December 1, 2007My initial Jaffe Juice post -what do you want to hear from me?
Filed Under: Join the Conversation
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I am pleased to have been asked by Joseph to be a guest blogger for this month as he enjoys some quality time in Africa. I am further pleased to be joining Stan Rapp in this capacity. In the spirit of "joining the conversation," it seems appropriate to me that I should not presume I might know what this community would want to hear from me about, I am reaching out to you to ask for your suggestions of topics you would like me to address. I have spent the better part of the last ten years as CMO at Wachovia and before that, in marketing leadership roles at IBM and Compaq for the prior 29 years. Given this range of experiences, I would be quite comfortable addressing a range of topics across a broad spectrum including, but not limited to, general marketing, accountability, innovation, CMO challenges and perils, emerging media, brand building, marketing challenges in a merger environment, agency relations, sponsorhips, etc. etc. etc. I hope to hear from you.
- Jim Garrity
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Comments
Welcome, Jim!
I'd like to hear your take on how you walk the line between the need to find an ROI for marketing programs compared to the need for innovation and experimentation. Often, these two things can be competing ideals, so I'd be interested to hear how you've handled that over your career.
Thanks!
Posted by: Paul McEnany
Paul,
Thanks for your post. Your question hits squarely on a challenge faced more and more by marketing leaders in corporate America. My experience would suggest that creative marketing programs cannot be driven by a spreadsheet. On the other hand, it is fairly commonly believed that the inability of a CMO to deliver quantifiable ROI numbers is a key contributor to the less-than-23 month average tenure of CMOs today. Innovation and creativity involve taking risks and tolerating failure as a result. This requires a significant culture change for most companies, however. My recommendation is for marketers to push the innovation envelope, but do so with a plan to include very strong metrics to determine success or failure. The key is to be prepared to fail, fail fast and learn from the experience.
Posted by: JIm Garrity
your prediction for changes in technology for 2008 and the issues surrounding them
Posted by: david wesson
your prediction for changes in technology for 2008 and the issues surrounding them
Posted by: david wesson
Dear Jim,
This may not be the right forum, but I believe my marriage story may be a good advertising idea for Wachovia. My husband and I were married in Camden, South Carolina at a Wachovia. The judge's office was not able marry us for a few hours.We then walked over to the Wachovia and gave the customer service rep.a shock. We asked him if he could notarize our marriage licence. He agreed,and mumbled he had no vows, we didn't care, we wanted to be married. We were all chatting and laughing while he was filling in the paperwork. He brought out his stamp to finalize our marriage, then asked with a chuckle if we wanted a joint checking account. We declined since we already had a joint account at Wachovia. We walked outside and kissed on the front steps. Since then we have received lots of laughs and even 10 shares of stock.
Posted by: kim
Jim,
Your response above mentions that organizations need to take risks, innovate and be willing to fail. However, with the rapid turnover at the executive level, one could assume that they are hesitant to deviate from the existing brand guidelines which effectively limits their ability to succeed.
With all of the platforms available to marketers today, the message is changing. As the message changes, so do the metrics. So, considering your reply above, what do you consider a strong metric? Will the existing stranglehold some organizations keep on their brand finally bend? Or has marketing just become to sensitive?
Thanks!
Posted by: Kevin
ETHICS IN MARKETING
Old school advertising has a less than stellar record when it comes to ethics. I mean by this the unethical practices such as deceptive advertising of inferior or defective products, misleading advertising, and marketing to children. Can you comment on some of the ethical issues that face new media advertising and how consumers can know ethical practices when they see them?
Posted by: Jim Richardson
David Wesson,
Thanks for your question. If I were to make a prediction, I wouldn't be comfortable limiting it to just 2008. That said, however, I do see 2008 being an important year among the next few as we see an explosion in mobile functionality. People will want more and more of the functionality they have on their computers available to them anytime, anywhere utilizing their mobile devices. This will bring great functionality to the user and present numerous, highly targeted advertising opportunities for advertisers. The obvious issue involved in this scenario is the concern over personal privacy, although Google seems to have survived those concerns the way they are using contextual information to deliver highly targeted advertising.
Posted by: Jim Garrity
Kim,
Your story is unique - at least for me, it's the first I've heard of a marriage taking place at a Wachovia Financial Center. The best parts for me were, first, the employee had the sense to ask for your business and second, that you had the brilliance to already be customers. I will forward your story to the folks in Marketing at Wachovia for any potential interest in using your great story for advertising or other possible marketing purposes. Thanks for sharing.
Posted by: Jim Garrity
Welcome Jim, many thanks for opening yourself up to some questions.
I'm interested in hearing how (or whether) you've made any structural changes to the marketing team in response to "conversational marketing," or however you'd term the relatively new dialogue-with-the-consumer paradigm. For example, have you created a position for someone to listen to "the blogosophere" on matters relevant to your business (and that of your competitors)? Or have you added that role to an existing position? Do you engage a 3rd party to respond to blog postings, when and if you do? If you can't answer that, do you have a perspective as to whether (and how) these sorts of roles will develop within companies? Is the ideal CMO leading a push for Emerging Media resources, and/or are they partnering with the CTO for these budgets? Etc.
(I work for a major apparel company, as something of a chief interactive architect meets user-experience designer)
Thanks Again!
Posted by: Marko
Kevin,
You pose some interesting questions. First of all, I should mention that throughout my career, I worked for companies that, for the most part, were single brand companies with various units going to market under the "master brand." Having been charged with responsibility for brand stewardship of thees master brands, I am a very big believer in brand rules and guidelines in order to very carefully protect these companies' extremely valuable assets in the represented by their brands. There is no reason why brand guidelines and governance should get in the way of creativity.
As for metrics, as marketing tactics become more and more targeted and as companies continue to build richer and richer databases with information on customers' atitudinal and behavioral traits, solid ROI metrics become much more attainable. At Wachovia this year, we were able to significantly increase marketing communications budgets because or our ability to quantitatively prove the ROI of established tactics from the prior year.
Posted by: Jim Garrity
Jim Richardson,
You raise a serious issue and one that will surely grow in the minds of consumers. It is my belief that in this era of information ubiquity, we will ultimately know more than we ever could have before about companies, brands and their true essences. If a company tries to fake it, they will ultimately get discovered, some sooner than others. But with consumers becoming more and more informed and savvy, it will happen. Consider the article in the Nov 28 WSJ about Mark Lasswell's new book PUNCHING IN:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119620870914305892.html (subscription required)
While some of the tactics cited in the book are perhaps not unethical, they certainly fly in the face of how these companies portray their brands and their values. Posers will get discovered!
Posted by: Jim Garrity
Marko,
I need to be clear in this response to your comments/questions for the record. I retired as CMO at Wachovia this past July, so I am not equipped to give you reliable information about the current state. I can tell you that during my tenure, we did not have anyone officially assigned to monitor the blogosphere as a major part of a job responsibility. We did rely on the online marketing team at Wachovia as well as our onliine agency, Carat Fusion, to keep track of what was out there, but it was not a major initiative. We did hire an external firm about 18 months ago to do some serious online monitoring of all things online relative to the Wachovia brand and, frankly, the results didn't surprise us and we didn't see any trends in buzz regarding our brand that required a major shift in direction. We never seriously considered authoring our own blog or participating in others. I understand that some companies do this with great results, Dell notably being one that has had great success.
Regarding how to generate funding for emerging marketing techniques, our approach was to move dollars out of traditional media e.g. network tv, and into emerging media. At first this was difficult because the business units we supported were uncomfortable doing this, but over time, we developed some really solid ROI metrics that made believers out of those who had been sceptical. The percentage of marketing dollars now spent on "emerging" or "alternative" media is considerably more that it historically had been.
If your company belongs to the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and if not, I strongly encourage you to join - great organization and wonderful resource at a bargain price - I would recommend joining their New Technologies Committee that I founded in 1996 and chaired for 11 years. A great way to hear about how leading edge marketers are dealing with the very types of questions you raised.
Posted by: Jim Garrity
Hmmm ... well I know what I don't want to hear ... please avoid too much recycled jargon, referring to yourself a "guru" or "thoughtleader" and don't shill for free iPhones/ cameras. Thanks
Posted by: Lex
Jim - my 80 year old father-in-law (whose health is failing) has come up with a catchy marketing phrase for Wachovia - "At Wachovia, we watch over you!" He has been relentless with me in asking me to find someone at Wachovia to tell about this idea. He doesn't care about getting 'credit' for this idea (if it were to be accepted) but simply wants to get it to the powers-that-be at Wachovia and get some kind of a response. This phrase has most likely been thought up inside the company and your ad agencies but any feedback from you or anyone in marketing would go a long way in making an old man (who is dying of cancer) happy. Any advice?
Posted by: Lesley
