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.

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.

Chief Marketer’s monthly Marketers and Brands on Fire series—now in its fourth year—spotlights the strategic thinking behind some of the industry’s most successful, innovative and game-changing marketing campaigns. In addition to delving into program ideation, creation and execution, these conversations frequently shed light on the evolving CMO role itself, and the qualities and attributes required to land that coveted role. Three CMOs we’ve connected with recently, hailing from Walgreens, Nutrabolt and Shipt, offer advice on ascending to the C-suite in today’s ultra-competitive marketplace.

Robert Zajac, CMO at Nutrabolt:

It comes down to balance and perspective. Easier to say, harder to do. Balance, because modern CMOs need to do so many things. They need to be energy givers. Strategic advisors. They need to be the voice of the consumer. They need to be creative engines for the company. On the other hand, they also need to be able to measure, analyze, react, respond.

They need to be able to read the P&Ls. They need to be able to understand running a digital business, a DTC business, an Amazon business. And a lot of times those things can come in conflict. But if you balance them, they feed off of each other. And then how are you going to invest appropriately, measure the return appropriately, adjust if it’s not working, or double down if it is working? Regardless of the company you work for, regardless of the size of your team, business, portfolio, finding that appropriate balance is the first big piece.

And then you have to have a perspective on operations, on sales, on finance, on product. You have to be able to form an enterprise perspective that’s then translated to the teams, which is the other hard part. You want to hire people who are the most creative, dynamic, interesting, connected. But you also then need to translate an enterprise perspective down to them, and say, “here are the things that actually matter to the broader enterprise for our collective success.”

And lastly, we still have to be good coaches. We have to be good thought partners. We have to be good navigators for our teams. A lot of people get into marketing because it’s fun, and because you get to do great things and create things. So it’s finding the balance and the perspective, but then also enabling and coaching your team.

Alia Kemet, CMO at Shipt:

For me, it’s a thought leadership job. At this point, people know that you can do the technical work. You have to be able to bring your actual thought leadership. What do you believe needs to happen to create big impact in the company, so that we can have growth and transformational change? That is the job. And I think you have to demonstrate your ability to do that before you’re necessarily put in that top role.

And then a good amount of courage comes along with it. Because we use data, we use insights, we use culture, we use teams. But at the end of the day, winning ideas—in this landscape—are the courageous ideas. It’s having the courage to lean into ideas that everybody might not be ready to go along with, but you’ve got the data, the insights, all those things that you’ve put together. And so now you say, “We’re going to jump. We’re going to do this. Everybody come along.” And when they come, that’s how you create meaningful, big change.

Linh Peters, CMO at Walgreens:

One of the things I always tell people is that as I built my career I focused less on titles. Sometimes when people focus on titles, you either narrow your opportunities, or you’re focused on the wrong thing. For me personally, it’s the roles themselves and what they entail. Am I gaining new skills? Am I gaining new experiences? How will this role provide a stepping stone to the next one to two roles that I might have in my career?

The other thing is, as a diverse woman I have built both an internal and external network of advocates and sponsors. It’s incredibly important to have that. But now as I’ve gotten higher up in my career, I am playing that role for other people and taking a more meaningful investment in people.

I always tell people you should take on the assignment or the challenge or the project that nobody else wants to do. Because there’s a lot of opportunity in doing the hard stuff, and that will generally bode well for you in terms of the experience that you get, but also you’re helping to solve a problem or an issue for the organization.

The final thing is that your personal brand and reputation really matters. What you do now and how you show up will continue to follow you throughout your career. A lot of the opportunities that I’ve had in my career were born out of roles or experiences or connections that I made from many years ago. It’s not just about how you show up currently. All of that stays with you and people will remember that many years after you left a company or left a job.

The post Three CMOs on What It Takes to Ascend to the C-Suite 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 centerpiece of Meta’s activation at this week’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity—where tens of thousands of executives gather to celebrate excellence in the marketing and advertising industries—was the creator-led Reels SuperStudio for the second consecutive year. But while the first collab with artist Felipe Pantone focused on how Reels’ augmented reality tools enable transitions and content development, this year’s iteration with KidSuper Studios hit on brands’ opportunities to capitalize on Reels’ explosive growth.

Meta’s backing up its pitch with impressive stats. For one, the number of Reels shared daily on the platform has doubled to two billion over the last six months, according to the brand. “Our goal was to try to educate our brand and media partners here at Cannes on the importance of all of the creative considerations and optimize best performance in Reels,” said Damien Baines, Global Experiential Lead at Meta. “We are focusing on where there are immediate opportunities and value.”

Here’s our conversation with Baines, which covers Meta’s strategic marketing goals at Cannes Lions; the origins of the KidSuper collab; the inspiration behind the activation’s design and aesthetic; and Meta’s experiential approach moving forward.

Chief Marketer: Instagram’s activations at Cannes Lions have wowed attendees and racked up industry awards in recent years—and you’ve lead the charge for the past eight. Tell us about your inspiration for this year’s activation.

Damien Baines, Global Experiential Lead at Meta: The SuperStudio originated last year with creator Felipe Pantone. We were focused on creating an exciting environment, incorporating AR for the awesome transitions and just developing great content. We built some equity in that, so we continued with the Reels SuperStudio again this year, but in partnership with KidSuper, a collaborator coming at it from a different angle.

Our intention for this is a bit more specific. Our goal was to try to educate our brand partners and media partners here at Cannes on the importance of all of the creative considerations and optimize best performance in Reels. So, that would include creating natively for 9×16 vertical, as well as the safe zones and “sound on.” You’d be surprised how many people do not create natively in that way. The flip side of that is how much the performance improves.

CM: How did you land on the particular design and aesthetic?

DB: Before you walk in, you’re met by a sculpture garden. For the partnership with KidSuper, we asked them, what are you doing right now? What are you making, creating? We wanted to make this as collaborative as possible, and his Paris Fashion show this Saturday is focused on “how to find an idea.” I thought, oh my God, this is perfect, because we think Reels is the best way to express an idea.

So, you’re met with what we are calling “totems of creativity,” these surrealist, oversized, pieces. A crumpled up ball that has some doodles and sketches on it. A paper plane, as if you’re taking a creative break. We were excited about making them extra-sized and playful, along with the spirit of the brand.

Also, you’ll see doodles on the floor—and it’s not just aesthetics. We are actually mapping how you go from the seed or the germ of an idea to [completion]. Along the outside, which you can see from the pier and up close as well, are different ideas on how to create a Reel. For instance, forced perspective: We’ve storyboarded that out to show how you can build that for yourself while you’re here at Cannes. And it’s changing every day.

CM: How are attendees guided through the experience?

DB: We have creative directors and brand ambassadors telling them about KidSuper and directing them and guiding them through the prompts. Once you enter the space, there’s an education zone, because we want to give you all of the things you need to remember before you go into the content creation moment.

We also have some stats and wonderful ideas to advance and underscore performant aspects of Reels. We have 3.8 billion people are on the platform, and over half of the time spent is with video and with Reels. Over the last six months, we’ve doubled it to having over two billion shares of Reels daily on the platform. And then 64 percent of the people surveyed [in a short-form video study by Factworks] have actually purchased a product or a service after viewing a Reel. So it has huge commercial implications. Because this is a business audience and we have so many powerful, important brands and media partners here at Cannes, these are the points that we’re trying to underscore.

Then you get into the content creation moment, and we highlight the power of sound. “Sound on” is not just about sound on or off; it’s also about the type of sound you use. You can have music—everyone’s very comfortable and familiar with that. But also of rising importance are sound effects as well as voiceover. You can do one or the other out of those three, or you can blend them together.

We also have an incredible AR effect called Doodles Scape, which basically transforms you in your environment into this big sketchpad. It’s really dynamic and underscores the KidSuper brand, the aesthetic, the super playful ethos. It launched here at Cannes and we’re going to be promoting that also at the Paris fashion show. Last year’s AR transitions, going from room to room, we wanted to keep with that. We feel that it’s very important; over 40 percent of Reels include some type of AR effect.

CM: What other ways have you tried to involve brands in the experience?

DB: We have a sizzle reel that plays in the education zone, where we are showing some of the brand-produced Reels. Because even though we see KidSuper as both the brand and creator, we wanted to highlight brands and partners that are doing their best work on the platform.

CM: To what do you attribute Reels’ growth?

DB: It’s been intentional. We have really focused on Reels since the transition from the still image to video. If this is where our audience is and this is where they’re spending time, then we want to optimize for that and empower them to create the content that they want to create and consume it as well. If you think about Instagram and all the creative tools—the alignment tools, the filters, all those things that help you make your best photograph—we’re trying to do the same thing with Reels and make it a powerful video editing tool.

CM: Last year’s activation highlighted the metaverse in a big way. How does your overall strategy differ this year?

DB: We’re still focused on the metaverse. That hasn’t really changed. For this particular audience, however, we are focusing on highlighting where there are immediate opportunities and where there’s immediate value. We are seeing this explosion of growth and success with Reels, so that’s what we’re trying to highlight. But it should be noted that there might be a perception that the metaverse is just about VR, or even with the launch of the latest Quest headset, mixed reality. It’s also AR. AR is the first step into the metaverse. So even within this Reels context, we are highlighting the metaverse and integrating that into social media platforms.

CM: In general, what’s Meta’s approach to experiential moving forward?

DB: We’re still committed—I think even more so—to bringing back in-person experiences. Moving forward, “hybrid” would be the word. The intention for the metaverse is to try to be expansive, and that means breaking down barriers and merging or blurring the lines between VR, AR and IRL. You need people to do that. People are always, and will always be, the focus of what Meta builds for.

Photo credits: Sean Ebsworth Barnes

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If there’s one part of the business that’s connected to the consumer, it’s the marketing department. Closely monitoring shifting consumer behaviors, eyeing critical trends in the marketplace and the culture in general, and deftly communicating the value of your brand to potential customers are all table stakes for any modern marketer with C-suite aspirations.

Indeed, according to a recent PwC survey, meeting customer expectations for their brands, products and services is the biggest concern for CMOs, with 37 percent listing it as one of their top three issues. So in recent conversations with some of the best and brightest in the industry, we inquired about what it takes to land that coveted role, and how to turn those aspirations into reality.

Brad Hiranaga, Chief Brand Officer, Cotopaxi: I think for marketers that are coming up, if there’s a way to have experiences on both types of brands, legacy nostalgic brands that you learn a ton of stuff on in addition to smaller, digitally-native brands that are built that way, it’s important to have both those types of experiences. Because otherwise, you can eventually pigeonhole yourself into being just a performance-based marketer, or just a big brand marketer.

When you step up into CMO roles and C-suite roles, you don’t have to be necessarily an expert on every single thing, but you have to understand how all of those parts fit together for the bigger picture of what you’re trying to drive. You have to understand the consumer and where technology’s going. So being curious and constantly reinventing yourself and your skills is crucial. [Read more from Hiranaga here.]

Ana Andjelic, Global Chief Brand Officer, Esprit: I would recommend a strategic and holistic approach, which means looking at where the marketing connects with merchandising, where merchandise connects with design, where brand connects with the product, and where all of the above connects with physical retail and the experience. Look at the entire brand experience. That’s your job. Sure, you can use data, but why? To connect better with merchandising, to give direction to design the product better, to set the price. I recommend a holistic view in this role. [Read more from Andjelic here.]

Kristen D’Arcy, CMO of Homedics: The conversation that I’m hearing in the industry is about the cookie-less world and how do you build up your first-party data so that you can learn a lot about your consumers’ market in a personalized way. That’s number one. Number two is social shopping. That’s something that a lot of people are discussing right now. And then three is, what is the role of influencers more broadly? Going back to our strategy, which was mass diversification in terms of where we put our media, what role do influencers play in terms of helping drive sales online? [Read more from D’Arcy here.]

Tyrrell Schmidt, Chief Marketing Officer, TD Bank: Sometimes people think about their career in linear ways, like “I need to move to the next level.” It’s also about understanding what experiences you need to get to the C-suite. Be open, be willing to try new things. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to stay in that role forever.

I urge people to think about “the what and the how.” What you deliver is important. Taking accountability for your area is critical, but it’s also the “how.” I’m a big believer in building relationships. As companies look to build more agile structures, being able to work with different groups of people on aligned goals and aligned KPIs and outcomes is important. [Read more from Schmidt here.]

The post The C-Suite Speaks: Cotopaxi, Esprit, TD Bank and Homedics Offer Career Advancement Tips appeared first on Chief Marketer.

For New York City-based consumers familiar with the FreshDirect brand, its orange and green delivery trucks may come to mind first. But the 20-year-old company wants to be known as a high-quality food and grocery retailer first—and a delivery service second. “We’re intimately knowledgeable about fresh food, curated experiences and culinary experiences,” CMO John MacDonald told Chief Marketer. “We just happen to think that the best way for that food to get to you is for us to deliver it.”

So to help tell that story, and to overcome the perception that “all food delivery is equal,” the company created a video series, dubbed “Sourced,” that highlights the stories, passions and motivations of the farmers and producers with whom FreshDirectpartners. We spoke with MacDonald about marketing the video campaign, brand awareness goals, the unique challenges of direct-to-consumer marketing and the company’s omnichannel approach.

Chief Marketer: Why did you decide to leverage vendor partners for this marketing campaign?

John MacDonald, CMO of FreshDirect: Spotlighting partners is something that many companies, specifically in food and grocery, do a lot. They showcase the relationships that process the quality of product. What I wanted to do with this one was turn the prism a little bit and show a different side as to why partnerships matter, especially for us. We show the quality of the food and we talk about the direct producer-to-table ecosystem we’ve built, but more importantly, the passion and reasons why these suppliers do what they do.

CM: How are you getting this message out to people? What’s your target audience?

JM: We created these as evergreens. These are partners who we’ve used for several years in many cases, so we’re promoting them on paid and organic social. We’re putting them on YouTube. We’re promoting them in pre-roll when people watch YouTube. We also have the ability to cut them down and do other things with them. We’ve taken this footage and given it back to them, to the farms and our suppliers as well. We’re hoping that they go back and start using it. They can use the still photography. We’re trying to get this in front of as many people as possible, but we’re also keeping it out there for a long time, so that if people happen to come to our site or our YouTube page they can see it.

CM: What are the campaign’s strategic marketing goals? And the KPIs you’re trying to meet?

JM: Very standard things, like engagement on my social channels and getting likes and views, but I wanted to go back and start telling the story of FreshDirect a little bit more than we have in the past, not just the fact that we’re out there and we’re packing groceries and fresh food and giving it to people. I’d love to start making headway on some brand breakthrough. I want some top-of-mind awareness and top-of-mind consideration. I want this to help people have a better perception of the kind of quality that we engage in, and engage with the brand not in just a functional way, but in an emotional way, and understanding what we do [beyond] delivering groceries.

CM: What are some of the marketing challenges of the grocery delivery landscape?

JM: The first thing I’d say is that FreshDirect isn’t a delivery service. We’re a high-quality food and grocery retailer first. We’re intimately knowledgeable about fresh food and curated and culinary experiences. We just happen to think that the best way for that food to get to you is for us to deliver it. We have temperature-controlled facilities and trucks that deliver the food in the best possible condition. I think the biggest challenge for me as a marketer for FreshDirect is to get customers to understand that, and to understand that not all food delivery is equal. And the relationship on how your food is stored and transported and how long it lasts at your home matters.

CM: What’s your social media strategy for this?

JM: We’ve done some research and we know that there are some awareness problems outside of Manhattan, specifically in the outer boroughs and the suburbs. So we’re using not only the social channels, but other mass media channels to reeducate people and broaden our reach. Social channels are going to be a mix of re-introductions to the customer and telling those great stories about our suppliers through the Sourced videos.

CM: Beyond this campaign, what channels and tactics have proven successful for your brand?

JM: I think anybody who is in our space understands that it’s a mix of the channels. Even though we’re an online, pure-play grocer, you still need to make sure that you’re reaching the customers where they are. And so that means a mix of digital and traditional. Things that work well for us digitally are paid search affiliate programs and very targeted, personalized, communications with our existing customers. But we broadly reach people, too. We still engage in very traditional methods, like direct mail, and this fall, we actually are doing our first broadcast TV [spot] for the New York Metro market. We’re doing a very wide media buy and going out there to try to tell that story and engage with the customer.

CM: Can you talk about your direct mail approach? Being New York City-based, I’ve noticed that your discount coupons have been around for years. How is that working for you?

JM: We use direct mail for a whole bunch of different reasons, and some of them are pure acquisition. We’ll go out there and say, this a group of people in the New York Metro market that we’ve never talked to before and we can target them. Sometimes we know customers who have shopped with us in the past, and some haven’t shopped with us before. So we’ll do some win-backs through those offers.

Acquisition is actually a success story for us through direct mail, because it introduces the brand and gives something people tangible to hold on to. And it also gives them a really good incentive to come into the brand and to shop with us. We still see value out of direct mail. But I think it’s in tandem with the other touchpoints. I’m encouraged to see that people still respond to that because you get bombarded every day with emails and texts. And sometimes it’s nice just to come home, have that piece of mail and sit with it for a little bit, or put it off to the side and then come back to it later, whereas an email or a text is deleted immediately. We see a longer-tail value to some of that direct mail.

But I think that’s the value of a fuller, broader type of funnel approach, where you may be sitting with a direct mail piece and maybe put it off to the side. But then you see our commercial and might go back to it. We want to continue to build that relationship, more than just, “Hey, I’m going to give you $50 off,” and it’s a performance marketing piece. We’re trying to find those areas of life where we can intersect with the customer.

CM: What are the challenges and opportunities of the direct-to-consumer market?

JM: Consumers in this world want us to solve their problem. [We have to] meet their expectations, meet them where they are, and consistently get them what they need–and then surprise them and give them quality. In a direct-to-consumer business, you have to deliver what you promise. We have to get the food to them on time, when they want it, in the condition that they want it in. That’s the bare basics of it.

The second thing is they want to know that you’re a brand that they can associate with this. There’s an aspirational element with brands like us, so we have to fulfill that. So if they’re looking for “grocery treasures”–these are finds that people can’t get too many places–we can get them those things. The challenge is making sure that we’re top of mind and that we are in their consideration set. I’ve got to be relevant to their life. I’ve got to solve their problems. And I’ve got to surprise them.

The post Brands on Fire: FreshDirect appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Claiming that your brand’s marketing philosophy is “social-first” is one thing. Truly walking the walk is another. Boardroom, the sports business media network founded in 2019 by Kevin Durant’s investment company 35V, is a shining example of the latter.

What started as a series on ESPN+ has evolved into newsletters, podcasts, premium video, written editorial and daily news that garners millions of monthly unique views and boasts tens of thousands of subscribers—all accrued in less than three years. Critical to the network’s growth was a test-and-learn strategy to pinpoint what content—and in particular, what format—worked best on social, and then applying that to developing its editorial strategy.

“While it sounds a little crazy to have done it that way, it was extraordinarily helpful because by the time we were hiring a full editorial staff, a full video staff and an audience development team, we already had these great use cases for what really worked for us on social,” Boardroom and 35V CMO Sarah Flynn told Chief Marketer. We spoke with Flynn about Boardroom’s growth strategy, its three-tiered target audience, experiential marketing plays and next steps for the brand moving forward.

Chief Marketer: Boardroom launched just prior to the pandemic in 2019. Today, it brings in 2.3 million unique views to its website, 216 million impressions and 8 million video views monthly. Discuss your growth strategy for the brand and how you achieved this success.

Sarah Flynn, CMO of Boardroom and 35V: When we first started growing the network, the most important thing was making sure that we had a differentiated voice and that we weren’t just another sports platform. People cover things on social media; there are a lot of different perspectives in the world. We needed to establish the “whys” of our existence. Once we started doing that, we were able to galvanize our network organically, through word-of-mouth, and have the athletes, entertainers, executives and people in our circles understand what we were trying to do and support it and promote it, which provides a halo effect and starts the initial organic growth.

Then, once we went through phase one, we were able to put our foot on the gas a bit more with an organic and paid social media strategy, digital marketing in general, and continuing to create awareness through the way that we cover different athletes, executives and entertainers, and making sure they’re sharing and reconnecting with their audiences. As well as starting to be more constructive about where we see ourselves out in the world, like being at VeeCon and the upcoming film we have, “NYC Point Gods,” and having that be affiliated with Boardroom rather than going full 35V. It’s being thoughtful about the places that we can be in the world, in addition to the “always-on-ness” of marketing on social media and continuing to drive people back to our site.

CM: So, the athletes and executives you cover are a key part of your word-of-mouth strategy.

SF: Athletes, executives and everybody in our network. We couldn’t do what we do from an editorial coverage standpoint if we didn’t have some of that buy-in from the early days. When we first started, we knew we had access and understanding. We used that as an asset on the content side, and it was also how we were thinking about it on the marketing side, because we knew that if we had buy-in from a lot of those people, they would start talking about it. They would subscribe to our newsletters. For a little while at the beginning, the core of our audience was actually the people that we were covering—and they were telling their fans.

And obviously, we have the force that is Kevin Durant. His fans knew early on, and that helped us get a jump start on follower and traffic growth, but also helped us understand what that audience and fans really want to see so that we were able to craft our content strategy around it. And the content piece and the marketing piece have to go hand in hand.

CM: After establishing your voice, how did you determine what your fans wanted?

SF: We did a lot of testing on social, and not just topic testing, but format testing, seeing what worked organically, seeing what performed well, if we put paid spend behind certain things. There was almost an entire year around building the social strategy where we didn’t have a full editorial strategy in place or a full internal team. We had not ramped up hiring yet because we wanted to do a lot of that content-type testing and make sure that the things we thought people wanted to see were really the things they wanted to see—before we actually grew our team and understood the needs that we had internally.

While it sounds a little crazy to have done it that way, it was extraordinarily helpful because by the time we were hiring a full editorial staff, a full video staff and an audience development team, we already had these great use cases of what really worked for us on social. [We would say] here’s some of the things that we’ve done, from a video and interview perspective, that have really worked well. And here’s how we think those things can translate to the larger editorial and content sphere.

CM: You used a social-first strategy to help build your content strategy.

SF: Yeah. Boardroom started out as a show that we did with ESPN, but even as we were doing that show, we knew we wanted to do more. We wanted to make it a network. So, piggybacking off of what we did with that show and transitioning it into something that was social-first was that initial incubation phase.

CM: You launched Boardroom just before the pandemic. How did that factor into your growth?

SF: The pandemic helped us focus on the things we knew we could do and what worked. From a sports business perspective, while it became very hard for places with live sports to understand where they needed to pivot, how they were going to make up for things financially, our coverage and our network is built off the business in and of itself. So, we were able to cover where people were putting sports spending dollars now that you didn’t have traditional sports on live TV, such as the NBA doing a 2K tournament on broadcast TV instead of having live games.

The business of it never stopped. A lot of people had to figure out how to innovate and do different things. We were really early to doing one-on-one interviews with people on Zoom, [and asking questions like] what are you doing? Are you thinking about your business? What does this look like? Being able to have those kinds of conversations early on helped us cut out some of the noise from a focus perspective, because we were able to double down on what was working.

Max Verstappen (Red Bull) -150
Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) +145
George Russell (Mercedes) +1800
Sergio Perez (Red Bull) +2400
Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) +2800
Carlos Sainz Jr. (Ferrari) +5000

A breakdown ahead of the Baku Grand Prix. https://t.co/sJa5Nd0ILS

— Boardroom (@boardroom) June 12, 2022

CM: What is your current target demographic? And how do you see it expanding?

SF: There are three buckets of fans that we speak to in slightly different ways. One is what we like to call the modern day sports fan, which is somebody who can be a more casual fan, but who’s really interested in the sports business in and of itself. They might not watch every single game on TV, but they’re probably seeing the highlights on Twitter. They’re scrolling through their Instagram and understanding what’s going on. They do care about who’s the GM of this team, or who’s buying this team, or what’s my favorite player doing off the field. It does skew largely male, 18 to 34, but we’re seeing an increase in female followers as well.

Then there are two sub-audiences. One is young entrepreneurs—people coming out of college who are thinking about business and the world of work in very different ways. They want to know what’s going on in Web3, in crypto, and they want to know what’s going on in new verticals, new sports tech, things like that. The content that we provide can help educate them on that. They’re not going to get that kind of information at a place like a CNBC or a CNN anymore. They’re going to a place like Boardroom. They’re having conversations on Reddit.

Then the third I call the sophisticated audience, which is people who just want to be really well read. That audience skews a little bit older. They’re subscribing to New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, and want to consume strong information and be informed. That’s an audience that people market to a bit less, but it’s one we think about all of the time. And then from an expansion standpoint, we’ve started doing a lot more music business coverage in addition to sports business coverage, and finding the right inflection points from a culture standpoint. A big goal of mine is to make sure we have the same strategy for music fans/music industry people that we did on the sports side.

CM: How have you shaped your testing and content strategy specifically? How do you find those inflection points?

SF: It’s three things. One, seeing how content performs across all different platforms, what’s hitting and what’s not hitting, and how we position it. Two, we’re always going to go back to that word-of-mouth and that our-network-is-educated strategy, because the more that our network is educated and excited about it, the more that translates eventually to fans as well. And three, A/B testing how content is presented on our site and who’s coming back for what kind of stuff, as well as paid strategy. If we are targeting new music audiences and we’re bringing people to the site, are they staying? Is that meaningful, and why or why not?

CM: Are you planning on experimenting with any new platforms beyond the ones you use now?

SF: Definitely. We’re in the process of revamping our website and doing some other things that will help galvanize and foster more of a community piece. I’m looking at platforms and strategies right now that will help a community conversation and perhaps unlock some experiences.

 

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CM: How is Boardroom planning to play in the metaverse?

SF: The metaverse is such an interesting conversation for us because it is a little meta: We’re covering what other people are doing in the metaverse. And then from a larger, 35V company perspective, we know what’s going on in the marketplace and we have brands and companies that we work with that have been extremely early adopters.

We’re being very cautious about the strategy that we craft there. The one thing that I would hate to do from a brand perspective is what a lot of the metaverse conversations are doing right now—which is a press play. [They] created a thing in the metaverse that you get press around. It doesn’t live, it doesn’t do anything special that you can’t do in Web2. We don’t want to create that. We want to use the metaverse and Web3 technology to actually cultivate community and do new and interesting things. I don’t think consumers’ heads are where they need to be yet for that to happen.

It helps us have constructive conversations about where we can be and how we can build, but I’m not going to jump into something just to jump into it. Everything that we do needs to be really thought out and well planned. We have the information and the tools that we need, but we’re not going to just show up tomorrow in the metaverse.

CM: What’s your experiential marketing strategy?

SF: Experiential marketing is really important to us, and there are three different ways that I’m thinking about it. One, we can approach any kind of experience from an editorial perspective and that can be very valuable. We look at where the conferences and events are, and how our editorial team can cover them on the ground and come back and tell fans about it.

Two, especially over the course of the next year, as you know, events are now really back to normal—in the way that we said they were going to be last year, but weren’t. We’ll start to appear thoughtfully and strategically in places where we know that there are fans and new audiences that we convert. A great example of that is we had a section called Boardroom Bleachers at VeeCon last month that was a targeted area for people to book meetings and network with each other, and have a space away from like the fray to have meaningful conversations and get business done.

Then three is, what are the opportunities that we have as a company to create our own events? The “NYC Point Gods” film that’s coming out with Showtime in July is a 35V project, but it is also a film about the cultural impact of the ’80s and ’90s, New York City point guards, how incredible they were, how they changed the culture and the sport, and the world around them. You’ll see Boardroom branding on that when it comes out. We’re doing a special premiere event in New York. Being able to create smaller touchpoints and connect them back to Boardroom is something that I’m always trying to figure out how we capitalize on.

CM: When it comes to marketing as an industry, any thoughts on what qualities a modern CMO should have?

SF: It’s about so much more than marketing than it ever used to be. The old school way of thinking about a CMO was, this is the person that’s going to come in, they’re going to spend a lot of money on flashy campaigns. They’re going to do a lot of paid opportunity marketing and they’re going to do whatever they can for brand awareness. And then that’s also the first person who goes on the chopping block when there are budget cuts, because they were spending all the money.

I am a marketing person first and foremost, but I’m a product person. I’m a business development person. I’m always figuring out what our revenue strategies look like. I have my hands in every aspect of this business, very necessarily. And I think that it’s true across all C-suite and executive jobs that, especially at organizations that aren’t huge, those roles are no longer as siloed as they used to be. And they can’t be. If you want be a successful, modern day CMO, you have to be willing to learn other new skills and be willing to put your hands in other territories in order to make things work.

The post Brands on Fire: A Chat With Boardroom CMO Sarah Flynn appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Statistics about the importance of brand purpose and its impact on purchasing behavior abound in the marketing industry. Here’s one: 66 percent of online respondents would consider a company’s purpose when deciding to make a purchase, according to Porter Novelli’s 2021 Purpose Perception Study And the numbers increase when considering trust, loyalty and even forgiving a company if it slips up.

So, when Elizabeth Drori joined as CMO of Sperry footwear last November, she begin establishing a purpose platform—grounded in its 87-year history—designed to break through beyond the boat shoe. Following is our conversation with Drori about the evolution of the Sperry brand, fashion merchandising strategies tapped from her Walmart days, how the company uses data from product launches to optimize consumer messaging, and more.

Chief Marketer: For your new “Make Waves” brand campaign, who is the target audience and what are the strategic marketing goals?

Elizabeth Drori, CMO of Sperry: We launched our brand campaign “Make Waves” with the goal of driving brand awareness and desire for Sperry. It’s the first time in a few years that we’re really investing behind the brand and not just product stories. It speaks to a lot of what we stand for, but it’s also a rallying cry for our consumers and encourages people to make the most of every moment, make your own path, make a difference. From a targeting perspective, we’re serving it to households ages 18 to 34.

CM: Is this target a shift for you?

ED: It’s a shift from where our current customer is. We had this audience 10 years ago and now we’re looking to get there again. Brands often reach a cycle where they have a target audience and they grow with that audience. And now that audience is the next generation and you need to reach a younger consumer again. That’s where we are. Our current customers are a bit older, so we’re looking to drive that resonance with younger consumers in the next generation today.

CM: How are you accomplishing that through specific channels?

ED: From the media standpoint, the brand campaign is running on YouTube, for the demographic targets we talked about, as well as interest segments. But then we also market on other channels that resonate. We have been experimenting on TikTok. We do a lot on Instagram. We use influencer marketing.

CM: How are you evolving the brand to recruit those younger consumers once again?

ED: We’re doing a few things differently. First we updated our visual look and feel, which ranges from modernizing our logo, which we refreshed at the beginning of the year, to colors, fonts, the topography as well as styling. We’re trying to portray a younger, more fashion-forward audience just through our creatives and how you visualize the brand, no matter of the channel. We’re also partnering with brands and people of influence. As I mentioned, we work with influencers and style leaders.

We’re also doing a lot of product collaborations. One example is a collaboration with Warm and Wonderful, which is the British brand known for the sheep sweater Princess Diana made famous. That collaboration’s coming up later this summer; we shot a campaign with them and Madelaine Petsch of “Riverdale.” We have some of that creative out in the marketplace right now. And then finally, investing in the brand through the Make Waves campaign and also through a new purpose platform that we call “All for water, water for all.” We’re trying to create a desirable brand by making it more purpose-driven and more of a lifestyle brand.

CM: What are the challenges of marketing to a younger audience with a brand that has an 87-year history? How do you tap into its history while also refreshing it for new customers?

ED: Sperry has an incredible heritage and backstory. We were founded by Paul Sperry who had a passion for sailing and yet a problem with slipping on boat decks. Our story is that he noticed one winter day how easily his dog was able to walk across an icy pond without slipping, and after looking at the groves in his paws, he decided to invent boat shoes and sneakers that have those grooves cut out as traction. We have this powerful story, and it is still the foundation of our brand in terms of being innovators, adventurous, explorers.

We’re a brand that gets passed down from generation to generation, so we have a lot to build on. How do we stay close to our roots, but then make the brand feel relevant for today? This story gives us is a connection to the water. We’ve done a lot of research and exploration on what an association with the water means for consumers today. How do we unlock that power of water and harness the joy and associated emotional well being to the water for consumers today?

The second aspect of it is our role in fashion. Post-World War II, Sperry became known for an association with nautical, preppy-style. JFK wore us, Paul Newman wore us. We have these amazing associations, but we still need to modernize how to stay relevant in fashion and culture today. What’s wonderful for us is that preppy fashion is returning in a more modern aesthetic–more diverse, more open… we’re trying to hone in on that. How do we take this amazing legacy and focus on what it means to be connected to the water, and how do we unlock that? And then how do we continue to lean into the preppy trend in a way that feels current?

CM: You’ve had experience launching new brands at Walmart in the past. What did you learn that you’re applying at Sperry?

ED: At Walmart, we were focused on building fashion credibility. We had a strategy that we called “borrowing fashion credibility.” You can advertise yourself, but it’s even more impactful when other people talk about your brand and your product. At Walmart, we leaned heavily on influencers and content partners to change perception. At Sperry, to the extent that people perceive the brand as something only for the elite, there’s still a perception challenge to address. We’re leaning into partners and influencers in a similar way.

And then we’re also paying very careful attention to how we show up. We want to portray the brand in a relatable, youthful, approachable way, but we still love the water. We’re optimistic. We seek adventure. We don’t take ourselves too seriously. We’ve done a lot to portray ourselves as a much more open and democratic brand, and then also leaning into partners to drive that fashion credibility.

CM: How has Sperry’s brand purpose evolved?

ED: I mentioned that we have a new brand purpose platform, “All for water, water for all.” Before I got to the brand, we didn’t have a purpose platform. We were doing some things in the sustainability space. We supported the LGBTQ+ community, but we didn’t have anything that tied all that we were doing together. This platform was meant to create a purpose-driven strategy that’s grounded in our heritage. “All for water” is the sustainability piece. Water is the world’s biggest playground. How do we ensure we protect it? We have really great goals: By 2024, we want half of what we produce to be made from primarily recycled materials. We have a collection that we call “SeaCycled.” That’s growing more and more, and we’re very close to achieving that goal.

We work with Waterkeeper Alliance, which is the world’s largest nonprofit dedicated to clean and drinkable water. We’re doing a lot with them this year and making the sustainability piece a bigger part of our brand. And then “water for all” is something we’re activating this year. It shapes our vision for a world where everyone, everywhere, has access to the water and feels welcome there. When we came up with this platform, we started digging into some of the reasons why people of color don’t have access to water. It’s complicated. They’ve been excluded because of discrimination. There’s fear that dates back to slavery. There are socioeconomic factors. There’s so many reasons.

What we started to learn is that the solve is very grassroots. There isn’t one national or global organization that’s doing anything here. So we partnered with a media organization to create documentaries telling stories of entrepreneurs that are making a difference in the space in their own way and in their own communities. We’re starting to roll that content out this summer and will look to amplify their stories, and we’re really excited about having this conversation, learning ourselves, and then having that conversation more publicly later this summer.

CM: How does Sperry use data to achieve marketing goals?

ED: One of the biggest ways is through our product launches. We are launching new products regularly and we use data to assess their performance. We’ll track data that we get from Sperry.com to understand if we’re bringing in a new consumer. And if it’s an existing consumer, what are they cross-shopping? What’s their demographic information? And then we’ll also be tracking how fast product is selling through across all points of market, whether it’s Sperry.com or through our wholesale partners. Those pieces of information give us a solid feedback loop for how we can optimize our advertising and how to lean into what’s working and understand for future launches.

CM: Lastly, what are some marketing trends that the industry should be watching right now?

ED: One, for fashion in particular, continues to be influencer marketing. We see that evolve as new channels like TikTok come up and content changes. It’s an important validation mechanism and it can also drive sales. And it requires a lot of test-and-learn. There’s really no one-size-fits-all approach. The metaverse and everything that’s happening there is also a trend that people need to pay attention to and figure out if there’s a way in or not.

The post Brands on Fire: Sperry Footwear Chief Marketing Officer Elizabeth Drori on Building Brand Purpose appeared first on Chief Marketer.

If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make it sound?

The age-old question, typically considered a philosophical thought experiment, can be applied to marketing as well—specifically the experiential industry—as a way to gauge the impact of your campaigns. Because if no one is really talking about it, and if it’s not generating buzz, showing up organically on social feeds and making headlines, it might as well have never happened.

That was the advice from Pepsi CMO Todd Kaplan at sister pub Event Marketer’s Experiential Marketing Summit in Las Vegas last week as he shared lessons learned from his more than 15 years at one of the most iconic brands on the planet. Following are his tips and considerations for the experiential industry.

Deliver a Cultural Impact. Think beyond the physicality of where you’re activating, what you’re doing and how the program and concept will actually work moving forward, Kaplan says. “There are more brand messages coming to consumers on a daily basis—an hourly, minute basis—than you’ve ever had to process before. And you’re simultaneously overwhelmed by the amount of choices you have. It’s a difficult context as a marketer to be coming in and giving a brand message and talking about something they may or may not want to talk about.”

Marketers should aspire to connect with consumers on a deeper level to break through the barrage of brand messages. “You might be there, but that doesn’t mean they’re digesting and engaging with your brand in the right way. Cultural impact is this idea of creating meaningful consumer connection and doing it at scale… You’ve got to think beyond the onsite footprints as well,” Kaplan says. Moreover, consider what’s happening around the cultural moment in which you’re activating. “What are consumers feeling and thinking in those moments, and how can you pair it to those exact needs?”

Lean Into Earned and Social Media. The marketing industry significantly underestimates the value of earned media, according to Kaplan. “If you were to think of all the content you watched throughout the day, how much of it is actually paid usage versus you reading your news feed? Organic social media is where you’re actually spending your time. If your brand is organically showing up in these places, you’re going to reach your consumer versus the skippable ads and things that you’re shouting at them,” he says.

From an experiential standpoint, it’s about far more than just sharing a photo. “You want to create things that are creatively interesting enough, Instagram-worthy enough…that [make] people want to organically share these things. That should be a must-have as you build your event.”

Create Opt-In Experiences. Given the multitude of options consumers have, marketers should create experiences that inspire people to willingly opt-in to participate. It’s “not interrupting people with an ad or with a flyer or with a sample, but actually having them seek you out as the content. And then stretching your brand beyond events and thinking about new ways to activate your brain. It’s not just through an onsite footprint, but in new spaces and new forms, new formats, ways that your audiences haven’t thought about,” Kaplan says. “And then when they opt-in, you want make sure it’s distinctive so they remember what brand it was.”

Give It the Good Old-Fashioned Bullshit Test. Take a hard look at your marketing programs and ask yourself whether or not you’d actually share them with your friends. “If you didn’t work on this experience yourself, would you participate? Would you wait in line to go do what you’re building? Would you remember what brand it’s for? Would you share it or see it organically on your social feeds aside from the people at your company?” Kaplan says. If the answer is no to any of those questions, “keep working the idea and refining and building.”

This kind of pressure testing will keep marketers honest about their programs and unlock the potential to impact culture in meaningful and memorable ways. “I think this industry can go to that next level,” Kaplan says, “as you think about the role of experiences, especially coming off the pandemic, where everyone is seeking more connection.”

The post Brands on Fire: Pepsi CMO Todd Kaplan Shares Tips for Building Culturally-Relevant Experiences appeared first on Chief Marketer.