Profile: Tamara Mendelsohn, marketing director, Eventbrite

by Marketing ON 30 April 2013

Tamara Mendelsohn, director of marketing at Eventbrite, joined the online ticketing start-up as the web revolution was disrupting yet another sector, democratising ticketing through technology and social influence.

A last-minute search on LinkedIn before signing up with a big corporate resulted in the fateful meeting of Tamara Mendolsohn with the founders of San Francisco start-up Eventbrite. Founded in 2006 by husband and wife team Kevin and Julie Hartz and Renaud Visage, at the time the online event ticketing platform’s headcount could be measured on two hands. Before Eventbrite, there didn’t exist a way to easily sell tickets online for all but the biggest players. The main competition was Excel spreadsheets and cash at the door. The company has now grown to over 200 employees and sits as a prime example of yet another industry being disrupted by the internet.

The service has since evolved to incorporate a suite of tools to help event organisers market their events online, including taking advantage of the site’s search engine optimisation. For the first few years, Google was the biggest driver of traffic to Eventbrite, but then, interestingly, Facebook starting climbing the rankings as a top driver of traffic to the site. Event organisers were taking advantage of Facebook’s distribution, and attendees were sharing the fact they had registered for an event. It was just around the time Tamara Mendolsohn came on board, and it marked a significant point in Eventbrite’s evolution.

“We realised that the event space was being transformed by the advent of social media, that social media was levelling the playing field,” she tells me. “All of a sudden you didn’t need a million dollar budget to get the word out about your event. Your attendees could be promoters for you, and in fact, they were probably the best promoters you could ever ask for because their word has so much credibility with their friends.”

Marketing: Tell us about how you got started in your career.

Tamara Mendelsohn: Out of college, I went to work for Forrester Research. I started as a research associate and worked my way up to an analyst role on the ecommerce side. So I was doing research and consulting around ecommerce and consumer behaviours and shopping patterns as consumers were increasingly incorporating the internet into their purchasing decisions. What I was really fascinated with was the multitouch process where a consumer would research something online and then go to the store and feel and touch it but then maybe go back online to do a little bit more research and then ultimately order online or the other way around – they might run into something in a store but not want to buy it, so they went home and would do more research.

You see these really interesting patterns, yet at the time most retailers thought about their ecommerce channel as very separate from their store channel, and retailers would fight about whether a customer was a ‘retail’ customer or an ‘online’ customer. So a lot of the research I was doing was to help these companies understand ‘this is your customer, this is your store’s customer and they’re going to use online channels, they’re going to use store channels, they’re going to use your phone channels, to get the information that they need when they need it because this is all being facilitated by the way consumer adoption of the internet is growing and changing’. I was totally fascinated by this and by both retailers’ strategy and structure and then the technology with which they solved these problems.

Then I worked with technology vendors as well to help them tailor their offerings to the real needs of retailers and I became really interested in how technology was transforming one of the oldest segments of business of all time, retail. I was really fascinated by that. I think my respect and excitement for technology and the impact that it could have on both our lives as consumers and how it can disrupt seemingly-secure business models was something that I became very excited about.

How did you come to end up at Eventbrite?

I was at Forrester for a number of years, and then decided to go back and get my MBA, and in a moment of thinking how I could broaden my horizons a little bit, I chose to go to MIT because they are very technology focused and they have a really strong entrepreneurship program as well, and got to really stretch my wings and explore a lot of different things, but at the end of the day realised that the thing that I was truly passionate about was consumer technology.

I graduated from MIT in 2009, which was very shortly after we had a pretty big economic collapse. There just weren’t a lot of start-ups that were hiring, and I had an offer to go join a large company that was not in the Bay Area, and I think it was one week before having to sign that contract I did a last minute search on LinkedIn for Bay Area start-up companies with less than 50 people that were hiring in any marketing position, and there were two open positions on all of LinkedIn at this time. Eventbrite was one of them, and I applied to both, and I got a call from Eventbrite the next day.

The rest is history. Julia [Hartz, co-founder and president of Eventbrite] called me up, our co-founder, and she said, “I’m really intrigued by your resume. You’re way over qualified for the position.” I think it was a community manager role, and she’s like “But I was really intrigued and just wanted to learn more about your thinking,” and so I spent some time with the product and was just really excited by the opportunity, as I also realised that the online ticketing events category was an area of ecommerce that was still undisrupted and there was a lot of exciting opportunity there, and convinced her that I could do so much more than the role that they had carved out. And I think two or three hours later, Kevin Hartz gave me a call and we had a great discussion and a day or two later I flew out to San Francisco and met I think the entire team, and was just really blown away by the passion, the excitement, the intelligence of the team, the opportunity for the business and the very simple yet strong business model.

Coming from that research background, how do you think that influences you now as a marketer?

It really does. I think one of the first things I was most proud of in the earlier days of Eventbrite was a report that I wrote called the ‘Social Commerce Report’, and that is a playbook right out of my analyst days. We were doing some really cool stuff with social media, right, as I explained to you before. I was watching Facebook go from 10 to nine to eight, all the way to the number one driver of traffic, and I knew that we had built the systems to be able to track exactly how that was happening. And there was a lot of debate at the time around what is really the impact of social media? Does it really affect the bottom line? And I knew we had the data to show that it did. So we published – it was just a blog post at the time, the first social commerce report, which was the value in revenue to our event organisers every time somebody shares an event. So when one person clicks, ‘Share this event on Facebook’, how much revenue does that drive back to the event organisers?

We update it. It just keeps on giving. Because it’s interesting data… it’s data that everyone can learn from and it’s thought provoking and exciting, and at the time, nothing like it existed. And I directly attribute the idea to my background at Forrester because that’s what I did: I looked for trends, I looked for patterns, I looked for interesting proof points, things that people were talking about, and put that out there. I remember when Mark Zuckerberg on a podcast talked about that report. We were a tiny company, no one had heard of us and all of a sudden we were in the conversation of social media. That was a very exciting moment for all of us.

It raises an interesting point, with ecommerce as well as social media and the paths to purchase being very muddled, it’s very difficult to attribute, but measuring ROI is an imperative for marketers. How do you go about that and what do you see as the next step? Is online attribution any good yet?

It’s only as good as the tool you have to measure it, and we have a strong toolset – I would say we have a solid toolset, but it can always be better. There is the full nirvana of multitouch attribution that we’re getting to and I think the level of visibility will only increase and get greater. But I think as marketers, you have to be comfortable with a certain level of ambiguity. That said, I measure the hell out of everything I can, and try to attribute. Because at the end of the day, as a marketer, you’re smartest about the marketing programs that you’re running and you can make educated guesses in terms of the impact that they’re having based on available data. And as long as you have a solid set of available data, you can have confidence that your estimates can be accurate.

And so I would say that I’m in a lucky position of being at a company that’s very data oriented. So we have a lot of the toolsets and mechanisms in place to track. That said, as we all know, when you do a great press release or hold a great event, it’s hard to sometimes map that or attribute that back dollar for dollar, but if you can…

Do you try?

Yeah, but at the end of the day, I think if you can trust your ability to estimate the unknown and use the data you have for the known, you can get to a place where you can feel pretty confident and your understanding of the effectiveness of the things that you’re doing.

We’ve heard it said you single-handedly took Eventbrite from Silicon Valley to global success…

That might be an overestimate of my capability, but that’s very flattering.

Tell us about that journey, there must have been challenges and unexpected hurdles on the way?

It’s not over yet, and that’s the thing. We’re right in the middle of this crazy journey, and literally it feels like every six months or so we have a whole new set of challenges based on the new markets that we’re entering and the state of growth that we’re at. So it’s never boring. But I think what’s really interesting, as a Forrester analyst, we spent a lot of time talking about the power of storytelling. We looked at a lot of data, but at the end of the day, if you couldn’t tell a compelling story with that data, it would be very difficult to get people to change the way they see the world.

And that I also really have taken into my role at Eventbrite, and back even when we were tiny and we hadn’t raised any VC [venture capital] funding, when it came time to go out and pitch to VCs, the question is: what is our story? What is our narrative? Why would someone believe in our vision?

As Eventbrite moves into international markets, have to change strategies or tactics for different markets?

Yeah, there are a couple of examples I think. One of the ways we enter markets is actually letting our product be organically adopted first, to understand exactly who is using it and where to put resources. For example, in Australia, before we did any marketing there, we saw a lot of adoption in the business community. People were using Eventbrite to do business seminars, such as how to use Google Plus for your small business, or how to do small business financing, things like that. That was very particular to the Australian market, and really interesting, because all of a sudden we looked at that data and we realised the story for Australia was that Australians are quite entrepreneurial and the proof of it is in the usage of the platform. Whereas in Berlin, it’s all about the burgeoning tech scene, and how Berlin traditionally has been this artist hub but now it’s becoming this tech hub, and all the innovation of Europe is coming out of Berlin, so the events that are on Eventbrite in Berlin are tech meet ups and mobile hackathons and things like that. That has really influenced and informed the way we go into a market.

Having access to that kind of data would tell you a lot about the different locations. Does it confirm anecdotes like San Francisco being the start-up capital of the world?

The density of tech events happening here is probably – I don’t want to say the greatest in the world – but the density is great. We released some stats last year on New Year’s Eve about the cities with the most tech events, and San Francisco was in the top five. That’s interesting, [as is] the fact that last year there were over 1000 bacon events that happened in the US. I think we learn a lot about our society.

I’m sure it’s not just the US that loves bacon… In your professional journey, not specifically at Eventbrite, have you had any mentors or influential figures that stand out?

Yeah, all along. I’m a big collector of mentors. I believe that the only way to really push yourself and grow is surround yourself with great people that can teach you. I would say that mentors have quite a really important role in my career. And you need different people at different times. You need the different things you need to learn at different times. So for me, it hasn’t been one person the whole way but different folks at different stages.

And are there any one or two things that you call on a lot, you know who gave you that advice and you’re glad you got at some point in your career?

Yes, all the time. Early on in my career one of my mentors taught me the importance of collaboration and of being able to get people excited about something and the power of having a team push an idea forward, and that’s something that I’ve definitely carried through and think about a lot. I remember in probably my first year of work, I went to this meeting and there was my boss at the time, and I knew we needed to get this other team on board with this idea, and my boss with such craft made them so excited about working with us on this, and I thought ‘wow, that’s so powerful’. So had they walked out of the meeting saying ‘I don’t want to work with them on that,’ then our idea would have gone nowhere.

Obviously it’s still going, but we’re interested in what you would see as your career highlight up to now.

That’s really hard – I feel like there have been a couple. Probably my career highlight was being hired at Eventbrite to be the community manager here, and we then went out and raised our first round of VC funding – we raised six and a half million dollars – and that was really the difference from being a 10-person start-up to being a 100-person organisation. And I remember when we raised that money, Kevin and Julia said, “Okay, we want to go out and hire a director of marketing to really take this company to the next level,” and I told them, “I think I understand this business so well, I understand what we need to do and I understand how to get there. Give me a shot at being the director of marketing.” And Kevin said, “Okay, well, we’re going to keep going with our search, but in the meantime, view this as your three-month interview and then if we don’t find somebody that we like or if you prove yourself, we’ll give you the job.”

It was three incredibly stressful months where I was interviewing for my potential boss and also trying to do the job myself and putting a strategy in place where no strategy had ever existed before. And I remember we interviewed a lot of great people and I was pretty sure we were going to hire this one woman and Kevin and Julia invited me into their office, and I told myself this is going to be good for my career, I’m going to learn from somebody, this is a good opportunity and they said, “No, we want to give the job to you.” And that was just such an exciting moment I think because I had earned the trust of Kevin and Julia and because I had this exciting opportunity as I had proven I had the chop to do it.

Q&A with B2B expert Carlos Hidalgo: Lead gen is overrated

by Marketing ON 13 March 2013

With over 20 years of experience in the B2B space, Carlos Hidalgo is a respected thought-leader, blogger and keynote speaker, and was named a ‘Who’s Who in B-to-B’ by US-based BtoB Magazine. He is currently CEO and principal of Annuitas, a provider of lead management process services, and has worked with organisations such as McAfee, HP, CA Technologies and Microsoft.

We chatted with Hidalgo about his thoughts on lead generation versus demand generation and the challenges facing B2B marketers today.

Marketing: How important to B2B marketing is lead generation?

Carlos Hidalgo: While this may surprise you, I would say that lead generation in B2B is not that important. What is truly important is demand generation. Lead generation is focused on simply generating ‘leads’ into the top of the funnel. I speak with many marketers who talk about lead generation as generating responses – responses are not necessarily leads.

Demand generation focuses on generating perpetual demand and creating a dialogue with the buyer at every stage of their purchase process. The reason this approach is so important is that B2B buyers have more information at their fingertips than ever before. Research shows that up to 50% of the buyer’s purchase path is complete before they ever engage with a vendor. This means that B2B organisations have a limited time to engage their buyer and demonstrate they understand the buyer’s needs and challenges. This is done through a defined demand generation strategy that is driven by buyer insights.

You’ve been doing this for a while now. Do you feel that many B2B marketers still fail to understand the impact of comprehensive lead management programs or include them in their marketing programs?

I do and here’s why: I think too many B2B organisations are still very tactical in nature. Many define their marketing campaigns by these tactics – how many times do marketers speak about a ‘webinar campaign’, a ‘lead-nurturing campaign’ or a ‘top-of-funnel campaign’? These are not campaigns. These are tactical, focused actions that are one and done. Marketers need to understand that the buying process is not a one and done activity, it is a dynamic process. B2B marketers must adapt to that process and develop programs that engage, nurture and convert their buyers. This requires deep buyer insight, development of relevant content, and marketing and sales working together strategically to address the needs of the buyer.

On that marketing and sales relationship, a recent study on B2B showed that 50% of B2B marketers couldn’t confirm leads were being followed up. Is this a common problem?

It is an all too common problem as that statistic indicates. I would say in my experience that 50% is low. With most of the organisations we work with, starting off the overwhelming majority of these leads are unattended. There are many reasons for this, but one of the biggest is where the focus is for marketers. If the focus is on lead generation – the tactical approach of generating responses – sales will most likely ignore these leads as it forces them into being lead qualifiers and not sellers. Sales staff get paid to close deals, not try to sort through a list of names in hopes of finding a qualified buyer. There needs to be a more-established process that delivers a higher qualified lead to sales.

Should this be a key focus?

There has been a lot of focus on how to align marketing and sales in hopes to address this problem. I would submit that this is the wrong approach as the alignment is not the problem but one of the key symptoms of the problem. The focus should be on developing a demand process which focuses on a perpetual state of demand generation, is buyer-centric and maximises customer lifetime value.

Do you foresee a structural shift in the way marketing and sales departments sit within an organisation?

Most definitely. Many organisations have structured their marketing in a siloed or tactics-driven manner. You have event departments, field marketing – which in most organisations simply serves sales – email marketing teams, web teams, etcetera. This only compounds the problem of not being able to take a buyer-centric approach to marketing and sales.

I see the more progressive organisations beginning to understand that there needs to be some centralisation of these functions with the ability to extend this out to the global organisation. While it sounds contradictory, a centralised yet distributed model which is accomplished by the establishment of a demand generation centre of excellence.

Do all B2B organisations need lead management and marketing automation? Is this the silver bullet?

There is no silver bullet when it comes to B2B marketing. The thinking and hope of marketing automation being the silver bullet is the reason why, according to Sirius Decisions, up to 75% of all those who own automation state that they have not received the full value of it. This is also shown by another Sirius Decisions study that stated only 10% of marketing automation owners deploy it for programs later in the buying cycle.

What needs to happen in B2B organisations is a transformation of their demand process, including their buyer dialogue and content approach, their lead management framework (SM), organisational structure and how they are utilising technology in order to enable the process. Without this approach and understanding that technology is simply an enabler, organisations will stay stuck in tactical ruts.

What impact is big data having on lead generation?

I think the potential is there to have a huge impact in terms of data analytics and predictive analytics, but the truth of the matter is that in the present day it is having very little impact in most B2B organisations. While many organisations have the data, there is a gap in that they are not utilising this data to improve their approach and establish a better dialogue with the buyer, thus improving their results.

We will get there as marketers, but I do not believe we are tapping into big data as effectively as we could.

How do you recommend B2B marketers measure the success of a lead generation program?

Demand generation is about maximising the lifetime value of the customer. Many marketers are still stuck in measuring impressions, opens and clicks. While these kind of engagement metrics can provide insight to the marketer, they need to understand the rest of the organisation is looking at contribution to pipeline and revenue. Marketers should be looking to value measurements – return on investment, overall reach to their ideal target buyers, increase in deal velocity, and contribution to sales pipeline.

In essence, marketers need to be thinking like business people and begin to measure the value they are bringing to the organisation as a result of their demand programs.

How do you think B2B marketing will evolve in the next five years? How should people be transforming themselves?

I believe that marketers will continue to become better equipped to do the jobs the business needs them to do – engage buyers and maximise the value of those relationships. To date, over 80% of marketers claim that they have been self-taught. While we can learn a lot while on the job, the lack of marketing training is abysmal especially given the importance of this role. I see that over the next five years there will be an increased focus on the education of marketers and skills development.

I also see more organisations adopting a process-first Approach. As we have discussed, demand process is key to an organisation’s success. Too many companies have jumped to marketing technologies – especially automation – in attempt to improve and have failed. I believe that others will learn from these mistakes and ensure that process, strategy and technology are viewed as essential to an organisation’s revenue growth.

Carlos Hidalgo will be speaking at ADMA Rethink, Australia’s B2B Innovations Summit, in Sydney on 9 April and 11 April in Melbourne. For more details or to register, visit: adma.com.au/attend/upcoming-events/rethink-b2b-2013

Career profile: Mark Hassell, chief customer officer, Virgin Australia

by Marketing ON 28 February 2013

From part-time flight attendant to executive at Virgin Australia responsible for the brand, marketing and end-to-end customer experience, Mark Hassell talks to Marketing about career, managing change and being in high-end hospitality.

Mark Hassell’s first taste of the airline business was as a part-time flight attendant, a job he took to pay his way through university. From there, he never looked back.

Okay, that’s not completely true. There was the five-year stint in branch banking, but Hassell realised that wasn’t for him. The bug had bit, but as much as he was enjoying flying in his early twenties, he decided he didn’t want things to stay up in the air.

An encounter with British Airways’ brand marketing group exposed him to a group of young marketers with “lots of energy and enthusiasm and passion,” giving him an insight into the marketing world that he describes as ‘energising’. It was all about change (a theme we’ll come back to) and customers (ditto) and bringing about new customer experiences to help win against BA’s competitors. Hassell says it was an incredible introduction to what turned out to be a passion he had in his heart.

At the turn of the millennium, Hassell moved down under for the first time, taking on the role with Qantas as general manager, brands, before switching to the equivalent position in his old (part-time) stomping ground: cabin crew. There he led a 7500-strong domestic and international cabin crew team through productivity change programs, something that would become entwined to his future positions.

After six years at Qantas, Hassell took on the role of general manager of inflight service worldwide at British Airways, which turned into head of customer experience, before it eventuated in early 2012 that he would join Virgin Australia as general manager, brand and customer strategy, as the company was going through a monumental change process – a move he says was never in his plans.

In the above career path, describing an airline pedigree, a few words stick out – ‘service’, ‘customer’, ‘experience’ – that perhaps culminate in where Hassell now finds himself: as Virgin Australia’s chief customer officer.

Marketing: We wanted to ask about your title first off – what brought about the adoption of the terminology ‘chief customer officer’? Is it different to a CMO role, or is it more a reflection of today’s updated CMO?

Hassell: Well, the role has been created to primarily create a customer voice around the executive committee table. So really, what that provides for is an opportunity with, for example, the chief financial officer and the chief operations officer, to ensure that the customer sits right in the middle of the discussions around strategic direction and decisions that we need to make. And really what’s at the heart of it is to ensure that, organisationally, the customer and the brand collectively sit centrally in the organisational design. And in so doing, it’s allowing us to slowly continue the journey that we’re on in building the brand externally, but it’s also ensuring that we can build the brand internally as well.

Do you consider yourself a marketer?

Me, personally? I would consider myself a marketer, but ostensibly, I’m a customer champion, which, in my mind, needs to be a strong brand advocate and ensure that both components of my role work in a symbiotic and integrated way. There isn’t much point in going out creating strong and effective brand messages if they can’t be substantiated through the products you deliver or the service that you design, and the consistency with which you can deliver it.

From my perspective my remit brings all that together. I can have greater confidence that what I’m going out saying, what the business is going out saying, can be strongly substantiated.

Having worked on the front lines, so to speak, do you still call on that experience in your role now?

Yeah, I do. I think having worked on the front line is a huge privilege. It’s a brilliant opportunity to see the business in action and to fundamentally understand what the opportunities are and what the challenges are. My career, about 10 years ago, broadened to take on management challenges, so I headed up the flight attendant division at Qantas, and I came back to London to do the same at British Airways. So having done the job and then done the division was hugely helpful to me because I could get an insight and an understanding of the day in the life of the team that I was leading.

I think the other thing is it really is useful for me to understand how to make change happen when you have got an insight into the mechanics of the operation and you understand the complexities of an airline, but also the potential and the dynamism of the industry.

So now in a management role, when hiring do you look for people with, not necessarily flight attendant experience, but customer service roles of any kind?

I look for the right talent for the right job, really. I certainly feel the people who have got some front line experience in service, because it’s a hospitality business that we’re in, I think is good. I think it gives people a sense of connectivity with the actual physical product and service that’s being designed and delivered. You get an empathy with your people; I think you’ve got a real opportunity to build very positive relationships because you’ve got a degree of understanding of that.

I don’t think it’s the only credential you need, at all, to be honest, it’s not necessarily something everybody needs to have. But, in my experience, I think people who have, certainly in their earlier days, had some exposure to front line customer service it is very helpful.

It’s interesting you mention the word ‘hospitality’. Do you think that is something that’s forgotten in the industry – that it is a hospitality service?

Coming to Virgin, the single biggest thing that struck me on day one was the sheer passion and commitment and genuine warmth and friendliness of the team, and I was really quite bowled over by it, to be honest.

When you’re going to take on a low-cost model and move it into a full-service business, that’s a journey that the whole organisation has got to go on, and from my perspective, the people are already there. Lots of our team, if they didn’t work for us, would be in high-end hospitality somewhere. The criteria of selection in the business has been very smart, and has definitely brought in hospitality professionals who want to go above and beyond for all of our customers, which is fantastic to see.

Regarding the rebrand, and as you mentioned it was moving from the low-cost Virgin Blue to the more premium Virgin Australia brand. That’s interesting to me because under the larger Virgin umbrella it’s obviously got that cheeky, irreverent Richard Branson-type personality, which seems to work quite readily in a no-frills airline, but with that step towards the full-service and ‘glamorous’ model, I guess that’s got to create some challenges balancing the different aspects of the brand?

I think you’re right. It’s important to remember, though, that the Virgin brand straddles lots of different sectors and lots of different markets – if you consider Virgin Atlantic, that very much fights hard in a premium airline, three-cabin competitive sector, and does very well with that. From our point of view, the critical thing was substantiation.

The absolutely brilliant thing was that our people were already there, and actually to give everybody a brand new uniform so that they could not only feel the part but they could look the part, was a huge opportunity and a huge kind of step change attitudinally for everybody. But we also then implemented very quickly a range of products and services that genuinely meet the needs of the corporate business sector to demonstrate the brand repositioning credentials pretty early on.

We ran an ad in May of last year which was when the corporate identity came out, which was all about the promise of bringing the magic back into flying, because at that stage the journey of change was just starting, and very, very quickly what was launched was wide-bodied aeroplanes to Perth, full service business class offering, uniforms, training for our people, lounges, a whole range of change that very quickly came down the pipe that were very much at the heart of associating the premium credentials that without a doubt we were setting out to promise.

The second ad that we did very recently was saying that the promise has been delivered. When we went into all of that, what absolutely in my mind needed to be front and centre was we had to hero our people because the work they have done and the way they have played their part in truly being an energised asset for this change program, needed to be brought across.

There are very few occasions – in fact, I can’t think of an occasion in my mind – where customers talk to me and they don’t say, “And by the way, your people are brilliant”.

Back on your career, have you had any particular mentors that have really inspired you? Specific lessons that you keep with you?

Yes, I have actually. There are mentors that I’ve had in my career: people who at the time showed you different ways to do things that were not self-evident, and at the time, possibly I didn’t pick up on. But surely afterwards, I reflected on it and I got it. I’ve been very blessed, actually, that I have worked with some incredibly inspirational people through very positive times in the industry and some pretty challenging times in the industry. But a combination of technical skills and effective leadership credentials has been very much something I’ve been fortunate enough to be exposed to, which has been great.

On an individual level, what do you do to keep abreast of changes in your industry and your profession from a self-education point of view?

I think really, from an industry perspective, it’s not that big, actually, which might sound a bit daft, but it isn’t that big, and you get a sense of what’s going on pretty quickly. From our point of view, within the last 18 months, we’ve got anti-trust immunity now [allowing the parties to coordinate more closely] with Etihad, Singapore and Air New Zealand, and a deep relationship with Delta. So even for an airline who 85, 90 percent of our business is domestic, we’ve got some pretty strong international relationships that are deepening by the week.

That’s in addition to the networking relationship that we build over the years as well. And that’s not just through an airline executive perspective, it’s also through the supplier base and the partnership base over the years. It’s not that difficult to stay in touch with what’s happening, and I always make sure that I keep one eye firmly focused on where the whole industry is going – not just airlines, I think that’s the important thing.

When you look at things like the transformation of service in lots of different sectors and the role of technology and the change in consumer behaviour, all of that, there is no reason why the airline industry needs to be 20 years behind.

This is why I talk about innovation and entrepreneurialism and inverting it. The brand allows us to challenge the convention, to an extent. So I make sure that I don’t kind of keep my eye on aviation – which in the main doesn’t tend to shift dramatically from one year to the next – I try and keep perhaps an even keener eye on other areas of hospitality, high-end hospitality in particular, and customer service, and really look at where the innovative thinking is coming from.

Tell me about Velocity, and the relationship between it and Virgin Australia.

Velocity is very much part of our business, a central part of our business, and one that’s got increasing importance, huge importance to us. We’ve recently appointed a chief executive to run that business, Neil Thompson, and Neil and I work very closely because he’s come in at a time when we’re seeing the Velocity program grow significantly, very significantly, and his greater projections are very, very encouraging.

From his perspective, the dialogue the chief customer officer has with the CEO of Velocity is very much around how we drive loyalty and advocacy to a greater extent, and the role of the program in being able to help us fully exercise that.

SAS: Do you have any examples of where you’re leveraging analytics to make proactive decisions, as opposed to a straight reporting point of view?

I think with programs such as this, the opportunity to fully utilise your database in a responsible way is a sensible thing to do from the perspective of ‘how can we use what people are telling us in the most effective way to tailor our thinking and tailor our customer strategy going forward?’ How do we want to use those – the depth and breadth of the knowledge of the database with emerging technology so that throughout the journey process, from contemplation to reflection, we can be more targeted and more individualised in the service experiences that we can create. The program provides a rich source of potential for us in being able to do that.

If you could give yourself, as a young marketer, any advice, what would it be?

Very good question. My advice would be get to know your customer, understand the industry, think the unthinkable, push the boundaries and bring everybody with you in making it happen.

Is there any one career high and low that stand out?

Well, the career high is joining Virgin Australia, because it wasn’t part of my plan, and I’m very glad that it is. So for that to be part of this change program is terrific actually.

I’m very blessed in the sense that I haven’t had a career low, to be honest. I’ve stayed in the industry because I’ve found it constantly full of energy both through the good times and the not-too-good times, and I haven’t stopped learning, which I’m very fortunate to be able to say.

Q&A with Joe Pulizzi, founder, Content Marketing Institute

by Marketing ON 22 February 2013

Joe Pulizzi likes the colour orange. In fact, the founder of the Content Marketing Institute likes it so much so he opened Content Marketing World 2011, the Institute’s annual conference, sporting an orange astronaut suit.

Two years on, there is a further World held in New York, and now, for the first time, Content Marketing World is coming to Sydney. In ten days the Harbour City will host the biggest gathering of content marketing experts and those eager to learn.

We caught up with Pulizzi ahead of his trip down under to ask why Australia, just what is content marketing and why is everyone talking about it.

Marketing: This being the first time Content Marketing World in Australia, we’re interested to know what the trigger was to bring it down under at this time?

Pulizzi: Honestly, we were surprised by the amount of reactions from Australia, and we had a number of Australian attendees at Content Marketing World in the States. We actually have our third highest traffic on the website coming from Australia and New Zealand, and it was as big a surprise to me as anyone else.

I think if you look at, traditionally, content marketing, especially in print, there has always been a good uptake on the Australian side, but now we’re seeing a real clear move over to digital. It’s almost like this seems the perfect time for content marketing in Australia, and just by the reception we’ve got so far, we’re happy to be coming over in March.

So what can Australian marketers expect to get out of Content Marketing World?

I think the most important thing, first of all, we’re going to talk about the research and have a little bit of a look between what’s going on in Australia as it pertains to content marketing, and differentiate that with what’s happening in the UK as well as what’s happening in the US. We have that research coming out, and in the next couple of weeks we’ll talk about that.

But I think, more than anything else, it’s important for the people that are handling content on the brand side to start getting together and networking with other people that are doing the same thing. In most cases they’re new jobs, mostly new roles. They’re marketing people that are taking on creation roles, who are hiring on editors and journalists. We haven’t seen that happen before, and we’re doing new things.

This is not traditional vanity publishing, like ‘Here’s our custom magazine’. This is, ‘What are we doing with our blogs and our white papers and ebooks, and how are we integrating it and how do we measure it?’

So really, we’re trying to get together and ask: what are the problems? What are the challenges in this industry? Because, there is a lot of opportunities, where do we take it next? And I’m excited about seeing some of the best and brightest from both the States as well as Australia come together and talk about these issues.

What are those main challenges you’re hearing about?

Look, we can talk about ‘How do we measure this thing? How do we create enough content? How do we create engaging content?’ I think, honestly, a lot of it is integration and the understanding that this is the way we need to market now. This is not a ‘nice to have’ type of thing. This is stuff we have to have, because if you want to be found in Google, if you want to drive leads, and if you want to have your social media channels work for you, you have to have a compelling story at the centre of that. You have to. And I think a lot of companies are just becoming aware of that, and that’s the most important thing.

I’d look at integration, buy in, and I think the bigger issue that we see is a lot of companies come and say, ‘Hey, we need more content’, and I’m always like, ‘No, you don’t need more content, you need best of breed content that’s going to work for your readers, your customers, and drive business for you.’ It’s a new world we’re living in now.

We saw your blog post the other week about basically putting an end to ‘more for the sake of more’ content. What triggered that? Just from the number of comments you get?

I’ve been railing about that all year long. When our North American study came out, we talked to 2000-plus corporate marketers from around North America, and we asked them what’s your biggest content marketing challenge? And number one on the list was producing enough content. That had taken over producing engaging content. And honestly, I was disappointed by that because we’re so used to getting in the mindset of having to fill channels, and it’s not about filling channels, it’s about asking why we’re creating this content in the first place, and how we’re going to make a difference in our customers’ lives. And if we do that properly, we’re going to get more business, we’re going to get more loyalty, we’re going to get more emotion.

I think a lot of marketers were like, ‘We need content for Facebook, we need content for Twitter, we need content for a blog, we need content for our white papers,’ and we’re starting to think of it more like filling holes rather than looking at the customer experience I think the way we’re supposed to do. So I’m always like you can always use more great content. I just see a lot of mediocre content out there, and I think that’s a problem.

But for brands that may not have the resources to create really great content, surely some is better than nothing.

I would say that some mediocre content is not better than nothing, in my opinion. I would never use that excuse – I don’t think you can be too small to create great content. I think we’re looking at it the wrong way. I understand why, because you’ve been marketing this way all along, but really, you need to be publishing. You need to be publishers now. These are new skills. These are things that we’re not used to doing. We’re not used to thinking this way about our marketing.

We’re used to thinking about it in these silos of PR and newer silos of search engine optimisation and social media. We’re not looking at our customers and what their informational pain points are, which I think is really important. We sort of look past that, and you, as a journalist being in publishing, you see that. I see that because I’ve grown up in publishing. But when we talk to marketing executives, they don’t see that. They’re thinking first about the sale, and if we’re going to be successful online, you can’t think first about the sale, you absolutely can’t do that.

You have to first think about what your customers’ needs are from an informational standpoint, what media companies have been doing forever. So I get frustrated about this stuff, but I think because there is so much opportunity in small companies, mid-sized companies, large brands. Do large brands have more capabilities because they can do more with outsourcing, they can do more video? Absolutely. But there is no reason why a very, very small business can’t create great content. You just have to think a little bit differently about it.

Taking it right back to basics, how you define content marketing?

Content marketing… I’ll give you the book definition. Content marketing is the creation of valuable, relevant and compelling content on a consistent basis to your customers or to your target customer, to do something, to attract or retain that customer, to create some type of profitable customer action.

The easier way to think about it is instead of telling my customers I’m great, I’m going to show them I’m great because I’m going to teach them or I’m going to entertain them.

Even simpler to understand would be to think about yourself as a media company and less about a product and service company. What do media companies do? They satisfy the informational needs of their readers. That’s where we’re heading. And I think because the consumer is so in control, and they’re so bombarded with messages of any kind, if we don’t create something that’s interesting to them, they’re going to forget all about us, they’re going to go somewhere else.

We’re trying to work with businesses all over the world, all different sizes. We’re trying to say, ‘Look, you need to create some type of a compelling story. That needs to be at the centre of your marketing.’ It’s not that advertising is going away – we just had Super Bowl over here. We know that advertising is not going away. But I think what you’re seeing smart companies do is they’re looking at their advertising and they’re saying, ‘Look, we also need to tell these really compelling stories, and if we can do that and integrate that together, that’s going to make the leap up from the competition.’

We’re at a paradigm shift. I think we need to make that now and there’s a huge opportunity for companies to get it. I think that’s where we’re at right now in Australia, because it’s first-mover advantage – the companies that are really taking this seriously are moving forward, and they’re going to have a great advantage over their competitors.

We’re interested to know the differences in what you’re seeing as the most commonly implemented types of content plans – are there big differences across industries and across B2B and B2C brands?

There are – let’s look at the difference between B2B and B2C. B2B is heavy whitepapers. B2C brands don’t use white papers at all. They’re more on your ebook side. If you’re looking at social media tools for distribution, B2B is heavier in SlideShare, while B2C it’s almost non-existent. Which, by the way, I don’t think is correct. SlideShare is a great opportunity for B to B and B to C companies.

Even though there are some really great examples from American Express and from Coca-Cola and Red Bull, great consumer examples of content marketing, I’m seeing a lot of excitement going around about B2B because in B2B you’re able to really fine tune on the buying cycle.

And then we’re looking at what type of piece of content is going to take us from here to here… if you believe in the funnel at all, which some people don’t.

We wanted to ask about changes over time and what you’re seeing now compared to five years ago? What’s happening in the States?

It’s hard to keep up. Every few months it seems like the industry is changing. Content marketing, as a phrase itself, is a big deal to me personally, just for the fact that we’re starting to call it the same thing. The book I wrote Get Content, Get Customers, with Newt Barrett in 2008, that was our first chapter. We’re like, this industry is called 30 different things: custom media, custom publishing, branded content, branded storytelling, you’ve got native advertising in there, all kinds of stuff. The problem is we’re all talking different languages. What I like now when I go to a chief marketing officer and I say ‘content marketing’, even though there is a little bit of differentiation with what they feel it is, we’re starting from the same point usually. This is a huge deal, because now in whatever country you’re in, you’re talking about content marketing, you understand that I’m marketing a little bit differently and what that means, and that’s the biggest thing going forward.

It’s interesting – and you touched on it – that it’s not exactly a new concept, really. Is it basically just that agreement on language that makes it seem resurgent in the last couple of years?

There’s a couple of things. This industry is over 100 years old. The Furrow Magazine started in 1895, which is the largest circulated farming magazine in the world, and it’s done by a company called John Deere. So that’s kind of the famous start to the industry, and then you can use Procter & Gamble as examples down the road, you can use Lego down the road, all some really good examples. Some events, but mostly in print.

Now, what’s happened since 2000, 2007, 8, 9, what you have is you have brands that are saying, ‘Now we can communicate directly with our audiences because basically there is no barrier to entry. There is no consumer barrier, there is no business barrier. What are we going to tell them?’

Your customers have hundreds of different channels they can go through to get information. The best story wins, and if we’re not telling a good story, they’re not going to like us on Facebook or check out anything we have to say on Twitter, or look at our whitepaper or anything. It’s got to be really helpful to them.

Generally what we’ve thought about our content, which is still the case by the way, 95% of the content in most companies is about its own products and services. We’re going to see that flip in the next five years and 90% is not going to be about them, it’s going to be what media companies have been doing for years and years – not that media companies are going away, it’s a completely separate issue.

But the fact is that brands know they have to be helpful, they have to get attention in some way and have to build that relationship, they’re going to do it through great content, useful applications. Think about mobile. What works in mobile? Very useful applications, nothing self-serving. So the biggest thing that’s happened is you’ve got to fill these social media buckets – strategy aside, by the way, because that’s a whole other conversation – they just know they have all these buckets they have to fill. What are they going to do? Better start looking at what our content is, and I think that’s been the biggest push forward in why content marketing is on the forefront now.

You mentioned a couple of big brands before. Are there any little guys that not many people would have heard of that deserve some recognition for how they’ve gone about it?

You’re right. I use the big examples. I look at Red Bull. Red Bull is a media company that just happens to sell energy drinks. I’ve believed that for a long time. Coca-Cola has got a great content strategy up. They’re doing the best they can or what they think. American Express is another good example.

From a small company standpoint, one of my favourites is OpenView Venture Partners. What I like is that this is a small company, had virtually no budget, and was a venture capital company which traditionally had been terrible at creating content like this. They’ve been able to create a dominant force online through video, through audio, through text, through photos, and create a real resource that is answering their customers’ questions and that’s cut the sales cycle in half. They’re getting almost all their new leads directly through their email newsletter sign up, which is really good content. And they don’t have to go out and traditionally do what they’ve done and focus on referrals at trade shows and connections. They don’t have to do that anymore because everyone is coming to them, and with almost no budget. They have their own audio studio. They have their own video studio in-house.

That’s what gets me excited – you don’t have to be Goliath anymore. You can be David. And you can dominate an industry niche if you’re smart about keeping track of what your customers are dealing with on a day to day basis.

Joe Pulizzi will be at Content Marketing World Sydney to keynote the conference, taking place 4-6 March. Niche Media, publisher of Marketing magazine, is proud to be a partner of the event. If you’re attending too, we’d love to see you there at our booth.

And if you haven’t decided yet, as a reward just for being a Marketing reader you can get $200 off your ticket by using the code NICHE200 when registering. Online registrations close on Friday 1 March. For more details head to sydney.contentmarketingworld.com

Marketers “sitting on a gold mine of data”

by Marketing ON 15 February 2013

As rhetoric flies around the topic of ‘big data’ – that concept that everyone’s talking about but nobody seems to know how to define – a business optimisation expert has told Marketing that marketers should focus less on worrying about how to collect data and more on effectively using the data they already have to boost business outcomes.

Lars Petersen, head of business optimisation services at global software company Sitecore, says that in the digital world segmentation, or at least the traditional implementation of it, is being turned on its head. Instead, the process online is much more flexible and continuously changing. Online visitors can be assigned a persona, and that persona can be used for both personalising their experience and collecting data to optimise the whole process.

“Marketers are actually sitting on a gold mine of data,” says Petersen. “Most organisations already have a lot of data that they can use.”

By way of example, Petersen gives personalisation: dynamically presenting website content, emails and other communications based on an individual’s profile. That profile is obtained through a user’s online behaviour, such as what search term brought them to a business’ website, or what content they’ve engaged with once there.

“Thinking about web analytics data, there are many different types you can dive into. For instance, which keywords are businesses using to find your website? Those keywords reveal intent, and then those keywords could be used for personalisation of the website.”

From the audience’s perspective the benefit of personalisation is the relevance of content presented to each user. “I think it’s something we can relate to in our everyday work when we go to a website… Even though you have come from Google and you have searched for specific keywords, you go into the website and the first page [may be] relevant to the keyword. But then when you break away from that page, for instance, going to the front page, it’s the same aesthetic front page that they show every visitor on the website.

“The real benefit from a consumer perspective is that you are able to be relevant. You can actually set up a conversation based on the intent, and the intent could be very real.”

In addition to the intent that can be determined by the keywords used, Petersen says a customer’s browsing behaviour can be another source of information. “And even if you go on the website and click 10 times on a specific product or service, [when you] go back to the front page it still shows the same standard content as it shows everybody.

The biggest challenge marketers face, according to Petersen, is getting started. “Marketers have a lot of tasks on their desk, just to keep up with their everyday job. So to get started on a personalisation initiative, to take that step, is a challenge for many, because they don’t have enough time for it. That’s the first step. But once they get into it and they start proving the business case, then of course it’s easier to get more time and budget for doing so.”

In order to prove the business case, Petersen recommends baby steps, rather than taking a plunge and the risk that goes along with it. “There are different techniques to [prove the business case]. The easiest one is basically setting up a test, you test your normal page, and then you test it with another version of the front page that has exactly the same layout, but the only difference is you’re using personalisation on this version. Then you can clearly see how personalisation will impact it. Will it perform better?

Then the next step, once you have proven the business case, is to look into which personalisation messages are delivering the best outcome, so you can go in and be more specific about what works and what doesn’t and what needs to be changed.”

Is the idea of target market segmentation dead? No, says Petersen. The concepts are still useful, but the difference is less need for qualitative, inefficient research. “Most organisations today use personas to influence design decisions. Basically they create these personas and discuss them: how should the experience look like for John, versus how should it look like from Anna? Then once they implement the website, all these personas are left in the drawer, and they’re not used anymore.

“What we are doing is making sure that you use those in your website, so you’re able to map every single visitor to which personas they are, and then you can use that for personalisation, but also for data collection. The five-step process that we will be covering in the webinar [Petersen is hosting a webinar on 26 February for Australian marketers interested in learning more about this topic] is basically how to, in the first place, create a persona, and that is step one: research.

“As soon as you start doing segmentation based on that research, different personas with different goals, behaviours and attitude appear. Step three is to validate those using the data and then step four is prioritising those – so you split them up into other pockets, like which are the primary personas? Which are secondary? Which are unimportant? And then step five is making the personas real: basically setting up different information sheets about personas, who is this person with a picture and a description and what is their behaviour? You also get a sense what their goals are and how to have a conversation with them. And then we use that information to basically put them into the website and make them come alive.”

One high flier in online personalisation and optimisation that Petersen points to is Easyjet. “They started out using personalisation in 2011. They also went through the process of proving the business case. Basically all revenue comes from their website because they sell online, so, of course, this has a great impact if it works, or if it doesn’t work.

“They started off by choosing a small portion of the website for personalisation, and then they worked a little bit with it, but what they saw was that this had a really, really great effect on their conversion rates, and their conversion rates were clearly correlated to real business outcomes with revenue. So they started using personalisation at a much faster pace than they had originally thought, and they’ve seen double figure increases in their conversion.”

Career profile: Sandra de Castro, CMO, National Australia Bank

by Marketing ON 6 February 2013

Sandra de Castro, chief marketing officer of National Australia Bank, chats to Marketing about why she doesn’t consider herself a marketer, the campaign that made her famous and the future of banking.

Sandra de Castro first realised she was a marketer at an odd time – when she was appointed executive general manager of strategy and marketing for National Australia Bank’s business banking division.

Prior to that appointment de Castro had spent 15 years at Corporate Value Associates (CVA), the ‘global strategy boutique’, consulting for corporations world wide. Rising up the ranks from consultant to partner by the time she moved on, de Castro worked with clients in a broad variety of sectors. Over half her time with CVA was spent working for financial services providers such as LloydsTSB, ING, Société Générale, Scottish Widows and Visa Europe. She also did a fair amount of work on customer strategy with large European telcos, utilities and the car industry and the odd stint in “more exotic” sectors like hotels, the nuclear industry and waste management.

The irony of this, she says, is that she doesn’t consider herself the marketer in the team. The branch of strategy de Castro inhabited related to demand generation, figuring out how to drive the customer end of the business.

“There’s not that much difference between customer strategy and marketing strategy. So I guess that probably means I have been a marketer all along, anyway,” she says.

Marketing: At CVA you were consulting on strategy. Could you please tell us in a bit more detail about the work you did there?

Sandra de Castro: I joined CVA as a graduate, and worked my way from consultant to partner during 15 years in the firm. It’s a great place to work, and I really enjoyed my time there. I was based in London, but was fortunate to also have the opportunity to work across Europe, in places like France, Germany and Belgium.

As a strategy consultant, my main focus area was customer strategy – there was a bit of everything in that, from segmentation to CRM strategy, product and offer design, distribution strategy, pricing strategy and so on. Generally, customer-related work ended up being about 70 percent of what I did, which left room for broad exposure to other aspects of business strategy, for example process re-engineering, cost restructuring and alignment, and the odd stint in mergers and acquisitions, once for a client in Romania of all places.

Have there been any mentors you may have had over your career, and if so what specific lessons do you carry with you?

One individual who stands out in my mind is Simon Hall, a partner during my time at CVA. I worked with Simon for about six years. He is a ridiculously clever man who I learnt a great deal from – learning I still benefit from today. He was the first to show me the importance of defining value from the customer’s perspective and to catch yourself when you’re ignoring emotion as a factor.

Simon also combined very strong creativity with highly quantitative and numeric thinking, and it was an incredibly effective mix. He taught me that you can, and should, foster both. That far from being rivals, creativity and rigour are highly-complementary skill sets. I’ve found this to be just as true in marketing as it is in strategy.

Coming from a somewhat non-traditional marketing career path into a CMO role, what has been the most unexpected challenge in your role at NAB?

I came from a strategy consulting background, rather than a traditional marketing route – I first went into a business banking strategy and marketing role at NAB which was more about customer strategy and salesforce support, and then to the CMO gig for NAB as a whole.

I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a little daunting to take on what is an unashamedly big marketing role when I’m not officially a ‘marketer’.

That said, my experience has largely been in what I call ‘demand management’ and at the end of the day that is what marketing is all about. It requires a similar toolkit. Great customer strategy starts from what’s going on in the heads of customers and where they’re coming from both rationally and emotionally, but is also acutely tuned to the commercial drivers of the business. This is tougher than it sounds, because most businesses naturally start from what they do and work backwards to the customer, rather than the other way around.

At the other extreme, it’s easy to become a ‘customer idealist’ and lose sight of the need to be commercial. I’ve found the same balance is critical in marketing.

And highlight?

Of course ‘Break up’ was an amazing experience – highly memorable, huge fun, and at times pretty nerve wracking, so it’s hard to miss as a highlight.

Looking back, though, the enduring part for me was the sense that we were a part of something that was core to the whole of NAB, not just marketing. We were using the tools of the marketer to shine a light on what NAB stands for, a strategy that pre-dated ‘Break up’, endures beyond it, and is deeply embedded in the organisation.

The way everyone at NAB rallied, from the CEO to the banker in the branch, was a testament to the depth of this commitment – an amazing movement to be part of.

A year and a half, almost two years on from ‘Break up’, how are you measuring the results? We heard a figure of one million new customers.

That’s right. We’ve had a million customers.

How much can be attributed to ‘Break up’, do you think?

You can never, in any business, attribute all results to a marketing campaign – of course not, like all good businesses. The thing with ‘Break up’ is it was very much integrated into the broader strategy of the business, so it sort of became symbolic for the whole business’ move to become more customer centric, which is really what gets you the million customers.

At the beginning you gave the example of, during the GFC, lending more when others were lending less. What else is following from that?

In the personal market, it really has been about the fair value agenda, and almost facing up to the reputational issue that banks have with customers, which is really that customers don’t think they’re getting value for money out of banks. The NAB, 18 months before ‘Break up’, went on a big mission to really change that. It wasn’t ‘drop’ the fee, it was either you have it or you don’t. It’s not about the price, it’s about the principle. So the business abolished a whole bunch of different fees like the overdraft fee – the thing where we write you a letter and charge you $35 for the privilege.

‘Break up’ was really the way that that was brought to life. People always talk about it being a brave campaign… it was a brave campaign, but in fact it was a little less brave than the business was to implement all this change. It was 100, 200, 300 million bucks, so it was a lot of money.

SAS: In an organisation built over the years on a channel/product alignment, how does an enterprise like a bank reinvent itself to become customer centric?

Customer centricity isn’t just a throw-away line, it’s a central part of the business strategy in place since 2009, when Cameron Clyne took on the role as CEO. He has been very focused on improving our reputation with customers, and he has not been afraid to face up to customer concerns which others in the industry have been slow to respond to. We’ve changed the way we think and do business, from the fees we charge and the service we provide in branches, over the phone and online, all the way through to how we deal with hardship and how we behave as a responsible corporate citizen.

It is a mistake to think that reputation is a marketing issue – it’s not. It’s about the way you do business, and its success starts and ends with the business, not the marketing team. We support this by finding ways to communicate NAB’s actions in a way that is compelling, but if it isn’t a real strategy, it will never make an enduring marketing message.

The other great thing about that stance over the last three years has been that it’s very motivating for our people. Employees are the biggest supporters of the reputation agenda as they too are customers and part of the community.

We were throwing around the idea of building brand loyalty within a bank to the point where you can charge a premium. That’s the opposite of what you have done here; you’ve built loyalty out of removing a lot of the inconsistent fees. Is it possible to build a bank brand and charge a premium for that?

I think people do ascribe to our strategic stance the notion that somehow it is price driven, and it isn’t, it’s reputation driven. So that’s why I emphasise it’s not about cutting a fee, it’s about charging it or not charging it. It’s a stance on what’s the right relationship that you want to have with your customers, it’s not a stance on price. If you don’t think that you should charge the people $35 to send them a letter to tell them that they’re overdrawn, which makes them a further $35 overdrawn, if you don’t think that your customers think of that as a service or if you don’t think that it’s right to do that, then you don’t do it. It’s not a discount. It’s not a price stance, it’s a reputation stance.

It seems to be all the comms that we’ve seen coming out of NAB are very, very PR-able – they’re great for a journalist to grab onto and build a story around – is that deliberate or a happy coincidence?

It’s great that you say that as journalists. I’m happy to hear that. I think the way I’d like to describe how we think about marketing is we like to use the word ‘remarkable’. Our objective is always to produce communications that are worthy of positive remark. It should be interesting enough that you want to talk about it with other people.

Now, the happy coincidence, I suppose, is that if we are successful in producing communications that do that for customers, then I guess they will probably make a story. But we’re not looking for the story, we’re looking for the communication to be worthy of conversation, remark and interest from customers.

One that came after ‘Break up’ was Commonwealth Bank’s ‘CAN’ campaign. Andy Lark came from another atypical marketing background. Do you think that it’s your backgrounds putting the energy into this space?

I don’t know. I think – yes, I didn’t come from a marketing background, but my team is filled with fantastic marketers. I think this is actually a broader marketing issue. Banks have traditionally not been marketing organisations, whereas other businesses, marketing plays a bigger part. One of the things that happens is that the marketing stops almost daring to dream, they almost stop putting up the great stuff because they’re worried that it won’t get through – and I don’t think that’s unique to banks, I think there are a lot of marketing organisations where the marketers kind of just eventually give up.

I’m sure lots of capable marketers, and I’m sure Andy Lark is among them, would have a similar perspective. But I also imagine that the fact that ‘Break up’ worked for us has probably opened up some of the horizons in other banks – I’m not saying that’s a case at CommBank, they may well have done that anyway – but I think it has had repercussions in terms of allowing bank marketing to be a little bit more interesting, which is great. It makes it more fun for us.

What would be the next big step in mobile for bank marketing, do you think? What’s phase two?

What’s phase two of mobile banking? I don’t know. I think because banking is a sort of low-interest category, people forget the scope and range of innovation that banks have actually brought to market over many years, so it wasn’t that long ago that we didn’t have ATMs, never mind telephone banking, never mind internet banking, never mind apps to do your banking on your iPhone or your Android device or your iPad. The thing with large organisations like banks is we’re always competing on that stuff, so the bar will inevitably always be raised. That’s why we talk about reputation. We’ll all go and do whatever works for customers and from a functionality sense [but] I think the game is won or lost on the longer-term perspective than the next cool thing. It’s fantastic – you’re given cool stuff to market, but I think the customer sees through that.

Something we often hear from marketers from sales backgrounds is that they have a heavy bias towards hiring marketers from sales backgrounds… do you think that’s true of you and your background and what you look for?

Do I look for strategic marketers? No, not necessarily. I look for strategic thinkers, yes, but you find strategic thinkers in all sorts of different spheres. We’ve got people from all walks and all backgrounds, and some really quantitative, square-headed modelling types, some free-thinking commercial strategists, some brilliant communications professionals, and people that are a mixture of all of the above. I genuinely believe that diversity is a source of huge strength in the team. So, no. In fact, there isn’t anybody in the team that has a background similar to mine.

This might be a difficult question having not come from a marketing background, but what advice would you give to a young marketer today?

I would go back to this point about diversity, which is that I find the best people in my team often have a very varied background. So they might have spent time in the pure brand space, but they’ve also gone and spent time in real execution, campaign-based marketing. They’ve probably gone and spent some time in the business and understand how the business looks at things. Sometimes they’ve been agency side, and sometimes they haven’t. They’ve done B2B and B2C, they understand planning and econometrics and the hardcore modelling side of things. I find marketers often get obsessed about working in different industries and sectors, and that can be great, but it doesn’t have to be that; it’s more about looking at the marketing problem from a lot of different perspectives.

Career profile: Katherine Birch, director of marketing, Hotels.com

by Marketing ON 10 January 2013

Katherine Birch, director of marketing for Hotels.com, chats to Marketing about ditching science to go backpacking and working her way up from the kitchen to a marketing directorship at a billion-dollar global travel business.

A science degree is what awaited Katherine Birch after high school. She had passed her exams, applied, enrolled and was all set to begin three years of lectures, lab coats and jotting calculations in triplicate carbon copy books.

Except, it wasn’t to be. The decision to defer university in favour of travel would prove fateful. Backpacking around Australia at 18 years old, Birch ended up in the Whitsunday islands, paying her way by taking on jobs in resorts. Tropical islands then turned into London – and that was the end of the science degree. “At the end of that year, I thought, ‘There’s no way I want to do a science degree – I want to work in tourism’,” she tells me.

And work in tourism she did. Climbing her way up from gigs in bars and restaurants, to cocktail waitressing, to fine dining and front office work, in locations ranging from the Whitsundays to London to Japan to Thailand, Birch spent six years in total travelling and working on the front lines of the hospitality and tourism industries. During that time she completed a degree in Asian studies as an external student with Southern Cross University. A passion for Asia motivated that, but it was a particular advertiser – Tourism Queensland – that cemented her desire to promote travel as a tourism marketer: “They were doing some really funky advertising. This was back in the time where everything was very colourful. All their campaigns were very bright – lots of pinks and fluorescent yellows – and very eighties style.”

Returning to Sydney, Birch found it difficult to land a marketing role without formal qualifications. She was working in international hotel sales, but without a marketing degree kept getting knocked back. So, she went out and got one.

Fast forward to 2012, and Birch is Australia and New Zealand director of marketing for Hotels.com, part of the multi-billion-dollar Expedia, Inc. It’s a far cry from the days when a company’s only requisite digital presence was a website, 11 years since she took on her first full marketing role at the Sydney Convention and Visitors Bureau (now Business Events Sydney), selling Sydney and New South Wales to the world.

Now she gets to do the funky stuff. But these days that involves things like 5-star camping – or ‘glamping’ – installations, and the twice-yearly ‘Hotel Price Index’, almost a travellers’ confidence index for hotels.

Marketing: When you started out, as you were saying, digital was a minor consideration and that fact has completely flipped on its head. For Hotels.com, it’s in the name, it’s a digital company, how do you look at non-digital advertising these days?

It’s still an important part of the marketing mix, it’s just not as big a part of the marketing mix as it was previously. These days as well, the marketing mix is so fragmented. Unless you want to be a specialist, if you want to move through the ranks you really need to have knowledge of all of those different marketing channels and understand them. It’s really quite broad these days, and I’ve found in my career that it’s been across multiple roles, because the landscape has just changed so quickly.

Did you start out in a specialty area?

I started out in a general role. However, at that time, digital was a very small percentage of the mix, and traditional marketing was more important. So we’re talking about magazine brochures, print advertising, TV advertising, and really the digital part of the mix was managing the website and even then it was quite a basic website with a content management system. These days you have entire teams looking after website content. The only other digital component was an enewsletter which 12 years ago was pretty fancy digital marketing. But these days it’s just another part of the mix.

Is there any role you won that you would consider your break in marketing?

I would say there are two times: the first is when I went from a pure sales role in hotels to the Sydney Convention and Visitors Bureau, and that was a marketing executive role, pure marketing, so not sales orientated. That was probably the first step. The second step was leaving the Bureau and going to Hotel Club, which is pure online. So that was my jump from traditional into digital. Both were pivotal in my career and where it’s taken me now to where I am with Expedia.

The jump from sales to marketing, was that a challenge?

Yes, it was a challenge, because marketing is very much focused on deadlines, identifying what their needs are, and communicating that message to them in order to get a response, whereas sales is more relationship based and it’s longer term, so you build a longer-term relationship with a client, and as a result, you get a sale. It’s a very different mindset.

What made you want to make that leap?

I always wanted to work in marketing, and happened to be given, when I was in hotels, a sales role, and I thought it was a natural progression. I wanted the experience first before going into a marketing role, and I find right now, when I’m hiring a marketing person, I would much prefer them to have had front line experience and sales experience. If they’re a pure marketer, sometimes they don’t have the other experience I find is very very useful in the role for them to make decisions.

And life experience as well. That for me is vital. When you’re young, I really think getting out there and trying new things and getting involved in different cultures, working in a different culture, no matter what the role, that knowledge and life experience is so much more beneficial than perhaps someone that’s come straight out of uni, done their marketing degree and then gone straight into a marketing role. You actually find that most people in marketing roles didn’t start off in a marketing role – they’ve come from somewhere else.

I have found that as well, actually. The backgrounds are always very, very varied as well – marketing is kind of an interesting profession that way.

Exactly. But these days as well, there’s a lot more skill involved because the different channels have different metrics and different benchmarks. It has become a lot more skilled than it was, just even in the last 10 years I’ve seen an enormous shift.

That increasing need to justify marketing activities and prove ROI before doing anything – are you seeing that move towards a greater need for measurement in your role as well?

Let me answer that question in two parts: in an online business, you can track absolutely everything that you do, so it is mandatory. However, offline marketing – television or a print ad, or even a brochure – it’s a lot harder to track. You can do it, there are various methods that you can use to do it, but it’s not 100 percent accurate, because [for example] not all people will redeem the offer via the channels that you’ve asked them to redeem it by. It’s very, very hard to track it accurately, whereas with online you can track it absolutely – there is no grey area, it’s black and white. You had an ad, you got this many clicks, and then as a result, you had this many sales. Before we even start a campaign, we have to analyse the return on investment.

That’s always been the case. But it’s not like before [when] you could easily put some money and try something out to see how it goes – these days it’s much tougher or much more – tough is not the right word – you’re held to every cent you spend, and every cent must be attributed to the dollar that you spend.

SAS: In your role at Hotels.com, what impact is customer intelligence having on things like strategy and planning, campaign execution, customer experience and cross-channel effectiveness?

Data is a very powerful tool, the trick is to know how to effectively leverage it. Customer intelligence plays a role in every aspect of our business. The needs of the customer are constantly changing and we need to make sure we change with them to make sure our product and offering stays relevant.

Marketing: I wanted to ask about taking on a profit and loss responsibility for the first time. Coming from marketing doing that, it has got to be a challenge.

I guess there are challenges, but I think it really depends on the company that you work for. Expedia and Hotels.com have an appreciation for differences, and as you may be aware, Hotels.com rebranded in March 2012, and the Asia Pacific region was the first region to change, followed shortly after by Europe and Latin America. The US was already red, and so the branding was only tweaked slightly there.

Prior to March 2012, the effort was very much one of collaboration with all of the different regions in building guidelines that could be used across the globe. So while there are sections of our brand book that are mandatory and must be used across all regions, such as the red colour, or the font, there are many variations to the brand, and one of the most Aussie is actually our tag line.

We did research or focus group work in Australia and New Zealand, for example, to find out what it was that Australian travellers wanted and to understand their thought process and the psyche of when they’re looking for a hotel. And that’s how we came up with ‘Find your perfect place’.

So that’s different in other countries?

It’s different in other countries. There’s ‘Finding you the perfect place’, and there’s ‘Be smart, book smart’. There’s many different variations because that needs to be market specific.

The other piece of that puzzle is in the US we have a mascot for the brand called Smart, and that has not been rolled out in this region, and that is because the Asian market in particular feels it’s totally the wrong fit to have a red-headed Caucasian male be the mascot. As you can imagine, in Japan, that wouldn’t really work.

So we absolutely have a lot of flexibility to localise where we feel it is better for the brand. One of the benefits of working for a global company is that we can learn from other markets, and we absolutely do that, especially when we are trialling new marketing channels.

Any examples of that?

Yes, I have a good example of that actually. Recently, globally we launched a video promoting our mobile app, and in Australia we launched a YouTube campaign last month. And from that campaign, we’ve taken those learnings and shared it with every other country director in the world to see the results, that they can then make decisions about whether or not they will invest in the same type of advertising.

The guidelines are exactly that, they’re guidelines, and where possible, we have to work within those guidelines. Where we require flexibility, then we consult with the team that manage the guidelines, and have those variations approved when there’s a market specific need.

Online travel is a fairly crowded category – there’s a lot of options for the consumer, and it’s very price driven. How do you approach that at a strategic level, maintaining differentiation from competitors?

That’s a really good question, and it absolutely is one of our challenges. I guess our most valuable value proposition is our Welcome Rewards program, which is our loyalty program. It is best in category when we compare against our competitors, and even hotels directly. It is self funded, as well, and most programs charge the customer for the reward by including it into the margin, whereas we fund the reward. It’s essentially 10 percent off.

The other part of that is we run promotions whereby the customer actually has a choice to take 10 percent off immediately or to get a free room night after staying 10 nights. That is by far our greatest value proposition. In Australia, the program is nearly two years old. We turn two next month, and will be running a lot of promotions around this event.

Going back to your question… yes, all the sites seem very similar, [but] we’re doing a lot of work and a lot of testing around the customer experience on the website to ensure that it is the best experience that they can have, and that it’s a localised version of the website. That means if Australian customers prefer to have lots of deals on the home page, then we have the ability to do that. In China, if they prefer to search by a map, then that will be more prominent.

Career profile: Lisa Harrison, head of GI brand & marketing, Suncorp

by Marketing ON 19 December 2012

Lisa Harrison oversees some of Australia’s most well-known insurance brands. As head of general insurance brand and marketing at Suncorp, she doesn’t care that some might not see the exciting side of insurance marketing – she has found a career and an industry to love.

The one word that comes up repeatedly when talking to Lisa Harrison is ‘passion’. A passion for the insurance business. A passion for customers. It’s a passion that may be hard to fathom for those outside the industry, but the way she waxes lyrical of the pride that goes with helping people through some of the toughest times in their lives, it’s hard not to believe her.

Given the enormity of the life events a customer (hopefully never) shares with their insurance company, it’s obvious how big an impact – positive or negative – an interaction with their provider can have in a person’s most vulnerable state.

During her tenure Suncorp’s home state of Queensland was subjected to the terrifying monstrosities that were the floods of Summer 2010-11 and Cyclone Yasi. Given the way Harrison talks of helping customers in crisis, helping them rebuild their houses, fix their cars, put their lives back together, one may be forgiven for thinking she was destined for the industry. But that wasn’t the case.

Upon completion of a commerce degree with a marketing major, Harrison entered a graduate program with global insurance group Royal and Sun Alliance (RSA). When the Australian and New Zealand arm of RSA de-merged in 2003, it became Promina Group, which was acquired by Suncorp five years ago.

The program organisers did a great job of selling it, Harrison says, by hinting it was marketing focused – so of course she snapped up the opportunity. And while the marketing component of the program turned out to be just that – a component of a much broader induction into the insurance business, from claims to underwriting – it ended up being immensely helpful to her later roles, which might otherwise not have provided time at the coalface. “At the time I was like ‘When do I get to do the real marketing here?’, but obviously overseeing the insurance brand marketing now, it’s given me a great understanding of exactly what we do for our customers. It’s been pretty invaluable for me in the role I’ve got, and it really keeps it real, what we’re selling.”

From RSA she was keen to get more experience in the consumer space, so a role managing home loan products at Commonwealth Bank beckoned. After four years at the Bank, the chance to work on some of Australia’s most iconic insurance brands at a strategy level lured her to Suncorp, and there she is today, overseeing Suncorp’s general insurance portfolio, which includes the likes of GIO, AAMI, Apia, Just Car Insurance, Shannons, InsureMyRide and Bingle.

On the surface it seems Harrison’s passion could be the financial sector, but she sees it differently. Loans and insurance are both foundations of the Great Australian Dream of home ownership – products that “give a lot of customer value”.

Marketing: Do you think that having passion for their work is important for marketers, no matter what the brand?

Yeah, I think really truly believing in what you sell certainly helps, and really understanding, not to a product level, but the experience customers have, because I think that allows you to really connect with your consumers better and makes your marketing activity a lot stronger.

You’ve spent most of your career in the insurance business – with that passion for it, have you even considered other industries?

I would be happy to be asked to do [my job] day in and day out for a long time to come, so I guess I haven’t really thought about other industries. I do firmly believe in what we do and the value of insurance, and I often tell people a story – we’re fortunate to have a lot of customers come and speak to us about the experiences they’ve had, good and bad – and the thing that really hit home to me is we had a guy about four years ago and he talked through living through this incredible storm that ripped through and ripped off the roof while he and his young family were in there, and he [told me], “People call it a house, but it was my home, and I rang up you guys and the first thing the person said was, ‘Are you and your family safe?’ To me that was incredible because I was in a panic, I didn’t know what to do, and she just brought it back to reality, ‘Are you safe?’ and, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll help you to get your home back’.” So I’m incredibly passionate about what we do, and I’m proud to say I work in insurance because I think it’s an amazing industry. We often say that the greatest dream is the Australian home and the fact that we help play a role in protecting that is something I’m passionate about, so I’d love to continue doing it.

Your work at the Commonwealth Bank was in a product-focused role – what have you brought to your current role where you are in charge of multiple brands?

[The Commonwealth Bank role] was a combination, it was looking after their home loans, and so we did a lot of the customer attention, customer service, as well as the strategic marketing component and working with a team on the marketing components as well.

One of the things I would say is when you look at a marketing campaign, what makes it really successful, I think is making sure when we’re doing the campaign that we’ve got a really strong strategy, and you’re looking at strategy and the customer insight, and I think having that discipline is really important. Too often, when something is a campaign, we’ve briefed it in as a campaign, it must run through these channels and at this point in time, and if you forget about the strategy up front, and the consumer insight, and having a really firm brand strategy in place, then invariably it’s not successful.

You’re overseeing some very iconic, very large Australian brands, but they’re also very different. What do you find the greatest challenge working across a portfolio like that?

If you’re not prepared, if you don’t have very clear brand strategy – that’s one of the things that we’re extremely mindful of, being absolutely clear about what the brand is, what role it’s there to do and having in place really good brand architecture which allows you to manage your brands and make life a lot easier. It’s also great fun, so some of the brands I oversee – you’ve got your Just Car Insurance brand which talks to a younger and modified car market, and then at the other end of the spectrum is Apia, which is insurance for the over 50s market. So it’s never a dull day. And for me, it’s a great experience getting to look over such a broad comms strategy for each of the different brands.

It doesn’t sound like differentiation is a challenge.

I think it’s always a challenge because you’ve got to make sure that you’ve got strong disciplines in place to keep the brands differentiated throughout the value chain, but I think for any marketer, having that really strong brand strategy, clearly articulated and known throughout the entire organisation is absolutely critical, and it’s something you can’t rest on – you’ve got to continually make sure that new people coming on board are very clear about what the brand stands for, and so there’s an ongoing comms piece in that space.

Insurance may not be one of the first sectors that comes to mind when people talk about innovation, but with the newer, smaller brands – Bingle selling online only, for example – are they used in any way for experimentations that you can then take to the more established brands?

That’s one of the beauties about having a variety of brands… you can carry learnings across the broader portfolio. Some things will work for other brands and some things won’t, and again, it comes back to having that very clear brand strategy up front because you can’t copy and paste across all, because then you run the risk of challenging each brand’s uniqueness.

Looking back at some of your earlier roles, were there any key mentors that stand out as being especially influential and what key advice do you carry with you?

I’ve been very lucky to work for a range of people. Certainly, at CommBank, I had a great manager once removed that encouraged thinking big, and that notion of experimentation as well. The notion of continuing to think big and experimentation I hope I can carry through my entire career, and also that notion of safety in experimentation. I think that’s very fortunate. I’d say my current boss is exactly the same and I’ve been very fortunate to work for some amazing people.

[The license to experiment] is absolutely critical in today’s market because technology is increasing at a rapid rate, and we do see brands coming in and innovating that if you just continue in your existing ways, sometimes it could be hard to keep up.

I notice you’re a member of the Hyper Island LinkedIn group. Is continual renewal and updating of skills your recipe for marketing education at the various career levels?

Yes, I think we have to. Consumers are continually up-skilling in their day-to-day life, learning about new technology, adopting new technology. So we certainly have to be at the forefront of that as well and keeping pace with them, and invariably ahead of them.

Speaking of new technology, I wanted to ask about the use of social media in this sector. It’s something that’s not done consistently across brands, it seems. How do you determine that at a strategy level, and how high up are those discussions?

For me, and maybe it is because I do have a strategy background, making sure we’re very clear about the brand strategy and how to deliver to that strategy. Social media is really important for all marketers, and very important to have a strategy for it for individual brands. However, how you deploy that strategy will be different based on the individual brand. At the same time, you also have challenges and, for us, one of the challenges has been building the capability internally to activate that channel. The good thing is, we’ve got quite a few learnings in this space from the AAMI brand, from Just Car, another brand, InsureMyRide, as well as some of the other activities we’re currently working on and deploying.

SAS: Is social media and social marketing going to be the holy grail of customer service? Where have you seen it work and where do you hope to see it work better?

I don’t think it’s the holy grail. I think it’s a really important piece to the puzzle, and the things that we like about it is it’s that two-way interaction, it’s quite fast, it’s very responsive, and it gives brands a voice, it gives consumers a voice. It’s very important. There are always fundamentals of a business that you have to put into play as well, so it’s not necessary that one size fits all, and for us, certainly we see customer service where we’re fixing people’s homes, we’re on site, we’re fixing people’s cars, as absolutely critical as well. It’s every interaction that you have with your customer; you want to get your customer experience right. And for us, really importantly, the moment of truth is getting them back in their homes, getting them back in their cars and doing a great job at doing that.

What impact is customer intelligence/analytics having on marketing strategy and planning?

If you’re informed you make great decisions, so it’s a no-brainer to have really strong customer intelligence and analytics up front, which is helping guide your decisions. And one of the challenges I think marketers face with so many different channels and so many different options to communicate with customers is invariably you can’t do everything, and customer intelligence and analytics helps you decide what are the things you must do.

Marketing: Do you use it to inform campaign execution?

We’ve got an analytics team sitting within the marketing team as well, and I think that’s really important, so analytics is accessible, and having the team in with the marketing team makes it easy to understand as well.

That’s interesting. What changes have you seen in the department? Are people coming in from different backgrounds, or are marketing people up-skilling into more data-savvy skill sets?

I think marketers need to be data savvy; they need to know what the output of their actions are, and also be clear on inputs that will drive actions, in terms of what’s going to generate the required return. But I think having people with dedicated analytics expertise, where they can do some of the more complicated tasks has been really beneficial for us. And it sort of has, in the team, demystified that data is complex. So we’ve been very fortunate, the fact that we’ve got some great analysts that get marketing and can really add some strong insight to the team.

What have been your recent highlights from your role that stand out?

I always say to people that I have the best job in the entire organisation. There’s a multitude of highlights.

Working across multiple brands means that in any one week, you kind of go ‘Wow, that’s just amazing, the work that people have done’. We were pretty pleased last year, we won one of the international media awards for the Shannons Supercar Showdown piece of work that we did with WTFN and Starcom, our media partner, and Channel Seven. So that’s something that we’re all incredibly proud of. There is a lot every week that you go ‘Wow, that’s great’, and there is stuff, whether it’s from an analytics viewpoint, that a lot of people don’t typically think is the sexy side of marketing, and some of the insight we can add, you see that coming through.

Are you increasingly looking at doing more activations like that with an online component, moving away from traditional broadcast media?

Any channel plan has to incorporate a wide variety of media, so online, as we all know, is absolutely critical but your traditional broadcast media still plays an absolutely huge role. I think Shannons for us, or Supercar Showdown was a great opportunity for us because it went across a whole range of media, whether it be online, whether it would be some of the activations we could do below the line as well as on the television as well.

It’s interesting earlier to hear you speak of stories from the front line. Do you think that’s something that’s missing from many high level – not even just marketing – positions?

I think it’s really important, if it is missing, and I don’t think it should be because there is so much that you can learn from customers about what you’re doing well and what you’re not doing well, but also I think it helps create that passion for what you do and that belief, and I think if you’re passionate about what you’re marketing, then you’re going to do a great job.

And so customers can help with keeping that passion?

Personally for me, I think it helps me. And like I said, we all work long hours. You don’t really want to be doing something you’re not passionate about. It makes for a long day.

Q&A with Anna Adriani, global head of PR and sustainability, Illy Coffee

by Marketing ON 19 November 2012

Anna Adriani, global PR director and chief sustainability officer for Illycaffè, is visiting Melbourne to speak tomorrow at the World PR Forum – the first time the Forum has been held in Australia. We caught up with Anna last week to talk organisational culture, setting up a University of Coffee, and managing the stakeholders of a “small, multinational company”.

What will you be presenting at the forum?

What I’m going to present is the way we handle and coordinate all the activities related to sustainability through my department, so through public relations and why. And above all, I will introduce the main project that we handle, that is sustainability certification that we got two years ago through DNV, Det Norske Veritas, that is a certification body. And it was and is a brand new certification, because we were looking for something like this, but there wasn’t anything basically on the market. And so we decided to work together with DNV, that was already our partner for other certifications, in order to design a new protocol, a new certification, that is not only for Illy, but it is now there and it is open totally to the industry, meaning the other coffee roasters in the world, but also to different industries.

So basically this is what I would like to introduce. The approach of the company to sustainability that has been there forever, because it’s really in the root of the company that was born 80 years ago here in Trieste, and the assumption is that there is no quality without sustainability, and vice versa. And I will try to explain the reason why public relations – it’s a total revolution. I think that it could link to the topic of public relations without borders, in a way, the fact that we allowed our scope and our mandate in the company to this territory in a way.

Regarding the topic of the forum, what does that phrase, ‘communications without borders,’ mean to you?

For sure, being a very small global, multinational company – we are in 140 countries with our products, and we source our coffee from more or less 15 different countries – we are really a small company that is present, more or less, all over the world. And so we have to deal every day we deliver, of course, different culture, different needs, and we try to maintain our positioning and our value proposition, and the way we propose our problems to the market.

Illy’s website mentions the four pillars of stakeholder, or supplier, relationships, and one of them is about a ‘culture of excellence’. I’m just wondering about the challenges of handling such a wide spread of stakeholders throughout the supply chain. How do you drive towards the culture that you desire for the company?

Basically, we trust a lot to training. So for the internal, we do a lot for the internal people, which means not only in Italy, but also the branches that we have in other countries. But we do lots of training as well for our suppliers from one side, the coffee growers, and for our clients, meaning the baristas, etcetera, from the other side. So we founded this University of Coffee, the Università del Caffè, that now has around 25 branches worldwide. The headquarters are here in Trieste where we have our general headquarters. And we do a lot of training. For instance, in Brazil, we have a branch that we set up in the year 2000, together with the University of San Paolo, and we do classes for the growers that gather there and attend, and basically what we do through the University of Coffee, the bottom line is that we deliver our culture of excellence, of being transparent, of acting in a corporate fair way towards not only our stakeholders, but we try to teach our stakeholders to be, on their side, fair towards their stakeholders.

Also, the certification that we have, and that I mentioned before, in a way, obliged us to do that, because the difference between this certification and the others is that the other certifications on the market, like Fair Trade, that is the most famous probably, is on the shoulder of the suppliers, on the shoulder of the growers to pay and to certify themselves. In this case, the company that is certified guarantee the fact that all our stakeholders act in a proper way. So for us, it is of course key to deliver these messages through training and that’s why the University of Coffee is there. And then of course it was also for having quality in the coffee bars, because of course, we cannot control the result in the cup – it’s not like a bottle of wine, unfortunately. You open the bottle of wine and the quality is there. No, the quality for coffee is delivered by either the barista or your machine at home, or the machine that you find in your office. So we needed to work more on that side to guarantee not only the quality in the can but also the quality in the cup.

On the idea of culture within an organisation, who do you think is responsible for that? Is it management or the marketing department, human resources? Where do you think the responsibility lies for organisational culture?

This is very firmly in the hands of our chairman and CEO, Andrea Illy, that is the nephew of the founder of the company, and the son of Ernesto Illy, that was probably the one that better designed this culture. Unfortunately, he passed away 2008, but now we have a foundation called the Ernesto Illy Foundation.

I consider myself very lucky to work in such a company because it values strongly the roots of the company of the family, the Illy family, that is still there, and that is the owner of the company 100%. Then of course, these values are shared by everybody, starting from the strategic committee, the first line of management. I am part of this, so again, I consider myself lucky because this is a very enlightened company that understands that the position like the one I have the honour to have, needs to stay there and discuss when these guys make decisions, and a part of this decision process – both in public relations and the relationship with the stakeholders and the one that is in charge of sustainability, so because every time we take a decision, we have to consider both aspects.

One observation from here in Australia, is that it seems the topic of sustainability and corporate social responsibility was very big prior to the global financial crisis, and then disappeared for a few years. Is that something you noticed from your perspective?

I think that the approach that is now on the table is probably more – this is really my opinion – it’s more true, in a sense, that there was a lot of greenwashing before, and now greenwashing is really clear to everybody, starting from the consumers. So what I think is that the financial crisis cleaned, in a way, the fake approaches to sustainability. What we like to say is that we are a stakeholder company, and really the family, meaning the shareholders are advocators of the pyramid and they are supporting the company; they are not there for, as it happens with many companies in the US, and in Italy as well, just for the sake of getting money. They are there because they trust that companies are a sort of social institution and they are at the service of the other stakeholders. They say, we say, actually, that we want to improve the quality of life of people, etcetera. I think to answer your question, is that really the people are more and more aware of what is a real sustainable approach.

I’m curious about your background, actually. Have you come from a PR background professionally, or something else?

Yes. You know Tony di Falcone, who is coming to Melbourne as well. He is the guru of PR in Italy, and I was lucky enough to start my career with him many years ago – I’m quite an old lady, unfortunately. I had the chance to start with him in his PR firm in Milano. At that time, there was no school, no university, and now we have plenty of choices if you want to study PR at university. At that time there was nothing, and as I said, I just finished my studies at university. I had some collaboration with editing in newspapers, TV networks, etcetera, as a journalist. Then by chance I bumped into his firm at that time, and I started basically from media relations – so I switched from being a journalist to being a person that was in constant dialogue with journalists – and I worked for more than 10 years in that agency, that was the biggest in Italy, that was bought by Shandwick, and then became Weber Shandwick.

After this – and I had a chance to work with many different clients, big companies, small ones, different sectors, etcetera. Then I was hired by Omnitel, and I became global PR director there. Omnitel was the first mobile telephone company in Italy, independent from Telecom [Italia] that was state owned. Now it’s Vodafone. So I stayed there two years. And then from there, one of my former clients from the agency, Illy, called me, and I decided after a while to move from Milano and come to live here in Trieste where the company is based and have this fantastic opportunity. I got it, and it’s now 14 years I have worked for them.

In the wider marketing and communications disciplines, digital has made such a huge impact, what’s been your experience, what has changed in the discipline over the time you’ve been in PR?

More and more. When I started, the focus was basically, I don’t say 100%, but probably 80, yes, on media relations, so it was the bottom line, and it was always very – and I remember when I was working with the agency – very difficult to have your clients, the people you were dealing with inside the company – understanding that there were not only media relations, that for instance, when you organise an event, you don’t view only the media that write about it, but also with the people that participate in the event. Hearing this now can be strange, but at that time, really, it was very difficult.

Then I saw, and I lived the revolution of the profession until the fact that now PR people are more and more part of the decision process. And they’re not the only one, of course, in this kind of position. Actually, it’s really part of the revolution of our profession. For sure, when I started, I remember that very often, public relations were perceived like a marketing tool, and then more and more, we succeeded in making our bosses and our clients understanding that we are in charge of, very often, the reputation of the company, and we are in charge of managing the relationships with the stakeholders and we give something different. So we, in a way, use communication, a project, etcetera, initiatives, to build and maintain these relationships with the stakeholders. But I mean the communication initiatives are not the main objective of what we do; they are just a tool. This is for sure the first big change and is of course an ongoing process.

And the second one, for sure, the disintermediation that technology, social media, blah, blah, made really rapid, and even the so-called media relations are totally changed and changing, together with our friends and counterpart journalists, bloggers, etcetera. And within this process, we change ourselves as they are changing themselves because, I mean, either you change or die.

Illy packaging

Digital technology has changed communications very obviously at a tactical level, but what about at a strategic level?

I agree, I totally agree with you. It’s not only at a tactical level; it’s a strategic level, because it’s a totally different way to manage the relationships with the people, with your stakeholders. The concept of opinion leader is no longer there, meaning that now, everybody can suddenly be an opinion leader with an interesting blog, authoritative opinions expressed through the new technologies without having the access to extensive media. So really, now it’s totally spread, and you have to have a map to who these new opinion leaders are and try to have a relationship with them for your company.

Also the way you present yourself, you stay on the market, it’s totally strategically changed, meaning that you have to be constantly in dialogue and open and accept criticism and be there to answer – very open is also that you have to have more people working with you and being totally online, maintaining this continuous relationship. You cannot open yourself and then disappear for a while. You really need to be there constantly. So this is a major strategic change, in my opinion.

What do you think the biggest challenges and the biggest opportunities – maybe they’re the same thing – are going to be in the year ahead for the PR industry?

This is a very good question. For sure, what we mentioned now, meaning being there and trying to really participate and understand in advance what is going on in the new technology world is really key.

From the sustainability side of my job, I really think that we are very quickly switching from a world that is based on exploitation of the resources to a world based on the maintaining of those resources; you cannot continue to exploit the world in the way we have done so far. And this has got, I think, everything to do with what we do in public relations and the way, of course, we deal with the people, with the stakeholders. I think that really they are intertwined. So keep the eyes open and try to anticipate what is next in the new technology world, really being there and able to get those opportunities from one side and the other, be really attentive to what is going on. And actually, being part of the process. So the company must change according to this new paradigm, I think.

Just one less serious question before we finish, I saw recently a survey that said PR professionals consume the most coffee out of any profession per day. So I’m just wondering, as a PR professional in a coffee company, how much coffee you drink?

I like that. Yes, I saw that and I immediately showed my boss. We are the best. I’m the kind of person that drinks coffee in the morning, and I have not so many, actually. I drink espresso or espresso based preparations, of course. And you know that espresso contains less caffeine than drip coffee, and so I have more or less three in the morning, and then one or two after lunch. But after four-thirty, let’s say, in the afternoon, I stop. I don’t know why. It’s a problem of metabolism. You know, there are people that can drink coffee before going to sleep, and they sleep very well. I’m not that kind of person. So I like to drink coffee until four, four-thirty in the afternoon, and then I stop. And it’s a total of five per day, more or less.

Anna Adriani will be presenting at the World PR Forum on Tuesday 20 November at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.

Q&A with Guy Kawasaki: Unconventional value

by Marketing ON 14 November 2012

During Guy Kawasaki’s recent visit to Sydney, Marketing caught up with the social media wizard to chat apps, evangelising Apple and why he thinks Google Plus is like the Macintosh in the early days: underestimated.

When you ask renowned social media wizard and one-time chief evangelist for Apple, Guy Kawasaki, if he has any tips for social media, he says no. It all comes down to finding what works for you, Kawasaki says, pointing out that he breaks many tenets of social media with his automated use of Twitter.

The Silicon Valley venture capitalist and co-founder of content curation site Alltop has a tendency to coin out of the box phrases, a characteristic that may have been influenced by his mix of Japanese heritage and Hawaiian upbringing. He famously described the first Macintosh computer as a “revolutionary piece of crap”. On branding he says, “Leverage your brand… You shouldn’t let two guys in a garage eat your shorts.” And on Jobs, “Steve proves that it’s OK to be an asshole… He just has a different OS.”

He’s written 10 books, beginning in 1987 with The Macintosh Way, before arriving at his latest work, Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions – a look at the new level customer experience is moving towards. Marketing sat down with Kawasaki to ask him a few questions when he was in Australia recently judging the Vodafone Foundation’s App Aid event, a 48-hour ‘hackathon’ where developers ‘coded for a cause’ to create an app for a charity.

Marketing: Content curation is being called the next big thing on the internet, and something that you’re leading the field in with Alltop. What are your tips for attracting customers using content?

Kawasaki: First of all, that is a tip in and of itself that I think many people don’t realise. I think almost every post you make in social media should have a link… if you are Paris Hilton and you say, ‘I just bought the new Prius,’ then people would find that interesting, but these tweets about ‘my cat rolled over’ or ‘the line at Starbucks is long’, or whatever, are not that interest- ing. So I think a good post either provides information or analysis or assistance.

What lessons have you learned from Alltop about content curation?

Well, I think the macro lesson is that there are lots of people already generating content, maybe it’s not necessary for people to generate more content, but there is definitely a need for curation. So how do you weed through all that content? The reason why I like Alltop so much is I use it to find the stuff that I post every day. I make about 10 posts a day, so I can’t be going to 50 websites, one at a time, each of them with a different user interface. Alltop delivers everything in one place, so I can cherry pick to make posts.

In your book, What the Plus, you say that Google’s social network, Google Plus, is as special as Macintosh. Why do you say that?

I worked in Macintosh in the mid-eighties and a quick analysis of Macintosh in the mid-eighties is that it was better, used by fewer people and generally condemned by the experts. And I think today, fast forward to Google Plus. It’s better, used by fewer people and generally condemned by the experts. So this is a déjà vu experience for me.

So there are some parallels there. But it is still growing, and it seems that the time that people spend on it and the number of people that have joined are still limiting its growth. Do you think it will overcome that?

It’s tough to tell what the real numbers are, because Google defines it as a social layer, not simply a destination. Clearly, it’s much less used than Facebook or Twitter, but I think the right philosophical approach with Facebook is it’s for people you already know, and with Google Plus, it’s for people you’d like to get to know, because you share something of interest. I’m 50 years old. There’s not a lot that I share with either my high school or college classmates at this point; we’re just in totally separate directions.

Trey Ratcliff – a famous photographer – happened to figure out I’m in Sydney because of my Google Plus posts, and he’s inviting me to a photo walk with other people who I don’t know who share my passion for photography. I can’t see that happening on Facebook.

What tips do you have for marketers who are trying to use Google Plus with brand pages?

I think the advice is not that much different. You have to earn the right to promote your product or service on any social media, and the way you do this is by providing value, and the way you provide value is information, assistance and analysis. So let’s say you have a food brand. You need to not just promote your own food, but promote articles that have to do with nutrition and fitness that would appeal to a foodie, that have nothing to do directly with your brand. And so you become a recognised expert in food, and then every once in a while you can promote your brand, but people are going to your fan page to learn about a passion, not about why they should buy your food.

You’re very active on Twitter and very well followed. Do you think that your success on Twitter is down to the approach that you take, or is it down to the name that you already had for yourself and the content that sits behind you?

I definitely got a faster start than most people because of who I was. I was never a Twitter suggested user, so I didn’t have that going for me, but if you look at my tweets, every one of them has a link in it, so that’s what I do. And a lot of this is automated on Twitter already.

But that’s also something that people say is not the best way to go about Twitter, an automated approach isn’t what people want.

Yeah, I violate two tenets of social media – one is I repeat my tweets, and a lot of them are contributor/ automated. I don’t know. It hasn’t hurt me, so that’s what I do.

So people know what to expect from you?

Yeah. It’s kind of like if I go to the Ralph Lauren store and I buy a shirt, I don’t expect that Ralph Lauren designed and made it. I buy the label.

Is it about finding what works for you on Twitter? Even if it goes against the usual rules of social media?

Well, I think the key is to understand that everything you do on social media, somebody is not going to like it. So the question is, is it one percent don’t like it and 99 percent like it, and are silent, or is it every- body doesn’t like it? I have about a million something followers on Twitter, so at any given point, no matter what I do, there are going to be 10 people who hate it. You just can’t let the 10 people change everything so that the other 999,990 then turn against you. So that’s a lesson in social media, you cannot make everybody happy.

In your latest book, you talk about a concept of ‘enchantment’. Is that where you see the customer satisfaction paradigm moving towards?

I hope so. It is a higher bar than simply satisfying a customer. This is taking it to another level where, for example, Apple has definitely enchanted tens of mil- lions of people, so much so that they will buy a phone without NFC (near field communication) and buy a new cable. So I think that is a test, and people are evangelists, they go beyond simply buying, they also tell other people to buy.

Kawasaki with St John's Ambulance and App Aid winning team

You judged App Aid recently. What were you looking for in the apps that you were judging?

These were apps that were created in a 48-hour hackathon and they were supposed to show off smartphone apps for social causes, and so what I was looking for is the relevance. Does it really save lives or prevent pollution or something like that? Does it take advantage of location-based capabilities? The winner was St John Ambulance, which, if you think about it, there are responders, and they need to know where the people who need help are. So it’s a pretty good match-up for location-based and smart- phones.

What are some of the best ways that apps can provide value for people?

Well, there is of course location-based. That’s very helpful, especially in an emergency. Pretty soon, phones will replace wallets, with NFC and, as credit cards embrace NFC, you won’t carry a wallet, you’ll just swipe your phone. I think that day is coming, even though iPhone 5 doesn’t have it.

What do you think of Apple’s latest iPhone release?

I wouldn’t say I was overwhelmed. I’ve been an Android user for a year now, so in America, if you’re an Android user, you’ve got 4G LTE, which is hugely fast. So I’ve had that for a year [and] they just got it. I happen to like the multitasking, multi-window aspect of Android. For sure I like NFC on Android, which is not available on iPhone. I can’t philosophically agree with this concept of changing the connector for the hell of it, but who am I? Apple is the most valuable company in the world.

Career profile: Andrew Leakey, GM, Wrigley Pacific

by Marketing ON 7 November 2012

For Andrew Leakey, there’s nothing more therapeutic than jumping on his motorbike at the end of a hard day and leaving the cares of work behind. “It’s complete down time, it’s getting away from the thinking to then come back to it when you’re in a better space,” Leakey says.

It’s a rare thing among executives of his level, but Leakey believes time apart is the secret to a healthy work-life relationship. It’s not just his love of the open road, but also his self-professed sports fanaticism and family man lifestyle, that give Leakey the air of a man who practices what he preaches.

Fittingly, Leakey’s marketing career began on the road, as a mobile van salesman for New Zealand wholesale distributor Gilmore’s. It was his first role in the sales and marketing arena, after starting his professional life as a construction engineer. Leakey comments wryly on the peculiarity of someone who started off in such a practical field, moving into the creative and unscientific world of marketing. “It was an odd twist of fate,” Leakey says. “I saw people doing things in the sales arena and thought I wouldn’t mind having a go at that.”

Following his stint at Gilmore’s, he took a role with what was to become Arnott’s, where he was part of the team that launched the Tim Tam, Salada and Shapes brands into the New Zealand market. Mars came next where he ran the pet care business in New Zealand. Carving out quite a niche in the FMCG sector, Leakey then transitioned into GlaxoSmithKline, to look after a number of consumer healthcare brands, as well as Ribena, Lucozade, Zovirax, Panadol and Macleans toothpaste.

Now in the top job for Wrigley in the Pacific region, it’s fair to say his path has not been the conventional one. The role entails overseeing New Zealand, Australia and the export markets that the confectionary brand services in the Pacific Islands. Leakey attributes his career in marketing as responsible for many of the skills he draws on as general manager, chief among them being staying on message and not sweating the small stuff.

Leakey also believes that his time spent at the coalface in a sales role was instrumental in his career to date, and is crucial to success in an FMCG environment.

Marketing: You’ve spent much of your career in marketing roles for FMCG companies. Do you have any insights around what it takes to be a successful marketer in the FMCG sector or are there any peculiarities to marketing in the sector that you can point out?

Leakey: FMCG is a highly competitive environment; our number one goal is to grow the categories in which we operate. Competing with other brands for share is a short term game: by expanding the category as a whole, everyone wins. This is particularly important when your brands are the leaders in their respective categories, as is the case for Extra and Eclipse. The phrase ‘FMCG’ tells you the most important thing to focus on when marketing in this sector – keep the consumer at the heart of everything you do, listen to them and leverage strong insights. Truly successful advertising shifts the sales dial, it doesn’t just win awards, although peer recognition is nice and we’ve had our share of awards over the years.

Andrew Leakey 600w

I’d like to hear a little bit about launching Arnott’s into New Zealand. That’s got to have been a very tough job?

It was a very tight team… when you have one marketer, one sales director, the GM and everybody is front and centre when it comes to going into the aisles in a supermarket, and you have to cart three or four bays of product in, there were some very interesting times. When you have conversations with your competitors and also with your customers around the benefits of what that’s going to bring to them… Strong competition, brands that consumers like and love, that was the sort of genesis of the brand performance: ‘How do we strategically take these brands into market, put them on shelf, but also bring them into the consumer psyche in a completely different country?’. We didn’t have to ‘Kiwify it’, we didn’t have to talk locally; we just had to talk around what the product benefit was, and how it had a part to play in their purchase behaviour. We had some interesting customers, and we had some customers who were intensely loyal to their own brands. For us, it was a great opportunity, proof in the sales I suppose, and delivery on investing in brands.

You now work as the general manager of Wrigley in the Pacific. How did your career in marketing prepare you for this role?

As a marketer, I learned that clear messaging is important. This is just as true when speaking to associates, customers or suppliers as it is when you’re planning a consumer brand campaign. Building a sustainable business is like growing a brand; you invest in your trust bank, build strong relationships with key stakeholders and keep an eye on the end game. If you don’t believe in your product, and have a clear idea of where you’re taking it, then how will you know what success looks like?

A key lesson for me as a marketer was not to sweat the small stuff: that goes double for life as a general manager. I focus on delivering what I say I will, and I can’t do that on my own – I have to give the people around me the freedom to help decide how we will achieve our goals.

Have you had any influential mentors that have been instrumental in your development?

I’ve always been very fortunate. I’ve worked in some pretty well known businesses with some great brands, and as I went into my marketing career, I was fortunate to have some sensational mentors in the marketing environment. I worked for a guy in the Arnott’s business, Peter Maher, and Peter was one of the top rated marketers. He was eventually poached into the Campbell’s business, and then headed up Westpac over here as marketing GM, and now works for Macquarie Bank. Peter was a real go-getter marketing guru, who, as we launched the complete Arnott’s business into the marketplace, had some great ideas around how to integrate your brand into the consumer space and get the consumer to trust an Australian brand in the New Zealand marketplace against the locally owned brand.

So, some of our marketing learnings were fantastic, and Peter’s attention to detail, while not sweating the small stuff is something that I still carry with me to this day. It sounds like a bit of an oxymoron, but he was saying the detail is important, but on the right things.

You’ve come to marketing through some pretty tough sales roles. Is that the kind of experience you look for in anyone you’re hiring into your team?

I think it’s important. It’s not absolutely critical that they have been out there at the coalface a lot, but they absolutely need to know where the sale is generated, and at the end of the day, for our business, one of our first and foremost principles is availability.

I know everybody talks to it, but certainly in an impulse environment and an FMCG environment, if you don’t understand the coalface, you’re going to have a problem marketing because consumers are shoppers and shoppers are consumers. You’ve got to deal with the third party, which is the middle man, in our case, to get our products on show and at arm’s reach, and you have to understand the pressures that those people are under.

What approach does Wrigley take to innovation, and how important is it for the business?

It’s critical. It’s not innovation for innovation’s sake. Some companies will do NPD [new product development] innovation, and most NPD is content to be more SKUs in the market place. We have a different approach. The Pacific has always been an innovation hub, so we’ve launched a number of world firsts.

We launched Eclipse mints in the tin in this market some six years ago, and it’s now market leader in that segment. We launched ‘5’, which was an innovation that grew the category. So, our criteria is around innovation that grows the category.

Can you comment on how much you spend on digital channels, and what is the priority in that area for your key brands?

I can’t give you absolute numbers, but I can certainly tell you that our focus has shifted over the last five years from purely mainstream to working more in the social space, depending on brand. Five years ago it would have been one percent, now it’s probably 10 percent of our total expenditure. But for our business, equally, we’ve grown our expenditure and brand support over that same time.

So, it’s about maintaining broad reach, but then if you’ve got specific consumers or specific activities that you want to be more targeted with, then you use the right channel and social is, particularly on the ‘5’ brand for us, very strong, but equally, conversely, for the Extra brand, as we’ve gone into messaging which is talking more and more about the benefits of chewing gum for oral hygiene, that’s more of a mass message, so we still have a very strong television based campaign.

What tips do you have for young marketers getting started in the profession these days?

It’s an interesting one, and if I talk about what success looks like to me, it’s about doing what you say you will, about understanding how you fit with the cultural part of the business, not just the brands; you’ve got to take ownership of the brands and treat them as if they’re your own personal property. Having passion and pride in brands is paramount and that’s one of the things, there is a good synergy between the Mars business and the Wrigley business.

Over the last 100 years, we’ve both grown some very, very well known brands around the world, but also in our marketplace. And that’s come through passionate marketers who live and breathe the brand.

Career highlight?

One of the single most powerful moments of my career as a marketeer was the filming of our Starburst TVC with Camp Quality. Starburst funded Camp Quality’s ‘Teenage Anarchist’ program, supporting teens returning to school after receiving treatment for cancer. Seeing the smiles on the faces of the Camp Quality kids and their families that helped us shoot our TVC really brought home what a powerful force for good companies and brands can be.

Career lowlight?

I know this is going to sound cheesy, but I really don’t have a career lowlight. There have certainly been tough times, but every single one of those experiences has taught me a useful lesson, be it how to avoid a potential issue for next time, how to seize an opportunity with both hands and maximise the possibilities, or simply how to effectively engage with people from different industries, functional backgrounds or cultures.

On managing the Ribena vitamin C content crisis:

I had the dubious pleasure of having been in charge of Ribena when we had the vitamin C issue. We spent three years doubling the brand, and halved it overnight because of a consumer issue that actually started off by there being too much Vitamin C in the product. Managing that was both probably one of my darkest hours, but also one of the ones I learnt the most about, brand resilience – having trust in brands, but also having trust in the organisation behind the brands. It was a long weekend, I can tell you.

Andrew’s key learnings from working through the Ribena issue:

Communicate, communicate, communicate. Explain the facts of the issue, tell people what you plan to do to address the problem, give them regular updates while you’re doing it, and then tell then how you fixed it – this is not a time to go underground.

Put the right people on the right things (expertise counts). You find out who you can count on during times like this!

Plan for the future. Have a plan for ‘what’s next’ after the immediate crisis has been resolved. If you have enough trust in the bank, consumers want to know what’s next, once they’ve been satisfied the problem has been resolved.

Q&A with Paull Young, director of digital, Charity: water

by Marketing ON 23 October 2012

Paull Young, according to his Twitter profile, is an Aussie living in New York City. In fact, Charity: water‘s director of digital is a country boy at heart, he says, having spent a significant amount of time in Bathurst and then in Surfers Paradise doing motor racing PR. Moving to The Big Apple must have taken some getting used to. But it was Young’s interest in digital and social media that led him there five years ago, and he says there’s no better place to be, not even Silicon Valley: “New York is more of a business centre, so you might not see necessarily as much of the crazy innovation that you will see coming out of Silicon Valley… but you’ve got all the seats of business here and the media brands, and that creates a more interesting cocktail for a lot of digital work, a lot of marketing work, too.”

Young will be in Melbourne this month for the 2012 World PR Forum, hosted by the Public Relations Institute of Australia, the first time the event has been held in Australia. Marketing caught up with him to chat about a charity brand that considers itself a start-up, has a strong focus on design and does very little traditional marketing.

Marketing: Can I ask straight out what you’ll be talking about at the World PR Forum? Obviously you don’t have to give away the punchlines or anything yet…

Young: I’ll be telling the story of Charity: water, and how we operate as a digital start-up, non-profit, how we’re different, and basically trying to give as much insight as possible for the audience into how we structure ourselves, how we approach marketing, how we approach our brand, in order to achieve our two goals: one, of bringing cleaner safe drinking water to every person on the planet – so that’s 800 million people currently live without clean water. And two, to reinvent charity. We want to be a brand that completely reinvents what charity means. They’re our two, high-level stated objectives, and so I will be presenting that to the audience and then talking about the various brand values, activities, examples of how we believe we’re tackling that.

If you’re reinventing charity, what does charity mean to you then, and to Charity: water?

There are really three things at the core of it. We’re only six years old here in New York City, and our founder, Scott Harrison, returned from two years working and living in Africa with an aid organisation in Liberia. When he got back into New York, he found that there was no charity that really inspired his friends; his friends weren’t giving anymore, and he kept hearing it was because charity can be like a black hole… is the money being used efficiently? And then simultaneously, if you looked at most non-profit branding, it’s hard to find a brand that really inspires you. So six years back, that’s where we were at.

We started Charity: water with three fundamental ideas that have stuck with us from day one and been the focus of most of what we’re doing. The first is our 100% model. So every cent we raise at Charity: water, we use to fund water projects. Every cent we publicly raise – you donate $20 on our website, every cent of that $20 goes to water projects. We pay back credit card fees. And we use a completely separate budget to fund our staff salaries, travel, ink in the office printer.

Where does that money come from?

It’s primarily major donors. It’s also corporate and foundation supporters and some merchandise. There’s a group of major donors called The Well, who give three year commitments purely to ops, and that enables us the scale. Also we are very efficient in terms of staff and numbers and our fundraising expenses.

The second pillar was something we call proof, where from day one, every water project we build we mark on Google Maps so that donors can not only give knowing that 100% of their money will be used for water projects, but they can actually see that impact. They can see on Google Maps the water projects that have been built, see photos, see GPS coordinates, learn about the village they helped fund. And that was from day one, we basically started off with a GPS unit we bought at Best Buy, and six years later we’ve built over 6000 water projects and they’re all tracked the same way.

And the final piece to match up is brand. We really wanted to build an epic brand at Charity: water. We wanted to be a brand that inspires people like an Apple or like a Nike, the brands that you love most in the world. Where most charitable brands are not really that exciting. So because of that, we’ve had a really strong commitment to brand excellence, to design and web design and in our history our first hire after Scott was someone who would work on the water programs, and the next hire was a web designer, and he’s still with us as our creative director. So storytelling is a real strength of our organisation. Brand has been a big part of it.

What I’m trying to do is with the three fundamental pieces of what Charity: water is about, talk about how that’s led into our extremely rapid digital expansion, and how we’ve used that platform, plus the strength of digital innovation to rapidly accelerate our business and effectively grow more like a web start-up grows than a traditional non-profit.

That’s interesting, you’ve mentioned ‘start-up’ a couple of times. So the organisation really considers itself like a start-up?

Absolutely. Yes. We’re only six years old. We’re 45 people, 44 in New York and one in Kenya. We’re certainly maturing now as we grow and as we scale, but we think and act like a start-up. So the brands that we’re most friendly with, and a number of the individuals who have been most supportive to our organisation, come out of the start-up world; they come out of Silicon Valley, they come out of the New York tech scene, they come out of interesting web businesses around the globe primarily. That’s where a lot of our best supporters come from. Since day one, we’ve been really connected with this community. We’re the first brand to have one million Twitter followers. Recently, we were one of the first handful of brands to join Instagram. And so this is how we operate; it’s a really strong part of our DNA.

You mentioned brand before, and design, and that’s something I definitely noticed compared to other not for profits, is that it seems to skew quite a bit younger, and that’s apparent through the use of social media as well. Is that a deliberate focus, to target a younger audience?

Not necessarily to target a younger audience, though we probably do appeal to early adopters, and our demographic, I would say, would trend a bit younger than a lot of the non-profits around the globe. We don’t do direct mail. We don’t do some of the more traditional forms of non-profit fundraising. We rely less on major donors than we do on the mass. We’ve had over 250,000 donors to date.

I don’t think necessarily younger donors has been a focus of us, but creating an inspiring brand is a really important element to us. I often say that inspiration is the most important part of our digital strategy because we rely essentially on people not only giving what they can, but people fundraising, and that expansion of online fundraising has been a big driver of our success, and is a strategic priority for us.

Effectively, fundraising is hard work – you can’t just set up a page and send a tweet and make 10,000 bucks. You’ve got to really work at it, you’ve got to educate yourself, you’ve got to educate your friends, you’ve got to inspire your friends in turn, and so we believe that inspiring brand is right at the core of that.

Another thing about Charity: water that’s apparent is it’s very focused – it’s in the name, it’s all about water. I can see how that’s a benefit to communicating what it’s all about. But are there any times where that strict focus is a hindrance to marketing it?

Surprisingly not. It’s interesting though, because a lot of people look at us and they point that out – it’s like it’s so tangible, it’s easier for you guys. It’s actually really hard work to make something look really simple, which I think people that aren’t in marketing don’t often understand that.

Interestingly, our brand name is Charity: water. We think we could really be as effective if we were Charity: education or Charity: malaria, or Charity: healthcare, if we were delivering medicine, or Charity: HIV if it was AIDS vaccinations, for example. As long as we stuck to those core brand values of 100% in efficiency, or proving every dollar, and of helping people see that tangible impact after they’ve been inspired by a story and inspired by a brand.

Brand extensions… has that actually been thought of seriously to do?

Not on the plan yet. You never know though. There are 800 million people living without clean, safe drinking water. So this year we will raise over 20 million dollars in order to knock off 10% of the problem we’re facing, 800 million people, we would need to raise three billion dollars by 2022, or something, we’re looking at.

The theme of this year’s World PR Forum is ‘communications without borders’. What does that mean?

For us, it comes down to fundamentally more than just marketing, because at the top level, we’re a global brand by nature of the internet, so we have people fundraising around the world all the time. Even though we’re only a registered non-profit in the States, there are dozens of interesting Australian stories of people doing fundraisers. I’m having friends doing fundraisers all the time back at home. My little sister gave up a birthday in August and she was written up in the local paper out in Bankstown about it. So for us, the nature of our business and the web business is that it’s easy to scale as a global brand these days.

More importantly, for us, it becomes about compressing time and compressing distance and connecting people with others on the planet. Fundamentally, the most important thing we do at Charity: water is help people see their impact. Now, we believe that with our 100% model, with our proof, with how life changing water is, that we give people the opportunity to really make a significant change in the world. If you fund a water project for a village, you completely transform a community, you transform hundreds of lives. And because of this world where you can communicate without borders, we are able to bring stories and connect people with the work that’s being done, and connect several billion people on the planet who are lucky enough to live in the developed world and have access to clean water, with the 800 million people who live without life’s most basic need, and put an issue on the agenda that’s been largely ignored.

You mentioned storytelling, and that’s something that’s discussed in marketing a lot at the moment, brands becoming storytellers. For Charity: water, there are some really compelling and amazing stories that it’s involved with. Hypothetically, if you were working on a different brand, maybe something not so interesting, how would you go about that, and is storytelling still an important part of the brand?

Yeah, it’s something I bring up a lot, especially coming out of a consulting background and working with major brands. It’s interesting to me because I work with a better creative team now than I ever worked with in the for-profit world. There is not many of them. They are certainly not well paid, but none of us really are in the non-profit world. The difference is that they’re passionate, their work is highly valued and they’re given a lot of room and time to do outstanding work. I rarely see any brands paying that degree of attention to creative.

We will invest significant time and energy into our big stories: building micro-sites, ensuring excellence, sending people to the field to come back with videos. Our founder will often be personally involved in the stories. From top down, there is that level of commitment to storytelling. I don’t see that level of commitment to storytelling from 99% of brands, and you can’t produce an amazing story without that level of commitment to storytelling. So I don’t think it’s more so the topic. Certainly being a cause, we think we’re doing the most important work in the world and so it’s a joy to tell that story, but it’s hard work – like I said earlier, it’s hard work to make it look this easy.

I saw on your blog a video of Steven Colbert basically taking the piss out of social media measurement, in particular, counting the tweets per minute in the US election campaign.

Good, isn’t it?

It’s hilarious because it’s pretty sharp satire about measuring things in digital just for the sake of measuring it and because the numbers sound good. Where do you think the industry sits at the moment in measuring social media? Is it something we need to measure, and where do you think it’s going… what’s the next big step?

I think most people are spending a lot of time and energy measuring stuff that may not matter, because it’s public. Any CEO can look at how many Facebook fans or Twitter fans they have and how many their competitors have, and care a lot about that number, where it doesn’t matter what number you have there. It really, of course, matters what you’re doing with them; what’s the impact?

It’s typically really hard to close the loop on impact. I’ve known this, I’ve tried to measure social media programs for all sorts of really large brands, and it’s not easy, especially with big brands, especially with brands where the business is done offline. But typically I see people investing a huge amount of time and effort in measuring raw numbers that may not have a link to any kind of defined activity. So people do all sorts of reporting on Facebook analytics and Twitter follower growth and number of mentions, and these are vague indicators that might be useful but at Charity: water, I look at dollars all the time, and how many active fundraising campaigns are there? And how many fundraisers do I need to drive? And how efficient do they need to be? I don’t have to track how many Facebook fans there are week on week, because if our brand is doing the right job, it’s going to happen.

I think everyone on the measurement front is just wishing that there was a golden bullet or a tool that’s going to appear that makes it easy. And it’s tempting to take the easier out, which is to look at numbers that are right in front of you and not do the mental work to try to work out what are the fundamental drivers of your business, and what are the things to measure that matter? But one of the things I often say about measurement is the most powerful analytics engine in the world is the human brain, and you’ve just got to spend time and energy on how to measure things. So at Charity: water, we’ve been spending a huge amount of time on building – on instrumenting our site so that we can track all kinds of user behaviour in order to make our marketing efficient. We’ve built a custom, back-end dashboard to measure our fundraising and define and measure key conversions, so that we can get stronger and stronger on measurement, and that’s how our brand approaches this.

Paull Young will be speaking more about Charity: water’s journey and approach to marketing at the World PR Forum, taking place in Melbourne 18-20 November 2012.

To find out more about Charity: water head over to its website, Facebook page or Twitter profile.

Paull’s blog is paullyoung.com and on Twitter he is @paullyoung