Economist Marketing Forum (Day Two) Top 10 round-up

Highlights from Day 2 of the conference using the Tweets made by myself and others. To review the Twittering activity during the forum, go here on Twitter Search. (Search: #ecsf09):

1) russhmeyer: "'We' is the pronoun for the internet, not 'me'".-A.Rasiej, TechPresident.com

The first session of the day was about building the Obama brand. Andrew Rasiej believes that, over and above all the political dynamics, Obama won because he and his team understood the rules of the game for the Internet, especially that its language is about "we" not "me." Yes, we can.

2) jweinberger: #ecsf09 Barr: Obama won because: right people, right product, right time, flawless execution

A different perspective on why he won came from H. Buford Barr of the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University. He believes that it was more of a textbook campaign: A good strategy, well-executed. "Now I've got something to prove the textbook is right."

3) russhmeyer: boutique hotels=magazines...interesting source for marketing inspiration. - C Conley

Chip Conley is founder and CEO of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, California's largest boutique hotel company. As he said: His original target market was: "Chip's friends who used to sleep on my couch." But, once he got started, he found his inspiration from magazines. His first hotel: Phoenix Hotel was inspired, for example, by Rolling Stone. Others have been inspired by Simple, The Economist and Sports Illustrated.

4) martinjbishop:The employee track up the Maslow pyramid: From Job to Career to Calling

Conley is a devout follower of Maslow and the hierarchy of needs, using it as the organizing principle for the positioning of his hotels and also as a way to think about employee engagement. His goal is to get employees to think of work as more as a calling and less as a job or even a career. Customer experience can also be translated to this scale: "meets expectations" to "meets desires" to "meets unrecognized needs" (Conley's book where he explains this in more detail: Peak http://tinyurl.com/2uxyrd)

5) martinjbishop: Who knows how the consumer will react? Why are they buying puppy treats at a time like this? http://www.pupperoni.com/

The next panel explored the relationship between CEOs and CMOs. In his introductory remarks, William Pearce of Del Monte threw in this unexpected fact. Demand for puppy treats has gone through the roof since the recession started. Why? Who knows?

6) martinjbishop: Zappos has taken some of the things at the bottom of the Maslow pyramid and made them differentiating (e.g. warehousing)

Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, declared himself a fan of Chip Conley and also uses Maslow principles in managing the company. What's interesting is that he's taken things that are normally considered costs-that-must-be-controlled and made them into points of differentiation. For example, Zappos runs its warehouses 24/7 which is not efficient but gives them an edge in customer service.

7) martinjbishop: The Zappos offer to pay people to leave after training is designed to get rid of people who are only there for the paycheck

Hsieh also talked about his famous policy of giving people the chance to quit for money after the training period. He wants people who are there for more than the paycheck. There's also some nice cognitive dissonance going on for those that stay. They have to rationalize the fact that they didn't take the money.

8) martinjbishop: The only way you win an argument against a person with a higher title is to "have a fact" (Kumar/Frito Lay)

Jay Kumar of Frito-Lay made the point that when two people are disagreeing with each other, the winner will generally be the one with the bigger title unless the lower-titled person has some compelling facts at hand. That, he pointed out, is why CMOs need to invest in getting facts if they are be persuasive in the boardroom.

9) TrevorWade: Virgin america goes to great lengths to connect with customers, stories are as remarkable as FedEx

The last speaker at the Forum was Porter Gale of Virgin America. Like Zappos, Virgin America is very plugged into what its customers are thinking and saying in real time. Porter shared a couple of stories where they had actually been at the gate of an incoming flight to talk to and help out customers who had complained about problems en route. Even as I tweeted about Virgin America at the conference, they started following me. Sort of GDR tactics made good.

10) johngerzema: My Economist presentation is posted here http://bit.ly/cnflH (expand)The slideshare has the links, but better graphics by dowloading.

John Gerzema, who spoke on Day 1 about avoiding the looming crisis in brand value, made his presentation available on this link. Well worth a read.

The Economist Marketing Forum Day Two speakers

Here are the speakers and agenda for today. You can follow the event via Twitter here. (martinjbishop on Twitter Search: #ecsf09):

1) Building the Obama brand: The selling of Barack Obama
Jim Margolis: Senior Partner, GMMB
H. Barford Barr: Lecturer in Marketing, Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University
Andrew Rasiej: Founder, techpresident.com

2) Stand out from the brand crowd
Chip Conley: Founder and CEO, Joie de Vivre Hospitality

3) Ties that must bind: Why CEOs rely on CMOs more than ever
William Pierce: Senior VP and CMO, Del Monte Foods
Jay Kumar: CMO, Frito Lay
Tony Hsieh: CEO, Zappos.com

4) Case study: Building a brand from scratch
Porter Gale: VP Marketing, Virgin America

Economist Marketing Forum (Day One) Top 10 round-up

Drawing: George Bush by me. Proving that even the best teacher (in this case KAL from The Economist) can't help those beyond help.

This conference was the first time I've used Twitter and my tweets (as martinjbishop) can be found via #escf09 on Twitter Search. So, apart from KAL trying to teach us all how to draw George Bush, what, as I look back through the tweets (mine and others), were the top 10 highlights of the day?

1) Don't just go after high-return customers. Just like stocks they may be the high risk ones. You need a balanced portfolio. (Ward Hanson: Policy Forum Director, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research)

The first session of the day was: "The economic landscape: How to spot an upturn." I thought this was a very interesting idea. Hanson made the point that, just as you wouldn't (or shouldn't) put all your eggs in a basket of high risk stocks, so should you avoid only going after high-risk customers. I think that AmEx's recent $300 incentive to encourage some card holders to leave is its effort to rebalance its portfolio.

2) The government is borrowing on the public's behalf (while we all pay off our debt) (Michael Lehmann: Emeritus Professor of Economics, University of San Francisco)

Also in the first session, Professor Lehmann made a compelling case for why the government must borrow and spend money. His argument: The public isn't doing it and the banks aren't doing it so, if the government doesn't do it, the economy will grind to a complete halt. But will the governement ever be able to turn off the tap?

3) russhmeyer: The good news and bad news of marketing right now is nobody has any money...levels the playing field. May the best idea win, then.

Marketing and advertising dollars have been a barrier to competition. But, these days, budgets are being cut and media is fragmented. As Russ Meyer suggests, this opens up the field and the best ideas may now prevail.

4) jweinberger: CMO of @tripadvisor talks about social media failure (their own site) and success (facebook)

The second session of the day explored the theme of how to market in a downturn. That task is a little easier for Christine Petersen, CMO of TripAdvisor because she never had much of a budget, even when times were good. Here Jeff Weinberger tweets that she has had more success developing social media applications for Facebook than she did trying to create things on her own site.

5) mktgwithmeaning: denny's received 1000s of thank u calls for free promo, one guy sent a $300 check "to thank u for what u did for America"

Mark Chmeil from Denny's was the architect of the recent Grand Slam giveaway, one of, if not the, marketing success of the year so far. Bob Gilbreath tweeted that the Grand Slam giveaway became much more than the simple trial device originally intended. It tapped into the strong feelings in the country as we bear the brunt of the recession.

6) The birth of Elf Yourself: One of 20 web sites launched with a total budget of $400,000. It was the one that took off.

Classic innovation technique adopted by Bob Thacker from Office Max. With a limited budget, Office Max launched 20 different web sites with no idea which one would be a hit. Turns out it was Elf Yourself that became the blockbuster.

7) danielriveong: Beam CMO: "our metric is getting into out consumer's heart", measuring "talkability". Very curious how's that's defined, budgeted

Rory Finlay is Senior VP and CMO of Beam's Global Spirits & Wine and he was part of a session talking about metrics and how to optimize marketing dollars. As Daniel noted in this tweet, Rory is trying to get a handle on "talkability" as a metric. As Rory went on to say, he's not quite got what he wants yet. He would like to measure the "quality" of conversation about his brand, not just the quantity.

8) WadeTr: Hermes is giving out paper bags to takes your purchases out of the store: guilded to guilt age (gerzema)

John Gerzema's book: Brand Bubble looks at what he called (all the way back half way through last year) the "looming crisis in brand value." Well the storm has hit and now we're seeing the impact. Trevor Wade's tweet captures John's idea that we have now entered a "guilt age" where conspicuos consumption has had to go undercover.

9) johngerzema: Econconf:Live your brand. UPS Marketing Chief Christine Owens started as a driver; mandatory for all executives

After his turn at the podium, John was also Twitter-active commenting on the fact that Christine Owens from UPS started her career as a driver. It reminded me that my first day on-the-job at Nestlé was to get up at 5am to go to a store in Seattle and reset the dog food section. Nothing like some real experience to cure you of ivory tower syndrome.

10) As we pursue efficiency via packaging reductions etc: "We are the accidental environmentalists." (Hagan/Clorox)

In a session on sustainability and corporate responsibility, Katherine Hagan: Marketing Director, Environmental Sustainability for Clorox made the point that going green only works if there's a business case that can be made as well. Clorox doesn't depend on altruism to get its green initiatives implemented. It relies on the bottom line.

All in all, a great first day. Back for more tomorrow.

The Economist Marketing Forum on Twitter

I'm attending The Economist Marketing Forum in San Francisco. And Twittering like crazy! You can follow my comments as well as others attending here. (martinjbishop on Twitter Search: #ecsf09) Speakers and agenda:

#1 The economic landscape: How to spot an upturn
Ward Hanson: Policy Forum Director, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
Michael Lehmann: Emeritus Professor of Economics, University of San Francisco
Martin Giles: Senior Business Correspondent, The Economist

#2 Brand management: Successful marketing in an economic downturn
Pam Kaufman: Chief Marketing Officer, Nickelodeon
Christine Petersen: Chief Marketing Officer, TripAdvisor
Sylvia Reynolds: Chief Marketing Officer, Wells Fargo

#3 Consumer behavior: New attitudes, new approaches
Mark Chmiel: Executive Vice-President and Chief Marketing and Innovation Officer, Denny's
Bob Thacker: Senior Vice-President, Marketing and Advertising, OfficeMax

#4 Payback: How to optimize marketing dollars
Rory Finlay: Senior VP and CMO, Beam's Global Spirits & Wine
Angela Courtin: Senior VP, Entertainment and Content, MySpace
Maureen Lally: VP Americas Marketing, Trane

#5 Avoiding the looming crisis in brand value
John Gerzema: Chief Insights Officer, Young & Rubicam Group, author of The Brand Bubble

#6 Communicating to a global audience
Kevin 'KAL' Kallaugher: The Economist's political cartoonist on Kaltoons

#7 Responsibility unbound: Expanding the role of the corporation
Katherine Hagan: Marketing Director,Environmental Sustainability, Clorox
Matthew Heim: President, Nine Sigma
Christine Owens: Senior VP of Communications and Brand Management, UPS

#8 Emerging markets case study: The rewards of brand-building in developing economies
Glenn R Weckerlin: Global Director, Brand and Product Line Management, Chevron
Rajesh Subramaniam: Senior VP of International Marketing, FedEx
Russ Meyer: CSO, Landor

Economist Conference base camp

I'm attending the Seventh Annual Economist Marketing Forum for the next couple of days (Landor is the founding sponsor). This year's theme is: "Managing for the present, preparing for the future," focusing on the marketing challenge of dealing with today while keeping an eye on opportunities for tomorrow. As described on the forum's home page:

"Chief marketing officers have been hit with a double whammy in the current financial turbulence: the slowing economy is forcing most of them to become cost-cutters just at the time they are being asked by their CEOs to take more responsibility for building brands and increasing revenue. At the same time, media consumption habits are changing significantly, leading CMOs to struggle with how to build brands in the digital age. They need to use their marketing dollars more effectively, decide on the proper mix of online and offline spending, and learn to reach and engage customers in new ways that underline two-way dialogues rather than simply pushing out one-way marketing messages."

Some interesting speakers lined up including Mark Chmiel from Denny's who was the architect of the free Grand Slam giveaway which I thought was the best Superbowl ad/promotion this year and Zappo's Tony Hsieh, everyone's favorite socially-media-active CEO.