The Association of National Advertisers held its annual Masters of Marketing conference in Orlando, Fla. If you weren't able to make it, we've got a few takeaways below, whether it was Marc Pritchard's advice to marketers, Gary Vaynerchuck's shock talk, or some nostalgia from the Backstreet Boys. And be sure to check out our complete coverage, including stories and videos here.
Give your agency a break
The marketing and ad agency industries haven't exactly been best
pals of late. Witness the ANA's ongoing battle with 4As over media
rebates and transparency. But marketers speaking at last week's
event extended more than a few olive branches to agencies. "The
last few years have been admittedly tough on agencies, P&G
included. And it's time to turn the page. The negative narrative
needs to stop," said Procter & Gamble Co. Chief Brand
Officer Marc Pritchard,
who also happens to be the new chairman of the ANA.
Diego Scotti, chief marketing officer of Verizon, said:
"I hear people blame the agency model, saying it's broken. I think
that's frankly a lazy way of thinking about it."
Don't be a "fuckface"
"If you are running [TV] commercials for a brand that targets
consumers 22 and under, you're a fuckface." That was just one of
many one-liners Gary Vaynerchuk threw at attendees during one of
his harsh-truth speeches. Mr. Vaynerchuk railed about marketers and
agencies being wedded to the old ways, stuck in legacy creative
habits and measuring things that didn't matter. He repeatedly urged
the crowd to look at the history of marketing, particularly the
transition from radio to TV and what happened to TV.
His final takeaway: "You're going to die," Mr. Vaynerchuk said. "It's an amazing time to be in this industry if you're on the offense, it's the worst time if you're on the defense and 95% of you are on the defense."
Don't fall into a "crap trap"
Mr. Pritchard was actually not very familiar with Mr. Vaynerchuk
before his ANA address. And maybe that's no surprise, because his
agency, VaynerMedia, does a whole lot of
social-media content for a whole lot of P&G's competitors,
including Unilever, L'Oreal and Johnson
& Johnson. Mr. Pritchard also isn't a big fan of the word
"content," or of pumping out lots of stuff on social media of
questionable value, such as a Pepto Bismol video he showed about a
boy raised by goats, which didn't make note of the brand involved
for more than four minutes. Instead, he'd prefer to see his
agencies making fewer, better ads. Improving creativity requires
craft that "belongs in the hands of serious professionals," Mr.
Pritchard said in his ANA address. "Don't ever accept mediocrity.
Don't be seduced into the crap trap of just getting something out.
On every part of the canvas, craft matters.
Let purpose really power the brand
After deciding two years ago to quit selling its $2 billion tobacco
category and rebrand, CVS Health saw a 40% lift
in its perception as a health leader. Norman de Greve, senior VP,
chief marketing officer of the $153.3 billion brand, told the crowd
his personal story of how he lost his father to lung cancer and
wants to ensure he sticks around to spend time with his own young
son Luca. "The important thing is that deeds matter more than
creeds, so stand up," said Mr. de Greve to attendees, many of whom
ranked the talk as one of the conference's strongest.
Let's get "phygital"
The ANA got formally introduced to a new buzzword by Alison
Lewis, chief marketing officer of
Johnson & Johnson's consumer business. It means the convergence
of the physical and digital worlds. For J&J, that means merging
offline and online retailing and marketing. So, for example,
J&J recently launched Aveeno into China via e-commerce first
before hitting stores. And Neutrogena successfully mined
loyalty-card data from store purchases to serve 88 different
digital ads programmatically to 18.1 million households aimed at
getting folks who had, for example, bought the brand's cosmetics to
also buy its makeup-removing wipes. The campaign generated return
of $5.84 in added sales in offline stores for every $1 in ad
spending online. It's all part of what the company calls
"ambidextrous marketing." Be prepared to hear all this again.
Phygital is up to 124,000 Google hits. And it
got a second mention from the stage from Ellen Moreau,
Sherwin-Williams' senior VP-marketing communications, Americas
Group. The paint company has been connecting with customers for
years in the digital world with its ColorSnap app. The app lets
people find the right paint color for their physical spaces in
various digital ways, such as taking photos with their phones or
finding images on Pinterest.
Consider female voiceovers
About 75% of commercial voiceovers are done by men, largely because
marketers think they sound more authoritative, said former Walmart CMO and
current Alliance for Family Entertainment chair Stephen Quinn at
Friday's CMO Roundtable focused on the ANA's #SeeHer gender
equality initiative. But research by ad testing firm ABX behind the
ANA's Gender Equality Measure shows female voiceovers are actually
more effective, which makes sense given that most brands have women
as their primary consumer target, Mr. Quinn said.
Death to demos?
Age-gender demographics remain the way much media, particularly TV,
gets bought. But speaking at the same CMO Roundtable, Best Buy CMO
Greg Revelle said the retailer has moved completely away from demo
targeting. "We're going after people who love technology," he said.
"What we've found as we've gone through that is that women love
technology as much as men." That's also led Best Buy to change the
way it casts ads.
Pro wrestling is fake -- but audience engagement is
real
World Wrestling Entertainment's roots go back 50 years. But at her
ANA presentation, WWE Chief Brand Officer Stephanie
McMahon reminded attendees that the pro wrestling genre goes back
to the days of the Roman Coliseum when "the emperor would decide if
a gladiator lived or met his unfortunate alternative. Thank god
we've evolved to scripting the outcomes." But while the results
might be pre-ordained, the WWE adjusts on the fly based on fan
reaction. The engagement has helped WWE reach 700 million social
media followers. "Our fans are our secret sauce," Ms. McMahon said.
"They are a part of our show. Whether they are chanting, cheering,
booing -- they can often even influence what happens during the
course of a match. Because if something isn't working, you have to
change direction quickly." She added: "Our strategy is that we
listen and we respond. … It's like the ultimate grassroots
marketing."
Do the math
"Many of us got into marketing to avoid math class," said Wes
Nichols, co-founder of Neustar's MarketShare -- a marketing attribution
modeler all about math. And his co-presenter, TD Ameritrade Chief
Marketing Officer Denise Karkos, acknowledged she went into
marketing at Notre Dame in part because it was the business degree
that seemed easiest because all the football players were in the
classes. But speaking to a relatively lightly attended Saturday
session, they made a strong case for doing the math in marketing.
Ms. Karkos noted that she's surrounded herself with strong
analytics talent throughout her career, and broke with tradition by
showing her TD Ameritrade board detailed return-on-investment data
for campaign elements rather than the latest 30-second spot. "Now
when I go to the board, they want to know what was the ROI of that
digital video I saw?" she said. Ms. Karkos has moved largely -- not
entirely -- away from upfront TV commitments and inflexible print
schedules in favor of an 80% flexible mix of digital, search and
other media to optimize around analytics provided by MarketShare
and others. Mr. Nichols said that despite their reputation for
number-crunching, packaged-goods marketers are now actually behind
other industries, such as entertainment, in analytics savvy.
