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.

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

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

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

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

Chief Marketer: What was the inspiration for the campaign?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CM: Talk about the experiential components of the campaign.

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Chief Marketer recently unveiled our esteemed PRO Awards judges panel, populated by heavy-hitters from some of the world’s top brands. This week they’ve provided insights on promotional marketing programs making waves in the marketplace; best practices driving results for their brands; influencer marketing success stories; and much more.

Chief Marketer: What brand—aside from your own—is doing promotional marketing programs that stand out in the marketplace?

Ekta Chopra, Chief Digital Officer, e.l.f. Beauty: There are so many incredible rockstar brands doing incredible work. Here are a few examples: Nike Just Do It,  Always Like a Girl, Old Spice The Man Your Man Could Smell Like, Tide Pods Challenge.

Denise Vitola, VP Brand Integration PR, Social and Influencer, Bayer Consumer Health: I recently was at the Cannes Lions Creativity Festival and was so impressed by many brands, but Heinz stuck out. I loved how they used human truths to arrive at a big idea. One that impressed me was the up-and-down Ketchup bottle. They uncovered in research that even though they reversed the ketchup bottle so ketchup fell to the top of the cap for easy release of the product, people still put it in the fridge upside down, so they put two caps on the bottle to avoid the issue. This idea rang true since my husband is guilty of not putting the bottle away correctly. It was a winner at Cannes. They also won with another campaign. They built off another insight they found where restaurants were refilling Heinz bottles with other ketchup to give the perception that they were serving Heinz.

Colin Fleming, EVP, Global Brand Marketing, Salesforce: What Warner Bros. and Mattel have done with the Barbie Movie promotion is nothing short of spectacular. It’s everywhere—in expected places—and more interestingly, in unexpected places.

Sarah Crockett, Global CMO, Dickies: There’s a lot of exciting work happening in the marketing field these days, and one standout to me is Claire’s. I am having a lot of fun watching how they are leaning in to reinvent themselves and enabling Gen Z and Gen Alpha (Zalpha) to take the center stage to help drive content, experiences and company strategies. They are also finding smart ways to incorporate AI in ways that drive value back to their consumer—their recent #Pierced campaign is a good example of that.

Linh Peters, CMO, Walgreens: The pivot that Airbnb has made to focus on their brand and purpose, and translating that into a meaningful and differentiated positioning, is fantastic. There is an authenticity and human connection that was previously not part of how the brand showed up.

Chief Marketer: What is the most exciting trend in promotional marketing today, and why?

EC: I get very excited thinking about the rise of personalized marketing. This is the practice of tailoring marketing messages to specific individuals or groups of people. This can be done based on a variety of factors, such as demographics, interests and past purchase behavior. Personalized marketing is becoming increasingly popular because it is more effective than traditional mass marketing, and when done right, it can lead to increased brand awareness, engagement, and sales. Other exciting trends include: experiential and influencer marketing, native advertising, video marketing, data-driven marketing… There is so much to untap!

DV: The most exciting trend in promotional marketing today is the Influencer/Creator. This trend excites me because it is a game-changer in reaching and interacting with consumers. And creators do more than post on their channels to promote products. They are now creating content for retail media, ecommerce, owned social channels, paid social and more. This content is platform-appropriate, relevant and relatable. I predict creators will take over 50 percent of work from ad agencies by 2025.

CF: I’m very excited about what generative AI can bring to promotional marketing. We’ve seen some inspirational traditional advertising efforts—like the Orange “Les Bleus” campaign—use it to highlight social inequalities. In the promotional sense, we can be thinking about real-time content creation and augmentation, which unlocks previously unbelievable experiences.

SC: Digital and growth marketing have been such a dominating force over the last decade. I love seeing how brands are taking what this field has taught us and using it in ways to marry the “old” with the “new.” Vans, as an example, recently launched a new campaign for their Knu Stack footwear launch and leveraged out-of-home, a media that has been arguably on the backburner for many years across multiple industries. They leveraged it in a hyper-creative way that obviously takes advantage of all the new technology that is available to us as creatives and marketers to pack a big and powerful punch.

Alia Kemet, CMO, Shipt: Years ago, social media felt like the wild west and in many ways, it still is. It’s interesting and exciting to see how brands are using their organic social channels to engage more directly and intimately with their customers in addition to all the ways social media doubles as an advertising platform. As marketers, we have the ability to test and learn on social media, to create content and revise it, and to try something out of the box and new, which I love. We’ve seen a huge spike in social commerce lately, and I think that will only continue to grow through the ever-growing social media landscape.

LP: Brands that are capitalizing on a consumer insight/moment to quickly bring a new product to market. It’s flipping the model of product development on its head.

Chief Marketer: What best practice or promotional tactic has driven results for your campaigns in the past year?

EC: For us, it’s all about being eyes.lips.first. That starts with community insights. We tune the e.l.f. in. We listen to what our community is saying and doing, and then we look for the signals to create our campaigns.

CF: Post-Covid, it’s been great to see the comeback of promotional and experiential marketing. But of course, people have evolved. They’re looking for more instant gratification and don’t have the attention span for long, drawn-out activations. This forces marketers to raise their game with strategy. Get to the point. Make it impactful. Don’t waste people’s time. And most importantly: build trust in your brand by doing so.

SC: Best practice #1 is a clear understanding of your brand’s unique value and how that can directly meet your consumer’s needs. The strength of our efforts can quickly get watered down when you try to be everything to everyone, but I firmly believe that you need to pick a lane, make clear choices on your unique consumer value and build strategies, plans and KPIs around that targeted zone. That doesn’t mean have one approach for all consumers, but rather augment your approach to drive more relevance, while ensuring that you hold strong on your unique position.

An example of a tactic that Dickies has deployed in this vein is with regard to our Dickies Skateboarding social media channels. We know that there is a robust consumer community that has an intimate relationship with skateboarding and who love our riders as much as we do. Segmenting our skateboarding social channels allows us to feed skate specific content all day, all night, to the most loyal skateboarding fans, vs. only embedding it within our larger Dickies social handles. We recognize that not all of our offerings are what our consumers are looking for, so finding a quicker way to get them what they want is always a goal.

Chief Marketer: Highlight how you’ve used one or more of the following to create standout promotional programs: Influencers; Brand Partnerships; Loyalty Programs. What made it a success?

EC: Focusing on our loyalty program, Beauty Squad, we have created a special program where our community is the first to have early access to product launches and exclusives (e.g. e.l.f. x America Eagle collaboration) plus receive exclusive rewards, promotions and incentives. Our goal is to create a truly omnichannel program where beauty squad members can get rewarded wherever they shop e.l.f. and know how valued they are to us.

e.l.f. Beauty Squad has 3.9 million followers and has been recognized two times as one of “America’s Best Loyalty Programs” by Newsweek, and we’ve scored above industry benchmarks for member engagement and member revenue contribution according to Oracle, our technology partner.

DV: I lead all influencer programs at Bayer and use this tactic often to reach our consumers with targeted programs and messages. We have seen much success in these partnerships. One example we recently executed with excellence was using the collab tool on Instagram, which resulted in even more chatter on social than expected. The program was for One A Day prenatal. We partnered new moms with experienced moms to chat about motherhood and insert our post and prenatal vitamins. The influencers loved the partnership, and so did their audiences. We used paid content, which performed well and exceeded industry benchmarks.

CF: We’ve partnered with Matthew McConaughey this year to highlight the “gold rush” happening in generative AI by asking the “right” questions of AI. Questions of trust, security, bias, privacy and data residency.

SC: I’m a big fan of brand partnerships. Partnerships allow you to see your brand through another powerful person or brand’s eyes, which can create a spark unlike any other. Earlier this year, Dickies had the pleasure of working with Ford and Sydney Sweeney, as an example. This was a unique trifecta that allowed all three partners to address a need in the market—an elevated and unique twist on workwear to cater to a consumer group that not only rolls up their sleeves and wrenches on cars, but also wants to be able to express themselves uniquely in the garage and out on the road. Sydney had a strong and sharp perspective on workwear needs for her and women in the garage, and we were proud to partner with Sydney and Ford to make this dream a reality.

AK: Consumers’ use of their favorite content creators, influencers, and VIPs has certainly impacted purchasing behavior and brand loyalty. They are looking to their favorites for product recommendations and, in some cases, spending advice. Shipt has tapped into this marketing tactic recently to partner with entrepreneur, actress and producer Issa Rae to star in our latest creative campaign and supporting programming.

Our partnership with Issa has ranged from product recommendations and an advertising campaign to a purpose-driven mentorship program for Howard University creative students. Through it all, we’ve been able to reach new audiences to introduce them to same-day delivery with heart. While the partnership just kicked off in June of this year, we’re already thrilled with the feedback and early results from our customers.

LP: We leveraged the myWalgreens loyalty program to create and deliver our first ever member exclusive “thank you: event that launched in stores and digitally July 23-29 for our 110M+ members. The event featured unprecedented bonus offers, personalized deals and accelerated reward earning opportunities that offered members the chance to earn three-months-worth of rewards in just a single week. This drove increased digital engagement and trips among members.

Chief Marketer: Where do you find your inspiration for your promotional marketing campaigns?

EC: e.l.f. is for EVERY eye, lip and face. We are a brand of the people, by the people, for the people and we create with the people. Our community tells us what they want from us, and this guides everything that we do.

CF: As a B2B company, we put great effort to draw inspiration from the leading B2C companies. For far too long, the B2B marketing world was held to a lower bar in terms of quality and caliber of work. Today, we believe that B2B should be held to that same bar and we’re living in a renaissance of B2B marketing.

SC: Easy…my team. I am a believer that good ideas come from everywhere, and I learn from and am inspired by my team every day. The creativity and ideas that they spark come from being diligent about having their eyes out in the field and their heart and passion on the brand. That combination is a powerful one and requires me to be a good listener every day.

AK: Good ideas can come from anywhere. At Shipt, we draw inspiration from the insights harnessed from first-party data, but also our children, our friends, the social media accounts we follow, and from our own industry. While looking for inspiration, it’s critical that my team and I have our ears to the ground—listening to cultural conversations, being mindful of consumer sentiment and news cycles—to create promotional marketing campaigns relevant to our targets, yet unique, exciting and appealing.

LP: I look outside of our industry to see what other brands are doing to drive brand awareness and engagement: brands that are clear in who they are as a brand and sophisticated in their understanding of the consumers, and then marrying that with what’s culturally relevant.

The post PRO Awards Judges Panel on Promotional Marketing Best Practices and Trends 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.

Restaurant reservation platform Resy uses search intent to curate editorial content, segment users based on interests and onboard new restaurants to the service. An article in AdExchanger covers a chat with Hannah Kelly, the CMO of the American Express-owned brand, about the company’s digital marketing strategy, what channels are working best and campaign measurement.

Image credit: facebook.com/resy

The post Resy CMO on Leveraging Search Intent to Inform its Editorial Strategy appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Got a promotional marketing campaign from the past year that you’re super proud of? Then we have just one simple question for you: Why wouldn’t you want to get your best work in front of this panel of judges?

The jury for this year’s PRO Awards, the industry’s largest and longest-running recognition program for B2C and B2B promotion marketing, is stacked with CMOs and high-level marketers from the likes of e.l.f. Beauty, Dickies, IBM, Disney Parks, Walgreens and Bayer.

Their brands are household names because they’ve mastered the art of promotion marketing. And come next week, this crew will share their thoughts on industry trends, best practices and stand-out brands in the marketplace. Get your work in front of them today.

The post 2023 PRO Awards: Call for Entries appeared first on Chief Marketer.