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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Q&A on Pinterest w Katrina Klier, Microsoft

08/17/12

When it comes to digital marketing, there are very few who know more about the ins and outs than Katrina Klier, Senior Director / VP Worldwide Digital Marketing at Microsoft. I caught up with Katrina at a recent The CMO Club cocktail party and she was nice enough to let me pepper her with questions about Pinterest. Her answers are refreshingly honest and informative–of particular note are her suggestions for how Pinterest could become more brand friendly–I hope they’re listening.

Drew Neisser: How do you see tech brands like yours being able to take advantage of Pinterest?
Katrina Klier: Pinterest is a wonderful way to showcase new products in a highly visual way as well as gain endorsements via re-pins that help create product brand awareness. Overall though I would say the tech world has been slow to get in to Pinterest. Dell has done a pretty good job: http://pinterest.com/dell/ .

Drew Neisser: Has Microsoft used Pinterest effectively thus far?
Katrina Klier: LOL, no I wouldn’t say we’ve used it effectively yet so far but we’ve learned a great deal. (The Pinterest.com/Microsoft page in inactive & the Pin it to Win it contest by the Windows team didn’t seem to get much traction.) We’ve done what most big brands do, claimed a profile and have plans for much more to come, but it isn’t live yet.

Drew Neisser: Do you have any thoughts on how Pinterest could become more brand-friendly?
Katrina Klier: Pinterest is pretty brand friendly already. Some things I’d love them to do: Create sub-boards so it’s easier to do topical boards with multiple themes; somehow connect to a purchase place – so drive ecommerce conversion potential either directly or via some type of visual search engine that can give you a list of online or offline stores to buy what you see. Ecommerce is a partnership opportunity for Pinterest to drive with the likes of Amazon, Wal-Mart and others. Also finding people or brands to follow is rather clunky – if you search for people you know, you can find them, but if not a general reco is not easy. Also would like to embed boards in other websites – allowing pinboards via a service provided by Pinterest (similar to how Bing or Google provide in-site search for brands)

Drew Neisser: Are you active on Pinterest yourself and if so, what do you really like about it?
Katrina Klier: Yes, I use Pinterest http://pinterest.com/katrinaklier/ I like the visual components and the link to Facebook. I started another blog a couple months ago Travel Like a Lady and Pinterest over time will be a big part of that to show products, ideas, how-to, etc. I had to put some of my writing on hold for other demands but hopefully will get back to it shortly. I haven’t connected my marketing blog much to Pinterest as the topic is not as product or visually centric. My husband is a photographer and very active on Pinterest. It helps him categorize inspirational work as well as check out stylists, other artists and companies he is or would like to do business with. His business is very visual of course so Pinterest is a good fit and he loves the Facebook integration as well.

Final note: just in case you were wondering where Pinterest could be heading, please check out my story on MediaPost and or join me for MediaPost’s Social Media Insider Summit in Lake Tahoe next week.

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8 Smart Plays for CMOs

08/16/12

With a 40,000-person strong waiting list for season tickets, you would think Tim McDermott, CMO of the Philadelphia Eagles, could pull back a bit on his marketing activities. On the contrary, explains McDermott, with whom I was delighted to meet through The CMO Club, “We don’t want to be naïve and think that it can’t go away.” As a result, he and his 40-person team are busy, even in the off-season, doing everything within their power to grow the Eagles brand.

After being named “Global Sports Team of the Year” in 2011 and ranked 7^th among all 32 NFL teams by Forbes in terms of franchise value, there can be little doubt that Eagles brand is a strong one. A closer look at how McDermott and his team tackle marketing regardless of the on-field performance of the team, reveals an eight-part playbook that should inspire marketers in just about any field.

1. Listen Up—Create a Customer Advisory Board
Lots of brands pay lip service to listening to their customers. With a 35-person season ticket holder advisory board that, according to McDermott, acts as “an extension of our marketing department,” the Eagles are doing just the opposite. Instead of inviting the typical slew of complaints one would expect, this open-door approach “help[s] us create the solution.”

2. Go Long—Develop Your Next Generation of Customers Now
Few brands think long-term when it comes to developing their customer base. Since 2004, the Eagles have targeted kids in various ways, including a TV show, a website and a club that McDermott says is “the largest kids’ club membership of any sports team in the world.” Acknowledging that these activities are more brand-building than revenue-generating, McDermott has his eye on “future fans” and the promise they represent.

3. Fans First—Think of Your Brand as a Public Trust
Imagine the impact of more marketers acknowledging that their “fans are the true owners” of the brand. McDermott believes that a fan-centric approach takes a lot of the complexity out of the business of marketing and brand building, remarking, “If you think this way, you simply do what is right for the fans.” He adds, “With social media, there’s more fan voice in the marketplace,” marveling “how much power the consumer has now.”

4. Tune In—Dedicate Expert Resources to Social Media
Recognizing the need, most brands these days are looking to expand their in-house social media team. McDermott started this process when he returned to the Eagles in 2010. “We needed people who were 100% dedicated to evaluating, understanding and determining how to use all of the new digital media technologies,” he recalls. Now staffed with social media coordinators, his team is “speaking as the Eagles and engaging consumers.”

5. Do Good—But Stick With It
Only dabbling with social responsibility programs is like calling a time-out after every play. On the other hand, since launching its “Tackle Breast Cancer” campaign back in 2004, the Eagles have shown the long-term commitment it takes to truly benefit the cause and the brand. After selling 32,000 pink hats in its first year, the Eagles have gone on to raise nearly $2 million over the last eight years in donations for breast cancer awareness.

6. Think Big—About the Business You Are In
Business history is strewn with the carcasses of brands that defined their category too narrowly. This is not a problem for McDermott, who sees the Eagles as more of a media company than a sports team, “aggregating millions and millions of impressions.” As such, McDermott expects “you’ll see us acting and executing more like a media company, producing and distributing content.”

7. Think Broad—About Your Marketing Department
Unlike most marketing departments, McDermott’s doesn’t stop with the folks who create and monitor communications. Calling this approach “myopic,” McDermott prefers to define marketing as “everything that isn’t happening on the ball field,” which is why his “marketing team” also includes a TV production group and all of the merchandising staff who sell Eagles gear online and off.

8. Look Ahead—Leave Some Time/Money For Experimentation
With budgets always tight, it’s harder than ever to test new approaches. McDermott sees experimentation as essential, especially in the digital world. “I’m fascinated by some of the augmented reality concepts,” notes McDermott, who is excited to see how these concepts can scale and recognizes that the PR alone could make them worthwhile. McDermott imagines A/R could bring “tickets to life” or drive a virtual store that pops up during tailgating parties at the stadium.

Final Note: The Eagles finished with an 8-8 record and without a Superbowl ring in the 2011-2012 season, leaving their notoriously passionate fans underwhelmed and McDermott eager for a fruitful draft, which by all reports they achieved. As such, expect more excitement from the Eagles next season, and in the meantime, please see my extensive interviews with their super CMO on past posts here on TheDrewBlog.com. (If this article seems familiar, that’s because you saw it first on FastCompany.com).

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Marketing Metrics: Q&A w Dan Marks, CMO, First Tennessee Bank

02/14/12

Dan Marks, CMO of First Tennessee Bank, is a big believer in learning from his peers. Having seen him speak at The CMO Club Summit in NYC last year, I would say Dan gives as much as he gets, if not more. As such, I was delighted to be able to catch up with Dan a couple of weeks for a conversation about marketing metrics. Dan is also responsible for orchestrating one of the most effective marketing metrics program I’ve heard about, a program that can not only look backwards at the impact of 84% of his marketing spend but also has the ability to predict with “reasonable” accuracy what will happen when budgets get cut. If you are a marketer and don’t have a metrics program in place, you’ll read this and weep.

DN: Please speak to the advantages, to you as the CMO, of having a strong metrics program in place.
The advantage of having strong metrics in place is it helps you understand how good the creativity is and helps in conversations with the rest of the business. So for instance, when you’re talking about changing resourcing between business lines or overall budgets you’re able to quantify the impact of your actions, maybe not to an ultimate level of precision but good enough that it lets you have a comparable type conversation to other investments the company makes. At the end of the day, marketing is a huge line item at any company. And so having the same level of accountability and quantification that you might have in other areas puts you at equal conversation and helps raise the credibility of the conversation.

DN: Have you been able to move the conversation from where marketing is no longer just a cost center but is rather a revenue driver as a result of having the metrics in place?
We’re on that journey. I’m not sure we’re completely there yet, but we’re definitely on that journey to more precisely quantify the linkage to revenue and to be able to quantify the revenue impact of different marketing approaches. Marketing is a matter of talking the customer’s language, right? So when you are talking to sales and you can show a stack ranking of your marketing programs and their benefit, all of a sudden you’re talking their language because they stack rank their salespeople.

DN: One of the terms that you used that I really liked is the notion that creating a metrics program is a journey. Talk to me a little bit about the journey.
The revolution really is in saying, let’s not have a separate set of metrics or let’s, at the very least, connect the marketing metrics to the core bottom line revenue and costs and profit objectives. And so that’s the journey. The measurement approach varies by type of marketing activity and channel. So the stages of the journey start with direct marketing, where the linkages and the science are the most developed. Even in B2B, if I can quantify that I’m helping create opportunities from introduction or helping move things along the pipeline, all of a sudden now you are speaking the same language that sales is. One of the most elusive goals and one that’s still not there yet is the overall full media mix impact–what’s the cumulative impact of everything working together?

DN: If you could measure the impact of the full media mix, what would be the benefit of that?
Other places that spend cash have ability to quantify the impact of that cash. So in operation, it might be a cost per output or what my cost is to deliver a dollar of revenue. And so it allows that same sort of conversation around marketing, what is the revenue impact of a dollar spent with me as I make decisions and look to optimize it–is that getting better or worse? And so it’s several layers of precision, of getting to be more precise and being able to forecast the impact of different decisions. And then track what happens and continue to optimize– that just adds that much more credibility and confidence in making marketing decisions and the organization.

And related to that is giving you the confidence to be able to pursue it scientifically. So we can creatively think of a few different ideas and then decide based on the risk tolerance or the level of uncertainty we’re willing to approach. We may try a very uncertain idea at a lower spending level knowing that, okay, we’re going to take a chance on that huge one, but we’re not going to bet the farm on something that’s very unknown. Yet we’re going to take more incremental experiments around more proven ideas.

DN: I want to make sure that we clarify language. What’s the difference between an outcome measure and a diagnostic measure and then can you put them in a priority order relative to job security and doing your job well?
Sure. So when I think of outcome measures, [these have] impact on revenue profits and margins. These are the key results that the CEO and board ultimately care about. And so those are the cardinal metrics. Diagnostic measures are important to understand outcomes. So for example, we look at awareness. But my team still cringes when I say, ‘You can’t eat awareness.’ But it’s important to understand that customers do go through this buying process of awareness, consideration, purchase, all this kind of stuff. But our goal is not to create awareness. Our goal is to get people to buy stuff and generate revenue. We have to understand the buying process. We have to understand if we’re having trouble getting people to buy stuff, is it because the awareness low, do they not know about the product, or are they are trying it but not repeating it therefore the likelihood to recommend the product to others is low or the experience is bad? When I said diagnostic metrics, these are things that help us understand what the potential actions we should take are, and the prioritization of those actions based on understanding the customer, the customer and the marketplace, and the buying process and the competition.

DN: Do you use Net Promoter Score?
We look at likelihood to recommend, we look at it in the total likelihood and in net time basis. But we don’t just rely on that.

DN: Do you look at the various points of contact in the customer experience and measure each of those?
We look at it both overall and after a key experience point. So after you’ve had an interaction at a branch, after you’ve had an interaction with a business banker, after you’ve interacted with some of our online technology. So we do — we definitely understand how they are all different. And we’ve studied it. So we also know that our experience scores and our recommend scores strongly correlate/predict future changes in retention and revenue.

DN: So when you see your experience core decline, you can go to the CEO and say, ‘sales are going to be down next quarter?’
Well, maybe not quite that quickly! We know over time if scores are trending down or scores are trending up, that will translate into a strong probability of having lower or higher revenue in the future.

DN: Give me a sense of how often you’re looking at numbers.
Well, we do have an alert mechanism. So if poor scores are spiking, we know that pretty fast. But generally speaking, we look at our customer experience and customer buying metrics on a monthly basis– and that’s where you see trends.

DN: Is a commitment to a metrics space approach sort of a guarantee incrementalism
Well, that’s something that we talk about a great deal. And I think misunderstood, it could. But I would say it’s better to spend a little bit of time on testing than to take a huge leap of faith and fail. And usually your level of urgency is not so great that it doesn’t make sense to spend a little bit of time testing it. It’s a lot easier to scale something up that is successful than to pull back when it’s not.

DN: So at some point is it possible to spend too much on analytics?
At the end of the day, it’s some expensive people and some expensive technology but in the grand scheme of things that’s still, in the neighborhood of one or two percent of your budget. And I have not talked to anybody yet who didn’t say after they started getting better analytics, they weren’t able to reallocate at least 10 percent of budget. You spend one percent to find out that 10 percent of your budget is not working or not working as well as it could be. And, that’s a 10 to 1 return.

DN: I’m assuming that there was a budget cut at some point in the last three years?
That’s right because everybody had one.

DN: So were you able to predict how the marketing budget cut would impact your business?
Oh, yes. And the level of prediction was pretty close. I mean, not a hundred percent. No model is completely perfect, but it’s definitely useful.

DN: What three pieces of advice do you have for CMOs about to start the metrics journey?
First, definitely have the conversation with your key partners, whether it’s your CEO, CFO or sales leaders. Figure out who is going to judge your performance and collaborate with you because most of the time CMOs can’t actually sell stuff themselves. They’re influencing sales activities. Have that conversation early on, and ask what metrics are important to them and what are the outcomes that you should focus on. And number two, I would definitely commit to a program of optimization and continuous improvement of marketing results.

And then thirdly, I would say for sure, connect to and focus on giving back to the community. And there are a number of different ways to do that– The CMO Club is one example. There are also several great CMO type organizations that exist to help CMOs share information. And you’ve got to do that, carefully. You don’t want to give away trade secrets, but there are great resources out there to help talk about common challenges, common best practices. And every CMO has got something to add to the conversation, and what you give, you get back in spades.

You can follow Dan on Twitter @wdanmarks

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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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