Category — Chief Marketing Officers
Walmart Life
Marketing chief Stephen Quinn taps into Walmart’s past to shape its future. When you get right down to it, everything — and nothing — has changed about Walmart in the 50 years since Sam Walton built his first store. Stephen Quinn, Walmart’s marketing chief, appears determined to keep it that way.
“What we’re really selling to people,” says Stephen, “is that they can count on us for their everyday needs at the lowest price. Keeping that interesting is tricky because it will be the same promise three years from now.”
It was also the same promise 50 years ago, which is why Stephen drew on something Sam Walton said a long time ago to arrive at Walmart’s modern-day tagline: “Save Money. Live Better.”
“Sam Walton talked about how Walmart would help the world save money and have a better life,” says Stephen. “We had reams of research and tested all these different taglines and then we just looked at what he had said and thought, hey, that’s pretty good.”
Living up to that deeply rooted principle is very much at the heart of Walmart’s past, present and future. Stephen is convinced that Walmart’s growth depends on “keeping that promise to more people.”
Such fidelity to the past requires changing with the times, too. It means navigating the vagaries of today’s fragile economy while pioneering the frontiers of social media and the newly empowered shopper.
These and other realities has Walmart launching a Facebook page for each of its more than 3,500 US stores, as well as tweaking the role of its famous greeters and communicating “low prices” in new ways.
It also has Walmart realigning its merchandising and marketing operations, so it can better integrate the two and keep the focus where Sam Walton always said it must be — on the shopper … read >>
May 1, 2012 Comments
Got Smarts?
A roundtable discussion on consumer and shopper insights, with Stephanie Cota of Mattel Brands, Hermann Deininger of Adidas, Sally Grimes of Newell Rubbermaid, Alfredo Martel of Caribou Coffee and Kevin Lane Keller of Dartmouth College.
What is the hardest thing to get right with consumers today?
Stephanie Cota: One of the hardest things to get right with consumers today is message authenticity. Consumers are very smart, and they are very pressed for time. They are increasingly intolerant of messages that are over-complicated or over-clever.
As a consumer, I also become challenged when watching a clever commercial but can’t necessarily tell you what the brand or product was. That said, some brands have done a great job of staying true to their message, both at a mass and a class level.
From a mass perspective, Campbell Soup and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese do a really great job of staying true to who they are. In the class space, Louis Vuitton and Manolo Blahnik are authentic with their messages. Staying true to your message, but delivering it in fresh, compelling ways, is one of the more challenging things that we do as marketers … read >>
May 1, 2012 Comments
The Hub 48
The Hub Magazine, Vol. 8, Issue 48. The entire issue of May/June 2012 edition of The Hub Magazine, centered on consumer and shopper insights, featuring a cover story interview with Stephen Quinn, CMO of Walmart
Also featuring the 2012 Hub Top 20 of Excellence in Shopper Marketing as well as a roundtable on consumer and shopper insights, with Stephanie Cota of Mattel Brands, Hermann Deininger of Adidas, Sally Grimes of Newell Rubbermaid, Alfredo Martel of Caribou Coffee and Kevin Lane Keller of Dartmouth College and 13 other articles … download pdf >>
May 1, 2012 Comments
Trading Places
Retail is where cyberspace meets the marketplace. A discussion featuring Kensuke Suwa of Uniqlo, Jon Abt of Abt Electronics, Christophe Garnier of Totsy, Stephen Hoch of the Wharton School and Tina Manikas of Draftfcb.
How do you see the future of retail?
Kensuke Suwa: The gap between what is sold in the store and what is sold online is getting smaller and smaller. More people are becoming accustomed to operating the smartphone and also e-commerce. So, the ratio of sales coming out of e-commerce is becoming bigger and bigger.
For Uniqlo, this means the online experience has to improve, because you can’t try on clothes online the way you can in the store. That is the biggest challenge for us. What is the best way to buy something without touching it? That is more difficult compared to what we do at the store level. It is a big part of the future of retail … read >>
March 1, 2012 Comments
The New NASCAR
Steve Phelps navigates innovative pathways at NASCAR. By Tim Manners. Baseball, football, basketball, hockey — all are great American pastimes with amazing stories to tell. But it’s hard to name a sport more organically rooted in American popular culture than stock-car racing — popularized, as it was, by bootleggers trying to outrun revenuers in the 1930s and ’40s.
When that race ended, it was only the beginning of what is now, after football, the second-most watched sport. Today, the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing — NASCAR — claims tens of millions of fans across more than 150 countries.
And yet, as with any enterprise, keeping up demands new thinking. The 2008 economic meltdown was especially painful for NASCAR, striking as it did at the automotive industry, its very heart. Sponsorship and viewership flagged … read >>
January 1, 2012 1 Comment
Bolder & Brighter
Truly breakthrough ideas are both easier and harder to come by. A roundtable discussion featuring Deborah Conrad of Intel, Tony Post of Vibram USA, Ralph Santana of Samsung, Robert Walcott of Kellogg Innovation Network and Beth Ann Kaminkow of TracyLocke.
How should innovators think about consumers? Deborah Conrad: Innovation is about presenting information in a way that’s easy for consumers. Several years ago, marketers had a push mentality, where we were shouting from the highest building and hoping that consumers would sort it all out themselves.
Digital and social media now give us the ability to offer different solutions to consumers when and where they need them. So, it’s about using that innovative platform and not just relying on things like television ads. There’s a real intersection between the consumer searching for solutions and our opportunity to get them excited about what we have to offer … read >>
January 1, 2012 Comments
In Care of Kimpton
Steve Pinetti of Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants wants to put a smile on your face. By Tim Manners. Dog biscuits at the front door. A goldfish in your room. Animal-print robes in the bath. If you’ve ever stayed at a Kimpton hotel, it’s all very familiar. The complimentary wine hour at five. The extra-long bed (if you’re 6-foot-8). The level of personal attention that Steve Pinetti, Kimpton’s senior vice-president of inspiration and creativity, says transcends mere “customer service” and provides “genuine, heartfelt care.”
“Our people are empowered,” he says. “We don’t give them a script; we ask them to react from their hearts and do whatever they think is right.” Even if it means driving a guest through a blizzard so he can be home in time for Thanksgiving (as one Kimpton employee did).
If you think you’ve never stayed at a Kimpton hotel — or the name doesn’t quite ring a bell — it’s probably because there is no hotel called Kimpton: For the most part, each of Kimpton’s 54 boutiques has its own name. Maybe you’re familiar with Hotel Allegro in Chicago, the Muse Hotel in New York City, or Nine Zero in Boston. All of them are Kimptons … read >>
November 1, 2011 Comments
Best Buy Next
Barry Judge of Best Buy re-imagines retail in 140 characters or less. By Tim Manners. With some 18,000 followers on Twitter and more than 2,000 tweets to his name, few marketing chiefs have embraced emerging media as personally as Best Buy’s Barry Judge.
“The idea that anyone can be a publisher and have a platform — all you have to be is relevant — is interesting,” says Barry, explaining his Twitter attraction. And yet Barry’s digital embrace plainly is more business than personal. It has to be. Having outlasted Circuit City, Best Buy still faces the most daunting of rivals — most notably Walmart and, maybe most of all, Amazon.
As music and movies migrate from discs to downloads, and consumer-electronics devices grow ever smaller, the acres of retail that once were so formidable suddenly may not be so desirable anymore. As a big-box retailer, Best Buy has no choice but to figure out how to make digital media part of its solution, and Barry is thoroughly absorbed in that challenge … read >>
September 1, 2011 Comments
Open Coke
After 125 years, Coca-Cola marketing chief Joe Tripodi says the best is yet to come. By Tim Manners. Five score and 25 years ago, John Pemberton devised a sweet, effervescent beverage, an innovative mix of syrup and carbonated water, flavored by coca leaves and kola nuts, which some believe he intended to market as a patent medicine.
The concoction actually was a variation on an earlier libation called Pemberton’s French Wine Cola, but prohibition prompted Pemberton to create a temperate version. Pemberton’s partner, Frank Robinson, came up with a catchy, alliterative name — Coca-Cola — and hand-lettered its logo in a fashionable Spencerian script.
Pemberton’s invention wasn’t exactly an instant sensation. During its first year, Coca-Cola sold only an average of nine glasses a day, at a nickel a glass, at Jacob’s Pharmacy in Atlanta. Today, however, using essentially the same logo and formula, Coca-Cola moves some 1.7 billion servings daily, and is widely regarded as the world’s most powerful brand … read >>
July 1, 2011 Comments
The Hub 43
The Hub Magazine, Vol. 7, Issue 43. The entire issue of Jul/JAug 2011 edition of The Hub Magazine, centered on brand identity, featuring a cover story interview with Joe Tripodi of The Coca-Cola Company.
Also featuring a roundtable on brand identity, with Tony Pace of Subway, Jeff Murray of the University of Arkansas, Jim Geikie of Burt’s Bees, Dave Fiore of Catapult and 13 other articles. download pdf >>
July 1, 2011 Comments
Procter on Purpose
Marc Pritchard of Procter & Gamble seeks deeper brand meaning. By Tim Manners. No longer is it good enough to make the best products. At Procter & Gamble, a brand is not a brand until it makes a difference in your life. A P&G brand must have a purpose that transcends its benefits.
This is why Pampers are now thinner, Tide is doing your dry cleaning and Mr. Clean wants to wash your car. Believe it or not, it’s also why you can smell like Isaiah Mustafa if you want to.
It may not be a new idea that a brand should solve your problems or make your life happier. But as Procter & Gamble marketing chief Marc Pritchard suggests, it is transforming the way marketing — if the term even still applies — is done at Procter & Gamble … read>>
May 1, 2011 Comments
The Hub 42
The Hub Magazine, Vol. 7, Issue 42. The entire issue of May/Jun 2011 edition of The Hub Magazine, centered on consumer and shopper insights, featuring a cover story interview with Marc Pritchard of Procter & Gamble.
Also featuring a roundtable on insights, with Scott Finlow of PepsiCo, Dorlisa Flur of Family Dollar, Jim Figura of Colgate-Palmolive, Raymond Burke of Indiana University and Ben DiSanti of TPN, and 18 other articles. download pdf >>
May 1, 2011 Comments
Whole Goals
Michael Besancon of Whole Foods makes shopping good for you — and the planet. By Tim Manners. Coming out of the ‘60s, Michael Besancon was looking for something to do that would contribute to the betterment of the world. His search found its mark in June 1970, when he opened a vegetarian lunch counter at Follow Your Heart, an 800 square-foot natural-foods store.
Michael eventually bought the store with some partners and opened a second location before selling his interest some 16 years later. Being a serial entrepreneur, he went on to launch some restaurants, and then, in the early ‘90s, became a food broker.
One of his customers was a 27-store chain called Whole Foods Market, and Michael was smitten. “What attracted me to Whole Foods was the culture, because I was really not cut out for the corporate world,” says Michael. “I don’t like to be told what to do, and at Whole Foods you really determine your own destiny.”… read >>
March 1, 2011 1 Comment
Fun With Ford
Global marketing chief Jim Farley makes innovation the powertrain at Ford. By Tim Manners. The phone buzzes and it’s Jim Farley on the line. “Hey, Jim! How’re you doing?” “Me?” says Jim. “I’m high as a kite!” After a deft pause for comedic effect and a mischievous chuckle, Jim says he’s just having fun. “If we can’t have fun,” he says, “then what the heck!”
No question but that Jim Farley, global marketing chief of the Ford Motor Company, is having fun. And if he’s not high as a kite, he has every right to be. Two years after stunning the auto industry by leaving high-flying Toyota for low-hanging Ford, he and his compatriots do indeed seem to be defying gravity.
How did that happen? Well, it’s kind of complicated, but it does have a lot to do with a single, simple word: innovation … read >>
January 1, 2011 1 Comment
The Hub 40
The Hub Magazine, Vol. 7, Issue 40. The entire issue of Jan/Feb 2011 edition of The Hub Magazine, centered on innovation, featuring a cover story interview with Jim Farley, global marketing chief of the Ford Motor Company.
Also featuring a roundtable about innovation, with Larry Wendling of the 3M; Tom Kelley of Ideo; Lisa Rose of Ciba Vision and Robert Rivenburgh of Mars Advertising, along with sixteen other articles. download pdf >>
January 1, 2011 1 Comment
The New Swoosh
Nike retail chief Jeanne Jackson sees big global growth in small local stores. An exclusive Q&A interview by Tim Manners.
(pdf) or (text)
July 1, 2010 1 Comment
Box Tops Moms
July 1, 2010 Comments
