The Drew Blog

Star CMO Interview: Terri Funk Graham

03/8/13

If you’ve been in this business awhile, you have seen many an ad campaign launch strong and then fizzle out in just a year or two. Perhaps this is why I was so bowled over when I heard Terri Funk Graham (at last year’s CMO Club Summit) tell the story of the “Jack” campaign that is now in its 18th year of productive service for Jack in the Box. As a student of marketing, I couldn’t help but wonder, how does such a campaign come into being? How do those in charge keep it fresh? What role does the agency play? What’s the secret sauce here?

I got the chance to ask Ms. Graham these questions and many more earlier this year and it was then that I realized she is truly a rock star in our industry. During Graham’s long tenure as CMO at Jack in the Box which ended at the end of 2012, the Jack campaign consistently drove product sales, introduced new menu items, helped overcome recessions and bonded with a new generation of fast food consumers. Graham, as you will soon see, has the courage to take risks not just once but year after year, has the wisdom to stick with one “genius” creative partner and has the curiosity to explore emerging communication channels. Here is part one of our interview:

Neisser: So tell me how initially the Jack campaign came into beginning back in ’95?
Graham: Well, it came out of the E. coli crisis. So the reality was the company needed to do something to revitalize the brand and make the brand relevant again in the marketplace. And so it came from a crisis.

Neisser: Which must have been a scary and interesting place to start, right?
Graham: I think that when you’re in a situation like this, you’re willing to put a lot more on line. And I so I think it actually it drove the ability to take more risks.

Neisser: Really interesting. So you decided to bring Jack back?
Graham: Yes, but let’s bring him back in a way that’s relevant and different and will catch attention. So it was 1995 when we launched Bringing Jack Back.

Neisser: So tell me about those initial ads?
Graham: Well, the very first spot had some controversy around it because it showed Jack coming back. He had had plastic surgery and he blew up the boardroom because the folks from the boardroom are the ones who blew him up in the ’80s.

Neisser: I see. A little revenge.
Graham: So he blew up the boardroom and basically reintroduced himself in the marketplace as coming back, better than before with plastic surgery and that he was going to be a big advocate for the consumers. The message was Jack was back and he was going to give fast food customers what they wanted.

Neisser: So did that seem like an idea that could endure 18 years?
Graham: Well, that’s where Dick Sittig, the creative mastermind behind the Jack’s Back campaign, comes in. We constantly challenged Dick to keep Jack relevant, and because he used this sense of humor that was a bit unconventional, described often as irreverent, he kept rising to the occasion and the campaign endures to this day.

Neisser: So why do you think the ads worked so well?
Graham: I think what drove the campaign to continue to last is that we tapped into the emotional branding side. I think that often that is not given enough emphasis. We tapped into the emotional side that really gave it a personality that people could connect to.

Neisser: So how did Jack end up having Dick Sittig’s voice?
Graham: That was actually by accident. That wasn’t planned. When he did the initial pitch, it was in his voice and then when we finally went to casting, we had the actor and we’re putting everything together that we’re looking at all kinds of different voices and the problem was everyone liked Dick Sittig’s voice more than anything that was put in front. So we decided to go with his voice.

Neisser: What does it take to keep a campaign like this together for so long?
Graham: I think there are a couple of things to consider. One is I was always willing to take a risk. So we were unapologetic about who we were. Dick Sittig would present things that would make us feel uncomfortable. But we knew that it was going to grab attention that it wasn’t going to hurt the brand as long as we were true to who we were. And so it was a combination of being unapologetic about who we were. It was about allowing great creative work to be done. I am not a believer in dealing any sort of pretesting of advertising. We never did anything of that nature. I also think that approval by committee is the death of a campaign, you end up with mediocre work. And, I think that, we truly trusted each other in our work and I think that’s also what helped build that campaign. And so we would constantly challenge each other to keep it relevant.

Neisser: Very few CMO’s are given permission to take risks. You must have had a lot of management support?
Graham: Yes, I had full support and I had permission. Linda Lang absolutely let me run with it and she always backed it. And, there would be situations where I would come up and say, “okay, I have got one that’s going to rile up some folks, prompting phone calls, e-mails and potentially, this all will need to be discussed in the board.” And she would say, “okay, is it worth the risk? And I’d say, “yes.” And she’d say, “I’ll back you, but you need to stand tall.” So I would have to do all the explaining in the boardroom anytime something went a little astray.

Neisser: What do you think were some of your most risky efforts?
Graham: Running Jack over – that was a trying moment. We were essentially putting the most — the biggest brand equity that the company had, Jack, and putting him on the line to see if people cared because if they didn’t care that he got hit by a bus, we were going to be in trouble. So that’s when we had Jack Get Hit By a Bus and of course it proved out to be quite a success and that was in 2009.

Neisser: So how did this part of the campaign unfold?
Graham: We only showed the ad one time and it was on the Super Bowl. And then everything went basically digital and social from there. That was our way of stepping into the whole social media area. So all of a sudden it got millions of views on YoutTube and it was talked about all over the place. We had amazing press and impressions on that. And, we had people sending cards and teddy bears and everything that — flowers, everything that you could imagine for Jack’s recovery. And then we created a storyline. We created multiple ads that followed up afterwards that talked about how he was doing and it became a campaign within a campaign.

Neisser: So what about the hallucinating kid who sees Jack on his dashboard? That must of stirred things up.
Graham: Yes it did. We really wanted to focus on selling our 99-cent tacos. And there is a real following to those tacos. And young people, after they’ve gone to the clubs tend to head to Jack’s for their tacos. And so we played off of that, if you will. And so we had, you know, a young guy in a van come up and he wanted to order as many as 30 tacos. And needless to say, that got quite a bit of attention.

Neisser: Did you end up selling a lot of tacos?
Graham: Everything that we did we also did with the premise of generating sales and driving traffic. I mean we didn’t do funny ads just for the sake of doing funny ads. Our goal was always to drive traffic to the brand. And that’s exactly what we start out to do and that’s what we accomplished each and every time. So in that case, we certainly sold a lot of tacos and we got a lot of buzz about tacos.

Neisser: You know, I think you told the story of how on that one, some protestors were showing up at your corporate headquarters?
Graham: Yeah, and I turned on the sprinklers. Yes, then the true story — we were going to have protestors and media show up and at the time we had grass all around our corporate headquarters. And it was in the afternoon. And so my way of stalling that was we became a water park in the afternoon and we turned on the sprinklers and we didn’t have any protests that showed up at all the rest of the week!

FYI, After a 22-year run at Jack in the Box, Terri Funk Graham recently joined the Board of Directors at Hot Topic Inc., is working with The CMO Club as the Chairman of its President’s Circle and is consulting for HOM Sotheby’s Realty. Fellow CMOs can meet Terri in person at the upcoming CMO Club Summit in NYC.

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Fly Like Eagles’ CMO, Tim McDermott, p1

07/18/12

Tim McDermott, CMO of the Philadelphia Eagles makes a compelling case that marketing a sports team is not all that different from marketing other products like consumer packaged goods. After spending over an hour with him on the phone, I not only came to see his point but also realized that he’s a marketer who really understands how to build a successful brand. (By the way, I met Tim through The CMO Club.)

Having spent a number of years marketing sports teams (both hockey & football) Tim also did a stint at Comcast and earned an MBA from Harvard along the way. Here are the highlights of my conversation with Tim broken into two parts that I think you’ll find most enlightening even if you aren’t an Eagles fan!

Neisser: is there anything keeping you up at night?
McDermott: Insuring that we are providing value for season ticket holders. We need to continue to find ways to add value to being a season ticket holder. Find ways to invest with our fan base, and continue to market why it’s a great experience. Why it’s fun to come to the games. Why it’s great to watch us on TV or to be part of purchasing our merchandise…

Neisser: And that’s an interesting place to start, in that there are things that you can control as the marketer and then there’s what happens on the field.
McDermott: I think there are a lot of similarities between marketing sports property and marketing for other companies. Whether it be the jean companies or the entertainment companies. The reality is we’re probably doing the same things that the marketers are of other retail oriented companies. We’ve got “widgets” to sell in the form of tickets. And we go through the exercise of segmentation, targeting, and positioning our products and our brand the same way that other marketers do. We build brands. We engage in all the different forms of marketing, and advertising as other companies do. So we’re doing everything from market research to CRM implementations, to automated emails; to managing social digital campaigns to direct marketing, to direct response. You name it and I think we do it.

Neisser: So what are the key differences in marketing a sports team?
McDermott: Everyday my product can fluctuate–it can change. And as much as I want to or want our fans to have an undefeated Super Bowl season, I can’t control that. Whereas when you walk in to the McDonald’s or when you purchase Tide, it can be consistent. And that is certainly a challenge to the sports marketer is that you have to able to accept the fact that it is inconsistent. You have to accept the fact that at the end of the day, you can’t control your product. And yet still be able to create demand for your product and create engagement, and create interest in your product.

Neisser: What about your fans?
McDermott: Then the one thing that we do have going for us, which some of those other types of companies don’t, is the tremendous amount of passion that our consumer has for our product. And you see that displayed in a lot of different ways. You should see the letters that we get and the emails that we get. People write stories, poems, music about our product, and they’re willing to sit down and spend time with you, for free of course, to tell you all about how they feel about your product. And to wear your logo on merchandise and they’re walking around with your product. When I step back I know I’m very fortunate because we have such a passionate consumer base. There are many companies out there who would love to be able to have consumers who are as passionate as ours.

Neisser: A losing season must be a sort of torture test of brand loyalty.
McDermott: There’s obviously some level of correlation between winning and off the field success. How much that correlation is, and how much the causation is between the two, is probably open for debate. And probably depends on a lot of different variables, from the city that you’re in to the kind of the winning tradition or how much success your team has had over an extended period time. To the sort of marketing and brand engagements that you do, all the way up to how people perceive your ownership group. I think if you look at the best sports brands though, all of the ones that have crossed that threshold, where independent of wins and losses, they create a brand that fans want to be associated with. And even in times that aren’t so good on the field, or on the ice or on the court, fans are still showing up. And they’ve created a connection with that fan base. They’ve made being a fan of that team something that does cross the threshold of just wins and losses. So that is something that all sports marketers are trying to do, is build that equity so that when the rainy day occurs people don’t leave. The fans don’t depart.

Neisser: What can the team do off the field to build loyalty?
McDermott: One of the biggest things we can do as team marketers is to create transparency and real trust with our consumer base. I think you can create trust through creating that transparency; and so having ways and methods on processes in place to listen to your fan base, to engage your fan base; to talk with them, but also provide them an avenue to share what’s on their minds. That’s something that we’ve been very successful with.

Neisser: Can you give me a specific example?
McDermott: We’ve created a season ticket holder advisory board. We’ve got a 35-person board that we started a year ago. The board membership runs two years. And it’s not just a glorified focus group. The people that have signed up to be part of this board, signed up to be solutions providers. They are very passionate about the Eagles. At the same time they would tell us what we’re doing right. They will tell us what we’re doing wrong. And they provide or I should say the quid pro quo is, they as being part of a sports membership they also have to provide us or help us come up with solutions to the problem. Don’t just tell us what we’re doing wrong, but be an extension of our marketing department, and help us create the solution. So we’ve been very successful with doing that. And I think it’s truly a concept of listening, and engaging, and developing trust with them.

Neisser: What measures do you have in place from a brand health standpoint?
McDermott: We look at TV ratings, website traffic, overall traffic on Facebook and Twitter accounts among other metrics. Merchandise sales is generally another sign of brand health. And of course, season tickets and how well you’re doing with ticket sales. If you’re sold out as in our case, then it’s a matter of monitoring your wait list and seeing if your wait list is growing. And then there are more scientific research based brand tracking studies. We do our own brand tracking study every year to see how we’re performing. And then are third party brand trackers, ESPN Sports Poll is an annual brand tracking study. And some others that are out there as well.

Neisser: And how is your brand doing?
McDermott: Our brand is doing well. Going back to early 2006, we were the fastest growing brand in sports according to a poll by Forbes. You can see some correlation there between how we were performing on the field as well. We had gone to a Super Bowl in January 2005. We lost in the Super Bowl to the Patriots in 2004-5 season. So there was some correlation obviously between on field success and off the field success. Overall today if you look at our website traffic, if you look at merchandise sales, if you look at the TV ratings, all of them are doing extremely well. In the 2010 season, we set TV ratings records. We set website merchandise sales records. 2010 was a very strong season for us. Last year, we saw a little bit of a dip. Again we were an eight and eight football team last year. We didn’t live up to some of the expectations. But when you look at most of the metrics, we performed well. We’re an extremely a strong brand, and you can see that even in a not so great on the field year, that our brand has been built in such a way that it can withstand a not so great year.

Be sure to read part 2 of this interview.

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Q&A on Social Media w Trip Hunter, FUSION-IO

04/6/12

To help gain insight into the results of our soon to be published Social Media Fitness Study, I interviewed a number of marketing professionals including Trip Hunter, VP Brand Marketing of FUSION-IO, a recently public company that is doing really well on all fronts. Trip, as many of you know, worked at Renegade for many years, so of course, I’m completely bias about his talents. Nonetheless, I think you will find what he has to say quite informative and insightful.

DN: B2C companies outscored B2B companies in the Social Media Fitness study. Do you have any thoughts on why this might be the case?
B2C companies are much better at engaging with people as individuals. B2B companies market like the end consumer isn’t a human being. They are a collection of survey responses and data points. They’re not. They are real- live human beings too that get sad, and find things funny, and care about their overeating.

I also think there is a belief that the level of passion that consumers in B2C have for brands is a lot higher and more a part of ‘who they are’ than exists in B2B brands. People strongly identify with the brands in their life. They help define who they are. “I’m an apple person”, or “I drive a BMW.” You don’t hear so much someone say “I’m an HP 980 server guy”. So I think B2C brands are better positioned to capitalize on this. It is not always true, but it’s a perception among B2B that individuals don’t identify with B2B brands as much, so why bother?

DN: Do you think there is still skepticism among B2B marketers that social can help them achieve their business goals?
I do think there is skepticism here, especially among more established and mature industries, because it is difficult to find a point of view or create content that is newsworthy, or interesting, or engaging. If you can’t get people involved in your story, then you might walk away. Fusion is lucky in that it is a technology that is very innovative, and new, and because of that, techies really pay attention to our story. They are constantly talking about Fusion, and playing with our solutions, and benchmarking them against the existing status quo, and engaging with us. Their passion for Fusion is genuine, and we would be the fool not to engage and share and facilitate in the growth of that passion. A lot of people are asking a lot of questions, because what we do is so revolutionary. If we don’t answer, someone else less qualified will. By facilitating understanding, we ultimately help them find solutions for the current issues that plague traditional data storage architecture.

DN: What is social media doing for your business?
We consistently generate qualified leads through SM. When prospects ask the general community a question about Fusion, we put them directly in touch with someone at Fusion who can answer that question. More often than not, this leads to further conversations which lead to sales. As our director of social media said “I am the SM switchboard operator who connects people to the right person in the right department. I communicate with customers and potential customers directly and help them out. Our efforts are as much about customer service, if not more, than about lead generation.”

DN: Less than 1/3 of the companies surveyed had a disaster plan in place. What triggered the development of a disaster plan at FusionIO and did it work when you had to use it?

There are at least two kinds of disasters: Disasters that shake the house, and those that knock it down. Our disaster plan covers the former well. We’re working on the latter.

Disasters that shake the house happen almost everyday. Someone makes a negative or incorrect comment about us, or incorrectly compares us to a competitor. Our first negative comment through SM was back in 2009, and we have been creating our disaster plan ever since. As a result of that negative comment, we contacted the customer, helped him out, and turned him into an evangelist. He went on to make supportive and positive comments about us from then on. (see below) Recently we’ve been adding “what if” scenarios to the playbook. Being a public company, we have to be prepared.

In general, we’ve learned that the quicker we are able to respond, the more favorably things go. There’s no way to fully measure the impact of our direct communications with followers, whether they be customers, fans, or critics, but we believe it’s invaluable. Because we have been very approachable and communicative, people expect honest and quick answers from us. They know they can reach out to us via social networks and we will respond and help them.

One key component of our plan is to be measured in our response. Sometimes people just want attention-want to be recognized, and you have to know when to walk away. What we have learned is that there is a code of conduct in the community, and many times it is self regulating. Recently a guy made a video about us that wasn’t based in fact. We responded saying we would love to discuss his POV offline as is would be a rather in-depth discussion. He had no interest in doing this-he was looking for attention. But the community dealt with him, discounting his claims and eventually stopped listening. This was a huge homerun for us-So much more credible than if we are telling him he is wrong.

DN: Most companies especially B2B struggle to develop engaging content and get their customers to pitch in. How have you been able to accomplish this?
We are always trying to grow engagement with our customers, and we are not as far along as we would like to be. That said, we are so new that a broad understanding of our technology doesn’t exist yet. People want to know more, so getting them involved is not as hard as it might be for others.

We treat them like the intelligent, opinionated, passionate human beings they are. B to B 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.

DN: You mentioned that you are in the process of auditing all of your social channels — what do hope to learn from this audit?
We are hoping to learn a lot of things, especially where we stand relative to our competitors. Since we sent you that answer, we have gathered some revealing numbers. Even though we’re much tinier than our largest competitor, we are gaining followers as a percentage of overall audience faster than they are, and in the area of measurement that really matters–shares–we are also ahead. People click on our links and share our content on Twitter more than they do with our largest competitor, so that is promising.

We also want to find out what we need to do better. B2C companies are known for creating very engaging content on channels such as FB and Twitter-we can learn a lot from them and how some types of B2C efforts can translate across to B2B.

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Q&A w Brian Kardon, CMO, Eloqua

10/16/11

I ran into Brian Kardon at The CMO Club Summit and we had some great conversations despite the fact that he is a RedSox fan. Brian is the CMO at Eloqua, a leading provider of sales automation software and a true thought leader. Brian makes a strong case for crowd-sourcing, content marketing, personalization and mobile while encouraging marketers to take advantage of the downturn.

DN: As 2011 winds down, are you thinking “good riddance” or “darn I’ll miss it?”
Missing 2011 already! 2011 was the year that the four horsemen of the digital age became real: mobile, social, apps, cloud. We found real value from these. It’s not the proverbial “just a few months away.” It’s now. It’s an exciting time to be a marketer!

DN: What new things did you try in 2011?
Crowd-sourcing took a big step forward. We leveraged our online community to help answer customer questions and create new, valuable content faster and cheaper via crowd-sourcing. And when the “crowd” creates its, they are also your partner in distributing it. Content that was created by outsiders received lots more love than that created by insiders or “the usual suspects”. Companies are reaching outside their walls like never before.

DN: Is the current economic uncertainty effecting your plans for 2012?
I’m starting to hear “hunker down” talk from business leaders. That’s a huge mistake. When your competitors are zigging, that’s the time to zag. It’s like doing a house renovation. You get higher quality workers and lower costs during a recession. The same is true of business. You can find better talent, get better media rates, pay less for words at Google because there are fewer dollars chasing those things during a downturn. And when the recession is over, those companies are in an incredibly strong competitive position because they have been continually investing.

DN: Looking ahead to 2012, are there some emerging trends that you hope to capitalize upon?
Call it 1:1 marketing or mass customization, but the dream of personalized digital experiences is finally here. Websites are no longer the embodiment of Groundhog Day, where the website looks the same every day. Think NetFlix and Amazon – where they use your digital body language to personalize movie and book recommendations. Retail and fashion sites use shopping card and clickstream digital body language to personalize the shopping experience. You like Gucci, hate Pucci? Your favorite web sites should know that and present content that they know you will like. Drew likes tennis – he gets an offer for US Open tickets. Drew likes the Yankees – he gets invited to Terry Francona’s Farewell Party! (Blogger’s note: you won’t see me holding my breath for that invitation.)

DN: What do you have to say about the growing challenge of complexity for marketers?
In all the petabytes and exabytes of data, some people see complexity and shudder. I think smart marketers see beauty in the data and their ability to personalize and improve customer engagement.

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Q&A w Hope Frank, CMO, Webtrends

10/14/11

I caught up with Hope Frank, CMO of Webtrends at The CMO Club Summit and look forward to seeing her at Pivot next week. Hope thinks big especially when it comes to marketing and offers a positive assessment of 2011 and an outright bullish one for 2012. It is safe to say that Hope lives up to her name.

DN: As 2011 winds down, are you thinking “good riddance” or “darn I’ll miss it?”
2011 was a pivotal year for digital marketing and businesses. Marketers are getting smarter about their programs and investments, which drives them to companies like Webtrends. We maximize marketing ROI, through optimization, testing, targeting and program measurement with our analytics offering. This is an area companies are laser-focused on. We are certainly looking forward to watching our industry mature in 2012.

DN: Looking back at 2011, what new things did you try that worked or didn’t work?
Webtrends has been on an incredibly steep curve of development to meet the immediate needs of brand marketers today. In 2011, we introduced the industry’s first unified analytics offering to provide brand marketers a view of their performance across mobile, social and web properties. Amazingly, we also introduced Webtrends Social, a complete social offering from ads to apps to analytics. Both of these developments have driven deep digital marketing success for our clients.

DN: Are you particularly proud of something you tried in 2011?
Without question it would be the globalization of our Webtrends products and services. In 2011, we opened our Japan office, and enjoyed tremendous growth from our EMEA, South America and Asia Pacific teams. Our products and services naturally translate to marketers globally who are looking to effectively measure their programs and discover new ways to engage their audiences.

DN: Is the current economic uncertainty effecting your plans for 2012, and if so how?
We do not see the current economic climate affecting our business in any negative way. In fact, we are seeing companies be smarter about their digital investments, driving them to our optimization and analytics solutions. We expect to continue to see strong growth in 2012.

DN: Looking ahead to 2012, are there some emerging trends that you hope to capitalize upon? If so, what are they and how important do you think these trends are to your business?
The shift of analytics from the IT department to the CMO will continue, as products continue to develop in the direction of clean, simple dashboards and interfaces that allow marketers to develop, manage and measure digital campaigns through intuitive tools and services. We have seen this unfold with “ahead of the curve clients” such as Zinio.

Zinio has been an avid customer of our analytics products and services and has applied it in a super intelligent fashion to shape their business. They don’t just sell magazine covers, Zinio sells the treasure of storytelling under the covers. Based on Webtrends analytics, Zinio is able to determine which articles are the most compelling and leverage those in their “Explore” section. Zinio allows for exploration and discovery of category-driven stories FOR FREE to complement the 5,000 titles Zinio sells. View examples here .

DN: Can you boil down your Pivot presentation to one or two key take-aways?
Genius in the Age of Enlightenment: Evan Greene, CMO, of The Recording Academy (The GRAMMYs) and Jeanniey Mullen, CMO of Zinio and VIVmag will join me to showcase creative innovation within social programs in music, fashion and publishing.

Key take-aways from our presentation at Pivot will include:

Don’t let the tools get in your way
Dive back into the art of marketing with jaw dropping concepts and creative
And a unified analytics approach to new creative and outreach is critical to ROI on digital

DN: Finally, among the trends I’m tracking are complexity (for marketers) and data-overload (for consumers). Can you comment on these?
Tackling complexity in analytics was another major achievements in 2011. We developed the only unified analytics offering in the industry. Webtrends Analytics 10 allows brands to measure effectiveness across their mobile, social and web properties, and see these measurements integrated in an easy to understand dashboard. It was a major step forward for our industry.

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Q&A w Jeffrey Hayzlett, Author, Consultant, xCMO Kodak

10/13/11

I caught up with Jeffrey Hayzlett at The CMO Club Summit in LA and look forward to hearing him speak next week in NYC at Pivot. He is a highly engaging speak with strong and clear points-of-view. In the interview below, Jeff discusses his next book, the growing impact of mobile advertising and adds a 5th P to the old marketing pillars: product, price, place, promotion.

DN: As 2011 winds down, are you thinking “good riddance” or “darn I’ll miss it?”
2011 was a great year for my company and me, personally. I spoke all over the world, Australia, all over the US and met some great people and great companies. Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google and MGM were just a few of my favorites. My book, “The Mirror Test” was released in paperback. And I just became celebrity editor of the largest circulation magazine in the world, “Tweeting & Business”, coming out this month. It’s been a great year. I tend never to look back, just move forward and go!

DN: Looking back at 2011, what new things did you try?
I’m always open to trying new things; I love to take risks. But I also think it’s important to continue to examine your company inside and out, drive change and make tough decisions. It’s exactly about what I wrote in “The Mirror Test”.

DN: What else happened for you in 2011?
I wrote another book this year and it will be coming out in January. It’s called Running the Gauntlet: Essential Business Lessons to Lead, Drive Change and Grow Profits. Gauntlet takes the concepts from The Mirror Test to the next level. I’m really proud of the book. We included some amazing new interactive elements as well that will make the book unique.

DN: Is the current economic uncertainty effecting your plans for 2012 and if so how?
Overall it’s not, I’m driving change and continuing forward. You have to. I have to take my company and my plans and move forward—whether I succeed or fail is up to me. I don’t look at the economy and let that stop or influence anything I want to do.

DN: Looking ahead to 2012, are there some emerging trends that you hope to capitalize upon?
Mobile advertising is growing fast than anyone–Google or Yahoo! included–predicted. As a marketer I would have a plan in place for mobile campaigns. And social media continues to evolve. Video is surpassing the written word online. I’ve tape many of my blogs as video as well.

DN: Can you boil down your Pivot presentation to one or two key insights or thought-provoking take-aways?
I’m fortunate to be on a panel with Gayle Weiswasser, the Vice President of Social Media Communications at Discovery Communications. We’ll be talking about the traditional 4Ps of marketing. But with a spin. The four P’s aren’t going away, but they have been joined by a powerful 5th P — the social element — people. Since it’s a panel, you never know which direction the conversation will go–which I love.

However, key points I usually work into any conversation about marketing and social media are: Never, ever discount the Power of One. Just one follower, whether they are an evangelist or a critic, will tell their friends and followers. Don’t ignore the critics. The recent incident with GASP in Australia is an excellent lesson on how NOT to do it. I call the ROI of social media “return on ignoring”. You can’t ignore the comments–positive or negative. Feedback from your customers is critical; in the past I’ve used that feedback to develop new features and products customers loved and bought like crazy. As marketers it’s critical we really listen and respond. That creates brand ambassadors for your company.

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