Adotas

Where media buyers start online

Featured Author

Author Photo

Donna has over 25 years of experience in assisting brands, agencies and not-for profit organizations develop and implement a wide variety of their marketing communications needs. In 2005 she founded DDC Marketing Group which has specialized in bringing interactive promotional marketing solutions to life for many clients. Today the firm is also dedicated to helping clients integrate blogs and social media into their marketing mix. Her own blog,Donna’s Promo Talk, helps to keep marketing professionals current on today's hottest interactive promotions and trends.

More articles by Donna DeClemente





Opinions

PMA’s Integrated Marketing Conference Wrap-Up

Written on
April 14th 2008
Author
by Donna DeClemente  |
Feed
   XML Feed

performance_landscape_small.jpgADOTAS EXCLUSIVE — The Promotional Marketing Association (PMA) held its annual Integrated Marketing Conference in Chicago last week at the Downtown Marriott. My background is in promotional marketing so I’m a member of PMA and have attended many of their conferences over the years. The association is close to 100 years old, initially established back in 1911.

This past year PMA decided to revamp its image a bit: it went through a strategic branding initiative that resulted in a new logo and name. The association is no longer just focused on promotional marketing, but instead is championing the understanding and meaning of integrated marketing which they define as the integration of all disciplines in the marketing mix to deliver one unified message to the consumer. At this year’s conference they incorporated their new identity and new name for the first time.

PMA’s theme for this year’s event was “Accountability in Action”. At first I thought the theme was a bit narrow and worried that we were going to be presented with reams of statistics and analytics. Luckily, the majority of the speakers did a fantastic job of incorporating the theme into colorful, interactive presentations. Measurement and a positive ROI have been important challenges that every marketer has been responsible for, and since everyone is now being held to accountability in a more direct way, presenters had a lot to talk about.

We had the great privilege of having Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, as our keynote speaker who kicked off day two (April 9) of the conference. Carly defined integrated marketing as “The collection of every impression that the customer has about a company.” She also said that “companies can’t always control with their marketing what the customer takes away about the company. We’re in a period of extraordinary change in our business today and we all know that change is difficult.”

Carly shared a great quote about change: “Change is like heaven … everyone wants to go there but nobody wants to die.”

Here are some of Carly’s key take-aways for us marketers:

1. Authenticity – if your marketing is not accurate and true, it just won’t work.
2. Judgment – the ability to know when to act and when to pause. We need to make quick decisions; however, there are always those times when the data is saying one thing and you just know it is wrong. That’s the time you should pause and reflect.
3. Perspective – this is what really matters … remember that you can use information to prove just about anything.

Coca-Cola and OfficeMax spoke on the first day of the conference about the Changing Tolerance of Risk. Beatriz Perez, SVP of Integrated Marketing for Coke, reminded us of the biggest marketing failure story in history … their introduction of New Coke. Here was a perfect example of when Coke should have probably followed their better judgment and paused for a while. As Steven Levitt, author of “Freakonomics,” told us in his keynote presentation on day one of the conference, “a lot of major companies make critical decisions based on what their customers tell them vs. what they actually do.”

Coke did highlight some examples of successful risk taking that they’ve achieved. At first they were very skeptical but finally did decide to embrace the EepyBird Experiment that turned 200 Diet Coke bottles into a huge fountain display when combined with 500 Mentos mints. This was an extremely popular video on YouTube and resulted in a host of copy-cats.

So, instead of Coke trying to make it go away, they invited both their employees and consumers to create their own versions of the experiment and submit them online. They even brought the two partners who created the original video experiment to Coca-Cola’s headquarters to perform the experiment for their employees.

OfficeMax’s SVP of Marketing/Advertising, Bob Thacker, told us their goal is to first make friends and then have them become part of the brand. His belief is that companies need to take risks however they need to have patience and may not always see an immediate ROI. The hugely popular Elf Yourself viral marketing campaign is a great example of taking risks. OfficeMax took their entire holiday marketing budget and decided to move it online with a strategy to create a gift that everyone could enjoy. The holiday season isn’t the biggest selling time of year in their category; back-to-school is king. So, the risk was a little less, but still this was a pretty bold move.

The OfficeMax Elf Yourself program was one of about a dozen different online games that they created that first year in 2006 and wasn’t the most expensive. It was however the one that really hit big with consumers as well as the media and went on to become the largest viral campaign ever. They had originally hoped to reach 100,000 million visitors and ended up with over 193 million! Bob also shared with us that 47% of those surveyed did connect the OfficeMax brand with the elves and that 33% actually bought product at OfficeMax.

Target gave us a really great presentation from Sally Mueller, Director of Marketing Planning, that was highly entertaining a welcome right before lunch. She took us through the story of the iconic Target brand set to a backdrop of visuals showcasing Target’s great design and music selections. Target has become a “marketer’s brand” and one that we use as a role model in our business to showcase how to successfully build a brand and differentiate yourself. Sally shared with us a wide assortment of marketing initiatives however I did take notice that they have not embraced social media yet into their mix.

Target has been very protective of their brand, especially in-store, and they even use the phrase “we police our brand.” During the Q&A period the topic came up about the disgruntled blogger who contacted Target about an ad in Times Square that she found offensive and was told that Target doesn’t recognize blogs as media and their policy therefore is to not to speak with them. This incidence, however accurate or not, has gotten the blogosphere in quite an uproar.

Now I’m a consumer and a marketer who has been an advocate of the Target brand. However, I’m also a blogger and this has truly left a negative impression of the brand with me. When asked how Target plans to work with bloggers and social media now based on this incident Sally could only say is that they are learning from their mistakes. I really hope that Target realizes that they do need to start loosening their control somewhat in this world of “my media” where any individual can make a huge difference. It would be a shame to see such a great brand hurt by not evolving with the “Sign of the Times”.

We also got to hear Neil Golden, CMO of McDonald’s USA, review with us their strategy of concentrating on their menu and creating products based on customer’s need into what he called “the strongest turnaround in business history.”

Mike McCarley, VP Marketing for NBC Sports told us how in just two years they created “Sunday Night is Football Night” and turned NFL Sunday Night Football into a more popular experience than the traditional Monday night.

Ann Hood, former SVP Global Brand Marketing and Innovation for BP shared with us a really great story of how this brand made an emotional connection with its customers on a global level by fulfilling its promise to make things “a little better” for them.

Each one of these session could be an article of its own. So, the conference co-chairs reviewed with us at the end what they thought were the top take-aways of the conference. Here’s what they said:

1. It’s all about the customer
2. Be authentic to your brand
3. Great brands need to take risks
4. People in this industry have a true passion for what they do
5. A unique value was gained by this year’s accountability theme

The conference then wrapped up on Wednesday night with the 25th Annual REGGIE live Awards Ceremony that featured 25 years of the best promotion and integrated marketing campaigns. 7-Eleven along with their agency, Fresh Works, took home the coveted Supper Reggie award this year for their Simpson’s Kwik E-Mart campaign. Rita Bargerhuff, VP of Marketing for 7-Eleven spoke about this campaign during the conference session the day before on entertainment marketing.

The Simpsons Movie was a hit when released in theaters this past summer and with it came a slew of marketing partners. 7-Eleven and FreshWorks worked with Fox Studios and Gracie Films to convert 12 stores into Kwik-E-Marts (the fictional convenience store from “The Simpsons”). The Slurpee® beverage was temporarily changed to “Squishee,” and new Sprinklicious™ Donuts filled bakery cases. Manufacturing partners were enlisted to create products like Buzz cola, KrustyO’s brand cereal and Radioactive Man comic books (Issue No. 711). Consumers were finally able to live like a Simpson at 7-Eleven.

Gold, Silver and Bronze REGGIE Award-winning campaigns were also announced in 16 categories. Other multi-REGGIE Award-winning campaigns included: The Sopranos A&E Connection; McDonald’s Shrek, SPIDER-MAN WEEK IN NYC; and My GRAMMY Moment.

“Each year, the PMA REGGIE Awards honors some of the most creative, well-executed, results-driven integrated marketing campaigns,” said Bonnie Carlson, president of the PMA. “FreshWorks and 7-Eleven delivered the largest-scale promotion to hit the convenience retail channel, and the first ever, real life Simpsons experience.”

Thanks to Bonnie, the PMA staff, all the speakers and the many attendees that I had the chance to see again as well as meet for the first time. We all walk away from these events truly inspired by each other and then have to go back to our individual offices and computers. The challenge is now to incorporate what we learned from our peers into what we do every day.



Tags: , , , , and
Article Sponsor

More Opinions

Reader Comments.

No comments yet

Leave a Comment

Add a comment


Spotlight

GlobalSpec: Firing Up the Vertical Search Market ADOTAS EXCLUSIVE — GlobalSpec is a leading vertical search, information services and e-publishing company that serves the engineering, manufacturing and [...] more...

Adotas Partnership