here for the health of your pet. And it’s great for our customers to understand that we get you, that we’re authentic. We love pets, too, and we want them to stay healthy. We want them to stay part of your family. If anything, it gave us an opportunity, like most marketers, to be relevant. What I love about pets is that this has allowed us to be further in your home. And now that entertainment value was amped up.

CM: When it comes to reaching and targeting Gen Z and millennial audiences, had you done this much before? How did you approach it strategically?

LS: This is an expansion of our existing efforts. We have to be where our customers are. When you look at the pet population, [the growth] is led by Gen Z and millennial owners. The strategy was to make sure that all our current and our potential customers know that we understand and care for your pet. That relationship, that bond, is very important. It’s part of our long-term strategy, but the audiences and Gen Z are growing. The dollars are there. They’re the folks who in the last five years have gotten new pets. So, we have a whole new segment that we want to make sure that we’re serving.

CM: Switching gears a bit… What trends should marketers be focused on right now?

LS: I think the whole idea of digital transformation is over. Digital is how we communicate, and so it’s not necessarily transformation. It is how you meet that customer where he or she is. The adoption of that isn’t something that you can choose. Consumers have an immediacy now. They want to work from home. They want their food delivered while they’re at home. And understanding that immediacy of the consumer is going to lead to some success. We’ve seen that at Banfield as well, which has to adapt to how we communicate with our pet parents, how we text with them, how we provide information to them through all of our digital channels.

CM: For all the aspiring CMOs out there, what qualities should a chief marketer have to be successful in the business world today?

LS: You have to be open minded. You have to be approachable, and you have to always remain strategic. One of the things I tell my team is that you have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable—and how do you welcome that? How do you begin to approach it with wonderment? There’s been so much change in the last 20 years. It’s about staying on top of the change that’s going to come about in the next 20 years.

The post Brands on Fire: Banfield Pet Hospital Targets Pandemic Pet Owners With ‘After Party’ Video Series appeared first on Chief Marketer.

It’s not every day that you can take home an artwork valued at $30,000 simply because you enjoyed it more than everyone else did. But thanks to an unusual art experience designed by Bombay Sapphire earlier this month, the only currency accepted at this particular auction was a bidder’s emotional connection to it.

The experience, which measured bidders’ reactions to the artwork using neuroaesthetic technology, highlighted the brand’s efforts to help democratize the art world by making art more accessible, regardless of financial means. “For the first time, we are creating an opportunity for art lovers to be able to bid on an original piece of art using their emotional connection and their senses rather than money,” says Jamie Keller, Brand Director, North America, at Bombay Sapphire.

We spoke with Keller about the inspiration behind the auction, the brand’s larger “Senses Stirred” campaign and its new focus on intimate experiences that hero emerging and underrepresented artists. And for a deep dive into the event itself, check out this case study from CM sister pub Event Marketer.

Chief Marketer: How did the idea of the sensory auction first come about?

Jamie Keller: The sensory auction is a continuation of our new brand campaign, “Senses Stirred.” The focus of the campaign is centered around the gin and tonic and how, when done well, it is so much more than just a cocktail. It’s actually an experience for the senses. The sensory auction was designed to bring that surreal experience of enjoying Bombay and tonic to life.

What’s super exciting is that it’s never been done before. For the first time, we are creating an opportunity for art lovers to be able to bid on an original piece of art using their emotional connection and their senses rather than money, which is the traditional way in which you would bid on art. The press preview was about showcasing the concept and also showcasing how the sensorial auction actually works from a technology standpoint. We partnered with Dan Lam, an emerging artist. She’s got this great visual language in terms of how she creates these 3D sculptures through her creative lens. Her artwork is so exciting and it brings a lot of emotions. It’s really fun and playful.

CM: How is the brand itself reflected in her work?

JK: She’s able to spotlight the elevated and balanced profiles of a Bombay and tonic because of how she uses her art. She’s doing it through layers and complexities of colors and textures, which for her emulated what a Bombay and tonic is all about. [At the press event] we did a representation with one of the models to showcase the technology that is being utilized to measure the artwork. We unveiled the piece of art and we were able to watch the model, live, register for a sensorial bid. We also featured the cocktail that was inspired by Dan, called the “Dan and Tonic,” which was a creative evolution of a traditional Bombay and tonic.

CM: How does the technology that measures bidders’ emotional responses actually work?

JK: The bidders are able to sit down individually with the artwork. So when you’re bidding you’re the only one that is in the room, ensuring it’s quiet and you’re able to focus on the piece. The reactions to the artwork are measured through a unique combination of emotional readings that are able to be recorded, which essentially discovers the piece’s most impassioned owner.

We use something called neuroaesthetic technology. It’s a measure of three specific components. One is the ability to measure brainwave readings with electrodes. Then there is skin galvanic response technology, which is placed on your fingertips. That’s capable of detecting the most minutia of sweat drops. Then lastly, there’s an eye tracking technology, which is sitting in front of them. That measures their focus, engagement and intensity from the depth of their eyes. The scientists are able to take the combination of those three elements and tabulate a single score. And at the end of the auction, the person that has the highest score will actually earn the right to take the piece of art work home with them.

CM: Did you target a typical art crowd for this or did you expand your reach?

JK: This was pushed out through our own channels and some event listings. It was slightly more general market. For us, it was about being able to tap into and find those that appreciate and enjoy art and give them the opportunity to not necessarily be pushed aside, as they may have before in these types of auctions, because price alone may have pushed them away. This actually gives them the opportunity to bid and take home an amazing piece of art because of their emotional connection rather than a dollar value.

CM: Talk about the strategic marketing goals of the activation.

JK: We launched “Stir Creativity” as a brand platform for Bombay back in 2018, and the mission is to inspire creativity within everyone. That is the lens for when do any sort of experience or activation for the brand, whether it’s through our communications or experiences themselves. Now more than ever, leading with purpose is really important to the brand, and this is something where we have the opportunity to participate in a conversation around the democratization of the art world. This event focuses on passion and conviction as a route to collecting your pieces of art instead of access to money. So, when we think about that conversation of the democratization of art, it’s how do we create these more inclusive spaces and make creativity accessible to everybody? Because we do believe that creativity is essential.

CM: Has the pandemic shifted your experiential strategy?

JK: We’re focusing more on intimate art experiences that hero emerging and underrepresented artists who need support now more than ever. I can give you an example. For a new brand launch that we had called Bramble, we partnered with chef Marcus Samuelsson to spotlight rising talent within the art world, [including] local artists Cey Adams and Dianne Smith. Marcus is a world-renowned chef, but also he’s done a lot for the Harlem community here in New York. At a time where there were a lot of empty billboards, we allowed them the opportunity to find their expression of what Bombay Bramble meant to them. They used their art identities and visuals to take the space of billboards in Harlem. It’s another example of supporting artists during a difficult time.

CM: Shifting gears a bit… could you talk about how you’re tapping social media platforms to reach consumers?

JK: For the sensory auction in particular, we use social media to get the word out about the events. We’ll also tap into partnerships with some influencers to help us communicate the story of the sensory auction—and, if they feel appropriate, the conversation we’re having around being more accessible and being inclusive. We partnered with seven influencers for the event to help spread that story. Also, we’re going to be capturing the content not only from the event but also the auction. We’ll be sharing the recap video of everything that we did through our own channels and through paid media to tell the story.

CM: The pandemic forced many spirits brands to double down on ecommerce. How has Bombay experienced this?

JK: There’s no doubt that the ecommerce platform—specifically within spirits—has grown significantly since the pandemic. It was a segment that was growing, but the pandemic definitely catapulted it to another level. We look at partnering with pure-play partners, like Drizzly, Instacart and Retailer.com. So, retailers that have a dotcom that are a source of sales. We definitely think about the role that they play in all of our marketing activities. Specifically when we think about social media, how can we make consumers aware of our brand and create desire to try our brands? We think about the role that ecommerce plays and whether or not we drive consumers to those platforms to be able to purchase, to create a seamless consumer experience.

The post Brands on Fire: Bombay Sapphire appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Chief Marketer’s Brands on Fire and Marketers on Fire series, a monthly analysis of some of the world’s top brands and executives making moves that set them apart within the marketplace, is now well into its second year. So as we head into the fall season, let’s take pause and highlight some of the nuggets of wisdom we’ve gathered during the first half of 2021—from Ikea’s renewed focus on sustainability to Dunkin’s innovative promotional programs to Visible’s cheeky brand voice and experiences. Click on the brands below to review their latest killer marketing campaigns.

Cadillac

Budweiser

Visible

Dunkin

Barbie

Ikea

The post Brands on Fire in 2021 appeared first on Chief Marketer.