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.

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.

When it comes to retail partnerships, the success of both brand and retailer depends upon a multitude of factors. To ensure there’s a compelling fit between the two, Multichannel Merchant provides some tips for brands on how to stand out amongst competitors.

The post The Retail Marketing Partnership: How Brands and Retailers Can Work Together appeared first on Chief Marketer.

BEHR Paint Company chose the neutral, moody shade of Cracked Pepper as its 2024 Color of the Year earlier this month. The annual selection, informed by consumer research, lifestyle trends and feedback from design experts, has evolved into a full-blown brand campaign with a retail media marketing partnership with The Home Depot, social media campaigns and experiential components, resulting in a dramatic increase in sales.

We spoke with BEHR Paint Company and The Home Depot CMOs on how the Color of the Year reveal has evolved over the years; the role that retail media plays in the partnership; trends in marketing home improvement to younger generations, and the intersection of content and commerce.

Chief Marketer: How do you go about choosing the Color of the Year? And why Cracked Pepper for 2024?

Jodi Allen, Global CMO, BEHR Paint Company: What’s great about the color is it’s very usable whether you’re painting inside—if you’re painting cabinets, your interior walls, furniture—but it’s also a great exterior color as well. We focused on making sure there was a color that was usable for DIYers, for designers and professionals.

We’ve created more of an experience to launch our color of the year. At the property that we’re on now in Napa, all the buildings’ exteriors are painted in a Cracked Pepper-like color, which provided the perfect backdrop for our 2024 Color of the Year announcement. We partner closely with The Home Depot, everything from picking the color to looking at the big trends that are out there around décor, and tying color and decor together to make a big statement. And with our partnership, help consumers as they’re looking to create the same experience at their homes.

Molly Battin, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at The Home Depot: Our partnership goes back 45 years. Our teams have worked closely together to bring this to life for our customers, and take everything that we know about The Home Depot customer and work with Jody’s team to bring a color palette that we know will resonate with them.

CM: You’ve been unveiling the Color of the Year for several years now. What’s different about the partnership this year?

JA: We continue to evolve a little bit. The color is an important part, so we look at lifestyle trends and ensure we have a color that’s very usable—interior and exterior. The other thing is the experience, and creating this big moment to launch here at in Napa. We have a vignette where we brought the color to life here on the property, including a kitchen, a dining room and a living room, to show how the color and the decor items from The Home Depot worked together.

The other piece is a big consumer activation. We’re making sure we get this color in front of consumers so they can get it on their walls and see how it can changes the feeling of their room and their space.

We’re leveraging social media, specifically Instagram and TikTok, where we know consumers are looking for color and inspiration. We have a sweepstakes that we’re running on Instagram, where five winners will receive $10,000 to help them transform and elevate their space with Cracked Pepper.

CM: How is The Home Depot specifically involved in the partnership?

MB: We have a retail media network where we leverage our first-party data so that we can understand where our audiences are, specifically where BEHR’s audiences are. We know where they are in their project. Are they looking for inspiration? Are they in the middle of doing it? Are they completing? So that we can put the right message in front of them. This is a perfect moment in time for us to come together, leverage our data and lean into both on homedepot.com as well as partner off-channel sites. We do a lot with Google and Pinterest to deepen engagement. We’ve done a lot in that retail media space, and as we go into this fall, and even with College Game Day coming up, BEHR is a big partner in that.

CM: How is The Home Depot’s retail media network evolving?

MB: It’s a big growth engine for us. One of the core things that we look at is, how can we partner with all of our vendors to help them grow their business? We know our customer better than anyone, whether it’s the do-it-yourself-er or whether it’s the pro. We can leverage and understand where they are in the course of their project, what problem they are trying to solve. And we can help our suppliers come in and get in front of those customers with solutions. BEHR has been on the leading end of it, and one of the key partners as we continue to grow.

CM: Why go with such a dark shade for Color of the Year? What informed the decision?

JA: We had some great research, which is one of the places we started. We talked with over a thousand consumers to see [what they thought] of these darker tones. A couple things: one, consumers were very interested in these colors. As an example, 57 percent of Americans we surveyed said that painting a wall a darker color would give the room a designer aesthetic and make it feel more elevated. We also talked to millennials, because they’re such an important strategic audience for us, and they felt that looking at a black tone similar to Cracked Pepper instantly gave the home a fresh look. [We looked] at all kinds of fashion and lifestyle trends.

CM: What are some key trends in the home improvement space?

JA: About 52 percent of millennials own homes today. That group continues to be an important strategic audience for us. Also we think about Gen Z, which is very quickly coming into buying their first home, their first space. We’re making sure that we are where they are looking for inspiration.

One of the big things that we see with people from a DIY standpoint is that they need just a little bit of confidence. So we’ve extended our brand into some new categories. We launched our spray paint in the very recent past. It’s getting in early and helping, especially for younger consumers. We had our “To DIY For” TikTok campaign—we just launched our second year of that.

MB: I would echo that we’re looking at the millennials, the Gen Zs. And we know, similar to what Jody said, whether it’s that confidence or they just don’t know where to start. They want to get into a project, they’re excited about it, but they’re a bit stuck. We’re thinking about that intersection of content and commerce in an interesting way. And how do we use platforms like TikTok, Instagram and Pinterest to get them “unstuck,” if you will, and to give them the tools and the confidence to think about, how do I tackle this project? Those content plays are really important for us as we think about how we help this next generation along, whether it’s inspiring them, whether it’s giving them the tools that they need to get all the way through—whether the pre-planning process, the middle, the end of the project, or how do I get to the next one.

We’ve also thought about leaning into other audiences. Obviously our pro customers are essential and a key piece of what our strategy is moving forward, but we launched a campaign earlier this spring all around female doers, based on the insight that we know sometimes women don’t always feel as welcome in home improvement stores. So, how can we invite them in to feel empowered, and start them at a young age? It’s reaching out to find new audiences and make them feel included and confident when they come to The Home Depot.

CM: What other insights are you leveraging to market to younger consumers?

JA: From a home ownership standpoint, we see that Gen Z is at a faster pace than millennials. So being able to connect authentically with that audience is going to be really important as we go forward. We’ll continue to keep an eye on social media and how it’s evolving.

MB: Gen Z and millennials are digital natives, so they think about the media landscape very differently than Boomers, or even Gen X. So we think about how we lean into innovative media platforms, whether it’s shoppable ads, whether it’s regionalizing our message so we can be authentic when we talk to them.

Spring is a big time for us at The Home Depot. Weather matters where you are; it depends on the season, the warmth. I’m in the North, so I’m going to start my spring a little later than in the South. We think about the channels, the new ways we can innovate and bring that digital-first experience. As I mentioned, we lean into that connection between content and commerce, but also, it’s not one-size-fits-all anymore. We have to be really thoughtful about the uses of each channel and also segmentation across the geographies.

Image credits: BEHR Paint Company

The post BEHR Paint Company and The Home Depot Marketing Chiefs Talk Color of the Year Campaign appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Topgolf is on a mission to make the sport of golf a lot more accessible. Traditional barriers to entry—a country club membership, a set of clubs, a rigid dress code—are crumbling fast, and the sport’s gamified version is front and center in that effort.

“If you think about entering golf through the traditional lens, it can be a very intimidating introduction to the game,” said Topgolf CMO Geoff Cottrill. “And if you’re not good at golf, you have to really invest.” But the sport is in the midst of a major shift, he says. It’s becoming more accessible and diverse, and the way people are entering and experiencing the game is changing.

Topgolf itself is expanding rapidly, with plans to open 11 new venues a year for the next five years. That amounts to three to four million new Topgolf players per year, Cottrill estimates. “We’re trying to make the game of golf more accessible by removing the barriers, making it more fun, with music, food and just a good time,” he said.

We spoke with Cottrill about how the game of golf is changing; Topgolf’s new brand campaign and zany animated spot; the company’s plans for growth; his approach to influencer marketing; and more.

Chief Marketer: What’s the purpose behind your most recent campaign?

Geoff Cottrill, CMO at Topgolf: Our core conviction as a brand is believing in the unlimited power of play. We live in a world where the older you get, the less you’re encouraged to have fun, let go and play. About a year ago, we launched our first-ever global campaign with the tagline, “Come play around,” and a visual representation of what an experience at Topgolf’s like, the unique combination of golf and not golf. It helped us build new awareness in the marketplace. Then we went back and said, what’s the next phase look like? The first time we just showed people playing. This time we wanted to do it with a different representation, visually.

CM: What was the marketing goal with this second phase?

GC: For this version we wanted to amplify the spectacle and the joy that you feel when you play at Topgolf, the bigness of the venue, yet the intimacy of what happens in the actual bay itself. The goal was to make it playful, memorable, a little bit outlandish, animated. We’re building awareness in the marketplace. We’ve been around for 20-plus years, but we still have relatively low awareness. So we’ve got to step out and disrupt a little bit. You’re going to start to see a number of interesting things coming out over the next couple of months.

CM: Where did the animation idea come from?

GC: We decided to create a whole new world and set of characters that are based on real people, but fun and engaging. We’re introducing a group called the “Hand Head crew.” We shot a bunch of film with real people playing Topgolf and then went back in and put Hand Heads on them instead. And then used the expressions of hand emojis and hand signals—high fives, low fives, handshakes—to express the joy of how it feels to play golf. Instead of showing someone’s face, it amplifies and brings these things to life. Why hands? They’re expressive. We live in an emoji culture. It’s also a golf glove. You eat and play golf with your hands, and they’re a humongous part of the experience itself.

CM: Are you creating any extensions to the campaign, like merchandise?

GC: With our partners at Callaway we’re doing a whole set and series of golf gloves that match the heads. Then we’re doing Snapchat filters and we’ll do some stuff on Instagram as well, so you can turn yourself or your friends into Hand Heads. We’re doing a full-page in Vogue to be a little bit disruptive and have a sense of style.

CM: How are you distributing the campaign to consumers?

GC: We’ve got the :60, the :30 music-only, a :30 with voiceover and a whole bunch of :15s that talk about families, going out with friends and our half-price Tuesday platform. Then we’ll have a whole bunch of six- and seven-second pieces for social. We’ll do out-of-home. We’ll also do some print; we’ll be in Hypebeast, Golf Digest and Vogue, for a bit of a record-scratch moment. Then we may pop up and do some fun stuff during Fashion Week.

CM: What’s your pitch to people who’ve never played golf before, or to those who may be intimidated by traditional barriers of entry to the sport?

GC: Most of the people who come to Topgolf have never played golf before. And a lot of people that come to Topgolf will never go on to play golf. But golf is a sport that’s got a long history, a lot of great traditions, but also a lot of barriers to entry for people to be able to even attempt the game for the first time. We’re trying to make the game of golf more accessible by removing the barriers, making it more fun, with music, food and just a good time.

The game of golf needs to be and is becoming more diverse. And we’re one of the driving forces around that. And then as the game becomes more diverse, it becomes more fun for more people. We’re constantly inviting people in to play for the first time. A lot of people come for a first date. A lot of people come in through our leagues. A lot of people come in through a company corporate event. We want that experience to be one that you remember is fun and associated with laughter.

If you think about entering golf through the traditional lens, it can be a very intimidating introduction to the game. You go to the country club or the place to get lessons. Are you wearing the right clothes? Do you have the right shirt? Is your shirt tucked in? Do you have your clubs? If you’re not good at golf, you have to really invest.

This past year there was a shift: off-course golf—for the first time in history—is bigger than on-course golf. And more than 80 percent of off-course golf is represented through Topgolf. So, the way people are entering and experiencing the game is very different. And the result we projected out, in five-to-10 years, is going to be pretty profound on the game.

CM: What are your plans for expansion?

CG: We’re building 11 venues a year for at least the next five years. Every year, with those venues, we’re adding somewhere between three and four million new players, new golfers, new people coming into the sport. We’re growing internationally as well. We just opened a massive venue in China. We’re in Germany; we’ve got plans to go into Spain. We’re in Australia and Thailand.

CM: Have you targeted specific types of consumers?

GC: I don’t use the generational labels that most people use. Gen X, millennials… we don’t use those ways of thinking. We’ve done personas. We’ve got seven different personas that we’ve developed that all are entering the game of golf or looking for leisure and entertainment activities in different ways. We’ve gone deep with each of those seven and we know where they’re living, what media they’re using, what social media they’re using. It’s young people, it’s families, it’s people who play golf, but it’s also parents who play golf and have young kids that want to experience something new. We just announced a huge relationship with the Special Olympics. Topgolf will become a medaled sport in the Special Olympics. We’re already hosting practice competitions across the country.

CM: What other actions are you taking to make Topgolf more inclusive and diverse? And how does influencer marketing factor into that strategy?

CG: We’ve developed what we call “friends of the brand.” I don’t use the word influencer. I know marketers are so fascinated and enamored with that word. I think it’s ridiculous that we’ve gone so deep on that. Everyone has influence. Everyone you interact with and meet and do things with has influence. We went out and found 25 or 30 people from all walks of life who are somehow changing the game of golf and we’re working with them to do things that are important to them. Like Roger Steele, for example, a kid from Chicago. He’s breaking down some of the barriers, so we’re doing things with him.

We just did a big program with the Divine Nine, the original nine fraternities and sororities from historically Black colleges. We had a tournament on a Saturday in all of our venues across the country where people from those fraternities and sororities came and played against each other, with a leaderboard that was nationwide. We work with the folks at Eastside Golf, a couple kids who grew up on around the East Lake area of Atlanta—professional golfers dressed head-to-toe in Jordan who are literally changing the game of golf. It’s not about us doing stuff. It’s about us participating and helping these people that are changing the game of golf and providing a platform to help them do that. They’re the ones who are driving the change.

The post Brands on Fire: Topgolf CMO Geoff Cottrill on the Brand’s Awareness Play, New Creative and International Expansion appeared first on Chief Marketer.

With back-to-school season in full swing, retail brands face a daunting challenge: standing out amongst competitors, who are also courting customers in major ecommerce marketplaces, retailer apps and in-store promotions. Providing a consistent customer experience across each channel where your brand shows up can be a game changer. An article in Multichannel Merchant reviews elements of a robust omnichannel retail strategy, from product bundling to predictive analysis to product availability monitoring.

(photo credit: Kimberly Farmer on Unsplash)

The post Three Key Elements of an Omnichannel Retail Strategy appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Language-learning app Duolingo acquires approximately 80 percent of its users organically, through word-of-mouth marketing. But targeted paid acquisition helps to spur that growth, and partnerships and piggybacking on pop culture moments have proven useful tactics as well. In an executive Q&A, AdExchanger explores the brand’s media strategy, social investment, measurement approach, and more.

The post Duolingo Taps Organic Marketing Tactics, Media Strategy and Social Investment for Success appeared first on Chief Marketer.

To kick off back-to-school shopping season, Target-owned delivery service Shipt launched its first foray into virtual experiences with an immersive racing game on Roblox, where players can deliver school supplies and snacks, claim orders for pickup and delivery, and earn currency for accurate, on-time deliveries. Based on the insight that 77 percent of American parents play video games with their kids, the campaign’s goal was to craft an experience shared by children and their parents during this busy retail moment.

“We wanted to create unique, value-oriented experiences for the 2023 school season in a way that instilled connectivity for our key consumers—which in this case are millennial parents and their children—by identifying moments where we could take the stress out of this time and create connection and fun in a meaningful way,” according to Shipt CMO, Alia Kemet. “This was a great way to put kids and their parents in the driver’s seat of this experience.”

We spoke with Kemet about the back-to-school campaign, marketing challenges unique to the retail tech space, its new creative venture with actress Issa Rae, and much more.

Chief Marketer: Why did you decide to go the virtual route for your back-to-school campaign with Roblox? Is this a shift for the brand?

Alia Kemet, CMO at Shipt: Marketing campaigns have evolved over the years from brick-and-mortar promotions to offering new products to large-scale initiatives to attract customers during what is a saturated and busy time of year. And it’s also hectic for the parents. I have four children, so I’ve lived this experience. You have so many priorities, so many things you need to get, and you’re also focused on the emotions of your children going back to school.

We wanted to cut through that clutter, obviously, but also create unique, value-oriented experiences for the 2023 school season in a way that instilled connectivity for our key consumers—which in this case are millennial parents and their children—by identifying moments where we could take the stress out of this time and create connection and fun in a meaningful way. Seventy-seven percent of American parents actually play video games with their children. This was a great way to put kids and their parents in the driver’s seat of this experience.

This is a shift, absolutely. This is our first foray into virtual reality, so we’re really excited about the innovation. Given our audience for back-to-school, we thought, what better way to do virtual reality than a driving game? Roblox is something that a lot of young people play and enjoy, and with their parents as well.

CM: Was there a learning curve there since you hadn’t done anything in the space before?

AK: Many of our team members, including myself, have worked in virtual reality with other brands. So it’s less of a learning curve. We have a strong innovation team, too, that stays on the forefront of what is happening and current. What we learn from this experience is going to be the most exciting. What do we do next, when we think about digital innovation for our brand? It’s more about the learnings as we think about 2024 and beyond.

CM: Your latest creative campaign features actress Issa Rae. What are the strategic marketing goals there?

AK: Our biggest goals are to increase brand awareness, loyalty and brand love. The program is designed to show that everyday delivery is attainable. It’s accessible for each and every person, whether you are a successful business woman, hosting an event on a yacht, at home with friends or having a girls night in. A lot of our customers who really lean into Shipt are busy people. They’re trying to get 36 hours into the 24-hour day. But they’re also trying to pour into others, whether it’s their family or their friends.

CM: In terms of talent, why partner with Issa Rae?

AK: We pulled insights about our customers and coupled those with our objectives, and then we needed to define a partner that could exemplify those things. Issa Rae is an actress, publisher and producer. And she’s a business woman. But she also has this fun side, and people find her approachable.

At the same time, because this is our biggest campaign ever, it has the potential to set the tone for the way people think of our brand. It was important for us to find a partner who also shared our passion and our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. It’s not always easy to pull together your business goals, your objectives and your brand values and make a meaningful moment. But when your brand values are so ingrained in how you do business, it becomes easier.

CM: You’ve worked at retail companies in the past, including Nike, Whole Foods and IKEA. Now that you’ve moved to the retail tech space, what’s your strategy to get people excited about a service as opposed to a more tangible product?

AK: I love this question, because it is different. I’ve worked in retail my whole life; my first job was in retail when I was 14. I developed the first social media strategy at IKEA, in 2007. So I’ve seen the evolution of tech in the retail space—and that’s what’s happening now.

Shipt felt like the evolution of the customer experience. Back when there was no social media, people used to have to come to the store to access their goods. But then it became pickup points. Now, you don’t have to leave your home because through the Shipt app, you can access these reliable, amazing shoppers who will then deliver products to you and make your life easier.

That felt like the right path for me. But it is very different from a tangible product, like a hot sauce or a mustard, or even a piece of furniture. I’ve tried to stay true to being customer-obsessed, consumer-obsessed, and think about the needs, the insights and the data that the customer is telling us. The customer is not thinking about the tech first. They’re thinking about their individual needs. And the tech is there to service that need.

CM: The delivery space is a crowded one. How are you trying to set yourself apart from competitors?

AK: We are a brand that tries to punch above our budget weight. It’s no secret: We definitely need to grow our brand awareness in comparison to our competitors. For us, it’s leaning into our brand values, our purpose and making sure that we are elevating our brand identity. And then focusing on things like personalization and adding significant value to customers is how we’re setting ourselves apart. The other thing is going to market leveraging the cultural moments, what’s happening in the world, and finding ways to put our brand at the center of that, so it becomes seamless to think about us and you’re not making people work too hard.

CM: How are you meeting customer needs in the digital space? How are you innovating?

AK: We’re always looking for ways to add value to people’s lives, and personalization continues to be the way to do it. We recently launched dietary choices in the app, ensuring that people can find the things that are most relevant to them. As we’re thinking about holiday time, gifting is something that comes up for us. We’ve implemented a one-stop-shop hosting hub—everything you would need if you were hosting or if you were having a dinner party or a brunch, and curating those products. Especially as we move into the holiday season, that’s another important one.

CM: You’ve mentioned that you’re passionate about creating a more diverse marketing industry, but that you’ve also been disappointed by the progress. Any thoughts on how the industry could improve in that regard?

AK: This is something I’ve been watching for decades now, and I think we’re having the same conversation over and over, where it’s, “we know, the representation in our advertising industry and marketing, it’s not that great. Let’s keep talking about it.” You have some organizations that are trying to do some meaningful work, but I firmly believe that great ideas and talent can come from all walks of life, from anywhere. What sets us apart, what makes it difficult and why we don’t have representation, becomes about access. It’s about doing away with things like gatekeeping. At Shipt, we feel that we have a role to play in not just bringing representation to marketing, but also to tech in general.

I personally take it very seriously, and I think that you have to be extremely intentional about it. Those of us who are in positions of power, or positions where we can create impact, should be thinking about how we provide access to those who are underrepresented—whether it’s in front of the camera or back of the house, or tech or marketing. My advice: It can’t just be people of color who are pushing these issues in meaningful ways. We all have a part to play. I’m excited to see change in the industry and I’m happy to do my part with Shipt to create that change.

The post Brands on Fire: Shipt CMO Talks Roblox Back-to-School Campaign, Retail Tech and Issa Rae appeared first on Chief Marketer.

The retail media network space is booming, with advertisers projected to spend $45 billion on the channel this year and more than $100 billion by 2027. In light of this, brands rich in first-party data sets might consider launching their own networks. (Check out our deep dive with The Home Depot about its own offering here.) The space is crowded, though, and requires plenty of strategic planning. Here are five key steps, according to a piece in Multichannel Merchant, to consider before taking the plunge.

Photo credit: Lesia_G

The post Launching a Retail Media Network: Five Key Steps to Consider appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Rather than adapting its marketing strategy to reach Gen Z audiences, direct-to-consumer period care brand August chose to launch with the demo in mind at the outset. Now, two years later, the company has inked its first major retail partnership with Target. AdExchanger has the story of the brand’s marketing journey, from DTC to in-store retail and beyond.

The post One Period Care Brand’s Marketing Journey from DTC to Retail appeared first on Chief Marketer.