Establishing a brand’s purpose and mission within marketing initiatives has become increasingly important in recent years. But how can a company measure its impact and campaign effectiveness? An article in PRNEWS looks at how purpose-driven brands like Patagonia are approaching a measurement paradigm while establishing industry standards.

The post Strategies for Measuring the Impact and Success of Purpose-Driven Campaigns appeared first on Chief Marketer.

The coffee category is a competitive one—but it’s also packed with potential for brand loyalty.

According to Peet’s Coffee brand research, 76 percent of consumers can tell the difference between a good and a bad cup of coffee. Plus, many are looking for a brand to defend high-quality coffee, craft and culture.

In this, Peet’s saw an opportunity. While other folks in the coffee category were creating dessert-like drinks and outlandish flavors, it sought to win over this discerning bunch by keeping is simple. Enter its new brand platform and first-ever 360 marketing campaign, “Coffee for Coffee People.” The 12-week initiative includes a series of spots taking aim at the coffee industry’s propensity for complicated drink orders, as well as a cheeky “Disloyalty Program” on National Coffee Day that honors competitors’ loyalty points as currency for a cup of Peet’s.

“As a small player in a very large and loud category with these mega brands, we knew if we just came out and told our story, which was ultimately a very simple one about quality, that we wouldn’t break through the clutter,” said Peet’s Coffee VP of Brand Jessica Buttimer. “So we decided to focus on what we aren’t in the beginning, and push off of these outlandish trends.”

Here’s our chat with Buttimer about the campaign’s strategy, core objectives, distribution channels, technical feats and challenges, as well as the brand’s ideas for next year.

Chief Marketer: What was the impetus behind launching the campaign?

Jessica Buttimer, VP of Brand at Peet’s Coffe: We did about six months of research with coffee consumers. The brand’s been around for a long time—57 years—and we’ve been a quiet, humble brand, where word of mouth, our cafés and the quality of our product created our reputation. But we haven’t really told our story broadly.

A lot of the folks in the industry had lost the plot, as we like to say. They were offering these outlandish flavors, complex dessert-like drinks, tech gimmicks—and they pushed coffee to the background. That was very different from our belief system and what we felt was important in the category. We were hearing that consumers were actually craving the same thing that we were, which was someone who would defend coffee quality, the craft, the culture.

The campaign is framed the way it is because as a small player in a very large and loud category with these mega brands, we knew if we just came out and told our story, which was ultimately about quality and a very simple one, that we wouldn’t break through the clutter. So we decided to focus on what we aren’t in the beginning and push off of these outlandish trends that we were seeing. We thought that we would get more attention that way.

CM: What are your strategic marketing goals with this? What are the KPIs?

JB: Our goal is to be a strong number two premium brand in the category. You can probably guess who number one is. It’s Starbucks. We admire a lot of the things that Starbucks does, but we think we are for a different consumer and have a different approach. The way we’ll measure that is, in the beginning we’re looking for familiarity growth. Not just awareness. We’re actually pretty strong on awareness, but when you get down to it, people don’t really understand who we are and what we do that’s different from the big guys. So, telling that story and building familiarity feels like a better way to measure than just pure awareness or impressions. That’s our key metric.

We are also getting amazing early results on traffic and orders on our website, and we expect to see retail traffic pick up as a result of “Disloyalty” this week. We’re looking for it to be a full funnel approach, where it all starts with familiarity, getting that story out there. But then we are also looking at the traffic and the orders side of things, and giving ourselves some time for that to build.

CM: What are some other highlights from your consumer research?

JB: Seventy-six percent of those consumers feel like they’re discerning and can tell the difference between a good and a bad cup of coffee. Another one was that consumers identify with their coffee brand. I spent 15 years in packaged goods and did mainly cleaning products and more functionally-driven categories. And then I moved into footwear and technology. The reason why I’m giving this background: there I learned this importance of identifying with your brand. Obviously in footwear, it’s super important.

I got intrigued—to come back out of retirement, actually—to work on coffee because it’s one of the few packaged goods products where people do identify with the brand. Part of that is the café side of the business: you carry the cup around with you. It’s this very complex category where the quality of the product you’re using says something about you. A pretty high percentage of this audience feels like they identify with their coffee brand and that it significantly tells you something about who they are.

CM: What does your target market look like? Are you looking to appeal to a specific generation?

JB: The passionate coffee enthusiast is much more diverse than our current user group in a couple ways. They are younger than the current Peet’s consumer. They’re all ages, but they average in the millennial group and a little bit of Gen X, and there’s certainly Gen Z and baby boomers as well. The Peet’s consumer is older than that group, so we’re “younging-up” the brand. We’ve got three core objectives. The first is to tell our story. The second is to young-up the brand, and the third is to modernize our assortment and our experience. That’s more on the product and the retail side of things.

The other demographic diversity is geography. Our brand is concentrated in the West Coast. We tend to be an urban brand. We have distribution nationally in grocery stores, but most of our cafes are on the West Coast. And then we’ve got pockets in D.C., Boston and Chicago. But because we have a national CPG presence, it’s important that we have a national campaign and familiarity. We have a big opportunity in the center of the country and the East Coast cities.

CM: How is the campaign being distributed? Are you experimenting with other channels in addition to video?

JB: We’ve got six spots with various cutdowns, and those are going on connected TV, OTT. We’ve got Hulu, YouTube… Then we’ve got Spotify for audio. That’s a channel that is underutilized by the category, so that was a good place for us to invest. It gets you into different dayparts and different occasions. Another part is out-of-home, which is also underutilized in the category. And when you have a café business, it just makes a lot of sense to hit people near the cafés geographically. The last piece is social, where we have been pleasantly surprised with the level of engagement that we’re seeing on Instagram, and in particular, TikTok. It’s hard to get people to comment on ads, and we’re seeing a lot of positive sentiment on TikTok as well as Instagram.

CM: Let’s talk about your “Disloyalty Program.” Why did you decide to go that route and deliberately target competitors’ loyalty programs?

JB: It’s breaking through the clutter, but it’s also this willingness to challenge norms. We’re an underdog brand. Even though we are sometimes perceived as a chain, there’s very few things about us that are like a chain. We take a more local approach to things, and scaling our smallness is one of our cross-functional strategies. So we wanted to highlight our non-corporate approach and our willingness to challenge the way the broader category works, and couldn’t think of a better way to get people to try Peet’s than to say, “Hey, it’s not just free, it’s actually using your points.” And by the way, those points don’t actually transfer so they can still use the points elsewhere.

CM: I assume you’re not working with Starbucks on this.

JB: Yeah, no. We legally couldn’t have done that. But that’s the brilliance of it. We could have just gone out and said, “Have a free drink on us,” but we wanted to do it in a more buzzy and competitive way.

CM: Were there any challenges to the program legally? Or in putting it together?

JB: We thought legal would be a big challenge. At the end of the day, our whole company likes to do things differently, and they were very open-minded to it. We had to be creative in the way we worded it and depicted it. But legal ended up not actually being a challenge. The bigger challenge was technology. We have an app, we’ve got an IT team that knows how to do things like this, but this was probably the most complex technology-driven promotion that we’ve ever done. There was quite an investment in making it easy for the consumer. We didn’t want people standing in line trying to upload something and having it fail, so we did a lot of QA work to make sure it was seamless for the consumer.

The other challenge: We’ll find out on [National Coffee Day] what traffic looks like in our stores. We value our baristas and we don’t want to put them under any undue stress. They want traffic just as much as we do. But they also want to give a really good customer experience and not have people waiting in line for a long time.

CM: What are your plans for growth beyond this campaign?

JB: This is a 12-week campaign in just four markets—San Francisco, LA, D.C. and Boston. We did that intentionally because we wanted to get our foot in the door and learn what it did. The plan from here would be to expand to more markets to keep telling the story, but keep it fresh. You’ll see us continuing to challenge norms in the category, but we’ll do it differently next year.

CM: What’s up next for the brand?

JB: Getting the experience right. We will make sure that the consumer experience is top notch before we start opening more stores, for example, or getting much bigger than we are today in terms of our footprint. The biggest opportunity is to continue to tell our story and to find those people that share our values, and to become a bigger brand as a result of that familiarity—not necessarily trying to be on every street corner.

You will see us differentiating. There’s some places in our menu where it’s hard to tell how a Peet’s drink is different than maybe a Starbucks drink. And you’re going to see us more clearly differentiating on flavors, and on the kinds of products we sell. We want to make sure we’re being true to the strategy of being “coffee for coffee people.” You’ll see some changes to the package, perhaps. We’re not ready to fully commit to what that looks like, but we’re definitely looking at the fundamentals.

The post Peet’s Coffee Brand VP on Leveraging Consumer ‘Disloyalty’ and an Appreciation for Craft appeared first on Chief Marketer.

We recently brought you email marketing tips gleaned from HubSpot’s annual INBOUND conference. Here’s a tour of what stood out, according to a piece in Event Marketer, from an event production and marketing strategy perspective—from wearable tech to accessibility to community building.

The post 10 B2B Event Production Strategies From INBOUND 2023 appeared first on Chief Marketer.

As new AI tools continue to launch in the marketplace, opportunities arise for marketing and PR to collaborate on data sharing, analytics, gauging public sentiment, brand awareness efforts, and more. Here are three ways marketing and PR can work together on integrated, AI-driven strategies, according to a piece in PRNEWS.

The post Three Ways Marketing and PR Pros Can Collaborate on AI-Driven Communication appeared first on Chief Marketer.

SheaMoisture’s new campaign “Black Men Love,” which kicked off Sept. 12 with a digital content series depicting personal stories of everyday Black men, aims to reshape how masculinity within the Black male community is portrayed. The vignettes highlight the various ways Black men show love through their roles as fathers, teachers, partners and professionals.

“As you look at the traditional conversation around Black men in the media and commercial landscape, there’s more of a negative or singular stereotype that defines Black men and Black male masculinity,” SheaMoisture CMO Taydra Mitchell told us. “We wanted to take a moment and take a stand in terms of helping to reshape and rejigger that narrative, and redefine how Black male masculinity is portrayed.”

At the same time, the community is increasingly interested in wellness and mental health. “There’s an evolution that’s taking place,” Mitchell said. “And even post-Covid, you’re now starting to see them talk about it differently. You’re starting to see them be more vulnerable and much more open around what masculinity means.”

We spoke with Mitchell about the campaign’s genesis, inspiration, partnerships and experiential components, plus the positive growth trajectory of SheaMoisture Men in recent years.

Chief Marketer: What was the inspiration for the campaign?

Taydra Mitchell, CMO at SheaMoisture: There’s two narratives that have been going on, and we see these narratives coming to an intersection. As you look at the traditional conversation around Black men in the media and commercial landscape, there’s more of a negative or singular stereotype that defines Black men and Black male masculinity. We wanted to take a moment and take a stand in terms of helping to reshape and rejigger that narrative, and redefine how Black male masculinity is portrayed.

Another conversation is, you’re starting to see Black men evolve as they think about their mental health, as they think about self-care, as they think about what wellness means to them. There’s an evolution that’s taking place. And even post-Covid, you’re now starting to see them talk about it differently. You’re starting to see them be more vulnerable and much more open around what masculinity means. So, looking at both of these, the time is now to help proliferate this new narrative that showcases Black men through the lens of love. And that’s what the launch of this campaign is all about.

But it’s also about locking arms with men who are telling these stories. There are a number of partners and people that have been trying to move this narrative along for a while. We want to stand arm-in-arm with the community to drive and amplify this new definition of Black male masculinity.

CM: Did these parallel narratives come about from consumer research or cultural listening?

TM: It’s a lot of social listening, but also looking at what the narrative has been, both pre- and post-George Floyd. George Floyd was this reckoning moment where it was clear that there is a perception and a perspective around Black men, and what’s in people’s minds around what Black male masculinity looks like. That caused us to take pause to say, how can we do something to affect change in terms of how people see and perceive this audience? You don’t have to look very far to understand that there’s a shift that needs to happen.

There was a young African American man very recently—12 years old—who was arrested right outside of his home for taking out the trash. There is a trauma. There’s a hurt. There is a brokenness that comes along with being misunderstood because of the color of your skin. There are statistics that show that if you have a Black man and a white man that are the same build, the same height, the same weight standing next to one another, that there is a perception of a different kind—people are more fearful and think that the Black man will do certain harm or certain danger. You can see from the way that men are treated and the way that things show up from a cultural and societal perspective.

But then it was also tapping into the Black men in our team. I stand as a Black female leader along with Cara Sabin, our CEO, and our Head of Purpose and Partnership, Simone Jordan. But this was not conceived by us. This was conceived by Black men on our team who are living this experience every day: our creative director, the strategist, our digital series director, Dominique DeLeon, consultants and different people who we worked with. We tapped into the Black male perspective to bring this to life. And we’re excited to be able to use our influence to drive it forward.

CM: You’re working with a number of partners on this. How are they significant from a marketing perspective?

TM: We wanted to amplify a number of people who are doing this work, and have been doing this work. Organizations like Black Men Heal and Black Men Smile have been leaning into these conversations around wellness, mental health support, and helping to shift and change the stereotypes around Black men and to celebrate how they see themselves. Some of these organizations have been around for 13 years or so.

Those partnerships were a critical component of the campaign. But they also help us tell the story. We have a digital series where we’re not just talking about how Black men love—we are demonstrating it. You’ll get a chance to see fathers with their daughters. You’ll get a chance to see Black men who are teachers, showing love to their students.

CM: Talk about the experiential components of the campaign.

TM: Another big part of the campaign are the wellness events. We’re creating safe spaces where men can come together and talk about the things in their heart and on their minds, and be vulnerable. We kicked off our campaign in Los Angeles and New York with a flower wall popup event where we handed out 200-plus flowers to men as a showcase and a demonstration of the first show of love. The wellness events will be an extension of that.

You’ll see the wellness events happen in major cities, but we’re also planning to take those events to B- and C-cities. And why are we doing that? Because a lot of this conversation happens in the New Yorks and the Chicagos and the LAs and the Miamis, but we might go to a Charlotte, North Carolina, which may not be seen as an A-city. We need to bring this conversation to those places and into those spaces where men may be experiencing different levels of colorism or racism or whatever the “isms” are that Black men have to face. We want to make sure that we can go wide and deep as we have this important conversation.

 

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CM: What channels are you using to get this message across?

TM: It’s a 360-campaign, so there’s full media behind it. Social media will be the primary channel. We’re putting forward the vignettes that showcase the stories about Black men, and affirmations of encouragement and elevation for men in ways that they don’t normally hear. As we talked about, we’re having in-real-life experiences for that human touch and that one-to-one interaction with our community. And then PR is an important part of amplifying the message, because our hope is not that we will be just showing “Black Men Love,” but that we will inspire and be a catalyst for brands, for the community, for other organizations.

We see this not just as a moment, but as a movement. The goal is that it grows beyond SheaMoisture, and that you begin to see all types of acts of love and kindness shown to this important audience. But then also see a different interaction with men in the community. We begin to see a different interaction with Black men, with the police. We begin to see a different interaction with Black men in terms of how they’re perceived on the street, and walking down the street in their neighborhood.

CM: SheaMoisture’s men’s product business has grown in recent years. To what do you attribute that success?

TM: Our men’s business has been on a growth trajectory. We relaunched the business in 2019 and refocused and repositioned it around the key need for men—which was moisture—and ensuring that our audience understood that this collection had been designed with their unique needs in mind. That was led by our Head of Hair and Men’s Innovation, Obinna Keke, who was just honored as an AdAge 40 Under 40 for the work that he did not just for Shea hair, but also for the men’s work. Through that rebranding, we saw 3X growth in sales and strong support from our retailers and distributors. That was anchored in new packaging and providing a more premium look and feel, a strong value from a pricing perspective, and then several campaigns that we executed to help showcase men in a positive light.

One in particular was a Father’s Day campaign, where we did a custom lullaby for men and their babies. And then last year, we did a partnership with basketball player Iman Shumpert, Teyana Taylor’s husband. We were a sponsor of his new podcast, where they had conversations around the issues that men deal with. In the fourth quarter of last year, we saw a 45 percent increase in our men’s business behind that partnership and podcast sponsorship. This becomes an extension of the micro-work that we’ve been doing to celebrate and elevate Black men, and to move from a product conversation into emotional conversation.

CM: In terms of the strategic marketing goals, what are you looking to achieve with the “Black Men Love” campaign?

TM: It’s a new way for us to make a connection with our audience. We do a good job of having product conversations, of talking to men about what they do with their hair, what they do with their beard and what they do with their skin. And we’re known for a strong product lineup and connection there. But as we think about what’s important for Black men—who are the muse for SheaMoisture—our goal is to elevate the conversation and to show that we are a partner with them, that we honor them and that we respect them.

We believe that there is as much benefit in having a conversation around what our hair product can do for your hair as there is in saying, “Hey, we see you.” It’s important that when we think about our consumer audience that they feel seen, they feel served and they feel celebrated. Because if our consumers and our audience don’t feel seen, then the product conversations we have are much less important, less relevant and will not land. A part of our job and purpose is to ensure that we drive the product discussion, but also a discussion that elevates their total well-being.

The post Brands on Fire: SheaMoisture CMO Dishes on ‘Black Men Love’ Digital Content Series appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Advertising to gaming audiences can be a tricky business. It’s tempting to engage with a global playing audience, but difficult to craft in-game ad campaigns that don’t detract from the experience itself. As such, brands often rely on experts that can speak to game development, ad network and agency know-how all at once.

One such company, Super League Gaming (SLG), works with major brands as well as gaming platforms. AdExchanger chats with SLG CEO Ann Hand on building in-game experiences, measuring campaigns in virtual worlds and thoughts on the metaverse.

The post Super League Gaming CEO Ann Hand Dishes on the In-Game Advertising Market appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Save the date for our inaugural Marketers on Fire LinkedIn Live on Sept. 26 at 2pm EST. Our first guest, Sarah Crockett, Global CMO at Dickies, will discuss the art of brand collaborations, marketing a classic product to younger generations, exciting new industry trends, and much more.

The post Sept. 26, 2pm: Chief Marketer LinkedIn Live With Sarah Crockett, Global CMO at Dickies appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Consider this statistic: 71 percent of marketers say they’re sending more emails than ever before, according to email platform Knak’s 2023 benchmark report. What’s more, the average professional gets 120 emails every single day. The result: It’s become more and more difficult to break through to prospects amid a deluge of marketing messages.

It’s not impossible, though. So while in Boston last week for HubSpot’s annual Inbound conference, we picked up a few best practices for email marketers on how to increase email open rates, avoid cliched content, write compelling subject lines and sidestep common pitfalls. Following are a few tips and tricks shared by Jay Schwedelson, CEO and founder at Outcome Media and GURU Events.

1. Personalize It

Email personalization is a no-brainer. But it entails more than putting someone’s name in the subject line. “The quicker you can tell somebody who they are, the faster they’re going to engage. The sooner they feel seen, the more they’re going to want to engage,” he said. For instance, in the subject line, mention the industry the person is a part of. The same can be done for title and function, which lifts open rates by 31 percent, as well as interests, which increases open rates by 27 percent, according to data from the latest GURU online email conference.

2. Make It Aspirational

Including aspirational ideas in your subject line lifts open rates by 24-28 percent, Schwedelson said. “We all want to know, what is the next level hearing about, thinking about, seeing? So if your database is made up of director-level and manager-level, or even VP level, if you start to mention C-level stuff, people want to engage with it… This idea of aspirational marketing is doing so well because we all want to level up.”

3. A/B Test the Name of Your Content

You might have a white paper or ebook that’s been filed away as evergreen content for years under the same name. The name of your content, however, is a critical variable. Change it, test it, and experiment.

4. Buttons Matter

“The words on the buttons in your emails can radically change the performance of your email,” Schwedelson said. A call-to-action written in the first person increases click rates by 28 percent. If your button says “Download,” that CTA is for you rather than the consumer. Phrases like “Save My Spot” or “Unlock My Savings” highlight the benefit of the user. Pro tip: Use a generative AI tool like ChatGPT to rewrite the word “download” (or another CTA) 10 different ways without saying the word “download.”

5. Use the Pre-header

A pre-header is most effective when it’s a continuation of the subject-line thought. A “continuation pre-header” increases open rates by 19 percent, Schwedelson said. Use the words “and,” “but” and “plus” to highlight additional content for the user.

6. Highlight the Pain Point

When you start your subject line with a pain point, it grabs the attention of the reader. “As a marketer, the faster that you can discuss the pain point, the faster somebody wants to engage…. You’re not changing your offer. You’re literally just stating that pain point within whatever market you’re talking to, consumer or business.”

The post Email Marketing Tips to Increase Open Rates, Clicks and Conversions appeared first on Chief Marketer.

According to UScellular marketing chief Eric Jagher, going up against your direct competitors may not be the best way to break through. “Sometimes the right thing to do is challenge something bigger than the category,” he said. For Jagher, that meant spearheading the brand’s multi-phased “Let’s Find US” campaign earlier this year, which explores the relationship between consumers and technology by addressing the issue of cell phone overuse.

So, it encourages consumers not to use the service… sort of. “As we were looking at the research, one of the things that popped up, ironically, was that people are struggling with the relationship that they have with their devices,” Jagher told Chief Marketer. “They love the technology. The problem is when the technology gets out of place and it starts to dominate people’s lives. So, if we’re a carrier that’s going to connect people to what matters most, how can we help them to manage that relationship with technology in a better way?”

The campaign initially tapped AI technology during Super Bowl playoff games to detect approximately how many people in the stadiums were missing major plays while they were face-down in their phones. The next component included a “Phones Down for 5” pledge that encouraged people to put their devices down for five days, hours or even minutes, as well as messaging to help users control the technology by pausing notifications or phone calls.

It also included a partnership with nonprofit Screen Sanity, which guides parents and children on developing a better relationship with digital technology in general. And most recently, the brand launched a Smarter Start Toolkit to help parents facilitate a discussion about better managing the technology.

We spoke with Jagher—our Marketers on Fire pick this month—about the program’s origins, startling stats about cell phone usage in America, strategies for setting the brand apart within a hyper-competitive category and the campaign’s positive results surrounding brand consideration and Net Promoter Scores.

Chief Marketer: Why did you feel the need to create a campaign that’s about using your cell phone less?

Eric Jagher, CMO and SVP at UScellular: We are all about connecting people to what matters most. And obviously, cell phones would be a big part of that. As we were looking at research, one of the things that popped up, ironically, was that people are struggling with the relationship that they have with their devices. They love the technology. The problem is when the technology gets out of place and it starts to dominate people’s lives. And so if we’re a carrier that’s going to connect people to what matters most, how can we help people to manage that relationship with technology in a better way? That might mean putting the phone down sometimes, or setting the phone to limit distractions, notifications.

CM: In what ways does the brand facilitate that specifically?

EJ: It started with the Super Bowl. For the first campaign that we did, “Missing the Big Game,” we used AI during the Super Bowl to show people in the stadium so connected to that technology that they were missing big plays. Something like 16,000 fans missed touchdowns during the game, 6,000 fans were watching the phones or the halftime show by Rihanna, 4,000 people-plus missed the winning field goal. That was a way to create awareness.

The first important thing we did from a marketing perspective was, “Phones Down for Five.” I did it, our CEO did it. We had celebrities doing it, like Ashley Tisdale. Put your phone down for five days, hours, even five minutes, just to get a sense of what it feels like to put the phone aside. The second step was, how are we going to help you solve it? Ninety-five percent of people never change the default settings in their devices, but there’s a lot of great capabilities in those devices, including modes you can use to shut off things like notifications during certain hours of the day. So the second phase was to help people to control the technology, what we call “US mode,” which is using technology native to the device.

The next phase came in our Screen Sanity partnership, an international nonprofit focused on helping parents and kids have a better relationship with digital technology in general. Recently we’ve launched a Smarter Start Toolkit around back-to-school so parents can talk to kids about how to manage technology better, because it’s not a conversation that parents enjoy having. This is a way to help them facilitate that discussion.

CM: How did the AI work exactly?

EJ: We tested the AI over a few of the playoff games before the Super Bowl, the division rounds and the conference championships. We used a Microsoft AI to look around the stadium and catch people looking down into their phones. That’s how we were able to get those stats. When there was a big touchdown, we could then see how many people had their heads buried in their phones as opposed to watching the game.

CM: What other research stats informed the campaign?

EJ: The average person spends more than five hours a day staring at their phone. Most Americans reach for their device between three and 400 times a day. Forty-seven percent of Americans say they’re addicted to their phone. Parents say that the number one battleground with their kids is these devices, and how to get off them. A more humorous one, but still very serious: It’s the number two thing people give up for Lent after chocolate.

CM: What are your strategic marketing goals with the campaign, and how are you measuring its success?

EJ: First and foremost, we’re trying to drive reappraisal of the UScellular brand. In some markets in our footprint we’ve had a little bit of market share deterioration. So we want people to have another reason to look at our brand and say, I see them differently and I want to come back. Love for the brand is our number one goal. And then, getting people to take action off of seeing this. Through June, we have some really interesting stats: a third of UScellular customers say they’re aware of us promoting healthy relationships with technology, and 34 percent of those customers state it improved their opinion of us.

So we’re seeing some really nice lift with existing customers, and even non-customers who were aware of the campaign felt that it improved their opinion of us by 18 percent. We’ve had over 358 million brand impressions to date since the launch of the campaign. Over the last two months in a row now, our Net Promoter Score is number one in our footprint ahead of all the other big three carriers. And we’re really proud of that because that’s been something we’ve been working on for a while. A year ago we were last by a decent margin, and then in the last two months we’ve been first since we’ve launched this campaign.

CM: In general, what is your strategy when it comes to setting your brand apart from your main competitors?

EJ: Our competitors seem content to fight each other constantly about wireless. One of the key insights we had during the development of this was that we wanted to talk about something bigger than the category. How do we help people to connect better? Let’s not fight against each other. Let’s fight about the technology getting out of place. When we think about building brand value and loyalty, we want to focus on something customers care about. That’s where the shift came in. We’re focused on setting the brand apart by having a strong value proposition. We’re always going to have competitive promotional offers in the marketplace, but really building that brand around a strong value prop and competitive offers.

CM: What are your brand’s greatest challenges, and how are you tackling them from a marketing perspective?

EJ: This is a hyper-competitive industry. You can’t go a set of commercials, whether it’s streaming content or linear TV, where you’re not seeing a wireless commercial. So that makes it challenging in the sense that the pull is to always do a transactional or performance marketing spot that’s focused on the device you’re selling today, how much off, and what’s the price plan. We’re certainly always going to do our fair share of that. But my role as a CMO is to make sure we’re continuing to develop the brand, and make sure people understand what UScellular is all about and what we stand for. And that’s where developing this healthy relationship with technology is really important. And then all the offers and everything else sits below that. The pull is to use all of the media to focus on the transactional or the performance, but you have to keep some of the focus on the brand and the equity.

The other thing is, and it’s probably very obvious to most, is that we are—depending on the day—the fourth or fifth largest carrier. It’s a David-versus-Goliath-type situation. AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile are always going to have a lot more to spend on advertising and media than we are. So we have to be nimble, to react. I’m very proud of my team and what we do in terms of how we structure hyper-local offers. Maybe it’s different in this state versus that state. The execution and the operational excellence of the team has to be top-notch, and it is. We’re constantly trying, testing different things to make sure we’re optimizing our offers in the marketplace.

CM: Lastly, in your view, what should modern marketers be focusing on to advance their careers?

EJ: Obviously the digital landscape has become more and more important over the years. A lot of marketers are figuring out how to address this notion of a cookie-less future. We’re certainly talking about it internally. My advice is to not lose focus on the quantitative aspects of marketing and how important financial analysis is to becoming a really strong marketer. It’s an important skillset, and the people I see who are most successful around me have that skillset set as well.

In marketing it’s easy to want to challenge the other person in your category. One thing we’ve learned in this process is that sometimes the right thing to do is challenge something bigger than the category. There are other great examples. Dove didn’t go challenge Irish Spring, or other soaps. They challenged this notion of toxic beauty. Chipotle doesn’t go against Taco Bell. They go challenge GMOs and freshness, and make that their stance. We’ve learned a lot through some of those examples: that sometimes the best thing to challenge is something bigger.

The post Marketers on Fire: UScellular CMO and SVP Eric Jagher appeared first on Chief Marketer.

The rules of public relations have changed, with successive press releases and spray-and-pray tactics no longer cutting it. An article in PRNEWS looks at some fresh tactics to try to ensure your B2B messaging will reach your prospects.

The post The New Messaging Tactics for B2B Public Relations Pros appeared first on Chief Marketer.