Marketing News: April 2018

AMERICAN MARKETING ASSOCIATION

AMA.ORG

APRIL 2018

INSIDE THE WALLED GARDEN THE OPPORTUNITIES AND ETHICS OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

APRIL 2018 NO.

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table of contents AMERICAN MARKETING ASSOCIATION

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SEEN ON AMA.ORG

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ANSWERS IN ACTION • Snapshot • Core Concepts

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AMA INTELLIGENCE • The Middle Market

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EXECUTIVE INSIGHTS • David Aaker • Lawrence A. Crosby and John P. Vidmar

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CAREER ADVANCEMENT • Personal Branding • On the Record

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#OFFICEGOALS

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 Inside the Walled Garden

How online communities give marketers a uniquely personal perspective on customer language, behavior and motivations.

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Marketers Are Confident in Their Brands, but Not Their Digital Skills

The first Marketers’ Confidence Index of 2018 illuminates marketers’ optimism about the economy and their role in business. Though marketers project financial gains, they are keenly aware of the digital skills gap threatening their authority.

34  How to Host an Engaging Social Media Chat  A Night in the Life of the Chicago Bulls Digital Media Team

(and Keep the Trolls at Bay)

The Chicago Bulls digital media team turns basketball games into content bonanzas, using the second-screen to make money, collect data and humanize players.

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APRIL 2018

VOL. 52 | NO. 4

LETTER FROM THE CEO

AMERICAN MARKETING ASSOCIATION

The Value of Social Currency

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ocial currency is a common concept in marketing and business these days that refers to the pull or influence that a consumer has among his or her peers, and social currency strategies are arguably the most critical point of leverage for a marketer.

I think about social currency in mathematical terms, as the quantifiable impact of word of mouth. If understood as a strategic aspect of marketing—not as some nebulous gimmick that sits outside of scientific foundation—word of mouth and connectivity between people will be jealously protected in budget discussions as the single most important investment that any marketer can make.

A device connected to a network increases in value as more and more devices are added to that network. If you are the only owner of a telephone in the world, your telephone is worthless, but when your phone is connected to a network of millions of other phones, your phone is substantially more valuable to you. Social currency is word of mouth that has value to a user but increases in value as it is passed along from one to another or, in the most powerful cases, from one to many.

There is a social dimension to virtually everything in the world of commerce.

Because they ultimately interact with human beings, commercial transactions take on social value. Relevance and regard drive the value of the social currency that these products and services generate.

The modern media landscape has created real-time connectivity that has transformed old-fashioned word of mouth into a rich, collective perpetual conversation. Content can become currency. If you create content well, it will become social currency that can pay your brand’s way into pop culture.

Lots of companies like to advertise, but that doesn’t mean that reconstituting or simply relabeling advertising as content will change how brands are valued.

Content that is highly relevant and

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regarded will unlock the mathematical tidal wave that swells larger and moves faster due to the power of network connectivity.

Social currency stems from an earnest and honest desire to inform, entertain and inspire customers while enabling them to make connections with others. Always be honest, and don’t waste people’s time. This will build brand value. Remind your CFO that, by a wide margin, the intangible asset of brand value accounts for the lion’s share of goodwill on your firm’s balance sheet. Social currency is the ultimate post-transaction exclamation point on whether you have gained an engaged customer or simply a buyer.

In social currency, one never knows the power of the butterfly effect because we never know which alteration, which token of currency, will prove to be the profound force that triggers a change in the narrative around our brand.

Understanding this dynamic helps a manager value the power of patience and persistence with a social currency strategy.

How would you value the social currency of your brand?

Mary Garrett Chairperson of the AMA Board 2017-2018 Russ Klein, AMA Chief Executive Officer rklein@ama.org EDITORIAL STAFF

Phone (800) AMA-1150 • Fax (312) 542-9001 E-mail editor@ama.org Molly Soat, Editor in Chief msoat@ama.org Michelle Markelz, Managing Editor mmarkelz@ama.org Zach Brooke, Staff Writer zbrooke@ama.org Hal Conick, Staff Writer hconick@ama.org Sarah Steimer, Staff Writer ssteimer@ama.org Bill Murphy, Designer wmurphy@ama.org ADVERTISING STAFF

Fax (312) 922-3763 • E-mail ads@ama.org Sally Schmitz, Production Manager sschmitz@ama.org (312) 542-9038 Michael Gay, Account Executive mgay@yourmembership.com (727) 329-4421 Nicola Tate, Account Executive ntate@yourmembership.com (727) 329-4437 Jordan Berthiaume, Media Sales Representative jberthiaume@YourMembership.com (727) 497-6565 x3409 Marketing News (ISSN 0025-3790) is published monthly except June/ July and November/December (pending) by the American Marketing Association, 130 E. Randolph St., 22nd Floor, Chicago, IL 60601.

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Copyright © 2018 by the American Marketing Association.

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RUSS KLEIN CEO

Without written permission from the AMA, any copying or reprinting (except by authors reprinting their own works) is prohibited. Requests for permission to reprint—such as copying for general distribution, advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works or resale—should be submitted in writing by mail or sent via e-mail to permissions@ama.org.

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Media Is Social

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ocial media defines much of marketing, no longer standing as a dedicated channel or specialty woven into the fabric of every savvy marketer’s plan. Social platforms are important for tracking every part of the customer journey, gathering vital data and insights.

The term “walled garden”—a digital environment that controls access to data— strikes fear in advertisers’ hearts. Media giants like Facebook and Google don’t allow third-party ad tech companies to operate on their networks, limiting advertisers’ access to consumer data and raising questions of objectivity. Marketers must get crafty. Smart marketers are looking to lesser-known but equally valuable walled gardens: virtual support communities. On VSCs, consumers share intimate details of their lives they would never offer on a product review or feedback form. As staff writer Sarah Steimer explores, health and wellness marketers are on the cutting edge of tapping this wellspring of consumer information.

Marketers have always known that they need to look in unexpected places for consumer insights. We all know that people won’t go out of their way to give feedback or data—you must look for them, deftly and, above all, ethically.

What is social media doing for your brand?

MOLLY SOAT Editor in Chief @MollySoat

CONTRIBUTORS

PHIL DANCE

DEBBIE QAQISH

Dance is partner and co-founder of Alter Agents, a Los Angeles-based market research firm.

Qaqish is principal partner and chief strategy officer of The Pedowitz Group. She manages global client relationships and leads the firm’s thought leadership initiatives. She has been helping B-to-B companies drive revenue growth for more than 35 years.

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So You Want to Do Experiential Marketing? Consider These 4 Things First.

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xperiential marketing has generated great intrigue among marketers recently.

It fundamentally shifts marketing budgets as well as the way customers interact with businesses and products. This new dynamic puts the customer and their needs front and center. It allows them to have a conversation with a brand rather than having messages pushed on them.

While budgets for online advertising are predicted to decline, experiential marketing is expected to grow. But this kind of marketing doesn’t fit into a neat category or follow a specific methodology. It is unique, creative and should make a connection. According to a study

by Freeman, more than 50% of marketing leaders believe brand experiences can create relationships with target audiences. Ninety percent of global marketers think this kind of

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engagement is more resonant and compelling.

It’s not easy, though. There are several things marketers need to consider before implementing experiential marketing. It can cost a significant amount of money to properly execute experiential marketing programs, which can vary from unique adventures to interaction with a product, all the way to virtual reality tours.

Any program you implement needs to remain authentic to your brand identity. You need to ensure the needs of the customer are met and their life is made better. You don’t want to run into experiential marketing without a solid understanding of how to put your consumer at the center of what you do, as they will see through anything inauthentic. One way to understand this is through research on promiscuous consumer s who

aren’t loyal to a brand just because they have purchased it in the past.

A holistic understanding of your customer and their needs is fundamental in implementing an experiential strategy. Measuring the success of an experiential campaign requires a deft mix of quantitative and qualitative metrics.

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Use Advanced Research Technology

Market research is advancing every day. From programs that track eyeball patterns to wearables that measure galvanic skin response to geo-located survey delivery, there are now myriad ways to measure consumer response to experiences.

Disney is experimenting with facial recognition software combined with artificial intelligence to observe people’s expressions as they watch movies and develop algorithms to predict reactions. Using this combination of technology, Disney can analyze facial expressions for 10 minutes to accurately predict how a member of the audience will react to an entire film.

As combinations of new

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technology become available, the stack options will provide a powerful way to capture sentiment that, to date, has been difficult to garner.

Brands can use this technology at events, concerts and other brand experiences to assess participants’ emotional reactions without having to interrupt their experience. By combining their emotional response with social media tracking, brands will be able to gain a holistic understanding of their experiential campaign.

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Ask the Right Questions

Traditional research methodology focused on brand attributes will not work anymore. Each shopper is influenced by several factors : who they are, what they need, what matters to them and how they are going to solve a problem. We need to focus our research on shopper motivation rather than trying to predict their behavior.

Philips Lighting has in-depth conversations with clients and engages them in research. It has Lighting Application Centers that allow clients to tour new lighting experiences. Philips Lighting University offers webinars and training so clients can get the most out of their lighting products and systems. It’s important to increase the understanding of what light can do to benefit people’s lives. Philips exemplifies the full commitment a brand needs to make to understand its customers and constantly challenge itself to meet customer needs.

By cherishing human complexity through research and conversations, Philips Lighting reversed traditional approaches. Using a mix of qualitative and quantitative techniques, the company better understood its customers’ needs.

brand has a different audience, brand promise, personality and offering.

The experiences they offer are varied; research needs to be just as varied to find the right fit.

Successful research comes from analyzing connections among all the different information sources and finding applicable insights.

When measuring the success of an experiential campaign, passive data is a great source for marketers to identify the number of impressions, social media mentions, and sales lift—all great indicators of the success of an experiential campaign.

But to really understand how and why campaigns are successful, we need to have conversations with our customers by way of focus groups, one-on-one interviews, surveys or brand outreach. This data can then be compared to passive data or sales and media data to show what customers are doing. Once we understand why customers behave as they do, we can make informed decisions.

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Look at All the Data We now have unprecedented

access to consumers, which should allow us to see a more complete picture of them. However, integrating all the data points is challenging.

Data integration has become a primary goal of the market research industry. The latest GreenBook Research Industry Trends Report made clear that market research professionals are under immense pressure to change. Emerging methods and techniques are gaining traction, and researchers are being asked to spend more time analyzing the data and making recommendations that align with business goals. Somewhere amid new demands for speed, cost savings and quality, we must bring disparate data sources together to provide more accurate recommendations.

New technologies are addressing this in part by offering artificial intelligence-based functionality, like machine learning, to take care of some mundane tasks and free researchers for analysis. Somewhere in this confluence of machines and humans lies an answer for current inefficiencies in data integration and a promise of high-quality insights for brands.

—PHIL DANCE

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Nimble Research

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to research when it comes to experiential marketing. Every

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4 Ways to Build a Better Relationship with Your CFO

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n many companies, the CMO-CFO relationship comes down to the annual budget brawl. The CMO asks for more money, the CFO wants to know the return on investment and the discussion ends in a stalemate. For years, CFOs have been frustrated by the inability of marketing to show ROI. In this scenario, the marketing budget is the bane of the CFO’s existence. The CFO views marketing as a cost center and tries to make sure marketing spend is kept within budget parameters.

A recent study from Allocadia correlated this view. From a study pool of more than 200 participants, only 14% of marketing organizations viewed finance as a trusted strategic partner, and 28% either had no relationship with finance or spoke with finance only when forced. In contrast, the Allocadia study also revealed strong correlations that underscore the importance of obtaining the CMO-CFO alliance, as high-growth organizations were found to be three times more likely to align marketing and finance.

The CMO-CFO relationship is drastically changing. With marketing automation tools integrated with CRM, marketing is not only showing ROI but can also forecast its impact on revenue.

CFOs love to see marketing calculate what another dollar of investment will mean to revenue.

This is a relatively new phenomenon that begins with marketing taking on revenue accountability. As part of this new role, the CMO works closely with the CFO on ROI calculations and business impact of marketing. The CMO-CFO working relationship is an indicator of the

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CMO’s ascent to the revenue team and the executive table.

How to Achieve CMO-CFO Alignment A hallmark of a good CMO is the ability to transform marketing from a cost center to a revenue center.

A relationship with the CFO is essential to this transformation.

CMOs looking to build this relationship with their CFO must take four key actions.

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Adopt Financial Accountability

Having the marketing team adopt financial accountability expressed in credible financial terms is step one. It is now the responsibility of the CMO to run marketing like a business. More than 80% of CMOs report feeling intense pressure to show financial results, yet only one-third report financial numbers.

One proven way to overcome this gap is to become the CFO’s best student.

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Acquire Business Finance Knowledge

Many CMOs have little to no business finance knowledge. The basics of creating a profit and loss statement and calculating return on investment are not part of their skill set. A basic finance class can open the possibilities of what you can do, what you can measure and how to run marketing like a business.

This concept of running marketing like a business is key to successful alignment with the CFO.

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Speak the Same Language

As a traditional, nonrevenuefocused part of the company, marketing speaks a different language than the CFO. The

CFO speaks the language of business — costs, revenues, bookings and forecasts. A traditional marketer is speaking the language of creative, impressions and traffic. Speaking the same language implies the CFO can speak in terms of MQLs, SQLs and conversions and the CMO can speak in terms of ROI, contribution to pipeline and forecasting. It is how you know they understand each other’s responsibilities and are working together as a team to drive business results. Listen very carefully in your next senior management team meeting. If you don’t hear this language alignment, you still have work to do.

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Share Budgeting and Forecasting Processes

Too often I see CMO budgeting and forecasting as a siloed exercise based on a set of activities, not results. As you begin to create an authentic relationship with the CFO, you need to understand that budgeting and forecasting is the CFO’s happy place. To create the transparency required for a successful relationship, adopt finance processes to express marketing’s activities in CFO terms.

Think about doing your budgets and forecasting process to make the life of the CFO easier.

How to Improve the Relationship First, determine what type of marketing organization you are. If you are responsible for revenue, partner with your CFO. The CFO has the financial knowledge and skills you’ll need to transform marketing from a cost center to a revenue center.

Given the marketing skills gap in finance, CMOs must work with the CFO to achieve marketing results.

Let the CFO mentor and guide you to develop this missing skill set.

—DEBBIE QAQISH

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SNAPSHOT

How National Geographic Is Bucking Trends and Dominating Social Media as an Historic Magazine Already dominating Instagram, the iconic brand has conquered Facebook Watch with a deft pounce

BY ZACH BROOKE | STAFF WRITER

 zbrooke@ama.org Eight hundred million people access Instagram each month. Almost 11% of them, 86 million, follow National Geographic. Only 13 other accounts have a higher share of the app’s audience, and no other media outlet can claim a spot among the top 25 accounts as of February 2018.

In some respects, Instagram is tailormade to feature work from the 130-year-old photojournalistic publication, which routinely includes breathtaking nature photos. National Geographic’s most popular image of 2017,

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depicting an indigenous Amazonian Awá child balancing a pet monkey on his head, earned nearly 2 million likes.

The brand notched similar triumph last year with its Snapchat Discover page.

National Geographic’s senior director of Snapchat, Stephanie Atlas, told Marketing Dive that the brand gained 1 million subscribers per month for three consecutive months by using Discover.

The brand’s Snapchat Discover page has also increased the amount of daily active users fourfold and doubled its completion rate, a measure of users who view an

entire series of snaps that comprise a Snapchat Discover story.

“We’re fortunate that we have access to the entire National Geographic archive— with thousands upon thousands of images and stories,” says Kate Coughlin, senior director of audience development for National Geographic Partners. “Most of the photographs we share come from our photographers as they’re in the field and on assignment. We’ve done something we think no other brand has done, in that we’ve given our photographers access to Instagram to share their photos and stories in real time.”

The photography network and access to vast content archives propels what is otherwise a bare-bones social media operation. “The [social media] team is fairly small when compared to other media companies, with 10 people working across all of our platforms and all accounts. Everyone on the team wears multiple hats, acting as creators, content distributors, community managers and analysts,” Coughlin says.

Nat Geo’s online success leaves the brand well-positioned in 2018 while many news outlets continue to struggle to successfully execute a visually driven social media strategy. Yet Coughlin’s colleagues weren’t content limiting their online presence to an expanding Snapchat profile and one killer Instagram account.

Given the totality of the society’s assets, which includes an entire broadcast channel, the company took on an even greater social media goal.

Goal “On a tactical level, we’re looking closely at engagement, conversation and conversion; National Geographic is unique in that we’re not just one business focused on driving digitalonly metrics, but we also have a number of other business lines that we partner with including television, consumer products, our magazine, events and our nonprofit National Geographic Society,” Coughlin says. “We aren’t just looking to have hundreds of millions of followers so that we can have a one-way conversation

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SNAPSHOT

with them. While we have a social following of 420 million people across all channels, translating to more than 7.9 billion content engagements every month, through digital and social media, we’ve been able to turn that footprint and that reverence to relevance by having dialogues with people from every corner of the world.”

Coughlin says “Safari Live” and Nat Geo’s recent expansion to Facebook Watch best highlight audience engagement for the brand.

Action “Safari Live” is a no-frills stream of unfettered wild animals in action. The original format was a show broadcast on the cable channel Nat Geo Wild in 2015.

The show later performed well online, where it quickly gained an audience on YouTube. “‘Safari Live’ has traditionally been broadcast live twice daily on YouTube, giving global audiences a passenger seat on safari to get up close and personal with some of the world’s most interesting and predacious species,” Coughlin says.

“It’s an interactive experience, too.

As our expert safari guides navigate audiences through Kenya’s iconic Maasai Mara and South Africa’s famous Kruger National Park, viewers are invited to communicate and ask questions in real time on Twitter using #safarilive.”

The live format of the program offered limited viewer access, however, so “Safari Live” was evolved into an on-demand, cross-platform product. The show has enjoyed a partnership with Facebook Live, but Coughlin says the opportunity was ripe when Facebook invited Nat Geo to be part of the alpha launch of Facebook Watch, a digital TV-like service that showcases some regular streaming series alongside “Facebook Original” shows.

The revamped “Safari Live” experience launched on Facebook Watch on August 2, 2017. By expanding to Facebook Watch, “Safari Live” is still live twice daily on Nat Geo Wild, Facebook Live, YouTube, Twitter and NationalGeographic.com, but can be viewed on demand by anyone

on Facebook Watch and by subscribers on YouTube and the brand’s website.

Facebook Watch has become a hub for prerecorded content and highlights of the best safari footage.

Results From August 2017 to January 2018, an average “Safari Live” livestream had 140,000 viewers on Facebook Watch, and 260,000 users had become followers of the program on Facebook.

“This revamp of strategy has provided audiences a direct line to the cast, the animals and one another—all while democratizing some of our most engaging content,” Coughlin says. Since launch, “Safari Live” has been viewed 294 million times, and Nat Geo’s Facebook Watch followers are growing at a rapid pace: From December 2017 to January 2018, Coughlin says followers increased 67%.

The duration of the livestream, as well as the amount of people watching,

WHAT

Safari Live FOUNDED

2015 CAMPAIGN

The “Safari Live” TV show was reproduced for multichannel distribution, including on Facebook Watch.

RESULTS

Facebook Watch views reached 294 million in the first six months of the service’s existence. Facebook Watch followers increased by 67% from December 2017 to January 2018.

answers in action

varies widely with each episode, given the unpredictability of the animals’ activity in nature. A wildebeest giving birth earned more than 10 million views in three days, and a cheetah hunting and devouring its prey garnered nearly 1 million views during its live broadcast. The show itself produced a bona fide social media darling, Scarface the lion. “‘Safari Live’ led to two fans meeting in the Facebook Watch comments section, then in real life and ultimately getting married,” Coughlin says. “It has helped pacify peoples’ post-traumatic stress disorder and more. These are the stories that show that the product has power and is making a real impact for our audiences.”

Lofty altruism aside, the results have given the sales team ammunition as it looks to bring ads into the experience.

“We’ve spent a lot of time rethinking our distribution and engagement strategy from something that started out as a broadcast-first initiative ... to something that lives across all the platforms,” Jonathan Hunt, Nat Geo’s senior vice president of audience development and digital strategy, told AdAge in January.

“Now we’re focusing on figuring out the monetization strategy.”

Coughlin reflects that tentative optimism, but she’s quick to circle back to the brand value that got the company there.

“As social media evolves, our strategies will, too,” Coughlin says. “There is a continuous effort to see where we can improve across platforms, and ‘Safari Live’ isn’t the anomaly. … We’ve had incredible successes with our immersive 360-degree storytelling, taking our audience underwater with sharks and into volcanic eruptions, but we’ve barely scratched the surface. Our ultimate goal is to share experiences with our users that they can’t get anywhere else, and video is a fantastic way to transport them. Above all else, our main goal is to take people to places, to give them new experiences they wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity to have; to really think of the yellow National Geographic border as a portal.” m

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answers in action

CORE CONCEPTS

marketers should learn how to use coupon codes, when to offer them and how to track them.

The Redeeming Qualities of Coupon Codes Consumers have come to expect coupon codes in e-commerce.

Savvy marketers can use codes to delight customers and track the ROI of their campaigns.

BY SARAH STEIMER | STAFF WRITER

 ssteimer@ama.org

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op-ups featuring promo codes have become ubiquitous to the online shopping experience. Most inboxes are clogged with similar offers: Use MYDAY15 for 15% off on your birthday! Use MEMORIAL10 at checkout for $10 off your order over Memorial Day weekend!

Promo codes are so prevalent that many online shoppers expect them and will search sites such as RetailMeNot or SlickDeals if they aren’t offered one by a retailer before purchase. Chris Johnson, client services director at Vouchercloud, says the discounting trend accelerated during the recession. Now consumers

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know they can shop around to get the best deal.

“Promo codes are a valuable part of most retailers’ marketing mix and, if used with the right strategy, can deliver results that either exceed expectations or play a significant role in budget management,” Johnson says.

According to Vouchercloud, 65% of consumers say online voucher codes often sway their purchase decisions if they are undecided. They can also be a successful retention tactic, as 91% of coupon redeemers say they will purchase from a retailer again if they are offered a coupon.

To meet customer expections,

When to Use Promo Codes There are three key reasons Springbot CMO Erika Brookes says marketers use promo codes: to hit sales targets, to acquire new customers without losing money and to move surplus inventory.

Brookes suggests sellers can use promo codes as part of their cart abandonment strategy by sending coupon codes to customers who leave items in their virtual shopping carts to entice them to complete their purchase. Promo codes may be used to reward loyal customers or encourage first-time customers to make a purchase.

The latter typically involves a tradeoff wherein the customer gets a code in exchange for their e-mail address.

Sheena Brady, Shopify’s merchant success manager and CEO of Tease Tea, says her tea brand has an ambassador program, which includes a call on its tea packages for customers to post a photo of themselves on social media enjoying the product. In response, the company sends the customer a promo code for future purchases.

The in-kind exchange is simple and worth the cost, Brady says. “People respond well to natural, organic social media posts like that.”

Tease Tea also has a loyalty program through which members earn points that can be redeemed with promo codes. One of Brady’s favorite strategies for offering codes is through Wheelio, a Shopify app that tracks a gamified pop-up on vendor websites. Visitors who submit their e-mail address can “spin” a wheel for a prize.

“We’ve only had it for two months and it’s been ‘spun’ about 2,400 times,” Brady says.

The pop-up has a 2% rejection rate and a conversion rate around 21%. “Basically,

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answers in action

CORE CONCEPTS

DO’S AND DON’TS OF COUPON CODES

DO make codes easy to remember, calculate and apply.

DON’T toss out codes without

a strategy. Paydays, the first and last weekends of the month and holidays have the best responses.

DO test your codes before deploying them. Customers will click off the site if a code hasn’t been properly activated and tested.

DON’T make the discount so large that you lose money.

DO try a rotation strategy.

Strategically offer exclusives to discount sites for one to two weeks at a time in rotation with other discount sites.

DON’T forget a strong call to action.

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21% of people who have answered their e-mail have converted to a sale using the promo code that’s generated [from Wheelio],” Brady says.

Tracking and Measuring Promotional codes are a great opportunity for measurement and tracking. They allow companies to attribute a sale not just to a specific campaign, but down to the medium on which the code was offered and the unique ad copy. For example, Brady says Tease may use the codes FB15 on Facebook and IG15 on Instagram and track which one customers use to match them to a preferred social platform.

Companies like Shopify, Wordpress and Squarespace have apps and plugins that can help with the creation and tracking of promo codes. Even beyond tracking which platform or campaign worked best, companies can use promo codes to see which type of discount or benefit is the biggest driver: a percentage off, dollar discount or free shipping.

Promo codes have the added benefit of easy sharing. Vouchercloud’s figures find 40% of consumers share e-mail offers with friends, and 28% share deals via social media platforms. Tracking specific promo codes used by social media influencers can also evidence whether much-lauded influencer marketing actually works for brands.

To track these codes, it’s helpful to understand the difference between public, private and restricted codes, and when to use each.

“Anyone can see a public promo code, which is good for enticing new customers but could get costly if too many people redeem it,” Brookes says. “Private codes are great for treating a specific group, usually as a reward for your most loyal customers or an enticement for firsttime buyers. Restricted codes are targeted to a single buyer and can only be used once. They’re often used as an apology for something like a delayed delivery or as a thank you for making their 50th purchase. We recommend stores use all three types of codes and follow a strategy for when they use them.” m

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ama intelligence

THE MIDDLE MARKET

Can the Middle Market Have Its Own Predictive Index?

The middle market has historically been an opaque market.

Now, a handful of organizations are trying to fix its fogginess by measuring changes over time with indices and indicators.

BY HAL CONICK | STAFF WRITER

 hconick@ama.org

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homas Stewart recalls an interesting predictive benchmark he once heard about Coca-Cola: When soda fountain sales rose, so would the economy. It’s not surprising that CocaCola would use soda fountain sales as a yardstick for the economy—the company owns roughly 42% of the U.S. carbonated soft drink market. However, Stewart, the executive director of the National Center for the Middle Market, says other organizations can find their own valuable benchmarks externally in market indices or indicators.

An index is a sampling of a market thought to be representative of the whole. All indices measure different data, businesses and markets. The two most disparate indices may be the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 Index, mammoths with different colored fur. The Dow is a price-weighted average of 30 large stocks featuring giant corporations such as Apple and Boeing. The S&P focuses on the stocks issued by 500 large companies with market capitalizations of at least $6.1 billion. Despite sample-size differences, both are trusted and used as indicators of U.S. economic growth.

Small businesses have indices, too, including Wells Fargo’s Small Business Index and the National Federation of Independent Business’ Small Business Economic Trends. All indices track performance changes over time. The most useful indices can serve as a litmus test for a company’s chunk of the economy.

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For example, a home-improvement retailer like Home Depot would likely find Coca-Cola’s benchmark useless, but it may find value in a benchmark like the S&P Homebuilders Select Industry Index.

An increase in this index could mean an incoming economic boom, while a dip may mean an impending economic tumble.

Measuring the Middle The range of companies in the middle market is dispersive. Middle market companies can manifest in industries as dissimilar as retail, manufacturing, legal services or computer equipment.

Also, despite the name “middle market,” the sector comprises a large chunk of the economy. The National Center for the Middle Market has reported that the middle market employs 47.9 million Americans and composes roughly one-third of the private sector’s GDP. Private companies don’t often report exact sales and revenue numbers, opting instead to give a revenue range. The variety of industries in the middle market makes it hard to take a well-proportioned snapshot of the market as the S&P 500 can do among large businesses.

These factors converge to make measuring the middle market akin to guessing the number of jelly beans in a jar.

However, multiple organizations are now trying to clearly measure the market and give executives a predictive benchmark.

NCMM publishes the Middle Market

Indicator, surveying 1,000 middle market C-suite executives and tracking revenue growth, employment growth and confidence levels. Stewart says he dreams that the report’s short-term index will soon have predictive value. “The holy grail for an index is to create something that actually becomes leading,” Stewart says. “I don’t know that anybody has that.

We are hopeful, but it’s a tricky business.”

Still, NCMM’s index, which is within its Middle Market Indicator, is only two years old and not yet predictive—it’s hard to know if it ever will be, Stewart says, but the NCMM is currently testing, laying new numbers over the old ones to see how they match up.

A pair of University of Chicago professors are also hopeful that their new index can make the middle market less opaque. Lincoln International, a middle market investment bank, recruited Steve Kaplan, professor of finance and entrepreneurship at the University of

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THE MIDDLE MARKET

ama intelligence

Niche indices, like the homebuilder index or Manheim’s Used Vehicle Value Index, can alert marketers to whether customers are ready to spend or too nervous to open their wallets.

Chicago Booth School of Business, and Mike Minnis, an associate professor of accounting at Booth, to create a quarterly index using data from the bank’s portfolio. “They thought they had better data than other folks who were trying to measure the middle market,” Kaplan said. “That’s why Lincoln was interested, and that’s why we worked on it. We could see there was value there.” Each quarter, Kaplan and Minnis construct an index using values from a subsection of the 1,200 companies within Lincoln’s portfolio. They believe that the variety in this index makes it more like public stock indices (like the S&P 500) than other middle market indices. Even so, clear measurement in the middle market is still hard to perfect: Kaplan and Minnis acknowledge that this index has fewer tech and financial companies than the overall economy. In addition to NCMM’s and Lincoln’s reports, other companies have tried to create their own middle

market benchmarks. These include the Golub Capital Middle Market Report, the American Express Middle Market Power Index and RSM’s U.S. Middle Market Business Index conducted with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Each of these five indices uses its own set of data: RSM’s and NCMM’s reports are based on surveys of middle market executives. Lincoln’s report is a smattering of valuation data from middle market organizations.

Golub’s report examines 150 privately owned companies in the Golub Capital loan portfolio. American Express’ report examines a six-year period of Dun & Bradstreet’s commercial databases.

Although none can perfectly predict the vicissitudes of the middle market, all aim to find a stable measure to give middle market executives a focused vision into their ever-opaque industry.

Why Read Indices?

Stewart, Kaplan and Minnis all agree that

executives can find tidbits of information in indices and indicators that could serve as benchmarks for their company, just as Coca-Cola executives found fountain drink sales to be their predictive benchmark.

Stewart says niche indices—think Home Depot looking at the homebuilder index, or perhaps a car dealer reading Manheim’s Used Vehicle Value Index— can alert marketers to whether customers are expansive and ready to spend or downtrodden and too nervous to open their wallets. This may give marketers a modicum of empirical evidence necessary to decide what the tone and style of their campaigns should be.

“You might think about where you’re going to put your marketing, what kind of marketing to do and what message you’re going to send,” Stewart says. “I suppose all of us could and should be informed by where your audience thinks the economy is going.” m

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STORYTELLING

The Challenge of Leveraging Signature Stories for B-to-B Brands B-to-B brands don’t have to fulfill the prophecy of bland marketing. With a well-managed bank of stories, they can convey their value to customers.

BY DAVID AAKER

 daaker@prophet.com

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he power of story is applied to strategic messaging to inform, energize, persuade and inspire. The use of signature stories is particularly relevant to B-to-B firms because their customers are often buying a relationship

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with an organization and their employees.

Communicating organizational values and a brand vision with authenticity is critical.

However, the nature of signature stories and the process of developing and using

them is different for B-to-B firms than B-to-C firms, which raises the question: What are the challenges of using signature stories that are unique to B-to-B firms, and how can they be addressed?

In B-to-B contexts customer success stories are often the best vehicles for signature stories. Given that reality, there are three challenges facing B-to-B firms: • Finding effective B-to-B signature stories that are intriguing, authentic and relevant.

• Having so many stories that their management is overwhelming.

• Creating an organizational structure and process to find and use signature stories.

Finding Effective B-to-B Signature Stories Effective B-to-B signature stories that can break through to disinterested, skeptical audiences need to be intriguing. In a B-to-C context it is easier to find stories with emotion, tension and connection with relatable characters. In contrast,

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STORYTELLING

B-to-B customer success stories tend to show functional benefits and processes.

To avoid bland, shallow customer stories, look for ways to dramatize the problem, solution or outcome.

The problem context might be so dire that it intrigues. Lou Gerstner’s turnaround story in the early 1990s started with a failing IBM paralyzed by silos focused on their own interests.

Customers were annoyed at the resulting confusion, inefficiency and absence of system capability. The firm was in serious financial trouble with a proposal on the table to split IBM into seven firms.

A solution that is dramatically creative grabs your attention. Marc Benioff started Salesforce in 1999 with the idea of using cloud technology to change software usage and make social programs a part of his business. The story involves a retreat to India, experience with an Oracle program to aid education and some research around what other firms were doing. The solution was the 1-1-1 program, whereby the firm would devote 1% of equity, 1% of people and 1% of product to addressing social problems. The solution was so unique and compelling that more than 70 other firms decided to adopt it.

An eye-opening, impressive outcome can intrigue. One of Prophet’s signature customer stories was about T-Mobile. The “Uncarrier” program took the business from a loss of 4.5 million subscribers to a gain of 22.5 million subscribers in 18

months when it scrapped contracts and roaming fees. The amazing turnaround transformed the industry.

The story should not seem exaggerated or contrived. Nor should it feel like a veiled sales pitch, providing no information that would help or interest the audience. Authenticity and intrigue are greater challenges when the brand resists dramatization or the telling of the complete story. A company might be embarrassed about the problem or feel there are trade secrets at risk. The result can be a shallow story with no punch.

People’s ears perk up when they hear a story that is relevant to their problem, their industry or their type of firm.

Having many stories will increase the chances that one or several are relevant.

Dealing with Story Overload Introducing new signature stories can provide freshness, energy and visibility to a brand. Multiple stories can also give the brand message depth, breadth and texture. Organizational values, for example, are likely to need many stories to capture all the dimensions and facets.

But there is a tipping point after which there are too many signature stories for employees to manage or for customers to grasp.

Some ways to manage story overload include: Screen. Some stories won’t break • through the clutter. Screen out stories that are not intriguing, authentic or

Authenticity and intrigue are greater challenges when the brand resists dramatization or the telling of the complete story. A company might be embarrassed about the problem or feel there are trade secrets at risk. The result can be a shallow story with no punch.

relevant. If they do qualify but their impact declines over time, they should be candidates for removal.

• Prioritize. High-priority, lead stories intrigue and are dramatic examples of an important strategic message. Give them more resources and visibility.

• Draft a Composite Story. Sometimes a story that incorporates some of the experiences of several customer case stories can work.

• Link. A lead or meta-story may be elaborated by signature stories that involve different applications or perspectives. Link them to add freshness and relevance.

• Bank. Create a story bank and code stories so they can be easily found.

Creating Organizational Support Success with signature stories is more likely in an organization that can supply employees with motivation and a story support unit.

Employees should realize that stories are valued and necessary to adequately communicate organizational values and other strategic messaging. Role models that demonstrate story power can help.

Visibility of the task can be stimulated by contests. Before its merger with Exxon, Mobil had a contest to find the best stories around three values: leadership, partnership and trust. The winners got to be on the infield in the Indy 500. There were more than 300 entrants and a host of great signature stories.

Appoint an organizational team or person to support the stories. This person can also take on a reporter’s role, seeking out signature stories, refining stories, executing presentation options and finding outlets such as podcasts, trade press and as internal communication opportunities.

B-to-B firms have their own characteristics to create and implement an organization in which signature stories can thrive. m DAVID AAKER is vice chairman of Prophet, the author of Aaker on Branding and a member of the NYAMA Marketing Hall of Fame.

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SOCIAL MEDIA

Can Marketers Repair Social Media’s Crisis of Trust?

Consumer trust in social media is declining due to foreign influence and disingenuous paid influencers. How can marketers foster trust on these channels?

BY LAWRENCE A. CROSBY AND JOHN P. VIDMAR

 lawrence.a.crosby@gmail.com  john.vidmar@ipsos.com

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uch of social media marketing’s glitter has worn off. Consumers increasingly turn to social media for product and service information, but they are

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quickly losing trust in the content they find there. The 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer reports declining trust in social media, particularly in the U.S. This is traced to what the authors call

a “crisis of trust,” namely, a loss of faith in institutions ranging from business to government to nongovernmental organizations. A major contributor, they believe, is the lack of objective facts and rational discourse in social media.

This crisis is not limited to the U.S. The U.K.’s Marketing Week identifies the reduction in trust in social media information as a “worrying trend” that is due, in part, to the behavior of marketers. According to this source, the loss of faith in online brand information is due to consumers’ increasing awareness of marketers’ tactics to reach them. Noteworthy are cases involving P&G and Mondelez, which had content banned by the U.K.’s Advertising Standards Authority for not making it clear that a blogger had been paid to promote products (known in some quarters as “cyber-shilling”).

In Canada, the Globe & Mail reports that Advertising Standards Canada now requires influencers to clarify when they are being paid to post about products and services.

An interesting nuance of these trends is the strong distrust of social media among millennials. Digital Content Next refers to this audience as “social skeptics.” That observation is echoed by Sensei Media, which notes millennials’ strong preference for recommendations from real people and real friends, not brands or institutions.

They characterize this as a shift from

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SOCIAL MEDIA

the “wisdom of the crowds” to word of mouth.

These trends and characterizations are relevant to all the major social platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn and YouTube. The spotlight shines brightest on Facebook with its more than 2.2 billion monthly active users worldwide.

As chronicled in WIRED, Facebook sprung from the idea of making people feel safe to post and then making that database of shared information and connections available to advertisers.

Perhaps that business model has become a victim of its own success due, in part, to some advertising practices that diminish trust on the platform.

In addition to the controversy of fake news surrounding the platform, this may help explain Facebook’s recent decision to modify its algorithm to favor posts from family and friends versus content from businesses, brands and news media.

Whom Do You Trust?

Social media marketing is not going away, but it is likely to evolve. Platforms and brands need user trust to survive and therefore have an incentive to drive change. The alternative is more regulation. In plotting a path forward, it’s helpful to take stock of what we know and don’t know. Clearly, the two most common ways people acquire information about products and services is by connecting with providers and by communicating with other people. Over the past 20 years, these interactions have increasingly occurred online. The interactions can be highly proactive (e.g., using social media to ask friends what they recommend) or passive (e.g., reviewing content on the provider’s site, reading a blog or checking online ratings). It’s been known for years that recommendations from family and friends are the most powerful drivers of purchase behavior. That fact has been confirmed in recent surveys that reflect the broader array of information

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sources available to buyers today. But most online recommendations are from total strangers. How much impact do they have? As noted above, probably less and less but with great variance.

The more familiar the source, the greater the credibility (e.g., Oprah is a familiar source on weight loss). The more expert the source, the greater the credibility (e.g., holistic doctor Andrew Weil’s opinions on vitamins).

This phenomenon is referred to as giving weight to a trusted source, and marketers need to understand the underpinnings of these mental weights.

For example, some people post a lot online but don’t have much impact on purchase behavior. Others can write a little and have a huge impact. The quantity of comments and posts doesn’t necessarily translate into higher trust and could have the opposite effect.

Independent of source, there’s also the matter of the relative frequency of positive and negative messages.

Today’s consumer is aware that material is planted or solicited online and generally with a bias toward favorable reviews and recommendations. But detractors can also plant negative reviews. The current controversy over the influence of Russian bots in the 2016 presidential election is a good example of this. There are sites that try to be objective by balancing positive and negative comments. These tactics would certainly give a savvy consumer reason to discount online information.

Not surprisingly, the jury is still out on whether the frequency of favorable comments, reviews and likes is related to the quality of an offering and if it drives actual conversion.

What’s a Marketer to Do? In approaching this crossroads, marketers need a plan. Hold social media accountable to a higher standard that involves moving customers along the entire engagement-to-loyalty continuum. That necessitates having quality content and integrating social media with other channels ranging

from advertising to point of purchase to customer service. It also necessitates having appropriate social media metrics that include the development and maintenance of trust.

Recognize that consumers are seeking reassurance. This implies positioning the brand as a subject matter authority and directing searchers to legitimate experts willing to give a balanced and objective review that is earned, not bought.

Work with the leadership of the firm to establish corporate policies and a governance structure for social media that is cognizant of advertising standards and laws, insists upon transparency and authenticity and extends to social media vendors.

In concert with academia and consultants, get smarter on how influence flows through the social media network. Communications theory may be of some help in this regard. Consider quantifying the number of connections a person has and determining whether those connections vary by subject matter.

From there, attempt to answer such questions as: Are people like brands who build up trust that can be translated across subject matter and/ or different clusters of people? Do their recommendations spread to different clusters through links that are also trusted?

Social media marketing is entering a new era. Marketers need to take a long-term view of their actions on these channels, candidly asking themselves if they want to be part of the problem or part of the solution to the crisis of trust. m LAWRENCE A. CROSBY, Ph.D. is the retired dean of the Drucker School of Management and currently the chief data scientist at the KH Moon Center for a Functioning Society, a part of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University.

JOHN P. VIDMAR, Ph.D. is the chair of Ipsos USA Public Affairs.

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A NIGHT IN THE LIFE OF THE

CHICAGO BULLS DIGITAL MEDIA TEAM The Chicago Bulls digital media team turns

basketball games into content bonanzas, using the second-screen to make money, collect data and humanize players

PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE CHICAGO BULLS

By Hal Conick

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amantha Brown squeezes past a force field of arms, cameras and microphones surrounding Fred Hoiberg, head coach of the Chicago Bulls, during his pregame press conference.

Brown—balancing two iPhones, a purple pen and an armful of papers— furiously types the coach’s words into one of her phones. Within moments, Hoiberg’s words float from his mouth to Brown, the Bulls’ social media coordinator, to the Bulls’ 4 million Twitter followers.

This moment is emblematic of sports media in the digital era. Three years ago, most information about a sports franchise or its players would trickle out through journalists, bloggers or TV and radio hosts, with franchise PR teams chiming in to clean up messes. Now, sports franchises have control over their brand, voice and the public’s perception of players.

In the case of the Bulls, this control means 20 people at each game create content, including a digital content team that snaps, tweets, posts and, in their words, humanizes the players. Many fans may think of NBA players as basketball automatons, machines created to score buckets, but Brown wants to show that they’re more than that: They’re human.

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To humanize the players, Brown must first remember that she’s human. As soon as Hoiberg’s press conference ends, she hotfoots toward the media and staff ’s buffet. It’s her last chance to eat for the next seven hours. In roughly two hours, a January game against the Los Angeles Lakers will tip off, but game day started hours ago for the digital media team. With 25 million followers across the Bulls’ social media accounts, the digital team often works 16 hours—morning ‘til night— returning for work at 10 a.m. the next day.

Brown zips through the back hallways of the United Center, past the locker rooms and toward the elevators that lead to the digital team’s office in the arena’s recent 190,000-square-foot addition.

Brown slows her pace briefly to greet players and staff—the people on the court, on the road and behind the scenes whom she gets to know over 82 games. “They’re each other’s biggest supporters,” Brown says of young Bulls players, 24 years old on average, who post congratulatory messages to one another after big games. To her benefit, the team’s youth means players are also social mediasavvy, some checking Instagram five minutes after a game ends, she says. Bulls players also tend to their own budding brands, posting photos of themselves that Brown sends them after games.

For Brown, working in sports marketing is a dream, but the dream certainly isn’t restful.

Brown remembers her first game nearly three years ago when she felt herself being pulled in a million different directions. “I had to Google how to spell ‘the,’” she says. “I just kept looking like, this can’t be right.” The flow of her job—posting highlight videos, taking photos, greeting fans who message the team across multiple platforms— is now easier, more binary, but the rapid speed hasn’t changed, nor has the need to react in the moment. Highlight dunks happen in a flash, so does breaking news. But with humanity and attention to detail, Brown believes the Bulls can win over fans.

GAME TIME Three stories up from the court, Brown finds her digital colleagues sitting around a rectangular table in the Pippen Conference Room, named for six-time Bulls champion Scottie Pippen.

The digital team, which employs twice as many members as it did two years ago, all wear matching fuzzy, gray Bulls sweaters. They discuss the long night ahead of them, including their

roles during tonight’s game, breaking it down by each teammate. Brown will run social media as usual, connecting with fans online and in person at the arena.

Dan Moriarty is the Bulls’ digital director.

He’ll oversee operations, ensuring the night runs smoothly and filling in on content creation—or running around the arena to meet with special guests of the team—when needed.

Luka Dukich is the Bulls’ senior digital content manager. Tonight he’ll be responsible for

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Each member of the digital team feels a kinship with the players.

“They’re our guys,” Dukich says. “We’re seeing them grow in Bulls uniforms.”

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posting highlights of the game to Facebook and Instagram, as well as working with a Chicago photographer who is doing an Instagram takeover of the Bulls’ feed during the game.

Matt Moreno, whose relaxed grin and leanedback posture betray his experience, is the Bulls’ senior product manager. After nine years on the job, he’s the longest-tenured member of the digital team. Tonight, he’ll create graphics, video highlights and pull photos to be posted on social media.

Kamil Strycharz is the digital content coordinator and, at 22, the team’s youngest member. Just last year, he was an intern. Now, Moriarty says he’ll see Strycharz posting content in the wee hours of the morning, uncertain if he’s scheduling the content or simply doesn’t sleep.

Tonight Strycharz will manage Twitter, “a fulltime job in and of itself,” Dukich says.

Each member of the digital team feels a kinship with the players. “They’re our guys,” Dukich says. “We’re seeing them grow in Bulls uniforms.” Moriarty says humanization is their main goal this season. This team is still relatively unknown. “It makes the team more likeable to show their personality,” Moriarty says. “There’s a sense among fans that they’re actually seeing development and growth in front of them. That’s helped a lot of fans get on board.”

Before the season started, the digital team had trouble humanizing Bulls players. The roster features no all-stars, no players known by most casual NBA fans and few players who were on past Bulls rosters. Last year’s stars—Jimmy Butler, Rajon Rondo and Dwyane Wade—were all traded or released, yet Wade remains on the cover of a United Center marketing pamphlet still handed out in the stadium.

Adding to the digital team’s difficulty is the odd fact that many Bulls fans want the team to lose. In the NBA, the worst teams are given the best odds of drafting premier talent in the NBA Draft. Given the Bulls’ perceived lack of talent, a surge of Bulls fans clamored for the team to tank in order to secure a young star. Add to the that the collective middle finger fans aimed at the Bulls’ front office in July 2017: A group of Bulls fans—angered at a series of trades—raised money to rent a billboard near the stadium that said “#FireGarPax,” referring to Bulls general manager Gar Forman and vice president of basketball operations John Paxson.

The Bulls started the season 3-20, pleasing

tank-happy fans. However, the scrappy young team won seven games in a row in December, making the digital team’s job easier. The Bulls’ refusal to quit endeared the team to many fans, who then took to social media to interact with the Bulls’ social media accounts. “People really embraced the team,” Dukich says of the Bulls players. Brown nods her head, agreeing: “It’s been a huge shift, and it’s noticeable.” The Bulls’ Twitter mentions and Snapchat inbox fill throughout the day—a notification seems to pop up on Brown’s work phone every few seconds. Many messages are still vitriolic, but most fans are friendly. As Moreno puts it: “Fans now get that we’re not Gar Forman at the computer.”

As the first quarter draws near, Dukich, Moreno and Strycharz flip open their laptops, crack their knuckles and prepare for the evening’s frenetic pace. Strycharz kicks back in his chair, mimicking Moreno, as Dukich pulls up software and social dashboards. Meanwhile, Brown waits courtside to film Snapchat videos of the starting five’s introductions, and Moriarty searches for ticket upgrades for special guests of the team.

Win or lose, the digital team is in for a busy night.

FIRST QUARTER Before the game starts, Dukich finds Facebook gold—or at least he thinks so. “Can we make a GIF of that?” he says, pointing toward the screen showing a pre-game ritual between Bulls big men Robin Lopez and Nikola Mirotić. “They touched each other’s noses.”

“I’ve seen them do that before,” Moreno says, eyes jutting from his laptop to the game.

“I got it, Matt Mo,” Dukich yelps, quickly cutting the celebration in a video editing program. The program is called WSC Sports, an artificial intelligence video platform that segments each basket into its own video, allowing the digital team to cut and post highlights within seconds. WSC even rates clips on a starred scale: Boring, mid-range jumpers get one star; earthshattering dunks that send the announcer into a fit of hysterics get five stars. “It works on crowd and announcer noise,” Dukich says. Within moments of the pre-game ritual, Dukich cuts a video in WSC, turns it into a GIF and posts it to Facebook.

Three seasons ago, WSC wasn’t an option for the digital team. Fans would often post clips more quickly than the team, which sapped likes and engagement. Now, five-star highlight plays can be

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posted within 30 seconds.

“WSC might be the real MVP of the NBA,” Moreno says.

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he Pippen Conference Room is filled with screens—two on the wall and two near each team member. In many ways, this multiscreen viewing experience mirrors the way fans watch games, as Google estimates that 77% of TV viewers fiddle with a second screen. STATS, a sports data and technology company, says this fan fiddling is not a threat to first-screen sports viewing but an opportunity for complementary content and campaigns. The Bulls’ digital team takes advantage of the opportunity to pioneer sports on the second screen, morphing from fruitless play-by-play posts—content dated as soon as it’s posted—to a multiplatform content machine. The team customizes content to each channel, Moriarty says: Twitter is active and responsive, Facebook shows “best of ” highlights and score updates, Snapchat gives fans a behindthe-scenes perspective of a game, Instagram features in-game action shots by professional photographers and the Bulls’ website hosts videos, scores, fan games and documentaries.

The Bulls’ digital team receives almost no budget, but with sponsorship comes funding.

Revenue generated from sponsored content has doubled over the past three seasons, Moriarty says. Sponsors realize that Bulls fans are online, responsive and interactive—even with ads— which has led to sponsorship deals with BMO Harris Bank, TransUnion, Papa John’s and Polish fintech company Cinkciarz. The team superimposes brand logos on posts throughout games, creating graphics from key stats or the game’s score. Some posts hinge on the Bulls being ahead or close in score—especially during makeor-break moments in the second half—but others go live no matter the context of the game. Brands pay for these sponsorships in bulk, Dukich says, and the digital media team finds creative ways to post them. Whether the Bulls win or lose, sponsors will get in front of 25 million followers.

The Bulls have also devised a way to transform social media money pits—like Twitter and Snapchat—into cash cows. On Twitter, the team uses Twitter Amplify, Moriarty says, which generates money by affixing seven-second ads to videos. On Snapchat, Dukich says the team has thrived on unconventional sponsored content.

For example, the Bulls produced a viral hit with a

“Beauty and the Beast”-inspired musical, written with Chicago’s Second City and sponsored by BMO Harris Bank. The musical featured Bulls center Robin Lopez playing a villain à la Gaston and unashamedly belting out a tune with his deep voice while chasing the Bulls’ mascot across the arena. Dukich could barely sleep the night before the Snapchat musical went live. “Why are they letting us do this?” Dukich asked himself. But fans loved it.

“We were seeing people stay and watch the entire video rather than dropping off after three snaps,” Dukich says. Within hours, the musical Snapchat story went viral, receiving coverage from USA Today and ESPN’s “SportsCenter.”

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“Y

o, is this score for real?” Moreno says, looking up at the game from his computer. The digital team doesn’t get to focus much on the flow of the game, but they notice the team’s scoring slumps as much as they notice its scoring runs. It’s the end of the first quarter and the Bulls’ offense looks torpid, its defense tortured. The team is down 17-30; it’s a slow night for social media highlights.

Although the Bulls are down, the team in the Pippen Conference Room creates content at an intense pace. Dukich scrolls down to the LopezMirotić post. “Now I’m glad I grabbed that pre-game,” he says. Facebook tells him the GIF is performing 90% better than other posts.

BMO’s logo was clearly displayed for millions of unique viewers.

“The piece of content everyone was talking about is sponsored,” Dukich says. Most other teams think of sponsored content as a necessary evil, but the Bulls have found that sponsored content, when created with humor and personality, is enjoyable for fans and profitable for the team.

Sponsored content helped the Bulls win the Best in Sports Social Media award at the Sports Business Awards, beating out the WWE, NBC Sports, the Dallas Cowboys and Major League Soccer. Moriarty, stunned by the victory, says judges told him the team won because it monetized content across platforms.

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SECOND QUARTER Brown is on a mission, zooming through the winding backstage hallways of the United Center.

She’s searching for a 200-level seating section where a couple from New Zealand said they’d be sitting. Early that morning, one of them, AJ Sullivan, tweeted at the Bulls that he and his wife, Emma Sullivan, would be flying into Chicago specifically to see the game for Emma’s 40th birthday. Moriarty found two 100-level seat upgrades and a bag of Bulls gear and gave it to Brown to surprise the couple.

“I don’t usually venture out,” Brown says, rushing into the concourse behind the 200-level seating, briefly lost in the arena’s twists and turns.

“Hopefully these people are here.”

Brown finds the Sullivans watching the game, big smiles plastered across their faces. She shimmies to their seats, leans in close to Emma and hands her the bag and envelope. Emma’s eyes widen, her hands shake. Tears stream down her cheeks as she reaches up to cover her mouth. “Can I give you a hug?” Emma asks, arms extending toward Brown. “Happy birthday,” Brown says, bending down and embracing her.

“Oh my god, she’s crying,” Brown says as the couple gleefully stride down the stairs to their new 100-level seats. “I’m going to start crying.”

On the way down, Sullivan tells Brown that she’s been a fan of the Bulls for 25 years, even naming her first son Jordan after Bulls legend Michael Jordan. Seeing the team live has been her life’s dream. “I’ve waited 25 years for this,” Sullivan says, fanning her face to dry her tears.

Brown snaps a picture for Twitter of the Sullivans showing off their new Bulls bags over their Bulls jerseys. As the Sullivans scamper to

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their seats, Brown shakes her head in disbelief.

“This is my favorite part of the job,” she says, breathing deeply to hold back tears. “I have goosebumps.”

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oosebump moments don’t happen every game, but the digital team communicates with its fans through social platforms 24 hours a day—including the 70% of followers from outside of the U.S. The team’s popularity spurted in the 1980s during Michael Jordan’s ascent to stardom and reached its zenith during Jordan’s dominant years in the 1990s, which included six championships. Jordan’s shadow has stretched through time, captivating a devoted generation of Bulls fans, which has translated to billions of dollars and millions of social followers for the team. This year, Forbes named the Bulls the fourth-most valuable NBA franchise with a net worth of $2.6 billion. The Bulls also have 18.5 million Facebook followers, the second-highest among U.S. sports franchises, behind only the Lakers, per Fan Page List.

The digital team tries to carry this momentum forward by being humanized on social, Brown says—posting in a person’s voice rather than that of a brand and reaching out to fans in real life, beyond the social networks. During road games, she’ll find fans in Bulls gear and give them a free hat or T-shirt. “They celebrate like they won a million bucks,” she says. On one occasion, the Bulls were tagged on Reddit and Twitter by posters who alerted the team to a young fan named Rocco who was battling cancer and hoping for a cheer-up message from his favorite player, Bulls guard Kris Dunn. The Bulls sent Rocco a care package of Bulls gear and posted a video from Dunn on Twitter: “We’re thinking about you,” Dunn says in the short clip. In response, the Bulls received a picture of Rocco lying back in a hospital bed, decked out in Bulls gear and sunglasses, flashing a big smile. “This team means the world to people,” Brown says.

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s the second quarter ends, Brown glides up to the United Center’s video control room, an eerily silent room of screens where a director’s voice dominates the tense atmosphere. Brown is still beaming and red-faced from her meeting with the Sullivans. On the court the Bulls battled back, now within four points of the Lakers, but Brown is more concerned that the team’s message to Emma appears on the scoreboard. Just then,

the message flashes across the scoreboard’s screen: “All the way from New Zealand, happy birthday Emma!”

“That’s awesome,” Brown says, smiling as she takes a rare pause. “I hope she sees it.”

THIRD QUARTER A baby-faced duo sit, headphones over ears, in a dark room lit by two computer screens and a live projection of the Bulls game on the wall.

Chris Ramirez and Dan Charous, members of the BullsTV team, are slowing down a clip of Bulls forward Denzel Valentine shooting a three-point shot in the second quarter. The video is edited to look rustic and cinematic, a crescendo of music rising in the background. Within moments, the clip is sent to the digital team to be posted online.

The creation of the high-quality video is a fast, multiperson effort: Two BullsTV cameramen move through the stadium, filming the game from angles that TV cameras can’t capture.

Within moments of a big play, a runner brings a video memory card containing the play to the editing room, where Ramirez and Charous edit the clip for Instagram (edited to fit portrait mode), Facebook (edited for its 16x9 aspect ratio widescreen video player) or YouTube and the Bulls website (shot in 4K). Within moments, cinematic fretwork is carved into the Bulls’ social networks.

The BullsTV team is another cog in the Bulls’ content machine. In addition to in-game video, BullsTV produces a pregame show for Bulls.com, films commercials and produces a documentary series called “Run With Us.” The series is similarly cinematic, like the Valentine highlight, but gives viewers an up-close look at players at practice, in the weight room and during their downtime.

Fans can see when friendships are formed and milestones are reached—such as guard Zach LaVine’s return to practice after his ACL surgery.

“Media can’t get that stuff,” Moriarty says.

The Bulls also have a cadre of artists working to make the team more visually appealing. For example, Chicago photographer Elise Swopes took over the Bulls Instagram feed for tonight’s Bulls-Lakers game, snapping photos at court level, then sending them to the digital team.

Swopes is one of approximately a dozen artists who works with the Bulls digital team. Another Chicago-based artist, Chuck Anderson (aka NoPattern), has taken over the Bulls’ Instagram in the past, but for tonight’s game, he’s designed

“Our stance is: They’re going to be on their phones during the game anyway, so we might as well be the thing they’re looking at.”

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PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE CHICAGO BULLS

a flashy-logoed Bulls hat to be given away at the game.

“We’ve been able to tap into the Chicago creative community and get them to work with us,” Dukich says. “The Bulls brand name is so strong that the first Instagram takeovers were unpaid because the artists just wanted to do it.”

The Bulls’ pull extends to technology, Moriarty says. The team has received discounts on CRM systems, content management systems and more than 30 other pieces of technology. A software company’s case studies look better with the team’s logo and brand name splashed across them, Moriarty says. The technological boon has led to better data on fans. For example, the Bulls’ Fanbeat challenge, a second-screen trivia game, draws approximately 1,500 players during each game, Moriarty says. There are 20 questions a night, running concurrently with the Bulls game, featuring unknowable questions like “Will the Bulls lead at any point in the fourth quarter?”

Fans who answer correctly can win tickets, merchandise or, for those who answer all 20 questions correctly, $1 million (which has yet to be won). Through this platform, the Bulls get data from clearly engaged fans—e-mail addresses, zip codes, lead scoring for ticket sales—previously shielded by television. Nielsen boxes can’t deliver this kind of information, Moriarty says of the

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game’s more than 7,000 unique registered players.

“Our stance is: They’re going to be on their phones during the game anyway, so we might as well be the thing they’re looking at.”

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y the end of the third quarter, the Pippen Conference Room sounds like a sports bar in Chicago—minus the slurring—as the digital team members holler for the Bulls’ comeback. “We’re winning this one,” Moriarty says to Moreno, Dukich and Strycharz, joyfully hitting the table as the Bulls go up 75-72. “He’s on fire,” Strycharz says, putting an arm up as Mirotić splashes home his fourth three-pointer of the game. The digital media team scrambles for a long night. “Get the ‘Bulls Win’ graphics ready,” Dukich says.

FOURTH QUARTER Real-time Bulls highlights flash across the Pippen Conference Room’s big screens.

“That’s money!” Dukich yelps as Bulls forward Lauri Markkanen hits another three-pointer.

“Should we do a highlight of all of his threes or just that one?”

But highlights quickly dim into lowlights.

The Bulls on-court product falls apart. In life, heartbreak takes many different forms; for sports fans, it tends to manifest as a frustrated yell followed by a resigned sigh.

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content,” Dukich says. The team learned that fans don’t want their social feeds jammed with content after losses. After one lopsided loss last season, the digital team posted a highlight dunk and fans reacted terribly, Dukich says. “People know when you’re fake,” he says, now resigned to an early night. “It takes one shitty piece of content for someone to unfollow. Then, they’re gone forever.”

Contracts with sponsors stay the same when the team loses, he says, even if certain pieces of content can’t be posted. The content will have to come another time. “Sometimes it’s kind of nice to get home at a normal time,” Dukich says, shrugging.

“Uuugh,” Dukich grunts before crossing his arms, whistling and turning his attention back to creating content. Just like NBA players, the digital media team must have thick skin and short memories.

Still, it’s disappointing to lose—even from a content standpoint. There’s a big difference between wins and losses for the digital team.

A win means more likes, more views and more engagement with fans. It also means more content, such as a quiz the team would create for the Chicago Tribune as part of a media partnership. “But we’re not going to make a quiz titled ‘Last Night’s Loss to the Lakers,’” Dukich says with a sigh.

During a nail-biter, the digital team stays in the office long past midnight to produce a stream of content—the best possible outcome is a buzzerbeating victory, Moriarty says, because the night will be rich with clicks and content. On those hectic nights, he doesn’t feel a five-person team is big enough to keep up. After losses, Moriarty says the digital team feels like it has twice as many people as it needs. “Here, we fell apart for the last two minutes, and I haven’t put anything up on Facebook or Instagram,” Dukich says, gesturing toward the big screens.

During insurmountable blowouts, Moriarty will send half his team home early. “It’s a lot less

POSTGAME Brown elbows through another media scrum, this time in the Bulls’ diminuendo locker room.

Players are clearly disappointed to lose. Their shoulders slumped, their eyes sullen, their voices muted—save for one player who sings in the shower. Brown, however, can’t afford to be glum; her camera needs to be right there, in the players’ faces, to broadcast interviews on Facebook Live, so fans can get to know them as humans.

Bulls guard Ryan Arcidiacono clears a path for Brown as she camps directly in front of Mirotić, giving Facebook fans a tight shot of the Montenegrin’s bearded face (in less than two weeks, Mirotić will have been traded to the New Orleans Pelicans). Brown deftly steps around pairs of $300 sneakers and full-to-thebrim buckets of ice water to broadcast Bulls guard Zach LaVine, still sweaty and sad-eyed.

Bulls center Cristiano Felício places his giant hand on Brown’s shoulder when she’s finished broadcasting—“Oh! I thought that was you,” she says, craning her neck to meet the eyes of the 6’9” Brazilian—and the two share a brief laugh before she moves past the media, out of the locker room and into an elevator. It’s time to finish the evening in the Pippen Conference Room.

In the elevator, Brown slumps against the wall, exhausted. A Bulls cheerleader asks if she wants to go out for drinks. “No, I need sleep,” Brown says. She’s off the next game, but then flies with the team for a West Coast road trip—Portland, Los Angeles and Sacramento, all within six days.

Each day, the process will start anew, 2,000 miles from home. But that’s OK with Brown; she has work to do. “We’re trying to tell the story of these guys growing,” she says, hiding a yawn. m

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How to Host an Engaging Social Media Chat

(and Keep the Trolls at Bay)

By Amelia Burke-Garcia

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rowth in the use of digital health communication channels has dramatically changed the nature of communication. The internet provides unparalleled opportunities to reach a range of individuals with vital information about health and a variety of other topics — and to tailor messages to audiences’ literacy levels, cultural orientation and channel preference. There are currently 2.5 billion social media users globally, and 70% of Americans now use social media to connect with one another, engage with news content and share information.

Millennials are the most active generation on social media, with 88% of Americans ages 18 to 29 using Facebook and 75% of them having created at least one social media account. Fewer adults over age 30 use social media, but their adoption is still high.

More than 60% of adults older than 65 use Facebook.

These numbers show a significant increase from six years ago, when only 6% of people 65 and older used social media.

Projections signal continued growth, with recent data suggesting that worldwide use of social media will increase 18% by 2020. Some data report more than 5 billion people, or about two-thirds of the world’s population, will be using social media by 2020.

With such growth comes increasing risk.

Communication and media researcher Pekka Aula writes in his article, “Social media, reputation risk and ambient publicity management” that “reputation risk, the possibility or danger of losing one’s reputation, presents a threat to organizations in many ways (including) competitiveness, local positioning, the trust and loyalty of stakeholders, media relations, the legitimacy of operations, and even the license to exist.”

According to research carried out by the Economist Intelligence Unit, leading European managers consider reputation risk to be the primary threat to business operations and the market value of their organizations. The growth in social media use magnifies the possibilities of these risks, expanding the spectrum of reputation risks and boosting risk dynamics. It is useful for new and experienced social media users to understand the risks of the technology and how to mitigate them.

Twitter is one social platform where brands can experience swift fallout from losing control of their

message. To avoid and mitigate risk in social media, marketers must be cognizant of best practices, how to anticipate and prepare for activations in social media, how to leverage supportive voices during times of crisis and how to limit brand crises.

Background on the Activation

Research and communication firm Westat partnered with The Motherhood, a blogger network and social media marketing agency, to produce an hour-long Twitter chat on behalf of a well-known national organization working to educate the public about the importance of vaccines. The chat was intended to share reputable information and resources about vaccines and engage parents and caregivers on the topic of vaccination for their families.

Westat suspected that this topic would be particularly divisive because data suggest that the online anti-vaccination conversation is strong. For instance, Jennifer Keelan, Vera Pavri-Garcia, George Tomlinson and Kumanan Wilson analyzed videos on YouTube about immunization and published their findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). They found that 32% of the sampled videos opposed vaccination and that these videos had higher ratings and more views than pro-vaccine videos.

Another YouTube analysis carried out by Keelan, Pavri-Garcia, Wilson and Ravin Balakrishnan found that 25.3% of YouTube videos about HPV immunization portrayed vaccination negatively. The researchers also analyzed MySpace blogs on HPV immunization and found that 43% were negative.

Another study published in Healthcare Quarterly

by Neil Seeman, Alton Ing and Carlos Rizo analyzed the sentiment on vaccines during an influenza outbreak by studying top search results for information on vaccines during the study period.

They found that 60% of the results contained antivaccination sentiments.

Given this context, the Westat team wanted to be prepared for anything that could go wrong during the activation. As such, it prepared for a variety of outcomes. This preparation led to great success, despite participation by anti-vaccine advocates.

Results

The Twitter chat generated a great deal of attention around the importance of vaccines. Tracking the conversation using a dedicated hashtag

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and comparing the level of conversation using the hashtag before and during the chat, Westat saw a 1,176% increase in the number of people participating in the conversation during the hour.

The number of tweets increased nearly 4,300%, and the impressions increased nearly 1,500%.

Although anti-vaccination participants did appear during the chat, of the 1,772 tweets published during the hour, only 262 shared antivaccination sentiments. Their message was diluted by the 1,510 tweets that came from pro-vaccine advocates — nearly six times the number of antivaccination tweets.

The top 10 highest-reaching anti-vaccine participants had a total of 44,307 followers (an average of around 4,400 followers per person). In contrast, the top 10 pro-vaccine advocates had a combined following of 175,678 (or an average of around 17,500 followers per person), demonstrating that the caliber and influence of the pro-vaccine contributors was greater than those in the antivaccination camp.

In fact, 17.2% of tweets during the chat shared negative sentiments about vaccination, but those tweets generated fewer than 3% of the overall impressions. This demonstrates that while the antivaccine sentiment may have felt overwhelming to the team, when Westat reviewed the data, the antivaccine content represented only a small slice of the conversation.

IMPLICATIONS FOR MARKETING AND PUBLIC RELATIONS PROFESSIONALS

Anticipate and Prepare

Westat anticipated that a chat devoted to the topic of vaccines could attract anti-vaccination trolls, or those who would join only to tweet inflammatory, misguided or off-topic messages. Therefore, Westat and The Motherhood took steps to prepare, counter the misinformation shared by such participants and defuse what could be an emotionally charged situation.

One of those steps was to create a detailed script in advance of the chat to act as the framework for the real-time online conversation. The script included links and citations to reputable, impartial and nonpartisan sources to support the points made on behalf of the health care brand. Ultimately, this kept the conversation on-topic as new participants joined the chat and pulled it in different directions.

The planning paid off. Post-chat analysis of the activation data revealed that despite chat impressions being slightly above average and the number

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of tweets being on par with other Twitter chats executed by The Motherhood during the same time frame, the number of participants was 4.5 times higher than average, indicating how many people were engaged — for better or for worse.

Bring in Supportive Expert Voices to Create a Safe Space

Ahead of the chat, Westat notified vaccination experts and scientists about the event, and The Motherhood identified and engaged supportive parenting influencers to join the conversation and share positive messages of vaccines.

Having a team that included scientists and curated parenting influencers who supported the message and were educated ahead of time helped keep pro-vaccination tweets at the forefront of the conversation and ensured that those tweets got the most visibility.

Stay Out of the Fray

During the Twitter chat, the sponsoring organization was mentioned by participants more than 553 times, 70 of which were made by anti-vaccination advocates. The sponsor only responded to one antivaccine mention. The account to whom the sponsor responded, in contrast, was mentioned just 95 times throughout the chat, comprising only 3% of total tweets and 1% of impressions during the chat. The sponsor organization’s decision not to engage with the majority of the anti-vaccine content limited the visibility of that messaging, ultimately achieving the aim of the chat: to communicate the benefits of family vaccination.

The message here to brands, initiatives or campaigns conducting an activation in social media on a topic that may be controversial is that you should not get involved in emotional arguments you can’t win. In short, do not “feed the trolls.” This only provides antagonists with a larger platform to amplify their message. By not engaging, you can minimize the visibility your vehicle gives to these counter messages. An alternative strategy to manage this content is to ask individual experts to engage or intervene on your behalf.

These results demonstrate that preparing and deploying a risk communication strategy in support of a potentially controversial situation or conversation can result in a successful activation.

Brands, organizations and individuals that carefully consider their message before sharing can successfully enter the online space, even if some risk is involved. m

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Marketers Are Confident in Their Brands, but Not Their Digital Skills The first Marketers’ Confidence Index of 2018 illuminates marketers’ optimism about the economy and their role in business. Though marketers project financial gains, they are keenly aware of the digital skills gap threatening their authority.

BY MICHELLE MARKELZ

A

s marketers reflect on the first quarter of 2018 and consider the near future, they are the most confident they have been in two years. That’s according to the Marketers’ Confidence Index, a survey by the American Marketing Association and Kantar Consulting that captures marketers’ optimism on customer spending, marketing budgets and investment climate.

The most recent index, which surveyed marketers from across B-to-B and B-to-C businesses of various sizes, put marketers’ confidence at 130. For context, a neutral score of 100 would indicate that marketers believe that customer spending, marketing budgets and investment opportunities have been and will remain stable.

“The outlook marketers have on the positive end is definitely up,” Joris Zwegers, the survey’s administrator

INCREASE

I NV ESTM ENT C LI M ATE

and vice president of global research at Kantar Consulting, says. “The proportion of marketers who are pessimistic about customer spending in the next six months has remained stable, but there are now more marketers who hold a very positive outlook.” The shift in proportions suggests some marketers who previously projected stable spending, budgets and investment climate have changed their view and now anticipate growth in these dimensions.

Marketers also gauged their performance against competitors. Fiftysix percent of marketers report that they feel their revenue growth outpaces their competition. This closely reflects 2016, when 53% of marketers evaluated their revenue growth as better than competitors. Regardless of competition, 59% of marketers are confident that their revenue will grow in the next six months.

DECREASE

In January of 2016, 60% of marketers felt it was a good time to invest. In 2018, 67% of marketers are confident in the investment climate.

GOOD TIME

BAD TIME

67%

60%

13%

10%

Jan 2016

Jan 2018

Percentages displayed don’t add up to 100%.

The difference (not displayed) represents marketers who responded that it was “neither a good nor bad time” to invest.

INCREASED DECREASED

32%

37%

27%

34%

40%

45%

39%

48%

22%

20%

14%

12%

19%

20%

14%

12%

Jan 2016

Jan 2018

Jan 2016

Jan 2018

Jan 2016

Jan 2018

Jan 2016

Jan 2018

PAS T MARKET ING B UDGET

In January of 2016, 32% of marketers reported that their marketing budget had increased over the past six months. In 2018, 37% of marketers say their budget has increased in the past six months.

FUTURE MA RK ETING B UDG ET

In January 2016, 27% of marketers projected their marketing budget would increase in the next six months. In 2018, 34% of marketers are optimistic that their budgets will increase in the next six months.

PA ST C USTO MER SPENDI NG

In January 2016, 40% of marketers reported customer spending had increased over the previous six months.

In 2018, 45% of marketers report that customer spending increased over the past six months.

FUTUR E C USTO MER SPEN D I N G

In January of 2016, 39% of marketers predicted that customer spending would increase in the next six months. In 2018, 40% of marketers expect customer spending to rise in the next six months.

Percentages don’t add up to 100%. The differences (not displayed) represent marketers who responded that customer spending and budgets remained stable over the respective time periods.

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Customer Centricity

T

he index captured marketers’ evaluation of how customercentric their organization is on a scale from zero to 100. Marketers gave their organizations an average score of 74, one point higher than in January 2016.

Though the distinction between individual points is not significant, Zwegers says by viewing the results in 10-point brackets, trends emerge about the tendency of firms to place customers at the heart of their decision-making.

“Companies that score 90 or higher are exceptionally customer-centric,” Zwegers says. “A company like Amazon will sit exceptionally high on this scale.

The category below still places a lot of emphasis on the customer, but things like internal process may occasionally be prioritized over an individual customer’s needs.”

Companies at the bottom of the scale are either exceptionally product-focused or put money-making or internal process at the forefront of decision-making with little regard for the customer.

Zwegers says disruptive companies, such as Amazon and Netfilx, are driven by customer centricity, and CEOs of other companies are noting their success and taking a keen interest. “It is clear that being more customer-centric is good for business, but translating a desire to become more customer-centric into organizational behaviors isn’t easy.

That’s where companies struggle,” he says. “They’re still trying to balance those [behavioral] shifts with existing culture, structure, processes and the demands to deliver growth every quarter.”

74

AVERAGE A S SES SMENT OF ORGANIZATION’S CUSTOMER CENTRICITY

A S SES SMENT O F O R G A NI Z ATI O N’ S C USTO MER C ENTR I C I TY, J A NUA R Y 2 0 1 8

Of marketers surveyed, nearly 84% scored their organization higher than 50 out of 100 for customer centricity, with the largest percentage (26%) scoring their organization between 81 and 90.

19%

91-100

Percent of

Percent of

marketers who

marketers who

scored their

scored their

organizations

organizations in

above or

each 10-point

below 50

category

51-100

0-50

26%

81-90

22%

71-80

10%

61-70

7%

51-60

84%

16%

/100

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Budgets

C

urrent marketing budgets show the strongest investment in media placement (21% of budget) and creative (20% of budget). Marketers were asked how they would distribute their funds if their budget were to increase or decrease by 10%. In both scenarios, media placement was most likely to be adjusted. Zwegers infers this is due to the short-term impact that media placement has on brand performance and the ease of reallocating funds to this category as budget changes necessitate.

“Innovation, research and analytics investments are more difficult to change in the short term and may also be deemed too critical to chip away at,” Zwegers says. “If marketers spend less on generating insights, that will hurt them more in the long run [than spending less on media placement]. Cutting money from media is relatively easy and might also be seen as the safest because it’s a shortterm step back versus messing with the fundamentals of how they want to drive business in the long term.”

CU R R ENT MA R KETI NG B UDG ET DI STR I B UTI O N

17% 20%

Product Maintenance/ Support (Promotions, Packaging)

Creative (All Channels)

13% Innovation/ New Product Development

21% Media Placement

10% Analytics

9% Market Research/ Insights

10% Sponsoring

CHAN GES TO MARK ETING B UDGETS

Which category would you cut if your budget decreased 10%?

Which category would you fund if your budget increased 10%?

MEDIA PLACEMENT 23%

MEDIA PLACEMENT 25%

SPONSORING 6% SPONSORING 21%

CREATIVE (ALL CHANNELS) 18%

CREATIVE (ALL CHANNELS) 14%

PRODUCT MAINTENANCE/SUPPORT 15%

PRODUCT MAINTENANCE/SUPPORT 10%

MARKET RESEARCH/INSIGHTS

9%

MARKET RESEARCH/INSIGHTS 13%

INNOVATION/NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

8%

INNOVATION/NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT 20%

ANALYTICS 12% ANALYTICS 6%

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The Influence of Marketing in the Organization

M W HAT IS T H E B IGGEST THREAT TO THE MARKET I NG F UNCTION TODAY?

People don’t understand how Many people don’t

dramatically marketing has evolved

understand what

over the past 10 years. Getting

marketing is.

them to shift their thinking and understand how critical marketing is to future success is difficult if you are not at a large or industry-

Failure to adopt new technologies soon enough

leading company. There are so many ways to track and report on ROI of all your marketing activities, but if you don’t invest in the proper technology to do so, you cannot improve and cannot justify total worth and value.

W HAT D O ES T HE CMO NEED TO K NOW MO R E AB O UT ?

The importance of

I feel that we need

digital marketing

to know more about

and investing in

digital marketing and

tools to help us do

how to use analytics

more in this area.

to properly calculate measurements of ROI.

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ore than 60% of marketers report that they believe marketing’s influence and power in their organization will increase in the next few years.

Just 8% of marketers report they feel this influence will decrease, and the remaining 32% feel their influence will stay the same.

Compared to January 2016, this outlook is slightly less positive—at that time, 64% of marketers believed their influence would increase, and 7% believed it would decrease—but over the span of the two years since then, the fluctuation in this metric averages out to 63.8% optimistic and 7.2% pessimistic, indicating consistent outlook over the past two years.

The biggest threat to marketing, according to marketers, is the rest of the organization’s failure to understand marketing’s capability and value. Technology could be a way to validate marketers’ impact, but a lack of adoption of these tools is also a threat.

Marketers expressed that their leaders, CMOs, are most lacking in knowledge about digital marketing. Despite its necessity in competitive marketing plans, digital marketing evades many seasoned marketers because of its recent emergence.

This mismatch of skills and experience was also reflected by 34% of marketers who responded that they are not confident that their organization has the right operating model, including staff, team structure, processes and tools.

Just 27% said they are confident in their operating model, and 59% reported they are unsure.

“Marketing teams are often still organized based on how marketing was done 10 to 15 years ago,” Zwegers says. “In the old model, the most senior marketer in an organization typically had done junior marketing roles before rising to that position. Today, that’s no longer the case. Most CMOs haven’t been in a digital role because it simply didn’t exist or was limited [when they were starting out]. If you think about marketing in the digital age, that structure doesn’t suffice anymore. You can’t expect your managers to have the answers because they haven’t done that job before.”

Marketers expressed the most confidence in their teams’ capabilities, their organizations’ investment in the right customers and cohesive brand positioning. Nearly half reported confidence in all three, while the proportion that reported a lack of confidence ranged from one-fifth to one-fourth.

“The bulk of marketers have the basics nailed down,” Zwegers says. “But the toolbox and possibilities of digital marketing is expanding, and those possibilities are a bit daunting and somewhat nebulous. The number of people with true experience in using all of these tools is relatively small.”

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Measuring ROI

M

arketers continue to lack confidence in their ability to show return on investment, as little more than one-third report they believe their team understands the ROI of their marketing plans. This could be a function of the lack of adoption or understanding of technology that could effectively report this critical metric of performance.

Demonstrating value and ROI of marketing remains an imperative but elusive goal for many.

HOW CONFI DENT A R E YO U THAT YOUR ORGANIZATION’S MA R KETI NG TEA M ‌

NOT CONFIDENT

CONFIDENT

Has the right capabilities to be competitive

20%

50%

Is investing in the customers that matter

23%

49%

Has a clear and well-understood brand positioning in place to be competitive

26%

48%

Has a clear and well-understood strategy in place to be competitive

26%

44%

Is doing the right things to drive growth

24%

44%

Understands the ROI of marketing plans

34%

35%

Has the right operating model (people/structure/processes/tools) to be competitive

34%

27%

Survey Composition and Methodology The survey results comprise the responses of 396 marketers.

Ages ranging from younger than 35 to older than 56 were represented. Most respondents identified as managers (30%), but nearly 50% identified as vice president or higher. They represent organizations smaller than 101 employees (36%) as well as larger than 10,000 (14%). About a quarter were B-to-B marketers, and 17% were specifically B-to-C. The rest considered their business to be a blend of the two. The respondents were mostly female (56%).

The survey was administered via e-mail from January 23, 2018 to February 12, 2018.

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INSIDE THE WALLED GARDEN

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How online communities give marketers a uniquely personal perspective on customer language, behavior and motivations

BY SARAH STEIMER

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ACROSS THE WORLD, AT ALL HOURS, PEOPLE ARE SEEKING SUPPORT.

But they’re not calling their psychiatrist, a trusted confidant or family member.

They’re tapping into a network of near-strangers going through similar trials and tribulations. In social media groups and other web communities, people share recipes, discuss workouts and seek advice for side effects of medication. They comment, lament and sometimes just passively observe.

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Support networks have long existed to help people reach their goals or grapple with hardship. Alcoholics Anonymous and Weight Watchers are familiar examples. Their members are drawn to the camaraderie, accountability and outlet the groups provide for sharing stories, soliciting encouragement and celebrating accomplishments. As with so many other forms of communication, many of these groups have moved online, where they’re sometimes visible to marketers.

Virtual accountability and support

communities may be used in addition to or in lieu of in-person meetings.

When members open up about their experiences, marketers have an opportunity to peer into their hopes, challenges and triumphs. In healthrelated groups, people undergoing personal transformation share sensitive details with the group. Weight-loss accountability groups on Facebook are full of before-and-after photos. Members of an infertility community may ask for encouragement to handle treatment and

the ensuing emotions they experience. In nearly every virtual support community, members use vernacular unique to their group, and many ask for or offer advice typically provided by professionals.

Though communities often live on brands’ websites or social media pages, the conversation is guided by the members. These users are mapping their own journeys, and they can often guide marketers. Marketers who listen can pick up on the pain points, stories and voices that feel comfortable rising in a usermoderated environment.

What Attracts Consumers People are drawn to online communities for their accessibility, identity-based motivation and shared intimacy.

Accessibility is a core difference between in-person and online meetings.

Participants in virtual support

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communities (VSCs) are not held to meeting parameters, such as specific locations or designated hours. They can access their forums at any time of the day on any device.

In addition to logistical flexibility, online groups provide members an opportunity to define their own identities.

This is crucial for those in a state of transition. A 2017 article published in the Journal of Interactive Marketing explores weight loss through VSCs. The authors saw the role that identity-based motivation plays in public commitment and interaction.

“There’s so much research that says people assess who you are within a few seconds of seeing you,” says Tonya Williams Bradford, co-author of the study and a marketing professor at the University of California, Irvine.

“Online, if I can control what you see of me in those first few seconds, ... then I can control how we interact in that way.”

VSCs allow participants to be comfortable with vulnerability in a way that’s not always possible in person. Many face-to-face meetings have a certain structure, time limit or defined leadership roles. This isn’t the case online, where members craft their own identities and deepen their intimacy with others in the group.

“One of the things that was key to the success of these forums is that people provided very intimate and vulnerable glimpses of who they are and what they’re struggling with en route to striving for their goals,” Bradford says. “They would not be able to or have the opportunity to do so in a person-to-person setting.”

Bradford’s study looked at VSCs hosted by ObesityHelp.com and Weight Watchers. The online spaces grant the option of anonymity; however, the authors found that many members exchange personal details to generate intimacy. Posting in the forums helps individuals commit to their goals with the rest of the group holding them accountable. Even failures help people publicly recommit.

Perhaps the biggest draw to online communities is camaraderie, which can be especially sought-after by those battling health concerns. The website Inspire was built to connect patients and caretakers with similar health experiences. Inspire Vice President of Marketing Richard Tsai says the site provides users valuable feedback that members can’t get from friends and family who have no experience to draw upon.

Folk magazine captured one such experience with Renata Louwers, whose husband was diagnosed with metastatic

Marketers would be keen to analyze the terms leading people to their support groups or those of competitors, and organize their content around this lexicon.

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bladder cancer. A search online for the diagnosis sent Louwers to Inspire.

Tsai calls the phenomenon of patients or caregivers finding one another an “organic community clustering effect.”

Words used in the forums become keywords that lead others from Google to Inspire forums, creating a self-aggregating effect. Marketers would be keen to analyze the terms leading people to their support groups or those of competitors, and organize their content around this lexicon.

According to Tsai, Inspire members have helped one another avoid unnecessary surgery and speak up to their care team at the advice of fellow community members, directing their care decisions on the advice of the group.

Letting the Members Do the Legwork On occasion, the super user becomes the marketer, and organizations can step back, letting VSC members tout program or product benefits and answer customer questions. These users become brand promoters.

Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than with Beachbody, the company behind home fitness and nutrition systems such as P90X, Insanity and Shakeology. The multilevel marketing company relies on its super users, who become so-called coaches, to sell its products. The motivation is clear for becoming a brand promoter: Coaches earn a cut of every sale they make. The company recommends that its coaches create and define their own personal brands, relying on the idea that coaches are the unique selling point, perhaps more so than the products.

The greatest tool for Beachbody coaches is social media, through which they develop their personal brand and design user communities called Challenge Groups. Beachbody provides some guidance for its coaches about post frequency and topic, and it designs some templated content. Coaches also frequently share their sales strategies

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through personal blogs that offer marketing tips and tricks.

Paul Francisco has been a Beachbody coach for seven years. He was drawn to the products for the same reason people are often drawn to VSCs: flexibility.

Francisco works for United Airlines and is constantly on the go. He shares tips via social media on eating well and exercising while traveling, posting photos of his prepared meals tucked away in his travel cooler. Imparting this level of intimacy endears him to his followers.

“People aren’t buying Beachbody products from me,” Francisco says.

“They’re buying me.”

Francisco didn’t have a social media presence until he got involved in Beachbody. Now he pulls out his phone and deftly flips through one of his Facebook Challenge Groups, pausing to react to members’ post-workout “sweaty selfies.” He’s taken cues from other coaches’ social media tactics and has honed some of his own. For example, he’s learned that teaming people up in groups of three helps them stick to their commitment by giving them a reliable group with which to interact. He also knows when to recommend products.

Sometimes those new to the Beachbody community choose a workout video that’s too difficult for their fitness level,

so Francisco will suggest something with more modifications. He may promote an add-on Beachbody product, such as a nutrition plan or Shakeology superfood drink, if the workout videos aren’t enough for a member to reach their goals. “[Beachbody] is leveraging this position of group engagement and peer coaching to help build their business in a crazy way,” Bradford says. A VSC that is “sticky,” she says, keeps participants involved and interested. The stickiness for Inspire members may be empathy, and some may remain in the group their entire lives. Weight-loss communities are considered less sticky because the journey theoretically has an end.

Weight Watchers has found a way to maintain brand promoters after the personal journey ends. Bradford says Weight Watchers members stick around because they believe in the product, whereas Beachbody coaches have financial incentive to stay involved.

“You end up with these individuals who become advocates for the brand,” Bradford says. “They can sell your brand better than you can because they’re empathetic to the customer. It’s key that institutions figure out how to develop these advocates and create the stickiness so that it matters to [advocates] that they stay.”

Forum members, especially brand

promoters, can be a proxy for corporate customer service. Bradford and her co-authors give one example in their paper, in which a Weight Watchers participant complained on the forum about a poor experience at an in-person meeting. Another forum member reached out with a note saying, “We get you, and we think you rock.” As the authors explain, the respondent provided service recovery in the online channel for an experience that someone wouldn’t necessarily approach the company to rectify.

“Joining a VSC provides opportunities to act as both a member seeking guidance and a leader sharing knowledge, fluidity and expressiveness neither welcome nor

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possible in the face-to-face channel,” the authors write. When members offer one another guidance, Bradford says they don’t see themselves as advocating for the brand, but rather, “they’re advocating for you and your goal.”

Previous research noted in Bradford’s study shows online communities rely on their members to generate content.

Co-creation and sharing in VSCs allow members to influence one another’s decisions, impacting consumer behaviors.

Members of an online weight-loss community can drive decisions on where to purchase new clothes, which video program works best for cardio-lovers and which meals have the best sources of protein.

Indirectly, conversations in specialized VSC groups can guide the voice of marketing materials. Just as people find Inspire groups because of specific keywords, marketers can tap into the jargon unique to a particular population.

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Inspire gives members the option to make their posts public or private, but most of the data the company generates for its health care clients come from anonymous insights and surveys.

“We focus on permission-based engagement,” Tsai says. “Our members can opt out of anything they don’t want to be contacted with. We make that very specific. They can opt out for sponsor research projects like market research, surveys and interviews.”

Inspire runs the surveys for its clients, which include pharmaceutical powerhouses Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Shire, then analyzes the results and provides recommendations. Details, such as keywords that unique patient groups use, go in the results section. Its insights team—which Inspire refers to as its linguists—searches for public, thematic posts and discovers trending concepts or words.

A health care brand could ask Inspire to gauge the public response to a drug in market, public perceptions, the financial burden it imposes and the major challenges to the brand. Inspire will analyze user-generated content and use ethnographic analysis to understand the unstructured data of the community chatter.

Tsai estimates that Inspire’s roughly 1 million members are split in half on public versus private accounts. With that many public members and 2 million

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reported medical conditions on the website, the opportunity to get significant, specialized consumer insight is rather good.

A Deeper Dive and Future Benefits There’s room to grow and more benefits for marketers to mine in VSCs, especially in the health care industry. There are gaps in the patient journey that VSCs can fill, which can have resounding effects on patient health.

Inspire partnered with a natural language processing group to identify adverse events called out by members but not yet reported to the FDA. Tsai says commissions or doctors prescribing drugs would find this information invaluable if it meant avoiding putting a patient in unnecessary danger. Bradford sees the potential for support groups to improve patient compliance, a nagging issue in the health care industry. A 2007 report from the New England Healthcare Institute estimated that poor adherence to prescription medications drives up medical spending in the U.S. by almost $300 billion each year. VSC members holding one another accountable could be a victory for compliance, as they can urge patients to commit and participate in their own care.

“Physicians do a lot of work in diagnosis, but nothing truly happens without compliance by the patients or engagement by the patients—and how do you inspire that?” Bradford says. She uses the example of pacemakers. Once a patient has a pacemaker implanted, they may have questions about how to manage life: What type of activity can they do? What does it feel like when the defibrillator kicks in? When is it time to call the doctor? These aren’t questions their regular physician can answer at

any time. However, a support group could offer immediate experience-based guidance.

VSCs can help organizations deepen their relationship with consumers, especially as people seek out customized and interactive content. As Bradford and her colleagues explain in their paper, it’s important for firms to understand the nature of the community if they expect to affiliate with it. Consumers interested in building camaraderie for transactional experiences will be drawn to a different type of engagement than those looking to connect over personal transformations.

Within these larger groups, there are even more specialized tribes with slightly different drivers or goals. A granular understanding of the audience and its personas allows for clearer segmentation, targeting and positioning.

It may feel counterintuitive for brands to relinquish control of online communities to users, especially for organizations involved in deep brand policing. But trusting consumers to organize on their own can be an illuminating exercise for all parties involved. m

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career advancement

PERSONAL BRANDING

6 Moves That Can Make (or Break) Your Career on Twitter Professionals on Twitter should think before they post, focus on their passion and always be learning

BY HAL CONICK | STAFF WRITER

 hconick@ama.org

T

witter is a minefield of insults, gallows humor and political arguments, but it’s also a gold mine for marketers looking to connect with some of the world’s brightest minds. As easy as it may seem for marketers to say

50

the wrong thing and offend thousands of people simultaneously, it’s as easy—if not easier—to say the right thing and gain access to the best of Twitter’s 330 million monthly active users.

Marketing News spoke with three

social media professionals who weighed in on what career marketers should do and what they should avoid on the quickfire social media platform.

3 THINGS TO AVOID

1

Posting Without Thinking Think before you hit send, says Kathi Kruse, owner of social media and digital marketing agency Kruse Control. Many people—even those who list their job in their Twitter bio—simply don’t think before, during or after they tweet. Many users post gross images, inappropriate videos and offensive thoughts on Twitter, she says, all of which can be gravely damaging to a marketing career.

“I’m not saying people shouldn’t have their personal opinions about things

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PERSONAL BRANDING

politically or otherwise, but what you say and do online speaks for you,” she says. “A lot of people don’t realize that because it’s just the click of a button. But the reality is, you can see [the Twitter post] for the rest of your life.”

Twitter posts can bubble up at the worst possible moment—many are archived by the Library of Congress—and take a marketer from candidate for a new job to the rejection pile. “Tread lightly,” Kruse says.

2

Only Talking About Yourself Twitter is like a cocktail party—most people hate listening to people who only talk about themselves.

Janet Fouts, a social media strategist and CEO of Tatu Digital Media, says using Twitter solely for self-aggrandizement is one of the biggest mistakes professionals can make. Instead, marketers should join other conversations and share other people’s posts, especially those who are valuable for their marketing network.

“Respecting the intelligence of other people and sharing their information aligns marketers with the people they respect,” Fouts says. “When they do that, they can really raise their status by associating with people who are super smart.”

3

Speaking as an Authority If You Aren’t an Authority Don’t be a know-it-all, says Lissa Duty, social media coach and co-founder of Rocks Digital. If a marketing professional, perhaps feeling intimidated by the experience of other marketers, speaks like an authority on Twitter when he’s more of a dilettante, other marketers will see through his pretentiousness, Duty says.

Wanting to be an influencer is a great goal, but influence can’t be forced, she says. Be open to learning new information before bestowing it.

3 THINGS TO DO

1

Focus on Your Passion It may be cliché, but marketing

career advancement

professionals should post about their passions to establish themselves as thought leaders in areas they truly care about, Kruse says.

“Let that guide you for how you want to be seen, and establish yourself as an expert or a thought leader,” she says.

“Volunteer to write content around it, certainly, but also volunteer to speak at [events] or contribute to blogs of companies that you admire.”

A lot of smart companies will try to poach these Twitter thought leaders, Kruse says, because their presence makes the company look like a marketing thought leader, too.

2

Strive to Learn Amid the insults, arguments and cat posts are a lot of posts by brilliant people.

The smartest marketing professionals on Twitter learn from them, Fouts says.

Marketing professionals should think of Twitter as a place of professional development, a place they can learn from leaders in their field. Marketing professionals can also help others learn by reading and sharing these insights, which will likely help their own brand.

3

Reach Out Within Your Range Marketers should focus on connecting with influencers who are within reach, Duty says. For example, Twitter users with 500,000 followers may not respond, as their notifications are likely crowded. However, someone with 50,000 followers may respond, which can have immense value. “[They can be] someone to look up to, ask questions of and follow,” Duty says. “Someday, they can develop the relationship, and they too will be an influencer. That’s how [marketers can] grow their reach on Twitter.”

Duty used this method to increase her Twitter following. Her @LissaDuty account has 30,700 followers, but those followers didn’t appear overnight. Duty identified three influencers who had a big reach on Twitter and developed a rapport with them on the platform. When their influencer status grew, Duty’s did, too. m

Marketing professionals should think of Twitter as a place of professional development, a place they can learn from leaders in their field.

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ON THE RECORD

How to Make It as a Creative in the Gig Economy Most creative professionals aren’t ready for the business challenges of the gig economy, but Ilise Benun believes that everybody can learn

BY HAL CONICK | STAFF WRITER

 hconick@ama.org

I

n 1988, Ilise Benun was fired from her job as the operations director for a travel agency. It was her second job out of college. She was furious. “I never wanted to work for anyone again,” she says. “I realized since then that I’m, in

fact, unemployable.” With more free time on her hands, Benun visited with her creative friends. She noticed stacks of paper strewn about their desks. Each pile was bursting with opportunity for more business, better marketing and

career advancement

self-promotion. Benun used her newly found free time to help her friends with marketing and bookkeeping, finding enough opportunity under the piles of paper to start her own company. Soon, her client list grew and her status as “unemployable”—at least by anyone else—became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Benun is author of The Creative Professional’s Guide to Money and founder of Marketing Mentor, a company that helps creative professionals find “better clients with bigger budgets.” She has kept her business growing by responding to the needs of the market. Very soon, those needs will largely reside in the gig economy.

Currently, 34% of the U.S. workforce consists of gig workers, according to Intuit, a number predicted to grow to 43% by 2020. However, most creative professionals—even creative marketers—

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career advancement

ON THE RECORD

likely aren’t ready to manage their own business. That’s where Benun comes in.

Marketing News spoke with Benun about the entrepreneur mindset, how creatives can market their business and how they can prepare for the gig economy.

Q

What’s the most difficult part of getting into the business mindset for creatives?

A

It’s being ambitious enough to pursue what we want. That means you have to decide what you want, find the people and companies and approach them. You have to not care about rejection because the reality is that most of them won’t want what you have to offer.

You’re looking for something better than whoever happens to find you. That is the biggest challenge for people, even people who are successfully self-employed. A lot of people are spoiled by word-ofmouth and see it as a blessing, but when it stops, it is no longer a blessing, and you have no foundation. That’s why taking responsibility for the direction of your business and pursuing the types of projects and clients that you want puts you in a much stronger position. You’re not dependent on something outside of you.

Getting outside of themselves and seeing that what they want isn’t the focus of marketing their services; it’s all about the client. Self-promotion is not about you. It’s a paradox, but the idea is that even the way you answer the question “What do you do?” is not about you. What I like to say to that, for example, is, “I help clients get better clients with bigger budgets.” That tells you nothing about what I do or how I do it, but I’m speaking to a certain type of creative professional who is at a certain place in their process— they want to take [their business] to the next level.

So it’s marketing. It’s doing the job you already do, but doing it for yourself. That has to be a hard concept for some to grasp.

Q

A

Are most people ready to run their own business? Should people in full-time jobs start preparing to be self-employed?

A

I don’t think people are ready.

Employed people think they have job security, but I don’t think there is such a thing as job security anymore. Even if you have a full-time job, you could lose it at any moment. You have to be constantly cultivating your network and building your relationships so that, as things evolve, you know who to call, where to go and how to position yourself for whatever the next thing is—whether it’s a full-time job or a gig. I make a distinction between an employee mindset, where you’re an order-taker, versus a business-owner mindset, where you take responsibility for going after the work you want, as opposed to taking whatever comes along.

Q

What’s the most important tenet of entrepreneurial thinking for creatives?

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A

Q

It is, because you’re too close to it.

And that’s why my business exists, because I’m not close to it. I can see who might benefit from your services. I can see what your strengths and weaknesses are, what needs to be shored up, what language might make sense based on who you are and what you want to pursue.

Q

What is the first step people can take toward this way of thinking?

A

Go to networking events in research mode. A lot of people hate networking because they imagine that it’s a situation where people are just foisting their business cards on other people, but it’s not. It’s developing relationships and learning about what the world needs. If you go to a networking event in research mode, you see that this person needs this, and this other person needs that. Then you can be responsive to the needs of the market. m

I don’t think there is such a thing as job security anymore. You have to be constantly cultivating your network and building your relationships so that you know how to position yourself for whatever the next thing is— whether it’s a full-time job or a gig.

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advertisers’index

ADVERTISERS’ INDEX Quick source for contacting the suppliers in the April 2018 issue of Marketing News.

2018 AMA Advanced Research Techniques Forum .................................................. p. 19 URL: h ttp://ama.marketing/ARTFORUM2018 2018 AMA Calendar of Events . ............................ p. 23 URL: h ttp://ama.marketing/events18 2018 AMA Marketing + Public Policy Conference ....................................... p. 13 URL: http://ama.marketing/MPP2018 2018 AMA Nonprofit Marketing Conference ...... p. 17 ttp://ama.marketing/nonprofit18 URL: h 2018 AMA Summer Academic Conference . ..................................... inside back cover ttp://ama.marketing/summer18 URL: h AMA 40th Annual International Collegiate Conference Thank You to Event Sponsors and Exhibitors . ............................ p. 7 Email: anelmes@ama.org

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#OfficeGoals A peek inside the marketers’ offices that make us drool

DHX MEDIA is a producer of children’s animated and live action television and online content. The DHX studio spans five floors in Vancouver, British Columbia.

The main floor provides a glimpse of a day in the life of people working in an animation studio with ample amenities. Offices adjacent to the street are designed as freestanding houses, offering privacy and an image of a neighborhood to passersby.

The other floors are a mix of open work space, offices and meeting rooms. No private offices were placed along the building’s north-facing wall, which offers mountain and city views. The design concept for these spaces used red, green and blue as an homage to one of the principals of 2-D animation. m

PHOTOS: JANIS NICOLAY

Interiors by Evoke

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