Marketing News: June/July 2019 by Molly Soat

AMERICAN MARKETING ASSOCIATION

AMA.ORG

JUNE / JULY 2019

HOW YOU VOTE IS HOW YOU BUY

Marketing in China is Deeper Than East Versus West 10 Years of The CMO Survey

JUNE / JULY 2019 NO.

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table of contents AMERICAN MARKETING ASSOCIATION

4-9

SEEN ON AMA.ORG

14-22

ANSWERS IN ACTION

• Snapshot • Core Concepts • Ethical Marketing

24-27 SCHOLARLY INSIGHTS

• Gary F. Gebhardt, Francis J. Farrelly and Jodie Conduit • Research Digest

28-41

EXECUTIVE INSIGHTS

• Andy Crestodina • Jakki Mohr • Finn Raben • David Smith and BV Pradeep • The CMO Survey

74-79 CAREER ADVANCEMENT

• Employee Branding • Golden Guide Career Advice

AND NOW, A WORD FROM ...

 Sell to Voters, Not Consumers

Politicians have realized that framing their messages helps them resonate with different voters. Now, marketing research also shows that brands can use a similar approach to target their liberal and conservative customers.

 The West’s Great Marketing Opportunity in China

Western companies attempt to make China’s giant market fit to their brands, rather than the other way around. To be successful in China, brands must realize that differences in marketing go deeper than East versus West.

R ise of the Buy-It-for-Lifers

Emotional connection has long been the goal of brands yearning to gain pathological loyalty from consumers. A burgeoning consumer movement asks: What about selling stuff that lasts?

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Without Insights, Who Cares?

he concept of “insights” has only come into focus in the past few decades. The ubiquity of digital information has made it necessary to glean insights rather than simply looking at the data. With the vast swaths of information available, marketers must make tough decisions about what informative nugget most closely defines an individual. Political candidates have long known to shape their messaging to the unique tastes, values and behaviors of their political party. But it seems marketers have been doing the same. Managing editor Sarah Steimer dives into how marketers are selling based on consumers’ political ideologies. Vanitha Swaminathan, a professor of marketing at the University of Pittsburgh, tells Steimer that political identity has always been a way that consumers define themselves. “There’s something called identity salience, which is this notion that [asks], ‘How important is a component of who you are to you?’” Swaminathan says. “Lately, it seems to me that people’s political orientation has become a

salient part of their identity. It’s how you define yourself more and more.” In this issue, we explore how marketers all over the world are gathering information and bringing insights into sharper focus. How do you define “insights”? MOLLY SOAT Editor in Chief @MollySoat

CONTRIBUTORS

JAMIE RAMSAY

FINN RABEN

Jamie Ramsay is a freelance photographer and director of photography for the Chicago Reader. She has photographed for Crate & Barrel and published work with Time Out Chicago, Smithsonian Magazine, Refinery29 and the Chicago Reader. Ramsay worked with dogs and cats for an Ozzie Award-winning layout for Marketing News. She splits her time between photography and handcrafting leather bags in Chicago.

Finn Raben is director general of ESOMAR. He has spent most of his career in market research, previously working at Millward Brown IMS in Dublin, Nielsen, TNS and Synovate. Raben serves as an external examiner at the International School of Management in Avans University in the Netherlands.

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JUNE/JULY 2019

LETTER FROM THE CEO VOL. 53 | NO. 6 AMERICAN MARKETING ASSOCIATION

Bill Cron Chairperson of the AMA Board 2018-2019 Russ Klein, AMA Chief Executive Officer rklein@ama.org EDITORIAL STAFF

Phone (800) AMA-1150 Fax (312) 542-9001 E-mail editor@ama.org David Klein, Chief Content Officer dklein@ama.org Molly Soat, Editor in Chief msoat@ama.org Sarah Steimer, Managing Editor ssteimer@ama.org Julian Zeng, Assistant Managing Editor jzeng@ama.org Hal Conick, Staff Writer hconick@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 Nicola Tate, Associate Director, Media Channels ntate@associationmediagroup.com (804) 469-0324 Samantha Couture, Recruitment Advertising Specialist Samantha.Couture@CommunityBrands.com (727) 497-6565 x3302 Marketing News (ISSN 0025-3790) is published monthly except June/July and November/December by the American Marketing Association, 130 E. Randolph St., 22nd Floor, Chicago, IL 60601. Circulation: (800) AMA-1150, (312) 542-9000 Tel: (800) AMA-1150, (312) 542-9000 POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: Marketing News, 130 E. Randolph St., 22nd Floor, Chicago, 60601-6320, USA. Periodical Postage paid at Chicago, Ill., and additional mailing offices. Canada Post Agreement Number 40030960. Opinions expressed are not necessarily endorsed by the AMA, its officers or staff. Marketing News welcomes expressions of all professional viewpoints on marketing and its related areas. These may be as letters to the editor, columns or articles. Letters should be brief and may be condensed by the editors. Please request a copy of the “Writers’ Guidelines” before submitting an article. Upon submission to the AMA, photographs and manuscripts will not be returned unless accompanied by a self-addressed, adequately stamped envelope. Annual subscription rates: Marketing News is a benefit of membership for professional members of the American Marketing Association. Annual professional membership dues in the AMA are $300. Nonmembers: Call 1-800-633-4931 or e-mail amasubs@subscriptionoffice.com. Single copies $10 individual, $10 institutions; foreign add $5 per copy for air, printed matter. Payment must be in U.S. funds or the equivalent. Canadian residents add 13% GST (GST Registration #127478527). Advertisers and advertising agencies assume liability for all content (including text, representations and illustrations) of advertisements published, and also assume responsibility for any claims arising therefrom made against the publisher. The right is reserved to reject any advertisement. Copyright © 2019 by the American Marketing Association. All rights reserved.

Exploiting the White Space

n today’s network-based world, managers are discovering that two forms of thought are critical to decision-making. Design thinking and systems thinking are the twin engines that power critical thinking in the 21st century. Firms are recognizing that customer centricity must be understood in a market-oriented context, that challenges brands to win the consumer’s trust and orchestrate the ecosystems where they compete. If you were to draw black dots on a sheet of paper to identify every knowledge-based discipline, the first place to look for answers is in the white space that separates them. Just as the problem-solving challenge facing modern enterprises requires an interdisciplinary view of the world, answers to marketing problems do not reside only in strategy, quantitative modeling or consumer behavior. The connections and integration of the three generate managerially relevant answers. Although the concept of having a single view of the customer receives ample attention, the more fundamental question is: Do firms have a single view of the data? Structured data alone is too ham-fisted to pick up the nuances of consumer behavior. Conversely, unstructured data alone prevents us from seeing the forest through the trees. The metamorphosis of data management is generating

a pragmatic perspective that improves a manager’s prospects of becoming decision-ready in a world where decisiveness is as important as insight itself. Thanks to technology, once-risky decisions have been de-risked to create a marketplace where firms can learn by doing. The answers drawn from an integrated view of structured and unstructured data will turn managers into doers. This elegant integration of facts and feelings finally unshackles enterprises from their heads-down plodding, giving them the freedom to run in an agile learning culture with their eyes fixed on answers.

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. Printed in the U.S.A.

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Relevant B2B Content on the Decline

10%

Only a quarter of marketing professionals believe their B2B content marketing strategy is effective

Two years ago, 30% of marketers thought their content marketing strategy was effective; in 2018, less than 10% felt the same.

ost B2B content is missing the mark, according to a January research study by Heinz Marketing and ON24. The study polled more than 150 B2B marketing professionals across various roles, industries and organization sizes. Just one in four respondents believe that their content marketing strategy is effective, and one in five reported feeling very or extremely confident that they’re creating relevant content. The report found a majority of B2B content isn’t driving results and marketers lack confidence in their ability to accurately measure their efforts. Thirteen percent of respondents are highly confident in their ability to measure the impact of their content marketing in 2017, but that dropped to about 3% this year. The downward trend in content marketing effectiveness extends to B2B marketers’ confidence in their ability to drive desired revenue results. Over 65% of marketing professionals claim to be somewhat confident or not confident at all in driving revenue. The survey also measured the most important content engagement metrics, finding that lead conversion is the top choice at 39.5%, followed by sales opportunity and conversion (34%), sales contribution (6.8%), sales influence (6.1%), clicks (5.4%) and likes (2%). Heinz and ON24’s qualitative research also revealed that marketers prioritize engagement, personalization, and successfully aligning and integrating marketing, sales and customer channels. —JULIAN ZENG

How would you rate your organization's content marketing strategy? EXTREMELY EFFECTIVE 2018

3.4%

2017

12%

VERY EFFECTIVE 2018 2017

5.4% 18%

EFFECTIVE 2018

27.7%

2017

25%

SOMEWHAT EFFECTIVE 47.3%

2018 2017

19%

NOT VERY EFFECTIVE 2018 2017

16.2% 26%

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Key Content Marketing Elements

IMPORTANCE SCORE PERFORMANCE SCORE

76.5%

PERFORMANCE GAP

What is the most important content engagement metric for your organization?

-22.5%

59.8% 54%

39.5%

-13.4%

46.4%

48.3% -13.8%

LEAD CONVERSION

34.5%

34%

SALES OPPORTUNITY CONVERSION CONTENT IS ENGAGING

6.8%

EXTREMELY CONFIDENT NOT CONFIDENT

VERY CONFIDENT

10.3%

5.4%

CONFIDENT

CLICKS

LIKES

2.7%

18.5%

SALES INFLUENCE

CONTENT IS CUSTOMIZED

How confident are you that your content is driving revenue results for your organization?

SALES CONTRIBUTION

6.1%

CONTENT DRIVES ACTION

20.5%

SOMEWHAT CONFIDENT

47.9%

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Optimize Your Website for Voice Search Voice search is becoming more popular, but websites could be doing more to optimize for queries from voice users

oice search is what the future holds, says Keval Baxi, CEO of UX design firm Codal, at the 2019 HOW Marketing Live conference. To meet the future, Baxi says that marketers and designers must focus on voice to ensure thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a

smooth, natural experience for voice search users. Responses must be conversational, actionable and easy to understand, he says. Baxi says that there are eight things that brands must do when optimizing their website for voice search.

Use Long-Tail Keywords

Brands must have actionable keywords and put them in the websiteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s schema markup, also known as code. This will allow the website to provide search engines with more information, which will be important for specific searches people make. Baxi says that when users voice a query, the answer they receive is often not the first result on Google. Long-tail keywords can help websites be the answer that users hear when making a voice search. Long-tail keywords are longer, more specific and more targeted.

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To find long-tail keywords, Baxi suggests using the tool AnswerThePublic, which populates a list of various search engine queries that came through for specific keywords.

Transform Queries into Questions

Instead of using “burger” as a keyword, use something that a voice search user would say, such as “Where can I find a burger near me?” This will make it more likely that your website will be the answer they hear when asking a question.

Optimize Your Content

Content needs to be relational and usable for voice searchers, Baxi says. “The key metric is not to write overstuffed content,” Baxi says. Overstuffed content is trying to fit too many keywords into the content— “burger,” for example, shouldn’t become “burger,” “burgers” and “best burgers,” with many more keywords tacked on.

Design for Mobile

There are no design standards for voice search, Baxi says, so mobile is the next best thing. “You want to make sure you have your entire content on a page designed for mobile,” he says. “But the same metadata is usually utilized for voice.” Google has a free tool to ensure a website is optimized for mobile, Baxi says, something businesses should use to ensure their website is mobilefriendly.

Use More Conversational Language

Baxi says that brands optimizing for voice search should make their content conversational.

Optimizing for Future Snippets

A Google snippet is the box that appears just under the search bar. Snippet boxes have quick-hitting information pulled from a relevant website—if you were to Google the top 15 burger restaurants in Chicago, the Google snippets box would likely include a numbered list. Baxi says that brands should try to cater to these snippet boxes by optimizing for specific queries. STAT Search Analytics finds that 70% of Google snippets don’t come from the first organic result, so it is possible to become a snippet without having to dominate SEO rankings.

Polish Your ‘Google My Business’ Profile

Most voice searches are for local businesses, Baxi says—think people who want to know where the nearest gym or food court are. For local businesses, having an updated Google My Business profile with name, hours, street address and other relevant information will increase the brand’s search ranking and traffic.

Localize Your Experience

Marketers and designers must focus on voice to ensure there’s a smooth, natural experience for voice search users. Responses must be conversational, actionable and easy to understand.

“Use marketing metrics to make sure you’re targeting the right area,” Baxi says. To optimize for local search, Baxi says that companies should: • Include their region in content and metadata. • Create location-specific pages with more than just a footer address. • Use visuals specific to your local area with alt-text tags. • Tag images and videos with the name of the geographic area. • If videos and audio discuss a specific location, provide a transcript to boost the website’s accessibility. —HAL CONICK JUNE / JULY 2019 | MARKETING NEWS

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Everything Digital Marketers Need to Know About Web Accessibility How to remove the barriers around your content for people with disabilities

sk most digital marketers what their top priorities are and they’ll usually give you the same answers: customer engagement, better conversion rates, higher search rankings and larger social media audiences. But ask about web accessibility and you might get a blank stare. While accessibility has become more commonplace in the last few years, it’s still largely overlooked by marketers. This is partly because it doesn’t seem to fall under the marketing umbrella. How does making a website more accessible to everyone connect with spreading the word about your brand? As it turns out, the two are more closely linked than many marketers realize. Web accessibility is a critical issue for all users, but especially for people

with disabilities. To understand how large this group is, consider these statistics: • According to government census data from 2010, 56.7 million people in the U.S., or 19% of the population, had a disability. • The Pew Research Center reported that 23% of those Americans don’t use the internet at all. (Only 8% of other Americans report never going online.) • The 2016 Click-Away Pound survey found that 71% of online shoppers with limitations will abandon a site if they find it hard to use. • That same survey revealed that 82% of these customers would spend more money if sites were more accessible. If that’s not enough reason to prioritize accessibility, then maybe the prospect of being fined or sued

will do the trick. In the first half of 2018 alone, nearly 5,000 web accessibility lawsuits were filed; that number is climbing. In addition, if your site isn’t accessible, it may incur legal penalties and fees, depending on where you’re based. The European Union Web Accessibility Directive, revised in September 2018, enforces accessibility standards on all public sector sites and penalizes sites that don’t comply. Countries like the U.S. may soon follow suit. Finally, there’s the risk of negative publicity. Several companies have recently experienced major customer backlash as a result of their sites or apps being inaccessible. One noteworthy case occurred when a blind customer sued Domino’s Pizza after being unable to complete a purchase using the company’s app. Of course, everyone can benefit from accessibility. For example, anyone who uses a mobile or smart device will enjoy the upsides of accessibility. Optimized accessibility also helps people with changing abilities, situational limitations and slow or limited bandwidth. There are enormous benefits to having an accessible site. Avoiding legal trouble isn’t the only perk you’ll enjoy—I’m talking about big wins for your business. Because more users will be able to access your site, you’ll see performance and metric improvements across the board. You’ll increase conversion rates, improve load time, increase search rankings, gain more links and enhance social sharing. But there’s still an important question here. As a marketer, what should you be doing about accessibility? To help you out, here’s a list of the 10 most important things you need to know about accessibility.

Understand What Web Accessibility Entails

When most people think of accessibility features, they think of

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something like alternate image text for vision-impaired users or subtitles for hearing-impaired users. But features like these only scratch the surface. Accessibility includes a wide range of features that help all users take full advantage of the internet. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) developed the Web Accessibility Initiative to create standards for online accessibility. Their Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are especially important for our purposes. These guidelines outline what accessibility includes. They are a must-read for every marketer.

Accessibility Can’t Be Treated as an Afterthought

As evident from cases such as the Domino’s lawsuit, many marketers have failed to integrate accessibility into websites, apps and campaigns. In doing so, these marketers have excluded a significant part of the population and reduced the size of their audience from the outset. They’ve effectively sabotaged their own work from the beginning. When a user realizes they can’t access content, they’ll almost undoubtedly abandon the content (as shown by the Click-Away Pound survey). Even if you fix the problem, the damage is done. Treating accessibility as an afterthought is a surefire way to lose a significant portion of your audience.

Read Up on Accessibility Laws in Your Country

of work. Depending on the type of content, you may need to transcribe, add written notes, modify color schemes, or even modify the inputs that people can use to interact with your content. It’s often worthwhile to outsource that work to people who are experienced in those fields.

Accessibility Needs to Be Built into Written Content

Accessibility is largely about providing alternate methods of content consumption and improving the user interface, but written content also must be optimized for accessibility. Written content needs to be carefully and intentionally crafted in order to be as accessible as possible. Elements such as heading structures, page layout and font size all contribute to accessibility. For more on this, the W3C has a list of tips for writing with accessibility in mind.

Non-Text Content Always Needs a Text Alternative

Any sort of visual or audio-based content should always have a text alternative. This doesn’t mean just videos, images and audio—many interface components also require text alternatives. (The search bar is one example.) The W3C has a list of examples on its Accessibility Principles page.

Design for Keyboard-Only Input and Navigation

Accessibility laws vary by country. Even if your country doesn’t impose fines or legal penalties, you still need to understand the laws to make sure your content is compliant. You can find many accessibility laws on the W3C site.

Some users cannot use a mouse or trackpad and rely entirely on the keyboard. As such, the W3C states that sites should provide “keyboard access to all functionality, including form controls, input and other user interface components.” This is a huge aspect of accessibility, so don’t overlook it.

Consider Outsourcing Work to Improve Accessibility

Making your site and marketing as accessible as possible will take a lot

Forms are Often Inaccessible

The humble form is usually an accessibility nightmare. The Journal of Accessibility Studies published a

particularly revealing study: Only 28% of blind users were able to successfully complete an online job application. Because forms and applications aren’t typically designed for accessibility, many users can’t interact with them. When you’re creating forms, be sure to make them just as accessible as all of your other content.

Better Accessibility Means Better SEO

You’ll notice that many of the structures used for accessibility are also used for SEO. For example, specific and meaningful URLs boost SEO, but they also aid users by allowing them to identify what page they’re on. There’s a powerful synergy between accessibility and SEO— the more accessible your site, the healthier your SEO will be.

Design Matters

Beyond content, layout and design matter significantly for accessibility. The colors you use, how you arrange elements on a page and the types of elements that are present are all important to consider. After all, no one will be able to understand your content if the design stops them from doing so. For example, if you use blue and purple text in close proximity, color-blind users may not be able to read it. Lack of accessibility is a growing problem. As marketers, we want to get our content in front of as many people as possible, but how can we truly do that if we ignore accessibility? To make the internet better for everyone, we need to start focusing on accessibility. That means creating and designing with accessibility as a priority. By improving the accessibility of your content, you’ll ensure that it will reach the maximum number of people, and you’ll be doing your part to decrease the digital divide. —TYLER McCONVILLE JUNE / JULY 2019 | MARKETING NEWS

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SPONSORED CONTENT | PROVIDED BY CONFIRMIT

The Case for Keeping People at the Heart of Business Insights BY WALE OMIYALE, SVP OF MARKET RESEARCH AT CONFIRMIT

esearchers and insights teams know that client expectations are growing daily. Traditional market researchers, whether in-house or at agencies, are under immense pressure to deliver their results faster and cheaper. The good news is that automation and AI help deliver quick, lower-cost results. The bad news is that this fuels even greater demand for immediate insights. Two major elements of research—operational and cognitive—are now being partly or fully automated. Creativity is what separates people from technology. Market researchers have always done well at automating process (remember paper scanning?), but there are some key differences in the approach and impact of AI: 1. AI is not confined to a single stage of the life cycle: It’s involved with survey design, sampling, data collection and reporting. Automation tools are becoming available for more complex cognitive techniques as well, including emotional response recognition, multimedia feedback and social media analysis. 2. Researchers can focus elsewhere and specialize: With machines handling the repetitive work, researchers can focus on the more in-depth analytical and creative processes, such as the design of new surveys and methodologies that require human interpretation. Research teams can evolve into specialist hubs, with researchers becoming data scientists and ordinary reports becoming strategic business guidance for C-level executives. Automation also increases the need for project managers with a wider understanding of the many automated steps of the research process. 3. The death of the silo (hopefully!): Automation can promote collaboration, both across survey teams and with external partners and customers. AI brings research content and knowledge into tools used by many teams, teams that may traditionally not have owned the insight process. As a result, they can make immediate positive impacts throughout their organization.

What’s Left for Human Researchers? Marketing insights and research won’t be staffed entirely by robots any time soon. Here’s why: 1. AI and automation don’t create new things: Once enough scenarios are fed through an algorithm, machine learning will be able to create surveys. But they won’t create new approaches to solve new problems. Developing new surveys that react to market dynamics will continue to be a human role for the foreseeable future. 2. They have no instinct: You know that gut feeling that tells you something isn’t right? AI doesn’t have that. People must oversee data quality assurance. This isn’t a statistical exercise as much as it requires an experienced researcher knowing that something is amiss in the data.

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3. Clients will always be people: Human clients will always prefer a human relationship. Most businesses want to work with researchers as partners and trusted advisers, not vendors of data. Clients with real business issues don’t want to only get answers from a dashboard, no matter how sexy the data. They want a person they trust to answer their questions. The developments in automation are driving the insights industry toward a custom model of research. In this model, the needs of clients are met with whatever level of program they require and can be delivered in the timeframe and format most suited to each need. Clients aren’t the only ones who can benefit from a fast turnaround, as automation also benefits researchers through repeatability. The more processes that can be set up and repeated, the more efficient an organization becomes. This boosts productivity and increases the usability of automation tools. Furthermore, when automation is applied to multiple processes across the organization, time and cost savings are magnified. This ease and speed of delivery becomes a differentiating factor against competitors. For some insights users, a new world of ownership—built on automation supported by human researchers—will open. This will take the form of more self-service research programs. This model is proving increasingly popular with companies that need to gather high-level insights quickly. They can use selfservice portals to select the appropriate tools for their project, select the audience or sample and select the type of reporting they need to produce—all from a single source. This shortens timelines and simplifies results-sharing and analysis through easy-access dashboards. This may ring alarm bells for market researchers worried about the diminishing need for their skills. But they can relax. What many companies need is quick insight; sometimes they only want to focus on questions that quickly get to the heart of their enquiry. Automation tools may give them 80% of the information they need in 25% of the time, which makes a justifiable business case for self-service. But there will still be the need for in-depth research programs. A self-serve approach becomes a new layer that sits on top of substantial analysis and insight. The future is bright for creative researchers to think highlevel and holistically. These new professionals will oversee elements, design new methodologies and advise and work with clients as a partner, not a data source. The role of the insights professional is changing, but it’s not a bleak future. Evolution is critical, but extinction is not inevitable.

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SNAPSHOT

What’s truTV? Oh, You Poor Soul. For years, March Madness fans lamented on social media their inability to find college basketball games on lesser-known truTV. In 2018, the network tried to educate them. BY HAL CONICK | STAFF WRITER

 hconick@ama.org Goal In 2011, truTV started airing the First Four games—those between the four lowest-ranked at-large teams—of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament (better known as March Madness). Basketball fans on social media seemed to ask one question in unison: What is truTV? Until 2008, truTV was known as Court TV, airing reality shows and trial coverage—many viewers unfamiliar with truTV may have watched the O.J. Simpson murder trial unfold years prior under its previous name. When Time Warner changed the network’s name to truTV, its focus changed to reality TV before rebranding in 2014 as a comedy network. But no matter the network’s year-round content, each March brought a torrent of taunting basketball fans. “See you in March 2015, @truTV. It’s

been real,” one Twitter user tweeted at the network in March 2014. When truTV rebranded to comedy, the network hired Puja Vohra as its senior vice president of marketing and digital. [Ed. note: Vohra left the network in May.] Before her tenure, the network mostly ignored what Vohra called a “tsunami of hate” from social media users. But she didn’t want truTV’s social media team to simply wait for the storm to pass. “We decided that we [wanted to] clap back and make a little bit more noise,” Vohra says. She chose to use the attention to truTV’s benefit. Social media users don’t often fill a brand’s mentions without an invitation or a terrible misstep by the brand, so engaged users—especially those who aren’t yet fans—were a big opportunity for the network. TruTV’s social media team started

responding to hectoring users, often mocking them with barbs of their own. In 2016, for example, a Twitter user tweeted a chart showing that people only Googled truTV in March. In response, truTV tweeted back a made-up line chart, the line curling into an illustration of a middle finger. “You’re good at interpreting charts! What do you make of this one?” the truTV account tweeted. As truTV continued to respond to social media users each year, Vohra and her team noticed that the negativity was shifting into a fun back-and-forth between the network and those tweeting at them. For the 2018 NCAA tournament, the truTV team and social media marketing agency Movement Strategy decided to soften the communications with a public service announcementstyle campaign called truTV Awareness Month. Instead of trading insults and middle fingers, the network chose to educate new viewers. TruTV Awareness Month expanded beyond social media and included TV ads, free shows on the truTV app and videos starring the network’s talent talking directly to basketball fans. By this point, truTV had many well-regarded comedy shows—“Impractical Jokers” became so successful that it earned syndication in 2017 and “Billy on the Street” received a 2017 Emmy nomination. “We had this arsenal of assets, these custom spots, plus this huge library of great clips and GIFs from our shows,” says Dan Manu, vice president of social and digital at truTV. “We want people to know our brand voice, but also get to know our talent and shows and understand why you really should be aware of us.” Although the tone changed, Vohra says that the plan for the campaign remained the same: Tell people what truTV is about. “The ultimate goal is for us to get people to check out truTV, to come and watch our shows, to become fans of our shows and then eventually become advocates.” Action TruTV Awareness Month started on March 1, 2018, with faux-dramatic public

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answers in action

SNAPSHOT

service announcement commercials— think “the classic Sarah McLachlan [ASPCA ad] with the slow music,” Manu says—airing amid new episodes and marathons of truTV shows. But the heart of the 2018 campaign, Manu says, was truTV’s social media war room. The war room team consisted of writers, freelancers and social listeners sitting side by side from morning until midnight during the week truTV aired March Madness games. “Hoodies and beards,” Manu says, describing the war room. “A lot of hoodies and beards.” The team searched through the thousands of tweets in truTV’s mentions and the #truTVAwarenessMonth hashtag. Manu says that they only wanted to respond to tweets related to confusion about March Madness airing on truTV, prioritizing accounts with a lot of followers or those saying something unique. Manu also wanted the team to have their own unique responses to showcase the network’s creator-driven voice. Most of the network’s shows are driven by creators—for example, Amy Sedaris and Andrea Savage created, produce, write and star in their respective shows, “At Home with Amy Sedaris” and “I’m Sorry”—so Manu had a unique voice in mind for the campaign. Those in the war room responded to thousands of posts across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, shifting to a tone somewhere between pitying and educational. “We wanted to show how we want to help these poor souls who don’t know truTV,” Manu says. On the first day, the war room team came prepared with loose scripts for responses, but Manu wanted them to rely more on their in-the-moment creativity. Even if they created 100 brilliant responses, he says that they’d burn through them in the first two hours. Most people in the war room had comedy training, he says, so they were able to adlib a response, collaborate on edits and quickly respond to badgering social media users. “We don’t want this to go through a five-layer approval process because by that point, it’s too late, it’s not that funny

and we’ve missed the opportunity,” Vohra says. Manu says that he knew the campaign would be successful as soon as he saw the PSA-style ads starring the network’s talent. The talent adlibbed, too—truTV’s creative team went into shoots with about 20 scripts and came back with about 100 pieces of content. When the games kicked off, the war room team simply had fun. “This is the only time of year where I watch TruTV. #MarchMadness,” one user tweeted. “This sad lack of truTV Awareness is heartbreaking,” came the response from truTV’s Twitter account, adding a PSAstyle video featuring stars of the network’s shows. “NEVER make fun of people who suffer from this disorder. BELIEVE THEM. It’s the only sure step towards recovery. #truTVAwarenessMonth.” Results By the end of March, truTV had published 1,418 #truTVAwarenessMonth posts, generating 132,584 social engagements. The network received 72 million impressions on social media and 34 million video views, representing a 42% increase in digital and social video views from the 2017 campaign. There were more new viewers who then watched truTV’s primetime shows, converting 19% in 2018, compared with 6.3% in 2017, according to analysis from Nielsen NPower. The campaign also won a Shorty Award for best television campaign and was a finalist for best integrated campaign. Manu and Vohra noticed that people who responded to truTV now seemed to be in on the joke. When the network responded to a barb, Manu says that people would often respond back that they were already a fan. Other people were now advocating for truTV, recommending their favorite shows on the network to viewers who dared to ask, “What’s truTV?” “The campaign has evolved,” Manu says. “We’ve gotten a fanbase for the campaign itself. Every year, people can’t wait to see how the truTV social team talks back to these people. We’ve moved

COMPANY

truTV FOUNDED

In 1991 as Court TV; rebranded in 2008 as truTV HEADQUARTERS

Atlanta CAMPAIGN TIMELINE

March 2018 CAMPAIGN RESULTS

132,584 social engagements; 75 million social impressions; 34 million video views; a 42% increase in digital and social video views from the 2017 campaign; 19% of new viewers watched truTV primetime shows; winner of the 2019 Shorty Award for best television campaign.

from originally ... a street fight where it’s us fighting these trolls to a boxing match where it’s a spectator sport and no one’s getting hurt and people are coming to watch.” In 2019, truTV made the campaign even friendlier by branding it as, “Welcome to truTV.” Instead of lecturing or educating those who don’t know about truTV, the network welcomed them. Manu says they’ve gone from defensive to “killing them with kindness.” Vohra says that each year, the network gets closer to its goal of winning more fans and seeing less negativity. She believes that there may be at least one more year of a similar campaign; it still works well, she says, especially for how little it costs. As long as truTV has thousands of people tweeting at and about it, Manu says that the network should take advantage. “No matter what, when people are talking,” he says, “it behooves you to talk back to them in one way or another.” m JUNE / JULY 2019 | MARKETING NEWS

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CORE CONCEPTS

of consumers trust the opinions other consumers post online. And although influencer marketing campaigns have been ascendant for the past few years, a report from Stackla finds that consumers deciding on a purchase find UGC 9.8 times more useful than influencers. Additionally, Salesforce finds that ads featuring UGC get five times more clickthroughs than ads without UGC. To run a UGC campaign—or better yet, have a UGC mindset—brands first need a story.

1 6 Tips for Developing a User-Generated Content Mindset Studies show that consumers trust user-generated content. How can marketers make UGC work for their brand? BY HAL CONICK | STAFF WRITER

 hconick@ama.org

n her weekly box of ugly fruit and vegetables from Imperfect Produce, Rachael Samuels noticed a hashtag. It appeared next to a writeup asking customers to take a picture of their produce and post it to social media under the hashtag #cookingugly. Samuels’s initial reaction was not to post, but she kept reading—for every photo posted, Imperfect Produce donates five pounds of food to people in need. It sounded like a big impact for such little effort, so she took a picture and posted it online.“Not only do I know how my [user-generated content] is going to be used, I also know that it’s going toward something good,” Samuels says. “It’s not just self-serving for

more people to buy their products.” User-generated content (UGC) is content created and posted by users online. Samuels, manager of social media at Sprout Social, often works with UGC, sharing what customers have said about Sprout products, as well as tips, tricks and tidbits from the social media management company’s events. Samuels says that she wants Sprout’s UGC to show that the company stands for open communication, that being real and empathetic are the best ways to connect with an audience. Sprout Social and Imperfect Produce aren’t alone in using UGC, and it’s proved to be effective in engaging audiences. Nielsen found that two-thirds

Find Your Story Theme Telling a story unifies the unique consumer voices with the brand voice, Samuels says. Sprout Social’s story is about open communication and empathy, but a brand’s story can be about anything. Think about Imperfect Produce’s story— it’s a subscription box company that wants to quell food waste, so its story frames consumers as role players in reducing food waste. Brands such as REI and Patagonia (both outdoor gear retailers) have stories involving being outside in nature and protecting nature’s resources. These stories all relate to the brand, but also start consumer conversations. Their stories aren’t arcs, plots or endings— they’re themes. These story themes can be invaluable in guiding what kind of UGC fits with the brand and the tone of its posts online. Along with a centralized story theme, Samuels says that it’s a good idea for the brand to have a hashtag that centralizes UGC. “If everything’s aggregated underneath the hashtag or a location tag, that makes it so much easier to find,” she says. “It also makes content so much more discoverable and more likely to catch on.”

Know Where the Emotion Originates Good UGC often expresses a feeling. In a 2019 paper published in the Journal of Marketing Research, Shiri Melumad, J. Jeffrey Inman and Michel Tuan Pham found that consumers who create UGC on smartphones create more emotional

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CORE CONCEPTS

content than those who create content on PCs. The physically constrained nature of smartphone screens drives consumers to create shorter bursts of content that focus on their overall experience and how it made them feel, the researchers found. “To the extent that firms are invested in learning about their customers’ genuine emotional reactions to their product or service, our findings suggest that it would behoove them to focus more on content generated by customers on their smartphones,” says Melumad, an assistant professor of marketing at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Content created on smartphones is more emotional and more positive, as researchers found that the words consumers wrote when creating UGC on smartphones were 10 times more positive than negative. “It’s kind of surprising,” says Inman, a professor of marketing and business administration, as well as dean for research and faculty, at the University of Pittsburgh. To take advantage of this increased emotion, Inman suggests that brands use social listening programs to find what consumers are posting about the brand, as well as what device they’re using to post. Then, brands should consider giving more weight to the content posted through smartphones. People pay more attention to more emotional content online, Inman says, and tend to be better persuaded. Melumad says that consumers writing on

smartphones are limited by the space, but so are smartphone readers, what Inman calls a “double-whammy.”

Ask Before Sharing Samuels says that companies should ask permission before using UGC from consumers. Asking permission can prevent any hiccups or anger from people who didn’t want their comments shared widely. Asking also gives companies a chance to connect with people who create UGC about them. “You should be asking about their experience and about their story and getting some details to provide more color and context as you share,” Samuels says. “I also think that not outlining expectations up front—asking for something with no incentive or no context into how their content is going to be used in return—can really suck.”

Cross-Promote and Share Adjacent Content Cross-promoting with clients, consumers and others can be a great part of a UGC campaign, says Bernard May, founder and CEO of internet marketing company National Positions. “Work by the philosophy of doing well by doing good,” he says. “At the onset of your cross-promotion collaboration, it’s a good idea to outline the order of operations and expectations. For example, [say], ‘We will write this article, share it on this site and link it to this page by

this date.’ Strive for the same written commitment from the other party. This will help you find out from the beginning if this is a worthwhile collaboration. Remember: Your time is valuable.” In addition, Samuels says that sharing brand-adjacent content can be a good way to engage consumers. Like UGC shared by the brand, this adjacent content— articles, videos, infographics and case studies by outsiders—should fit the brand’s story. She cites REI as an example; the company will frequently share articles on nature that other people have written as part of its #OptOutside campaign.

Avoid Influencers Influencers, while trendy, won’t lend the same credibility to a UGC campaign, Samuels says. Social media managers who find good UGC should always ensure it’s not coming from an influencer, who can come across as less authentic because readers may assume that they have been paid for their words. To figure out who may be an influencer, Samuels says that she looks for the “#ad” hashtag on the person’s social media timeline. She also looks to see what else that person regularly posts about—if someone regularly features products in their posts, such as different kinds of soaps or scrubs, Samuels says that she worries they may be an influencer and will appear less genuine.

How to Start a UGC Campaign Unlike marketing campaigns that can take a metric-based, studied approach, May says that you never know what may inspire discussion from your audience. A well-guided UGC approach, therefore, will take some experimentation. “So, start talking,” May says. “Not every topic or question will resonate and not everybody will agree, but just getting the conversation started is a huge success.” May suggests testing your UGC by posting a question to each social media platform to see how the audience reacts. “You may have just found the best platform to gain UGC for that particular topic.” m

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answers in action

ETHICAL MARKETING

Disincentivizing Metrics-Counting Marketers should learn from Wells Fargo’s mistakes and avoid incentivizing hollow counts BY SARAH STEIMER | MANAGING EDITOR

 ssteimer@ama.org

histleblowers from Boeing’s South Carolina factory claimed this spring that plane safety was compromised by production issues: metal slivers hanging over wiring, tools or other debris left inside jets. In some cases, the whistleblowers said that their bosses knew of quality violations, but were incentivized to focus on speed. Boeing is the latest company to

unintentionally incentivize bad behavior by focusing on a particular metric, rather than how it could ethically reach its overarching goals. Wells Fargo is another well-known example: A 2016 investigation found that Wells Fargo employees opened new accounts for existing customers without their authorization, the result of workers being evaluated and paid based on how many

new accounts they opened. Or consider educational goals linked to test scores, leading schools to “teach to the test” and not emphasize a well-rounded education. Maurice Schweitzer, a professor at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, says that when a company or manager creates a metric, the result may be measurable, but it may not be the desired outcome.“We, as managers, need to be very careful to make sure that the culture doesn’t communicate the idea that the objectives come first, and the integrity of the organization comes second,” Schweitzer says. The Problem with Quantitative Goals In his research, Schweitzer, co-author of Friend & Foe: When to Cooperate, When to Compete, and How to Succeed at Both, found that goals can be motivating, but

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ETHICAL MARKETING

can cause people to cut corners. “When we have these kinds of incentives in place, people are super motivated to hit that target, but they might either fudge numbers or do things to misrepresent their performance, [or] they might engage in unethical behavior to achieve a particular goal,” he says. Marketers often measure their progress through such quantitative goals, particularly in digital advertising. But these numbers don’t always tell a full story about the quality of the data. Exchangebased digital ad buys have created a “weirdly incentivized market,” says Kevin Stalder, vice president of client services at Trust Metrics, a brand safety planning tool for programmatic advertising. Because there’s an endless demand for digital ad metrics, such as views, companies have raced to place their ads anywhere on the internet—including on platforms that post false or misleading information. Stalder references Goodhart’s law, which states that when a measure becomes a target, it’s no longer a good measure. “[Marketers] can kind of be duped into these fallacies of, hey, viewability is a good thing,” Stalder says. “Let’s just drive everything toward viewability. Much like the Wells Fargo case, if you want people to open accounts, that’s what you’re going to get—you just may not like how they’re going to get there.” Some companies have the goal of running digital campaigns that have extremely high viewability rates, but Stadler says, “You have to ask yourself: ‘How are these guys constantly doubling what the average site would realistically be doing?’” The answer: ad clutter. For example, four ads may be placed above the fold on a webpage. Once you read down the page and click “next,” there may be another two ads. Perhaps there are six ads per page on four pages of content. “In an Excel spreadsheet, that site’s going to look great because you’re going to have really good performance, lots of ads served almost all in view,” Stalder says. But more companies, such as Trust

Metrics, are beginning to ask whether these are worthwhile metrics. The user may have seen a high number of ads, but it wasn’t a good experience. “The low-ad clutter sites have the highest click-through rates. There’s an inverse relationship there.” An April 2017 guest post on Marketing Land by Ipsos U.S. President Peter Minnium explored the “perverse incentives” of digital marketing. “While the sell side of the industry has woken up to the perils of perverse incentives, with efforts like the Coalition for Better Ads, the real driver of change will come from marketers who clearly articulate objectives that drive the right behaviors from the start,” Minnium wrote. Using the example of ad viewability, it’s obvious that viewed ads have greater consumer engagement, simply because

matters,” he says. Two: Be transparent, so that the company and consumers see that process matters. Schweitzer cautions against management by objectives—“I tell you what I want, here’s the goal, I don’t care how you get there.” Instead, company leaders must clearly articulate that they care how goals are reached. Otherwise, the firm risks fostering a climate where employees feel like they’re playing a game. “You shouldn’t have a whistleblower that has to tell the world that your priorities are screwed up,” Schweitzer says. “It’s also long-term versus shortterm thinking. That is, what’s the longterm health of the organization?” Incentivizing one metric—clicks, views or other tallied units—can cause employees to ignore some other

Nobody really cares about a viewed ad. We’re not here to just sell advertising. We’re here to actually drive business. a reader cannot engage with an ad they don’t see. But correlation isn’t causation. While viewability is measurable, the real goal is conversion. “That’s how you get into the Wells Fargo situation where, yes, you’re opening bank accounts, you’re getting viewed ads, but it’s being done in a way that’s inorganic and therefore it’s not actually driving the real numbers you want,” Stadler says. “Nobody really cares about a viewed ad. We’re not here to just sell advertising. We’re here to actually drive business.” Leading with Quality Goals It’s up to company management to maintain quality goals that incentivize the ethical action, rather than keep a tally on empty results. Schweitzer underscores two management actions. One: Communicate strong values. “We might have goals— sales goals or some production targets— but you need to communicate at all levels that the ethics and integrity of what we do

key parts of the process in favor of hitting quantitative goals for reward. A focus on these counts runs the risk of disincentivizing a team’s creativity or teamwork, for example. Digital marketers may need to loosen their grip on certain measurements and start embracing more qualitative goalposts. For example, Stalder recommends taking a greater stand against bad publishers and partnering with companies that can help them create whitelists of reliable websites. Brand viewability on these reputable sites are both more ethical and more likely to result in higher conversion. “You’re going to cut out a little bit of good inventory by doing that,” Stalder says. “But that’s the ethical obligation that we’re faced with right now. And if everybody does it, if everybody suffers 5%, but we strangle out the incentive to create any kind of fake publishing environment, everybody would win in the end.” m

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scholarly insights

MARKET RESEARCH

How to Make Your Market Research Deliver More Value Despite organizations knowing how important customer insights are to their development, they aren’t doing enough to integrate market research into their decision-making BY GARY F. GEBHARDT, FRANCIS J. FARRELLY AND JODIE CONDUIT

ome 75% of senior executives believe that customer insight is critical to firm performance and cite it as one of the top two capabilities their companies need to develop. Despite this, only 30% of these organizations integrate market intelligence into their core

decisions. Why is that, and how can firms capitalize on the wealth of information they possess at their fingertips? Large firms understand that market research is critical for successful strategic planning and program implementation. That’s why they make significant,

ongoing investments in market research and hire market research (or insights) directors to oversee programs and research dissemination. But past studies have established that it’s very different to promote and sustain employee engagement with market research, the key to ensuring effective knowledge transfer. Consequently, firms struggle to reap a return on their investment. Our new study in the Journal of Marketing finds that while organizations understand the “why” of market intelligence, they are struggling with the “how”—managing how it is generated, shared and responded to across the organization. Our research team conducted a qualitative study that included: 1. Reviewing two extended case studies. 2. Interviewing 35 insights directors (IDs) at major multinational product and

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MARKET RESEARCH

service firms representing a wide range of industries. 3. Engaging at practitioner conferences and workshops. 4. An extensive analysis of industry and company reports on research use and of intranets containing commissioned research and research-focused case studies. 5. A follow-up survey of 60 IDs to validate our findings. We found that these professionals use five dissemination practices that either update and reinforce organizational schemas (mental models) of the market or create new, shared schemas of the market. This is important because as a schema is used over time, it becomes more deeply embedded and resists change, unless a person realizes that it’s inaccurate and using it has negative consequences. The five dissemination practices these

experts used were distribution, resource centralization, consultative selling, empathic learning and experiential learning. These practices are also distinguished by how they activate learning using market research. We categorized practice metaphors, the role of the ID, the role of intelligence users, the relationship with an organizationally shared market schema and examples of each practice. The first three practices reinforce an existing shared mental model of the market, categorized as schema updates, while the last two practices replace the existing model with a new shared mental model of the market, categorized as schema change practices. The five practices are not mutually exclusive, as all survey participants mentioned using more than one. In our survey of 60 IDs, 97% said that they used at least one of the schema update practices, and 77% said that they used at least one of the schema change practices. Many of the IDs were aware of the limitations of schema update practices, categorizing dissemination as transactions or project management. Less successful practices were stopped or modified only when a new ID arrived, or financial pressures exposed related problems. In terms of schema update practices, 95% of IDs used distribution practices, and 86% used them regularly or frequently; 78% used resource centralization practices, with 65% using them regularly or frequently; and 87% used consultative selling practices, with 50% using them regularly and 25% using them frequently. While IDs used schema change practices less regularly or frequently—34% for empathic learning and 25% for experiential learning practices—they were more certain that they would result in end users understanding and using the disseminated intelligence. With empathic learning, IDs used ethnographic storytelling and other methods to transport users into the contextualized life of customers, enabling them to

scholarly insights

understand customer needs and desires. With experiential learning, employees participated in immersive experiences and were encouraged to verify and add to their new schemas by meeting partners, channels and customers in person. Our research shows that the existence (or absence) of an organizationally shared mental model of the market is crucial in explaining the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of different market intelligence dissemination practices. If firms do not have a shared understanding of the market that staff can draw on to make sense of market research, they will ignore the research. Moreover, firms that do not have a shared understanding of the market can disseminate market research across the firm for years with very little use or impact. Our research highlights that firms must recognize their current state in terms of whether a shared mental model of the market exists and, if not, they must create one. They must employ a mix of these market research dissemination practices to not only ensure the company-wide dissemination of market intelligence, but when necessary to employ them to redevelop the mental model of the market when that market shifts and a new shared understanding is required. Significantly, our findings also indicate that in addition to being experts on market intelligence, market research directors must also understand how organizations learn and establish ways to create shared meaning structures that enable disseminated intelligence to be understood and used within organizations. m GARY F. GEBHARDT is an associate professor in the department of marketing at HEC Montréal, Canada.

FRANCIS J. FARRELLY is a professor of marketing in the school of economics, finance and marketing at RMIT University, Australia.

JODIE CONDUIT is an associate professor of marketing in the Adelaide Business School at the University of Adelaide, Australia.

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scholarly insights

RESEARCH DIGEST

Research Digest from AMA Journals Service Robots Rising: How Humanoid Robots Influence Service Experiences and Elicit Compensatory Consumer Responses MARTIN MENDE, MAURA L. SCOTT, JENNY VAN DOORN, DHRUV GREWAL, ILANA SHANKS

Forthcoming in Journal of Marketing Research, 56 (August 2019). >>IN A NUTSHELL: Interactions

between consumers and humanoid service robots (HSRs, i.e., robots with a human-like morphology such as a face, arms and legs) will soon be part of normal marketplace experiences. The authors find that consumers favor purchasing status goods, seek social affiliation, and order and eat more food when they interact with a service robot. But the uncanny valley of similarity to human features can trigger discomfort.

>>PRACTITIONER TAKEAWAYS: The

authors caution that consumer discomfort can undermine customer satisfaction and loyalty. Therefore, they write that managers should proceed with caution and segment consumers, assigning â&#x20AC;&#x153;human employees to customers who are more likely to fall into technophobe segments but offer HSRs to their technophile peers.â&#x20AC;? That said, HSRs can provide benefits: Pairing HSRs with healthy food settings could help prevent an increase in caloric intake and offer opportunities for upselling, such as in settings where consumers choose between base and premium products.

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RESEARCH DIGEST

Building Customer Loyalty in Intercultural Service Encounters: The Role of Service Employees’ Cultural Intelligence

What Influences Consumer Evaluation of Genetically Modified Foods?

NICHOLAS G. PAPAROIDAMIS, HUONG THI THANH TRAN, CONSTANTINOS N. LEONIDOU

Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 38 (April 2019), 263-279.

Journal of International Marketing, 27 (June 2019), 56-75. The authors examine how frontline employees’ cultural intelligence (CQ) influences customer loyalty outcomes of service quality perceptions.

>>IN A NUTSHELL:

NGUYEN PHAM, NAOMI MANDEL

Climb or Jump: StatusBased Seeding in UserGenerated Content Networks ANDREAS LANZ, JACOB GOLDENBERG, DANIEL SHAPIRA, FLORIAN STAHL

Journal of Marketing Research, 56 (June 2019), 361-378

>>PRACTITIONER TAKEAWAYS: Firms should aim to recruit service employees who can function effectively in cross-cultural interactions, fostering cultural empathy and sharing this with customers. Human resources managers should familiarize themselves with the concept of CQ and then integrate specialized tools to evaluate the three CQ components (cognitive, emotional/motivational and physical) of potential applicants during the screening process.

scholarly insights

>>IN A NUTSHELL: Using a

music-sharing platform, the authors investigate how unknown music creators expand their follower base through directing outbound activities to other users (seeding). They find that the responsiveness of seeding targets strongly declines with lack of status. Thus, unknown music creators (the majority) do not generally benefit from seeding influencers. Rather, “climbing,” or moving up the ladder slowly by gaining followers who are closer in status, is more effective than “jumping,” or attempting to influence much-higherstatus influencers.

>>PRACTITIONER TAKEAWAYS: For small and medium-sized businesses, seeding influencers may not be cost-effective. The authors find that the expected return on influencers is actually lower than on ordinary individuals.

>>IN A NUTSHELL: Genetically

modified (GM) foods have attracted a great deal of controversy— some consumers and organizations regard GM foods as safe, but many others remain concerned about their potential health risks. The authors find that consumers respond differently to persuasive messages according to their preexisting attitudes. Weak anti-GM consumers tend to comply with a variety of pro-GM messages, but strong anti-GM consumers exhibit message-opposing behavior and respond just as negatively to a safety message (claiming that GM foods are safe) as to a risk message (claiming that GM foods are unsafe). The most effective message for these strong anti-GM consumers is a message emphasizing the nutritious value of GM foods.

From Fantasy to Reality: The Role of Fantasy Sports in Sports Betting and Online Gambling DAVID M. HOUGHTON, EDWARD L. NOWLIN, DOUG WALKER

Forthcoming in Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 38 (July 2019). >>IN A NUTSHELL: Pay-

to-play (P2P) fantasy sports participation is growing rapidly. But the combination of its resemblance to gambling and its exemption from regulation has created a significant public policy concern. The authors study the relationship between sports fandom, fantasy sports and gambling and find that playing P2P fantasy sports leads to higher levels of sports betting and online gambling.

>>PRACTITIONER TAKEAWAYS: A message that GM foods are beneficial and more nutritious than their conventional counterparts is a better alternative for strong anti-GM consumers than a safety message. Marketers may be able to use these guidelines when crafting messages to convince people staunchly opposed to their product, service or idea.

>>PRACTITIONER TAKEAWAYS: Watch for new fantasy sports regulations and be aware that simply participating can increase the chances of engaging in gambling.

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executive insights

HEADLINE WRITING

Write Headlines That Win Clicks and Drive Traffic With These 5 Headline Best Practices BY ANDY CRESTODINA

 andy@orbitmedia.com

hink back to the last thing your brand published. Did it get much traffic? Some people may have read it, but others scrolled past. Either found in their inbox or social stream, whether they clicked was determined by the headline. As you read this, your target audience is scanning through headlines on websites and in apps. For each headline they see, they’re doing a split-second cost-benefit

calculation. They’re deciding whether a headline is worth clicking and if the content is worth their time. We need to ask if our headlines are doing everything possible to help readers choose our content. The headline needs to make the benefit specific and valuable, and the cost to the reader small. If not, we won’t win that visit in the ultracompetitive context of content. Here are five ways we can drive

up perceived benefits and reduce the perceived costs in every headline.

Make a Promise “The pulling power of a magnetic headline traces to its promise,” says Barry Feldman, blogging expert and headlinewriting master. “Simply stated, it’s a benefit.” When the headline makes a specific promise, the reader can see the value. We need to give up the clever but vague headlines and make clear the benefits of clicking. The reader is asking, “What’s in it for me?” and the headline must answer. The answer must be specific. We should be able to place the words “This article will show you” before the headline and form a complete sentence. When the headline is a focused spotlight on the most compelling, surprising or useful part of the article, the reader has a better reason to invest their time. If there’s an “aha” moment inside, the headline should serve as a preview.

Write Long Headlines Research from BuzzSumo found that long headlines drive engagement, at least when they appear in social posts.

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HEADLINE WRITING

The headlines with the most Facebook engagement (likes, comments and shares) were 15 words on average. This makes sense when you think about the psychology of the reader. More words mean more opportunities to indicate a benefit. It’s a chance to add another phrase in parentheses or after a colon. It’s enough room to write a second headline right after the first one, indicating more value.

We need to ask if our headlines are doing everything possible to help readers choose us and our content. The headline needs to make the benefit specific and valuable, and the cost to the readers small.

Push the Value to the Front of the Headlines Length can be an issue. In mobile inboxes, the reader may see just 45 characters. In search results, title tags get cut off after about 60 characters. That’s why the most impactful words of the headline, and the gist of the benefits, should often appear at the beginning. Even when truncation isn’t an issue, readers will scan your headline from the beginning. Placing eye-stopping words toward the beginning makes them more likely to be seen and clicked.

Use Numbers LinkedIn found that headlines with numbers have 37% higher clickthrough rates. That data confirmed what many marketers have known for years.

Numbers tell the reader the content can be easily scanned. If the article includes seven ways they can work with influencers, it will be easy to find one or two that are useful to them. This lessens the cost of the click. Numerals, not just numbers, are part of the magic. In a line of letters, numerals stand out. A headline written as “eight things” instead of “8 things” is a missed

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opportunity to make the headline more visible. Spelled out numbers also eat up your character count, which is important when the headline can be cut short in a mobile inbox.

Write Many, Choose One Professionals aren’t writing a single headline, but many. For any article, you should write a dozen or more. Write several options for each posting location: title tags, headers and subject lines. Once you have at least a dozen, pick the best few and try them on social media. Whichever has the best engagement is the winner and can be used as your next email subject line. The battle for attention online is intense. Winning that click depends on the headline. It’s impossible to overstate their importance. We are all judged instantly and ruthlessly by this short set of words. Work hard on your next headline—your reader’s attention is worth fighting for. m ANDY CRESTODINA is the co-founder and CMO of Orbit Media. He’s an international keynote speaker and the author of Content Chemistry: The Illustrated Handbook for Content Marketing.

COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS OF A HEADLINE YES

Click!

• Open inbox • View social stream

See headline

Benefit > 2 seconds of attention?

View article

• See search results

Scan/ Scroll

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executive insights

MARKETING DILEMMAS

The Positives and Negatives of Marketing Weighing industry pros and cons from a marketing professor’s perspective

BY JAKKI MOHR

 jakki.mohr@business.umt.edu

arketing strategy plays an important role in any entity’s success—or lack thereof. Marketing requires astute monitoring of trends across many

domains: changes in sociocultural values, emerging technologies that can be tapped (or ignored at one’s peril), new business models based on platforms and the sharing economy,

to name a few. Developing strategies that resonate with the firm’s customer base, are in tune with the cultural zeitgeist, and that authentically reflect the organization’s values are essential elements of effective marketing. When used to its best potential, marketing offers products and services that solve meaningful problems customers face, helps new technologies and solutions achieve their potential, and contributes to solving social and environmental challenges to create a better world. On the flip side, I experience more than a little angst about the social and environmental problems to which marketing has contributed. Although the list of such problems may be long, I’m especially concerned about the

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MARKETING DILEMMAS

role of data analytics and increasingly sophisticated behavioral algorithms that contribute to excess consumer consumption, which can generate an endless waste stream of unwanted products, packaging, plastics and trash, leading to environmental degradation. This tension is very personal: I teach a course on data analytics, epitomized by using data to better tailor offers to customers to prompt them to buy more. I also have a research stream on the role business plays in restoring degraded landscapes, the opportunity business has to learn from nature in developing sustainable innovations, and new strategies for business to become not just “net-zero,” but net-positive. Business has a responsibility to give back to nature so it can continue to provide the ecosystem services upon which human life is dependent, such as clean air, water and soil. The clash of good and bad is inherent in marketing. Marketing can contribute to a better world: framing consumer choices to facilitate healthier lifestyles, using data analytics for important social causes, developing new business models that regenerate and restore degraded ecosystems. Conversely, marketing contributes to unhealthy, unsustainable behaviors: offering fruit-flavored vaping products to children, using data in ways that violate consumer privacy and placing profits before people and the environment. I believe that in our important roles as teachers and scholars, we cannot be blind to these tensions; rather, we must illuminate these paradoxes. For example, in our teaching role, we can prepare the next generation of leaders to recognize and appreciate the positive and negative roles marketing plays in society. We can spark meaningful debate,

encourage thoughtful reflection, and offer frameworks and tools to assist in navigating trade-offs. We can urge our students to appreciate interdisciplinary perspectives in other domains—such as ecology, climate science or environmental philosophy—that can inform the tensions. We can encourage our students to develop their own moral compasses and philosophical beliefs to articulate a point of view in a compelling, persuasive fashion. Essentially, we should equip them with the skills and tools necessary to consider competing demands in a thoughtful way. In our role as scholars, we can ask provocative questions, develop risk assessment frameworks and consider unintended consequences. The marketing discipline undoubtedly has important scholarly foundations in this type of inquiry, including exploring “the dark sides” of marketing and bringing a public policy, macro-marketing or quality-of-life perspective. In addition, we can look to other disciplines for meaningful theories and methods. For example, sustainability science, theories of deep ecology and social-ecological systems might offer new lenses through which we may inform our study of these tensions. Ultimately, I look forward to seeing the forthcoming articles in the special Better Marketing for a Better World issue of the Journal of Marketing. This edition signals the obligation marketing scholars have to leverage our skills and knowledge to address the wicked problems facing our world in the coming years. m

executive insights

The clash of good and bad is inherent in marketing. Marketing can contribute to a better world. Conversely, marketing contributes to unhealthy, unsustainable behaviors.

JAKKI J. MOHR is the Regents Professor of Marketing, the Poe Family Distinguished Faculty Fellow and Fellow at the Institute on Ecosystems at the University of Montana.

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executive insights

DATA DEVELOPMENTS

What Marketers Need to Know About Innovations in Data BY FINN RABEN

 finn@esomar.org

ata and analytics are constantly evolving, whether through technology, new understandings of consumer psychology or regulations and legislation. With so much going on, it can be difficult for marketers to keep track of developments that may come to impact their work in the future. What do marketers need to know? Artificial Intelligence is Maturing The data and research sector is awash with buzzwords and phrases, one of which is artificial intelligence. In recent years, AI was used as a catch-all for various technological products and systems that used elements of machine learning and automation to streamline back-end processes and operations. However, true AI is now maturing in the industry and is likely to have a huge impact on data collection and analysis. The value we now see in AI is in the adjustment of scale. In particular, it has game-changing applications in the field of qualitative research. Historically, focus groups—or newer online communities— have been constrained to participant sizes based on the logistics of moderation. Now, companies such as Remesh are using AI moderators to run online, real-time qualitative research with respondents numbering in the hundreds, rather than the tens. AI also has significant applications in analyzing text analytics, whether through open-ended text responses in quant surveys, social media listening or examining responses from computer-

assisted telephone interviewing techniques. AI revitalizes data that was sometimes discarded because it was not recorded by phone interviewers; would cause challenges in manually coding answers; or was believed to be too vast, fast and variable. Research agencies will be able to provide additional qualitative context from quantitative surveys, creating richer insights for their clients. We’re also seeing AI applied to social prediction. Brands such as PepsiCo are using AI to track and analyze social media conversations and sentiment, as well as to combine that information with weather, search and government data to recognize potential trends ahead of the pack and inform new product lines. AI was billed for many years as a gamechanger in data analytics and market research. We’re now seeing that promise fulfilled. System 3 Thinking The market research industry has long been the bridge between academic consumer psychology and commercial application. You’re probably aware of implications of System 1 and System 2 decisionmaking. These systems were developed by psychologist and Nobel Prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman. System 1 decisions are the fast, instinctive and emotional decisions our unconscious brain makes when first encountering a stimulus, while System 2 decisions are the conscious brain’s slower, more deliberative and logical rationalization of a choice.

When you see a product on the shelf in a supermarket, your System 1 self decides which product is more desirable, based on the immediate emotional reaction to the packaging or brand. Your System 2 brain then rationalizes that decision based on factors such as cost. System 1 decision-making is a core element of behavioral economics and is a key way we make purchase decisions. However, new work in neuroscience and psychology has uncovered another way of making choices: with imagination. Leigh Caldwell, a behavioral economist at the Irrational Agency, has termed this kind of decision-making as System 3 choices. System 3 uses a different part of the brain than Systems 1 and 2. It applies to how you imagine a product or service may make you feel after purchase. When you buy clothes, for example, you’ll imagine not only what you look like in them, but how they might make you feel and how they might make others feel to see you in them. You’re most likely to choose the clothes you imagine you’ll feel best wearing. System 3 imagination combines past and present experience with possible futures and works out which it enjoys most. Systems 1 and 2 decision-making still has its place in how we make consumer choices, but we may find that System 3 completes the decision paradigm, certainly until further breakthroughs in consumer psychology. Data Legislation on the Fast Track to Change International marketers working in Europe will understand some of the disruption caused by the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation last May. Whatever your thoughts on GDPR and data legislation—and regardless of whether you work internationally—it’s worth getting organized as soon as possible. The European Union designed the GDPR legislation to be a framework for facilitating the development of the global digital economy. After one year, we’re already seeing similar legislation in Japan, South Korea and elsewhere. There

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DATA DEVELOPMENTS

is no single U.S. law that governs all data processing, but most states have adopted one or more privacy laws. However, we’re seeing a significant increase in the number of changes and conversations around data protection in the U.S. Much has been said about the California Consumer Privacy Act, which will come into effect on Jan. 1, 2020, and there are numerous privacy bills being proposed at both state and federal levels. It is safe to assume that the already complex landscape will be increasingly difficult to navigate. There is also the European Copyright Directive, a piece of legislation that—if left unchecked—would have meant that anyone conducting social media listening and text analysis would have had to pay

executive insights

each author an amount for using their text. Thankfully, ESOMAR’s efforts with EU lawmakers have ensured an industrywide exemption for market research. It’s difficult to say what legislative changes might be in the pipeline, but what can be said for certain is that change is coming. Take this opportunity to assess your data practices and future-proof your organization. m FINN RABEN is director general of ESOMAR. He has spent most of his career in market research, previously working at Millward Brown IMS in Dublin, Nielsen, TNS and Synovate. Raben serves as an external examiner at the International School of Management in Avans University in the Netherlands.

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STRATEGIC INSIGHT

Help Your Insights Team Deliver Insights teams that are allowed to play strategic roles in organizations have proved their importance to direction and growth. But overall, they’re underused. BY DAVID SMITH AND BV PRADEEP

s marketers, you know that data can be an incredibly valuable tool to guide new developments, hit new demographics and understand consumer needs. But as with the marketing team, insights teams have a huge amount of pressure to prove the ROI. ESOMAR, the global association for data and insight, embarked on a study to explore return on research investment in customer insight. It conducted in-depth interviews with insight leaders in major

organizations—including Diageo, eBay, Heineken, Microsoft, Pepsi and Nissan— and extensively researched existing literature. ESOMAR found that in regard to assessing ROI, no organization feels that it has discovered the perfect solution, although many are comfortable with the approach they’re taking. Most organizations—whether they endeavor to attribute formal, precise ROI metrics to insight, use metrics selectively or are openly resistant to formal ROI

assessment—feel that a silver-bullet solution is almost impossible. But there is a universal agreement across global industry leaders that insights teams need to ensure a position within an organization that allows them to play a strategic role, not just a tactical one. The success of the insights team in many organizations is symbiotic to that of the marketing team. ROI will be clearer and growth easier if you support your insights team and get the best out of it, tactically and strategically. PILLAR ONE

Focus on value creation. The core purpose of an internal customer insights team is to add value. Ensure that it constantly acts with intentionality to deliver this purpose.

The primary role of insight is to futureproof the organization, equipping it to deal with disruption and change. Make

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STRATEGIC INSIGHT

sure your insights team is the go-to team when it comes to identifying and outlining the implications of powerful strategic foresights. Insight should not be boxed into the corner of being perceived as a reactive, market-research, ordertaking cost center. • STRATEGIC FORESIGHT: Insight should build a reputation for being able to quickly seize critical opportunities that lie at the heart of driving value and growth in the business. • PROACTIVE, NOT REACTIVE: Rather than approach the insights team for reactive market research for business decisions, get the team involved straightaway and provide its members room to look for trends and developments that can grow the business. • COMMERCIAL ACUMEN: The insights team needs to demonstrate the business impact that customer insight is having on the business. By showcasing business acumen and commercial awareness, the insights team becomes a value creator. Clarify this expectation and provide the necessary support. PILLAR TWO

Ensure the insights team has access to the C-suite and business strategy. This will allow it to deliver powerful customer insights.

It is important for insights to be connected with the C-suite. This keeps the team aware of the organization’s business vision and future strategy and will ensure customer insights inform business thinking. This positioning will also help customer insight professionals gain access to all sources of data we now use to derive a customer insight. • CUSTOMER CENTRICITY: Insight should guide the business’s consumer behavior strategy. Make sure that when the data behind a decision is being presented to the C-suite, the insights team is involved, providing the opportunity to bring the voice of the consumer into the boardroom.

The success of the insights team in many organizations is symbiotic to that of the marketing team. ROI will be clearer and growth easier if you support your insights team and get the best out of it, tactically and strategically. • HOLISTIC ANALYSIS LEADERSHIP:

•

Has the insights team secured access to all customer insights data available within the business? Is it building a reputation as the expert of integrating the evidence into a holistic picture to tell the customer story? BEING AN INSIGHTS CHAMPION: Use your position to build a reputation as being the insights champion. Insights teams should have the strategic vision and forensic energy to unearth powerful insights that tell us how best to change and influence customer behavior. By providing the space, resources and encouragement to the insights team, it can lead the way to use digital-, AI- and machine learninggenerated insights.

PILLAR THREE

Show the value of insights through a mix of success criteria, not just ROI.

• TELLING THE INSIGHT STORY: Are you

telling insight success stories, those that demonstrate the value of insight? Where are you in terms of deploying innovative communications techniques to demonstrate the way insight is setting the future direction of the business?

• CREATING A LEARNING ORGANIZATION: Is the team taking responsibility for creating a learning organization with insights at the center of an agile, customer-centric culture that is capable of continually adapting to change? The insights team can be a powerful tool for any business, but many insights teams are underused and underappreciated. These are teams fundamentally geared toward direction and growth. To get the most out of your insights team, you must collaborate with them. It’s important to provide support, but it’s equally vital to ensure that your expectations are clear. Transparent, collaborative work can transform a business. m

You should be confident that benchmarks and ROI-style metrics are not the only ways the insights team is being evaluated by senior stakeholders. These measures have a role to play, but they only provide a narrow assessment. The key is to use a mix of hard and soft measures. There was widespread concern that going down the ROI route would box customer insights into the corner as a cost center, rather than a value creator. Ask yourself these questions:

DVL Smith.

• RESISTING THE TYRANNY OF METRICS:

Director Adam Phillips, ESOMAR North

How close are you to hitting the sweet spot between ROI metrics and using more qualitative measures to show the success and effectiveness of insight?

American Ambassador Reg Baker and

DAVID SMITH is founder and director of BV PRADEEP is global vice president of consumer and market insights at Unilever.

The ESOMAR project was led by Smith and ESOMAR Director General Finn Raben. Their work also included Real Research

Heart Data President Vanessa Oshima. In addition, Pradeep has been closely involved as the ESOMAR council member overseeing the project.

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CMO SURVEY

The CMO Survey: Top Marketing Trends of the Decade

The mission of The CMO Survey is to collect and disseminate the opinions of top marketers in order to predict the future of markets, track marketing excellence and improve the value of marketing in firms and in society

BY CHRISTINE MOORMAN AND LAUREN KIRBY

he CMO Survey annually collects critical data and deep insight into how marketers view the industry’s future, how they are investing in business and workforce growth and how they are evolving marketing practices. Given the survey’s recent 10-year anniversary, it’s a good time to reflect on the trends that have dominated the marketing industry in the past decade and what to expect moving forward. While this isn’t a complete list of trends captured over the past decade, these findings can offer plenty of insight to marketers. These are The CMO Survey’s top 15 trends of the past 10 years.

Companies Focus Their Growth Spending on Market Penetration Spending on existing markets and offerings has dominated marketing spending for the past 10 years. This dominance increases as companies continue to shift away from product or service development toward market penetration, which is likely a reaction to CMO concerns that a recession is approaching. The figure to the right shows the February 2009 results of The CMO Survey compared with the results from February 2019. The distribution of spending has remained relatively constant. While entering new markets is a priority, the reality is that building the existing market, products and services provides CMOs with a safer path to growth than building new markets and offerings. Keep in mind that in February 2009, the world was still in a recession. Similarly, in February 2019,

Companies focus on market penetration to boost growth Investment in growth strategies (% of companies) SPENDING ON GROWTH IN PAST 12 MONTHS* Growth strategy

Feb. 2009

Feb. 2019

Market penetration

49.8%

55.1%

Product/service development

25.2%

21.8%

Market development

16.6%

13.5%

Diversification

8.4%

9.6%

*% of spending for each growth strategy

the C-suite is increasingly preoccupied with a volatile economy and possible approaching recession and is taking defensive measures to prepare for it. Marketers rated having the right

Acquisition of New Customers Dominates Marketers’ Expectations When asked what customer outcomes marketers expected would change in the coming 12 months, marketers have said since 2013 that they foresee increased acquisition of new customers. February’s survey showed 71.9% hold this view. Marketers

talent as the most important factor driving revenue growth in 2018, ranking it higher than having the right data, technology and operating model.

regularly report that they believe this increased acquisition of new customers will dwarf increases in customer retention, purchase volume or customer price paid per unit. Therefore, it seems fitting that 74% of respondents in the February survey said that they use channel partners to go to market in order to meet this opportunity.

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Domestic Marketing Spending Remains Majority of Marketing Budget Throughout the survey’s history, companies have spent most of their marketing budgets on domestic marketing rather than global. Companies continue to turn inward as they spend more on domestic markets over time— the survey finds an almost 10% increase since 2012. This finding aligns with growth spending. It may also be a recognition of many companies that have invested billions of dollars in growing overseas markets, thereby encountering protectionist regulations, locally funded competitors and cutthroat competition. As a consequence, these companies may be adjusting strategies, spending and expectations. In February, Western Europe was the largest international market for companies, followed by Canada. China was rated as the market with the biggest opportunity for the future.

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Spending on Digital Continues to Outpace Spending on Traditional Advertising Since 2011, spending on digital marketing has been higher than spending on traditional advertising methods. Over the past eight years, companies have spent about 10% more each year on digital advertising than traditional advertising. As companies continue to reduce their traditional advertising spend every year, we expect this trend to continue. Companies are increasingly engaging with digitally wired consumers who own multiple devices (phone, computing device and tablet), interact with companies and services on multiple digital platforms and consume media in bite-sized chunks throughout the day. Thus, non-digital channels such as newspaper circulars and print mailers have lost their reach and ROI.

Brand spending doubles over five years Change in spending, August 2014 to February 2019

BRAND SPENDING 9.3%

7.3%

5.6%

5.4%

Marketing Budget Continues Slow Growth Marketers have consistently reported positive expected growth in their marketing budgets. This trend of slow, consistent growth has continued in the past 10 years. While marketers love to grow their budgets, they are also benefitting from digital technologies and processes that are highly efficient, cheaper and demonstrate ROI. Thus, budgets may be leaner due to marketers’ newly agile processes. If you’re looking for bigger-picture budgetary figures, marketing budgets tend to average 8.1% of company revenues and 10.7% of firm budgets between 2011 and 2018.

4.3%

8/14

2/15

8/15

8/18

2/19

Brand Spending Continues to Grow Marketing spending on brand building has grown in the past five years, rising from 4.3% of marketing budgets to 9.3% on average. Companies continue to prioritize brand building over other areas of marketing spending, including new product and service introductions and traditional advertising spending. This finding is not surprising; brands compete for distracted consumers’ attention and wallet share in a noisy marketplace, characterized by new incumbents, business transformation, a 24/7 news and media cycle and millions of digital platforms. Thus, brand building is critical to counteract the lack of simple, consistent ways to reach consumers as individual digital platforms and techniques rise and fall in popularity. The No. 1 use for social media reported in the February survey was brand awareness and brand building. JUNE / JULY 2019 | MARKETING NEWS

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Marketers Prioritize Capability Development When asked about spending on different types of marketing knowledge, we see an upward trend reflecting more spending on all types of marketing knowledge. But the most impressive growth has occurred in the area of developing new marketing capabilities over traditional marketing training, marketing consulting services and marketing research and intelligence. February’s survey showed the largest growth of these expenditures in the last decade. In terms of how marketers approach the development of new marketing capabilities, 56.2% of respondents said that their companies use trainings or hire new employees with desired skills, while another 40.3% partner with marketing agencies, consultancies or other companies.

Social Media, Mobile and Marketing Analytics Spending on the Rise Spending on social media slowed this year for the first time since 2017, but has experienced an overall upward trajectory. The percent of marketing budget spent on mobile has only been recorded since 2015, but has steadily risen. Similarly, marketing analytics spending has increased overall since 2012. All three metrics are expected to continue to increase over the next five years. This finding aligns with the reality that today’s consumer is a mobile, connected consumer who expects to engage with brands online and uses social media in product search, evaluation and purchasing. Similarly, marketers are deepening analytics expertise to better understand their customers, innovate faster and demonstrate ROI to the C-suite.

43.5%

2/19

42.1%

2/17

35.8%

34.7%

31.6%

8/16

8/18

35.3%

2/16

37.5%

31.0% 8/15

2/18

29.0% 2/15

8/17

32.5%

32.3% 8/14

8/13

2/14

30.4%

29.0%

2/13

Focus Shifts to Marketing Analytics Research Companies use marketing analytics in decision-making 43.5% of the time, on average. This represents a 13.1% increase since the question was first asked in 2013. We anticipate this growth to continue as marketers find value in using analytics to make strategic marketing decisions. Marketing used to be a field of both creative hunches and sound decisionmaking, but companies are increasingly Companies’ use of marketing letting data drive their decisions. The analytics reaches highest point goal is to move to a predictive model, in six years where marketers can anticipate change, rather than respond to it, stripping time delays, cost and human error out of decision-making.

Social Media, Mobile and Marketing Analytics Make Modest Contributions to Company Performance When asked to value contributions of social media, mobile and marketing analytics on performance on a scale of 1 to 7, marketers consistently give them modest reviews, despite considerable investments made in each. Over time, these ratings are stagnant and there is no indication that they will change in the future. This finding indicates that it is still the early days of assigning digital attribution. While tools abound, there is no plug-and-play way to get instant analytics. Thus, marketers are experimenting with analytics to understand how various strategies and campaigns contribute to the development of true measures of performance.

Companies Lack Quantitative Metrics to Demonstrate Impact of Marketing Spending Companies have prioritized marketing analytics but still lack the quantitative measures to justify the impact of their marketing spending. Each time we surveyed marketers since this question was first asked in 2014, more than half of respondents have indicated they have not been able to quantitatively measure the impact of their marketing spending. This finding will likely remain somewhat constant for integrated marketers, given their need to consider attribution from offline and online activities. Digital natives, who can measure most customer interactions online, will continue to demonstrate analytics mastery, further pressuring traditional companies and their marketing teams.

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CMO SURVEY

Companies Fail to Overcome E-commerce Growing Pains Companies make less than 10% of sales, on average, through the internet. This number has not changed much since it was first asked in 2009 and respondents reported 8.4% of sales came via the internet. Physical retail has refused to die and retailers have evolved their customer experience. Companies are using blended physical and online retail strategies, and online sales have not increased as rapidly as shares of Amazon stock would suggest. In the August 2018 survey, marketers cited four key challenges to selling more products and services online: 56% said that their business requires more human interaction; 49% said that they need a new business model; 46% said that their products or services are too complex to sell over the internet; and 39% said that the business requires more customer experience than can be delivered over the internet.

Use of Product, Not Customer-Focused Organization Structures, Continues to Dominate One way to get closer to the customer is to adopt a customer-focused structure. This means that divisions, groups and titles are focused on customer segments, not products or brands. The percentage of companies adopting this novel structure has hovered around 28% since the topic was introduced in 2013. There are costs to this customer-focused structure and companies need to determine how to efficiently sell the same products to different customer groups. B2B companies are typically organized in this manner and could be a model for B2C companies.

Marketing Continues to Lead in Traditional Marketing Functions, But Not in Sales or Revenue Growth Since February 2011, The CMO Survey has asked marketers to review a list of activities and indicate whether marketing leads those activities. The breakdown of what activities are led by the marketing function has stayed consistent over the past eight years. Marketing continues to lead in brand, advertising and social media. It continues to take a back seat in pricing, revenue growth, innovation, new products, customer experience and market entry strategies. Given the fast pace of business growth, it is likely this trend will continue. Enterprises are typically creating new functions and roles (such as chief design officer, chief risk officer and chief experience officer) rather than expanding marketing’s fiefdom.

Activities that marketing leads in companies OWNED BY MARKETING refers to activities for which more than 50% of companies reported that marketing leads the activity • Brand • Digital marketing • Advertising • Social media • Public relations • Promotion • Positioning • Marketing research • Lead generation • Marketing analytics • Competitive intelligence OWNED OUTSIDE OF MARKETING refers to activities for which fewer than 50% of companies reported that marketing leads the activity • CRM • Customer experience • Marketing entry strategies • Revenue growth • New products • Pricing • Innovation • E-commerce • Market selection • Sales • Customer service • Distribution • Stock market performance

Marketers Continue to Give Themselves Average Ratings on Societal Metrics Since 2011, marketers were asked to rate themselves on social metrics on a scale of 1 to 7. On both benefit to society and minimizing environmental impact, marketers have consistently given themselves about a 3, on average. Ratings are generally flat since 2011 with a slight uptick on marketing that benefits society in 2018.

This is not surprising, given that most marketers head for-profit companies focused on growth and profitability. While there are companies with a blended social-profit mission—such as Tom’s, Patagonia and AllBirds—these are in the minority. But social values are important to many consumers, especially younger ones. Many companies are committing to social and sustainability goals as part of their corporate mission, so look for social metrics to increase over time.

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executive insights

Marketing Trends on the Horizon

n addition to these 10-year trends, a few additional emerging areas are expected to greatly influence marketers over the coming years.

Marketers Unlikely to Use Brands to Take a Stand on Politically Charged Issues While we have seen some political activism from brands lately, most marketers still do not feel it is appropriate to take a stand on political issues. Politics has become an increasingly divisive issue and brands are probably wise to tread cautiously in this arena. Brand leaders know they need to balance social imperatives with their responsibility to grow the business and maximize profitability. That said, the percentage of respondents who think it is appropriate for their brand to take a stand rose almost 2% since the first time this question was asked in February 2018. This willingness is highest among services companies and those with a lower percentage of their sales from the internet—both groups likely looking to connect with their target

Marketers unlikely to use brands to take a stand on politically charged issues Do you believe it is appropriate for your brand to take a stand on politically charged issues?

Yes 19.2%

No 80.8%

customers and show they care about more than making profits.

Concern Over Data Privacy Among Marketers Will Continue to Grow While marketers worry less about privacy than critics believe is necessary (and we tend to agree), concerns are growing. We expect marketers to continue to worry about protecting customer privacy. Since 2013, The CMO Survey has asked marketers how worried they were, on a scale of 1 to 7, that the use of online customer data could raise questions about privacy. The number of marketers who are “very worried” has doubled since 2016, while the number that is not at all worried has dropped from 25.7% to 15.6%. Consumer attitudes toward data privacy change constantly as they trade data for services. However, the passage of GDPR in Europe, negative media coverage of companies’ third-party data-sharing practices and the increased risk of data exposure with the growth of endpoints is increasing marketers’ worries and will continue to do so. Cloud services are generally viewed as more secure than on-premise services, but marketers know that the volume and velocity of online threats is growing, increasing their risk of data exposure.

Marketers Are Experimenting to Understand the Value of Their Marketing Actions For the first time this year, The CMO Survey sought to understand the extent marketers rely on experimentation to determine the value of their marketing activities on their customers. In general, B2C companies experiment more than their B2B counterparts. We expect that the level of experimentation among marketers will continue to grow as the value of marketing analytics grows. This finding aligns with the fact that consumers expect to be the recipients of constant innovation, including new messages, campaigns and tactics. But B2B deals are typically larger, more strategic and involve five to seven buyers and buyer influencers, taking much longer to close. Thus, sellers are unlikely to embark on radical new experiments as they seek to drive a purchase decision over the line.

Marketing’s Implementation of AI, Machine Learning and Blockchain Will Continue to Grow Marketing’s implementation of artificial intelligence and machine learning has kept steady in the past year. But marketing leaders now expect these technologies to be implemented more in the next three years. More than half of respondents are using AI technologies for personalizing content and generating customer insights using predictive analytics. Marketers reported that while blockchain currently has a weak effect on their marketing strategy, it will grow in coming years. Emerging technology capabilities usually lag hype in the early days of market adoption. But marketers know that automation, AI and machine learning will transform all aspects of business, including theirs, which is why many are accelerating use cases. AI is an arms race no one can afford to lose.

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CMO SURVEY

executive insights

7 5

Marketing AI Moves to Center Stage Companies are using AI across a wider array of marketing activities. B2C services companies use, on average, more AI in their marketing activities than other sectors. B2C product companies lead in the use of AI for customer segmentation and autonomous objects, while B2B companies lead in the use of augmented and virtual reality. To date, most of AI’s uses in marketing are customer-facing and will continue to be that way in the near future.

Demonstrating Impact of Marketing on Financial Outcomes Challenges Marketers In the February CMO Survey, marketers were asked what activities they found most challenging when working with the C-suite— more than 60% reported that demonstrating the impact of marketing actions on financial performance was challenging for them. We expect this challenge will continue as marketing analytics grows. If the world were to head into another recession, CMOs might find themselves in the hot seat in terms of being pushed to improve analytics. During recessions, functional heads must defend every dollar and demonstrate how it delivers ROI. Thus, companies may evolve analytics capabilities faster than they expect to preserve their strategies and budgets.

Marketers Still Value Creativity The survey shows marketers are increasingly analytics- and machine-driven. When asked what skills they would prioritize in future marketing talent, the top response was MarTech platform experience. Creativity ranked second. Companies are looking for ambitious talent who can crunch the numbers and find unique customer insights that competitors would find difficult to imitate.

Marketers List Growth as Top Challenge When asked for their top challenge in 2019, 37.9% of marketing leaders ranked growth as their No. 1 issue. Another 28.9% of marketers ranked it as either their second- or third-biggest problem. We suspect looming economic uncertainty, increased competition and the opportunities and threats associated with digital transformation lie at the heart of this challenge. Over the past few years, companies have gone from viewing digital transformation as a “change or die” message to an opportunity to create significant levers for growth. But the path is a race—competitors are evolving just as fast as companies can. Driving growth rated No. 1 challenge by marketing leaders What are your top challenges as a marketing leader? (select top three where No. 1 is most important). Presented as % ranked first Challenge

February 2019

Driving growth

37.9%

Delivering a powerful brand that breaks through the clutter

13.7%

Securing marketing budget

13.4%

Providing ROI of marketing activities

10.8%

Hiring top talent

9.7%

Generating customer insight

5.1%

Find sponsorship/support from the executive level

3.2%

Identifying the right technologies to meet our needs

2.9%

Managing our online presence

2.5%

Training our team

0.7%

CHRISTINE MOORMAN is the T. Austin Finch senior professor of business administration at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, founder and director of The CMO Survey and the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Marketing.

LAUREN KIRBY is an MBA student at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. Founded in 2008, THE CMO SURVEY was the first of its kind to take the pulse of the marketing C-suite and chart this role’s responsibilities and priorities in the fast-changing digital marketplace. The CMO Survey has now become the longest-running non-commercial survey for and about the field of marketing and has garnered more than 8,300 responses. Sponsored by the American Marketing Association, Deloitte and Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, marketers, consultants and analysts can access all data free of charge at cmosurvey.org/results.

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An avalanche of hot takes and deep dives follows any major election, when reporters and pundits examine how exactly a candidate won. Their victory typically boils down to one simple reason: They did a better job appealing to the region’s predominant values. Analyses of consumer shopping choices use similar language: How did consumers vote with their dollars? What items did they elect? It starts to sound political— and in fact, a growing body of research finds that shopper decisions can be based on the values of voters. Political identity has always been a component of consumers’ identity, says Vanitha Swaminathan, a professor of marketing at the University of Pittsburgh. “There’s something called identity salience, which is this notion that (asks), ‘How important is a component of who you are to you?’ Lately, it seems to me that people’s political orientation has become a salient part of their identity. It’s how you define yourself more and more.” Marketing researchers are finding that election maps can predict consumer attitudes as much as traditional demographics. The use of these insights doesn’t need to be overt: Ideological values can predict how consumers will respond to variations in messaging. Research on political messaging has shown as much, as studies find that conservative policies can gain liberal support when framed in terms of traditionally liberal values, such as empathy, social justice and equality of opportunity. The inverse is also true, as progressive policies were found to be more appealing to conservatives and moderates when framed in relation to traditionally conservative values such as patriotism, family, the American dream and respect for tradition.

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“In political campaigning, you appeal to different types of values, different types of things when trying to get people to vote for you,” says Samuel Gosling, a psychology professor at the University of Texas. It’s targeting by segmentation. “Political orientation is a really helpful variable because it does seem to predict a lot,” Gosling says. His own research from 2008, published in Political Psychology, found liberals to generally be more open-minded, creative, curious and novelty-seeking, while conservatives were found to be more orderly, conventional and better organized. It’s the exact type of audience insight that could make a marketer salivate. As the nation becomes more politically polarized and Americans more entrenched in their views, political ideology may help marketers segment their audience. It’s just a matter of learning what traits are typical of an ideology, and how brand messaging can speak to them.

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GROWING POLITICAL POLARIZATION MAY EXPLAIN WHY IDEOLOGY HAS BECOME SUCH A SALIENT PART OF AMERICAN IDENTITIES. A 2018 Gallup poll found that the number of Americans who identify as moderate shrank to 35%, down from 43% in 1992, while the portion of Americans identifying as liberal or conservative grew from 53% in 1992 to 61% in 2018. Pew Research shows Republicans and Democrats have been moving further apart in their political values, as well as approaches to addressing national issues they identify as top government priorities. Another Pew survey from 2018 found that 53% of Americans say that talking about politics with people they disagree with is generally stressful and frustrating, compared with 46% who said the same two years prior. “Increasingly, this is going to be an important part of how people define themselves,” Swaminathan says. “And because it’s an important part of how people define themselves, companies and brands have no choice but to appeal to that part of identity.” As Americans cling more strongly to political ideology as identity, there are two ways brands can tap into this segmentation, according to Nailya Ordabayeva, an assistant professor of marketing at Boston College. “First, they expect companies to chime in on political issues which they feel strongly about,” she says. For

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example, Edelman’s 2018 Earned Brand study found that 64% of respondents said that they are buying from or boycotting brands based on the company’s stance on a social or political issue. Such belief-driven buyers were the majority in every market, age group and income level surveyed. The study also found that 67% of respondents purchased something for the first time because of the brand’s position on a controversial issue, while 65% said that they would not buy a brand because it stayed silent on an issue it should have addressed. Appealing to consumers’ political ideologies by taking a stand on an issue has well-documented successes: In December 2017, Patagonia announced plans to sue the Trump administration in response to the government’s decision to reduce the protection on two national monuments in Utah. According to e-commerce and analytic company Slice Intelligence (now Rakuten Intelligence), Patagonia sales were 7% stronger the week of the statement than they were the previous week—a week that included Cyber Monday. Similarly, Nike sales surged 31% after it released its ad featuring Colin Kaepernick, according to Edison Trends. But not all brands that take a stance will see an uptick in sales. They can also run the risk of coming across as inauthentic or opportunistic (see: Pepsi’s Kendall Jenner commercial). And the ones that are successful in driving brand affinity for some can still alienate others (see: consumers burning their Nike apparel after the Kaepernick ad).

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“THERE IS ALSO A MORE SUBTLE AND PERHAPS MORE PERVASIVE WAY IN WHICH POLITICAL IDEOLOGY CAN IMPACT CONSUMPTION,” SAYS ORDABAYEVA. “My work falls within the second line of influences, of the implicit impact of ideology on consumer shopping behavior that has nothing to do with politics.” This second line of influence uses the traits and beliefs that are commonly attributed to liberals or conservatives to inform marketing messages. It’s segmentation by ideology in what products or services appeal to the two groups, but also in how the messaging can speak to their ideological values. Ordabayeva’s research, published in August 2018 in the Journal of Consumer Research, used seven studies to illustrate how political ideology influences consumers’ preferences for how they differentiate themselves. This idea is based on social psychology research that found

people have a fundamental desire to showcase their identity to others. The defining trait that Ordabayeva and co-author Daniel Fernandes explored was expression of social hierarchy, which found that conservatives differentiate themselves from others by signaling superiority, while liberals differentiate themselves by signaling how they’re unique. “We find that conservatives like signals of superiority because they very much endorse the idea of vertical hierarchical structure being legitimate and a reflection of real differences in individual hard work and character,” Ordabayeva says, “whereas liberals don’t endorse that idea. This is why they look for ways to differentiate non-hierarchically through these signals of uniqueness.” These consumer-signaling strategies can be used by brands in their market positioning and messaging. Ordabayeva provided two examples in an article for Harvard Business Review: Mercedes-Benz catered to consumers who wanted to show their superior qualities and positions with its “A Class Ahead” tagline, while ad slogans such as Apple’s “Think Different” speak to consumers wishing to highlight their uniqueness. In one of Ordabayeva and Fernandes’ studies, they offered participants a choice between a mug with their name and the message “Just Better” or “Just Different.” They found that conservatives were 2.2 times more likely than liberals to choose the “Just Better” mug. In another of their studies, participants could win a gift card for participation from either Ralph Lauren, which their brand perception pretests showed signals superiority, or Urban Outfitters, which they found signals uniqueness. Conservatives tended to prefer Ralph Lauren while liberals tended to prefer Urban Outfitters. The patterns were consistent whether political ideology was captured by a basic either-or option (“Are you liberal or conservative?”), by a 1 to 9 scale (one being “extremely liberal” and nine being “extremely conservative”) or measured by people’s attitudes toward various political topics (such as views on abortion, gun control, same-sex marriage or illegal immigration). Another of their studies verified that the results were consistent across income brackets. Political ideologies also predict other traits. Swaminathan and her colleagues found that liberals’ and conservatives’ relationship to power can also guide messaging. The research, published in the Journal of Marketing in February, targeted conservatives and liberals on Facebook to find that power-distance beliefs play a role in consumers’ preference of user-designed products. “For liberals, they were more inclined to like the product if it had user design in it, but conservatives didn’t,” Swaminathan says. “We argue that the reason is that power distance beliefs are quite different between liberals and conservatives. Conservatives have a belief

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in high-power distance: that organizations are superior, they’re elite and therefore are able to make better decisions and should be in charge of the design of the product. Liberals, on the other hand, are much more low-power distance in that they believe that everybody should be equal, so consumers should be equally placed to give input.” Another study, published in the Journal of Marketing in September 2018, found political ideology can segment how consumers of luxury products respond to messaging. The researchers found that conservatives’ desire for luxury goods relates to their goal of maintaining status, based on the idea that conservative political ideology increases the preference for social stability. In fact, upon activating status maintenance in study participants who identified as strongly conservative, these consumers were willing to pay $109.80 on average for a set of headphones, compared with those with weak conservative views who were only willing to pay $65.10. AS THE U.S. EDGES TOWARD THE NEXT ELECTION SEASON, AMERICANS’ THOUGHTS ARE TURNING TOWARD POLITICS, MAKING THEM MORE COGNIZANT OF THEIR IDEOLOGIES. “I would expect elections to increase the salience of one’s political identity and thus the effect to be stronger around election days,” says David Dubois, a professor of marketing at INSEAD and co-author of the study on status messaging for luxury goods. “It may make sense for brands to tune their message before Election Day as one’s political identity gets stronger.” There’s proof that as Americans have become more polarized in their politics, they’ve begun pulling their identities with them. New York University political scientist Patrick Egan found evidence that people shift the nonpolitical parts of their identity to better align with being a Democrat or a Republican. His October 2018 paper used public opinion data collected through the General Social Survey, specifically a cohort of 3,900 people who were interviewed three times for the surveys, starting either in 2006, 2008 or 2010. Each time the survey was conducted, respondents were asked to rank themselves on a seven-point ideological scale, then asked questions about their identities related to, for example, their heritage or religious beliefs. Among the shifts noted by Egan, conservative Republicans were much more likely than liberal Democrats to become bornagain Christians and to stop identifying as non-religious. Liberal Democrats, on the other hand, were much more likely than conservative Republicans to leave religion and stop describing themselves as born-again. If more Americans are shifting their identities to

match their ideologies, and researchers have found that ideology can predict what messaging will appeal to shoppers, political orientation can serve as a new method of marketing segmentation. “There are clear metrics of the ideologies of different markets,” Ordabayeva says. “There are electoral maps, voting data, in addition to demographic data such as Gallup poll data that can help marketers discern the political beliefs and ideologies of their consumers.” For instance, Gallup polling from 2018 shows that audiences with the strongest conservative leanings include seniors, adults ages 50 to 64, men, residents of the South and adults with no college education, all of whom lean conservative by more than 15 percentage points. Whites, adults with some college education (but no degree) and residents of the Midwest lean conservative by at least 10 points. On the other side, adults with postgraduate education were 15 points more liberal than conservative and blacks were nine points more liberal. Adults ages 18 to 29 lean more liberal than conservative by four points, and adults ages 30 to 49, women and residents of the East lean slightly more liberal. “Given that different geographies and different locations tend to lean politically one way or the other, companies could think about tailoring the positioning and the advertising, the messaging around their products toward superiority versus uniqueness in order to appeal more strongly to the ideological base of the specific market,” says Ordabayeva, in reference to her own research on differentiation signaling. She also recommends that marketers consider targeting different outlets. It’s worth following where Republican and Democratic candidates place their ads. For example, digital and advertising strategy company Echelon Insights found in 2014 that 93% of political ads on the Golf Channel were for Republican candidates and 94% of the political spots on the E! Network were for Democratic candidates. If a brand can use its existing demographics data to determine whether its customers are more liberalor conservative-leaning, it can shape its messaging around that ideology’s values. If its customers span the spectrum, a brand can use that demographics data to shape what messaging appears across the country and on different media platforms. “That’s where the real traction is, in values,” Gosling says. “That’s really what differentiates liberals and conservatives. And there’s a lot of flexibility in how you can appeal to those different values with the very same product.” To win votes, politicians must appeal to their constituents’ values. To win customers, marketers may well use the same tactics. m

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Traits of Liberals and Conservatives: What else research has shown about political ideologies Despite conservatives’ greater desire for control, three studies showed conservatism is positively related to variety-seeking. The study’s authors wrote that if a marketer wishes to target consumers who do not engage in variety-seeking among different brands—those who are brand loyal—they might target neighborhoods that are politically liberal or advertise in liberal media. On the other hand, if they wish to target consumers who are open to variety when introducing a new product, the marketer might target politically conservative neighborhoods or advertise in conservative media. “Political conservatism and variety-seeking,” Daniel Fernandes and Naomi Mandel; Journal of Consumer Psychology

In a study of attitudes toward human rights, liberals responded most significantly and were more motivated to act in response to messages framed to emphasize the suffering of victims. Conservatives were more likely to feel motivated when the information is framed by graphic visual imagery of human rights abuse. “Rights on the Left and Right: How Ideological Predispositions Affect Human Rights Attitudes,” Joseph Braun Political orientation is associated with problemsolving strategy: In a study, liberals solved significantly more problems through insight and aha! moments instead of in a step-by-step, analytic fashion. Conservatives were more structured and preferred clear answers. “The politics of insight,” Carola Salvi, Irene Cristofori, Jordan Grafman and Mark Beeman; Psychological Science

Researchers developed tailored persuasive messages about recycling that appealed to consumers’ political ideologies. They used messages related to individualizing foundations for liberals, based on fairness and avoiding harm to others, and the binding foundation for conservatives, based on duty and an obligation to adhere to authority. These appeals significantly affected consumers’ acquisition, use and recycling intentions and behaviors. “Getting Liberals and Conservatives to Go Green: Political Ideology and Congruent Appeals,” Blair Kidwell, Adam Farmer and David M. Hardesty; Journal of Consumer Research

Research on openness to new experiences and conscientiousness found liberals are more open to experience and conservatives tend to be attracted to normality. The researchers polled and observed subjects in their tests, but also looked for physical clues in dorm rooms and offices. Conservatives’ bedrooms tended to have more calendars, postage stamps, flags and sports posters. Their rooms were also neater and better lit. Liberals’ bedrooms had a greater variety of books, more CDs and a greater variety of music, along with more art supplies, cultural memorabilia and maps of other countries. “The Secret Lives of Liberals and Conservatives: Personality Profiles, Interaction Styles, and the Things They Leave Behind,” Dana R. Carney, John T. Jost, Samuel D. Gosling and Jeff Potter; Political Psychology

In a study on charity advertising, researchers found liberals respond more favorably to equality-based rewards, whereas conservatives respond more favorably to proportionality-based rewards. They found liberals perceive greater effectiveness in equality-based rewards for donations based on random drawings, compared with conservatives who felt proportionality-based rewards based on donation amounts were more effective. “How Liberals and Conservatives Respond to Equality-Based and Proportionality-Based Rewards in Charity Advertising,” Younghwa Lee, Sukki Yoon, Young Woo Lee and Marla B. Royne; Journal of Public Policy & Marketing

A 2014 quiz by Time magazine of 220,192 respondents found liberals were more likely to believe, for example, that self-expression is more important than self-control. The survey also found liberals are more likely to prefer cats to dogs and are more willing to try a new restaurant that blended the cuisines of two very different cultures. Conservatives, on the other hand, were more likely to believe that all children need to learn respect for authority. They were also more likely to be proud of their country’s history and would prefer visiting Times Square than the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “It’s True: Liberals Like Cats More Than Conservatives Do,” Time, February 2014

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THE WEST’S GREAT MARKETING OPPORTUNITY IN CHINA China is home to 1.4 billion people—more than 800 million of whom are now internet users—and a rising middle class. But the marketing plans of most Western companies fail in China because of inadequate research of the market, population, demographics, trends and culture. Western companies attempt to make China’s giant market fit to their brands, rather than the other way around. To be successful in China, brands must realize that differences in marketing go deeper than East versus West. BY HAL CONICK

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WICE EACH YEAR, FENG LI TRAVELS BACK HOME TO CHINA FROM THE U.K., WHERE HE’S LIVED FOR THREE DECADES.

In the U.K., change comes slowly and cultural movements can linger for years, but Li notices new trends every time he visits China, especially as the country’s wealth has blossomed. “People want different things,” says Li, a professor and chair of information management at Cass Business School in London. One of the country’s biggest changes came by phone. In 1996, there were 55 million landlines across urban China and 15 million across its rural areas—that’s one phone for every 6.5 urbanites and one for every 57.5 rural Chinese residents, according to a paper by Dan Lynch, professor at the University of Southern California’s U.S.-China Institute. The Chinese government tightly regulated the flow of information and communication by stanching telecommunication. But in 2019, there are 1.6 billion mobile subscriptions across China’s 1.4 billion people, according to Statista, more than one subscription per person. The government has moved from blocking the flow of information to censoring and regulating it through the country’s “Great Firewall of China,” which the Chinese government uses to control what its citizens can see online. Mobile has been at the heart of many of the changes Li has seen in China. Five years ago, people in China still relied on cash, Li says, but everyone now pays with mobile devices, even at small markets. On another recent trip, Li saw that people had been making restaurant reservations, ordering their meals and paying entirely through mobile devices. “By the time they get there, the food will be waiting for them on the table,” Li says. As Li has noticed these trends, he’s followed the Western brands trying to enter the Chinese market. China has been slowly opening to Western business since its 1978 Open Door Policy, which allowed foreign businesses to operate in the country. But most fail. Western brands experience several problems in China, Li says. Fixing them all can feel akin to putting out a series of small fires that threaten to coalesce and engulf the entire business. In 2019, Li published a paper in the Academy of Management Discoveries, which examined why so many Western internet-

based firms fail in China. Li interviewed more than 40 senior business executives from Western firms, including eBay and Google, and their Chinese competitors, such as Taobao (akin to eBay) and Baidu (akin to Google). One reason Western brands fail, Li found, is competition. Brands are often initially successful after launching but are then swarmed by competitors. The clearest example came when eBay entered the Chinese market in 2003, buying EachNet for $180 million and launching as eBay EachNet. At the time, EachNet was China’s biggest online auction player, holding 80% of China’s small consumer e-commerce market—eBay executives were confident the dominance would continue. Meg Whitman, then eBay’s CEO, predicted that eBay’s e-commerce business in China would be worth $16 billion within four years, according to The New York Times. But Jack Ma—founder of Alibaba (akin to Amazon) and now one of the world’s richest people—had other ideas. He decided to go to war with eBay. Porter Erisman, former Alibaba VP, writes in his book, Alibaba’s World: How a Remarkable Chinese Company is Changing the Face of Global Business, that Ma thought he could outmaneuver eBay in his home market. Ma started his own online auction platform called Taobao, which translates to “search for treasure.” Erisman writes that Ma told him, “The launch has to be a really big bomb to generate a lot of buzz in the media. I don’t want this to be a war between Taobao and EachNet. It has to be about Taobao versus eBay.” Taobao announced to the press that it would invest $12 million in a consumer marketplace customized for China, one that would offer free transactions for its first three years—Taobao wouldn’t focus on revenue for now, Ma told reporters, but instead on helping Chinese sellers establish themselves. The Chinese press called eBay to see if they’d also offer free transactions; eBay PR reps said no, commissions were too important to the marketplace. Ma had won the first battle. EBay tried counterattacking by signing exclusive internet advertising deals across China to prevent Taobao from advertising online, according to Li. “But in China at that time,

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the number of internet users were relatively small compared with other channels,” Li says. Then, more Chinese people watched TV than had the internet, so Ma advertised Taobao on TV. TV proved to be far more effective than eBay’s online advertising. Slowly, eBay EachNet lost another battle, then the war; their market share was captured by Ma and Taobao. By 2005, Taobao owned 57.7% of the Chinese marketplace, while eBay EachNet’s shares diminished to 31.5%, according to Analysys International. The next year, eBay EachNet CEO Martin Wu resigned. EBay scaled back its goals in China, shutting down eBay EachNet to form a different service with Tom Online, a China-based mobile internet company. “That's one example [of] a Western company going into China and doing something that appears to be sensible but doesn't really fit the cultural or the market setting,” Li says. EBay simply wasn’t ready for the level of competition—the competitiveness common in Silicon Valley is seen as very mild by Chinese competitors, Li says, something that Ma showed when confronting eBay in the auction-space battlefield. Other brands are simply caught unawares by the changes Li sees every time he goes home. Chinese brands have homefield advantage; these brands see consumers using a new, popular technology in real time, watching how they use it and shifting their strategy to incorporate that new technology. Meanwhile, Western brands rarely have any idea how or where new technology is burgeoning in China and continue to use outdated methods to reach consumers. But an overarching theme of why Western firms fail, Li finds, is that they enter the Chinese market and expect to be as big as they are back home. They attempt to make China’s giant market fit to their brand rather than making their brand fit into the Chinese market.

hris Breikss, a founding partner of full-service agency Major Tom, had no delusions of grandeur in 2014 when his company launched its Chinese marketing arm, Sheng Li Digital. His company employed people who were born in China, but educated in the West, giving the North Americabased marketing agency a unique set of knowledge and skills for entering China. And the Chinese market was growing. The ChinaPower Project, an arm of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, reports that the Chinese middle class was only 4% of the country in 2002, but by 2012, the middle class had become 31% of the country—more than 420 million people. And, as Breikss saw, China’s internet ad revenue was rising as more of the country gained internet access—Statista reports that internet ad revenue in China grew from $7.7 billion in 2011 to $22.5 billion in 2014, while internet users in the country had risen from 500 million to 650 million over the same period. “We could see that the advertising revenue was growing by billions every year,” Breikss says. “And we thought that we would

grow at the same rate and that brands would be ready to jump in and start advertising in China.” Breikss assumed that a flood of Western brands would soon enter the market. But then 2015 came—China’s internet ad revenue grew to $31.7 billion, then $42 billion the following year—and Breikss noticed that most brands and agencies still had no marketing strategy in China. By 2018, a report from China’s Interactive Advertising Marketing Lab found that Chinese internet ad revenue had reached $54.9 billion (Statista’s prediction of $71.46 billion was even more flattering), growing by 24.2% every year. The Chinese market was thriving, but few Western companies were succeeding—most never tried. There’s no official count of how many Western brands market in China, but Breikss predicts that the top 2-3% of Western brands have a China strategy, while one out of 100 middle market brands and almost no small companies have a China strategy. “What we didn't anticipate was that [brands] weren't really ready or prepared to invest what it takes,” Breikss says. Sheng Li, which currently has a team of 10 people dedicated to 30 active clients marketing in China, works solely from its offices across North America, using marketing tactics built for China. But even with their presence in the West and knowledge of China, Breikss says that it’s often hard to convince Western brands to start campaigns in China. Before launch, many are scared away by the scale or budget they’d need to be successful. Sometimes, even success after launching can be overwhelming: One of Sheng Li’s clients stopped its campaign in China after getting 160,000 visitors to its website in a two-week span, Breikss says. The campaign performed far better than the brand expected, but that was the problem: The company didn’t have the back-end infrastructure it needed to give customer service to the Chinese visitors. “They abandoned that because they would have had to invest in more staff and more infrastructure,” Breikss says. “And they just weren't ready to do that yet. “When they win, sometimes they lose,” he says. Sheng Li has had many successes, too, which Breikss credits to the relationships they’ve formed and access they’ve won within Chinese companies and the government, relationships that few other agencies have. This success, he believes, is also available to other patient, persistent brands and agencies. “If you have a unique product or a unique service that works with the Chinese demographic and you can be the first one to market in your industry, you can own it,” Breikss says. “And by being first to market, you could take over that channel and no one else would be there.”

DOMINATE NICHES AND FIT THE CULTURE

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market. Now, Amazon has reportedly merged with cross-border shopping platform Kaola (owned by Chinese tech company NetEase) to help Chinese people buy from the West and Chinese sellers sell to the West. “In that aspect, they’re actually doing better than most other companies,” Li says. “When we talk about failure, some of them are probably not a strict failure. … They just didn't achieve the same level of success people would expect them to do in international markets.” Instead, the brands that have been successful in China are those that have attacked market niches, Li says. By thinking of China in terms of niches, the bar for market share can be set lower than in other countries. For example, if a U.S. brand launched in the Netherlands and worked to dominate 50% of the country’s 17-million-person market, the brand would have 8.5 million customers. But in China, brands that capture even 1% of China’s 1.4 billion population would have 14 million customers. If Western brands started going after niches instead of attempting to dominate straightaway, Li says that they could gain a foothold in China’s market. Although niches are powerful, Li agrees with Breikss that market dominance in China is possible. For example, most of the country’s auto market is owned by international brands, with German manufacturers dominating the luxury market. Car manufacturers succeed by making their brand fit the market, he says. BMW increased the length of the wheelbase in its 300 Series to lengthen the back seat. Li says that this is because senior businessmen in China hire chauffeurs to drive them to work; BMW customized its car to fit that market trend. “Those kinds of subtle differences will show,” Li says. Jon Dupuis, global managing director of ad agency mcgarrybowen, has been working on launching the American Express brand in China and was recently impressed by a subtle change made by a Western brand. A competitor—the digital agency Isobar—runs KFC’s China campaign and found that there were language problems at KFC’s digital ordering kiosk. There are eight different languages and hundreds of dialects spoken across China, but the digital kiosk didn’t understand what many of the customers were saying. To improve the customer experience, the agency created an AI-driven ordering system that could learn and understand many more Chinese dialects. “It's a wonderful story of what agencies are doing these days,” Dupuis says. “It's not a prescriptive campaign development for brands, it's understanding what are the behaviors that we need to put into the market to make change.” Dupuis, the global lead for the American Express campaign in China, agrees with Li that brands can’t “cast a shadow” over any market they’re entering, especially China. To avoid casting a shadow, he says that brands must research and map out the full customer experience of their Chinese audience before launching. Brands should look for potential issues, conflicts and problems to avoid or ways to fit their product into the Chinese market, as BMW did with the 300 Series. There’s a rise in nationalism

everywhere, Dupuis says, so Western brands—especially brands with “American” in the brand name—can’t be cocky. Rather than assuming consumers will automatically be drawn to a Western product, brands must research the market from many angles. Some unresearched problems could be fatal blows to a brand’s prospects in China. Ashley Galina Dudarenok, founder of Chinese social media agency Alarice and Chinese marketing training company ChoZan, says that one Western brand launched a toothpaste in China for pregnant mothers—it supposedly made their teeth stronger, she says—but, according to traditional Chinese medicine, an ingredient in the toothpaste causes miscarriages. Western science, in this case, would be no match for belief in Eastern medicine. “There’s no way that people are going to be buying such a toothpaste,” Dudarenok says. Aside from preventing such oversights, Dudarenok says that research allows brands to learn about the people to whom they’re selling in the Chinese audiences. There’s a bigger difference than simply Eastern versus Western sensibilities—China is like Europe, in that there are many different cultures. You wouldn’t market to Spaniards the same way you’d market to the French, she says. But China is also a larger culture with shared values that are in flux: There are divides between its generations, seven prefectures and multiple socioeconomic levels, but also differences in consumer philosophy and preference. “They all have different buying preferences,” Dudarenok says. “Without knowing, it’ll be very tough. You could sell some, but then [the market will] be gone because you have no idea who you’re selling to, what their local problem is or why they bought it.” Research gives brands the cultural awareness to know what the audience wants, but it can also allow brands to break cultural convention and go viral. Tony DeGennaro, director of marketing and business development at Chinese marketing agency Dragon Social, says that branding is less popular in China, while performance marketing dominates. But that doesn’t have to be the case in every campaign. DeGennaro points out a 2017 McDonald’s ad on WeChat that became wildly popular—a 152-inch illustration that took five or six minutes to scroll before revealing itself as a McDonald’s ad. “Nearly every person I've met who's seen that ad has said they enjoyed it and reacted positively to it,” DeGennaro says, adding that Chinese ads are typically hard sells. He references an influencer on Weibo (akin to Twitter) who features a product in nearly every one of her posts, sans the getting-toknow-you posts of Western influencers. “There's no subtlety at all. This [McDonald’s ad] was a welcome surprise for many Chinese netizens,” he says. “Any type of advertising campaign that bucks this trend and stands out from all these hard-selling advertisements has the potential to go viral and get recognized.” But whether getting creative or maintaining the status quo, Western brands launching in China will likely have setbacks and need to make changes. Dupuis—who kept quiet on when and how American Express will launch in China—says that the

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Chinese financial market is still very restrictive. But some of the restrictions loosened last year when the Chinese government relaxed regulations on foreign-funded banks. With newly relaxed restrictions comes unchartered territory—Dupuis and the mcgarrybowen team will need to know how the market feels about the brand across the entire campaign, which will mean continuing to research and map out customer experience and perception. “There's just not that existing playbook,” he says. “You can’t open page three and say, ‘Here's what we do.’ It just doesn't work that way. I find it's incredibly refreshing to go in there, [have] a blank canvas and allow the market to paint it. You've got to know the fundamentals of what you need to care about—that full customer journey and customer experience—but you can't predetermine what you’re going to hear.”

HOW CAN BRANDS ENTER THE MARKET?

There’s a perception among Westerners that doing business in China is inexpensive, even when the brands are marketing to affluent consumers. But entering the Chinese market is not only expensive, Sheng Li’s Breikss says, it also takes a lot of time, patience and access to connections in China’s government. To launch in China, at minimum, Breikss says that brands must have a landing page on WeChat—a social media, payment and communications app with 1 billion users, akin to Facebook—and earmark $30,000 for their campaign. It’s a labor-intensive process: This amount would be enough for translating content, creating ads, designing graphics, building a Chinese microsite or landing page on WeChat and registering and hosting it on Chinese servers, as well as having discussions between the agency and Tencent, WeChat’s owner, and managing the WeChat account for the three months. “WeChat is a social media channel that needs constant nurturing and content created,” Breikss says. “Ongoing community management is required to respond to inquiries and engage with the brand's audience and build a relationship with the followers and fans. … If you're not willing to invest $30,000, you're probably not going to see the kind of success that's going to justify the investment.” WeChat has 1 billion daily active users, according to Tencent. But even though WeChat is akin to Facebook, Breikss says that brands can forget about the five minutes it would take to make a programmatic media buy on Facebook. To start on WeChat, it takes anywhere from one to three months, Breikss says, depending on the industry. Due to The Great Firewall of China, Western websites tend to load slowly for Chinese people, sometimes taking minutes—and some never load. A Western brand running a campaign in China without an established, local web presence—whether a WeChat page or a website carried on a Chinese server with a .cn domain address—will be trusted about as much as a Chinese brand in the U.S. that sends potential customers to a slow-loading website filled with Chinese characters.

MARKETING TO THE CHINESE IN AMERICA

rands don’t have to leave the U.S. to market to Chinese people: Sheng Li’s Breikss says that many brands now have a China strategy in the States. These strategies make up about half of Sheng Li’s campaigns. The potential to reach Chinese people in the U.S. is still great. The Migration Policy Institute reports that there were 2.3 million Chinese immigrants in the U.S. in 2016, 5% of the country’s total immigrant population and just less than 1% of the country’s total population. Remember: There’s power in niches. “The other competitors aren’t doing the same thing and the conversion rates are a lot higher, actually,” Breikss says. “It’s remarkable: The same brand could be targeting an American customer and there’ll be a 1% conversion rate, but if they’re targeting in Chinese to a Chinese customer, we might see a 3% conversion rate.” Google and Facebook are the essential platforms for marketing to Chinese people in the West, Breikss says, as both platforms can detect and target the people who are reading on Chinese language settings. “The Chinese demographic likes to be communicated with in-language and their needs catered to specifically,” he says. But caveat emptor: These campaigns aren’t easy just because they’re close to home. Just like in China, you must do research about a U.S.-based Chinese audience. Campaigns for a Chinese population in Brooklyn, New York, (where Fujianese people are the largest population) will need to be different from campaigns in Manhattan (where people from Hong Kong, the Guangdong province and Shanghai represent the largest populations). And just because you’re home doesn’t mean the need for Chinese infrastructure will disappear. Brands marketing to Chinese immigrants in America will need to have Mandarin-speaking customer support representatives and landing pages for Chinese customers—they’ll need infrastructure that lets the consumers know that the brand is serious about winning their business. For example, Sheng Li worked on a campaign with Bryant Park Hotel in New York, which prepared the front desk and bellmen to cater to the Chinese and had staff members who spoke Mandarin. “It’s not just about getting someone to buy something or book a room or become a lead on your website,” Breikss says. “You truly need to have that Chinese communication through all aspects of your internal infrastructure as well. You can’t fake it.”

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CHINA MAY COME TO YOU

isruption comes from everywhere, says David Doty, former CMO and executive vice president of Interactive Advertising Bureau. Why couldn’t disruption reach the U.S. from China? Doty says that when he started at IAB a dozen years ago, AOL, Yahoo! and Microsoft were the three top companies. Now, Facebook and Google own the tech landscape in the U.S. But will it always be this way? “Pull up off the planet, if you will, and look down and see that there’s a growing population in Asia and there are growing technical capabilities in Asia that are really surpassing a lot of what’s going on in the U.S.,” Doty says. In the 1950s, Americans saw Japanese car manufacturers as cheap, Doty says; now, Honda and Toyota sell millions of cars in the U.S. and are lauded for their quality. Even if Western brands never launch in China, Chinese tech giants may launch in the U.S. For example, Tencent invested $150 million in Reddit, the U.S.-based mega-message board, which made many Redditors worry about the potential of censorship. Baidu launched DU Ad Platform—an app that predicts ad performance—to app developers in Silicon Valley. “People aren’t talking about this here, but we really ought to look and ask what it means when Tencent and Baidu and the others are actually doing more than just sitting in China,” Doty says. “They are looking to expand.” And even if they don’t ever fully launch in the U.S., Li and Breikss both noted that Google and Facebook have been imitating Tencent and its WeChat platform. “Imitating is going both ways now,” Li says. “This is a new phenomenon.”

And certain industries—healthcare, medical devices, cryptocurrency—aren’t allowed to advertise at all in China. Other industries take longer to be approved by the Chinese government—Breikss estimates that the government takes two to three months to approve education companies. Just last week, Breikss says that the government denied a Sheng Li education client the ability to advertise. Sometimes, approval depends on politics—the restrictions can become tighter based on relations between the U.S. and China, for example. He pauses, murmuring to himself that he must be careful with his words: “You don't always get the same answer, depending on where you look or what your connections are,” he says of government approval. Breikss says that Sheng Li has built up connections and partners across China to help navigate the sometimes-shaky ground, but the solutions go too far for some Western brand

leaders. “For example, when you want to set up these social media or search accounts, you may need a copy of the business license,” he says. “And depending on the size of the brand, getting a copy of the business license can be difficult. Or getting the personal identification of the CEO may be required to get an account set up. Well, the CEO doesn't necessarily want to provide scans of their passport. But sometimes that's the requirement of the Chinese government for setting up an account.” “So then I’d probably layer on a month of planning in advance of that,” Breikss says. “Three to six months is a good window for what companies can expect to have a basic presence set up where they're able to target the Chinese demographic. It depends on how much content they have ready.” But fitting that content to the market will take research and translation. One Sheng Li client had a great video, Breikss says, one the brand spent a lot of time and money producing. But the video was entirely in English, using English characters to explain features of the product, and was hosted on YouTube, a website that has been blocked by the Great Firewall of China for a decade. The brand wanted to put the video on their Chinese landing page—Breikss says that he explained to the brand that they’d need to dub the video or provide Chinese-language subtitles, move it to Tencent Video (akin to YouTube) and rework certain parts of the video. As it stands, Breikss told the brand, the video would be a clunky translation for the Chinese market. “Ideally, it should be reshot with the ideal target Chinese customer in mind, not the Western customer,” Breikss says that he told the brand executives. “You've spent $50,000 producing this video, you have to spend another $75,000 or $90,000 doing the Chinese version—more than double because there's more intricacies and it’s not in our backyard to go and shoot it again. “Well, brands aren't necessarily ready to hear that,” he says. The video wasn’t reshot, but given subtitles for its Chinese audience. Breikss hopes that if this version is even somewhat successful, the brand will reshoot the video next year specifically for the Chinese audience. “We still want it to be a successful campaign,” he says. Breikss ran into another issue with this brand’s campaign that Sheng Li often sees: cost. The brand translating the video had a budget of about $100,000, but Sheng Li would be taking 30% in service fees—the cost of launching in China is higher than the standard 15% agency fee for media buys because of the complexity. Brands often think that launching in China is simple, Breikss says, but are surprised when they must split their budget between advertising and creating infrastructure. In this brand’s case, Sheng Li had to set up the brand’s landing page, host the video on Tencent Video and translate the video’s English into Mandarin. And it’s not just the language that has to be translated—the data does, too. Chinese channels such as WeChat and Tencent Video don’t have API interfaces like Facebook and Google that quickly populate data, so Sheng Li needs to manually pull the analytics from the brand’s account to measure

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INTERNET AD REVENUE CHINA VS. U.S. [ IN BILLIONS, U.S. DOLLARS ]

CHINA* U.S.** $107.5

$88 $71.46

$72.5 $59.6

[PREDICTED]

$54.4

$49.5 $42

$42.8 $31.8 $22.5 $16.1

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

*Revenue numbers from China come from a Statista report **Revenue numbers from the U.S. come from multiple years of IAB’s Internet Advertising Revenue Report, conducted by PwC

the campaigns. Still, Breikss says that the brand was surprised by the higher-than-usual service costs. “That's actually the No. 1 problem that we run into,” Breikss says. “All other partner agencies, all other brands seem to think that it has to be under 15% for us to run campaigns into China, but because they don't have the infrastructure in place, that formula doesn't work yet.” That formula doesn’t work because—as McGarryBowen’s Dupuis noted—there’s no roadmap to success in China and a lot of unknowns. But Breikss believes that launching in China will become easier over the next few years. Lately, branding work and getting approval in China seems to be getting faster. “Every year seems to be accelerating and there's more agencies like ours providing these services—there’s more competition,” he says.

‘YOU CAN OWN IT’

Every company entering the Chinese market takes a different approach. Li says that he’s spoken with companies who parachute experts into China—senior leaders from the U.S. or Europe— many of whom don’t speak Mandarin or any other Chinese

CAREFUL WITH CONSUMER ATTENTION

ecent research in the Journal of International Marketing finds that while U.S. consumers love highly attentive brands, attention can rub Chinese consumers the wrong way. In one experiment, the study—titled “Consumer Responses to High Service Attentiveness: A CrossCultural Examination”—found that when brands are highly attentive to Chinese consumers, the consumers become suspicious and lower their patronage of that brand. “This finding suggests that high service attentiveness by itself may be enough to trigger suspicion and result in negative responses among Chinese consumers, who are usually associated with an interdependent self-construal,” the researchers write in the study.

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language. There may be a room full of Chinese people with one Western executive, but the entire room tries to communicate in English, which Li doesn’t believe is effective. Other companies empower local talent to run the show, but the head office often wants final say over big decisions. Since China is many hours ahead of both Europe and North America—and has a first-hand look at any budding trend—the decision-making process is neutered. Brands often fall behind on this alone, Li says. “I have seen examples where approval was given to the local Chinese executives to do things to compete with local competitors,” Li says. “But then it's probably too late [after] several weeks have gone. The competitors are already doing things. … How much autonomy do you give the local leadership? That’s a really critical issue.” High-level autonomy is critical for those working in China for a brand, Li says, but often difficult for Western brands to accept. China is an ideas-based economy, one that moves rapidly—being quick and willing to experiment may mean more failures, but it will also likely mean more successes. Brands can put all the work they’d like into crafting their strategy, but it’s just as important to adapt your strategy as the market changes. “When you don't even know where your destination might be or what course you are going to take, execution becomes a very different ballgame,” Li says. To be given autonomy, the agency must have the brand’s trust. Dragon Social’s DeGennaro says that they try to establish trust with clients early so they can quickly jump on new trends. But if a company can’t trust its marketing agency, they’ll likely not bother working together. “Working with stubborn customers who think they know better than we do with close to zero experience can often be more of a headache to work with,” DeGennaro says. Success in China takes a lot of research, money, patience, hard work and adjustments. Breikss says that brands should have one thing within the organization that will likely set them apart from their competition: a brand champion for the China market. The brand champion is someone who sees the potential in China campaigns and knows what their success could mean for the company. They’re someone who can bring excitement about the campaign’s potential to the C-suite. When the company has put in the work and sees the opportunity in China, Breikss says that the size and potential to fail may be scary, but it’s best to doubleor even triple-down on the efforts. Having someone inside pushing for more effort and resources can make the difference between moving forward in China and stopping the campaign entirely. m

WHAT’S THE FUTURE OF WESTERN BRANDS IN CHINA?

arketing News spoke with Simone Tam, CEO of mcgarrybowen Greater China, about how the Chinese market has changed for the West, how branding differs in China and what the future holds for Western brands in the country.

IN THE YEARS SINCE THE OPEN DOOR POLICY, HOW DO YOU THINK THE MARKET HAS CHANGED FOR WESTERN BRANDS IN CHINA? Being a Western brand used to be an advantage. Chinese consumers would naturally prefer Western brands as they associated them with high quality and prestige. This is no longer true. With a multitude of global brands to choose from and rising incomes fueling premiumization, “Western” doesn’t automatically equate to better. Chinese brands have worked hard to change perceptions of low product value and poor quality. Through better product design, durable quality and improved brand image, Chinese brands have built consumer confidence. We see an increasing share of Chinese brands in many categories, including mobile phones, automotive, infant milk formula and home appliances. According to Mintel data, 58% of consumers buying a new smartphone in the next six months would choose domestic brands; the top 10 electric vehicle car brands are all local brands; a premium line of local IMF brand Feihe grew 80% in one year; Midea, Gree and Haier [all Chinese brands] are leading the growth in home appliance. Chinese consumers are sophisticated

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and rational in their choices. Simply claiming overseas origin isn’t enough. The challenge for modern marketers is to make the brand origin meaningful.

WHAT’S THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE FOR WESTERN BRANDS MARKETING IN CHINA?

In general, Chinese local brands are more flexible in terms of adapting new consumer trends versus Western brands. Commonly, Chinese local brands tend to adopt centralized organization. Decision-makers are normally the founder of the brand or direct appointments connected to the CEO. They have unrivalled power over everything related to the brand and are expected to be fully accountable for sales. Once the decision-maker is convinced of the importance of a new consumer trend and has decided to push products, services or communications toward that trend, the whole organization responds at speed. Western brands with [multiple] market-layered decision-making processes are just too slow.

CREATIVELY, WHAT’S THE BIGGEST DIFFERENCE YOU SEE IN CAMPAIGNS THAT WORK IN THE WEST AND THOSE THAT WORK IN CHINA?

At a global level and in established Western markets, fame and creativity are strongly tied to effectiveness. “Fame” campaigns are four times more effective than other campaigns. Creatively awarded campaigns are 10 times more effective than other campaigns. In China’s mobile-first landscape, “make me care” has less impact. Although consumers’ time spent with media is increasing, the growth is driven by the time spent with mobile screens and across fragmented platforms. In comparison to YouTube in the West, China has 10 major online video platforms all competing

with hot drama shows as well as a multitude of vertical sites that cater [to] every interest.The challenge is to capture consumers’ attention as they easily jump from one piece of content to another. This requires a new approach to delivering effectiveness. To increase awareness and recall from fragmented exposures, the direct benefit needs to be clear: repetition with resonance rather than a single emotional exposure. During FIFA World Cup in 2018, Chinese digital economy brands—such as BOSS Zhipin—gained awareness within two weeks by taking a high-profile and high-intensity approach. More brands are adopting similar approaches. But does this work in the long term? Direct and repeated information can raise brand awareness for a short term, but blunt and irritating creative will have a negative impact on long-term brand consideration and preference. Hitting me over the head again and again doesn’t mean I like you. Short-term hits do not automatically translate to sustained success.

WHAT’S THE BEST WAY FOR WESTERN BRANDS TO FORM RELATIONSHIPS WITH THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT? Demonstrating an understanding of Chinese culture and delivering “positive energy” to society is a good way for Western brands to form better relationships with the government. In China, especially lower-tier cities, consumers are politically sensitive. Any misunderstanding or play on Chinese culture will be seen as disrespectful to China, and it will lead to criticism from Chinese government. Brands that inspire Chinese consumers can gain support from the government. ESports used to receive a lot of criticism due to the stereotype of [being an] “electronic drug.” When Chinese eSports teams began to win worldwide and proactively looked to inspire younger generations

to work hard and be their better selves, [the government changed their opinion]. Recent government communications have changed tone and shown their support via state-owned media channels.

WHAT DO YOU THINK THE FUTURE HOLDS FOR WESTERN BRANDS MARKETING IN CHINA?

The era of double-digit growth in China has passed. Growth rate in GDP is expected to stay around 6% in the coming years. Despite incentives and the ending of the one-child policy, population growth looks stagnant and lower than official expectations. This will impact consumer spending in the long term, influenced by macro factors in the economy and an aging population with more demands on their income. The environment for foreign-owned entities continues to improve and the doors remain open. Industries that were dominated by state-owned companies or joint ventures continue to open for competition. In 2018, we saw the easing of restrictions for verticals as diverse as banking, insurance and automotive. Even petrol stations can now be foreign-owned. Innovation will be the competitive battlefield. Under the central “Made in China 2025” strategic plan, the government will help Chinese brands to grow competitiveness in industries currently dominated by Western brands. Western brands are facing bigger challenges, especially in high-tech industries like pharmaceuticals, electric vehicles, IT and robotics. No brand should expect to benefit automatically from China’s growth potential. With consumer sophistication and ever-increasing competition, delivering real value to consumers is critical for Western brands looking to cut through. Localization and authenticity are key. Brands need to stand out for their product, service, technology or consumer experience.

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B U Y- I T- F O R -

LIFERS Emotional connection has long been the goal of brands yearning to gain pathological loyalty from consumers. A burgeoning consumer movement asks: What about selling stuff that lasts?

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on Longworth arrived in the West African nation of Benin in the 1990s. Deployed for missionary work in a remote, underdeveloped region, his needs outnumbered his limited resources. He prioritized transportation and pooled what money he had to purchase the first decent vehicle he spotted, a 1986 Peugeot 505. The car was “notoriously unreliable.” Several years and one pregnant wife later, the Peugeot’s irksome flaws assumed a larger magnitude in the face of a medical emergency. Longworth’s wife Erin needed an emergency cesarean section nine weeks pre-term. The procedure could only be performed at a hospital reached by hours of travel on pockmarked roads—an impassible route for Longworth’s aging, mid-size car. “I knew I couldn’t trust my car for the type of aggressive driving needed. If it broke down, I could lose my wife,” Longworth wrote in a blog post recounting the incident. The crisis passed only after a colleague volunteered to undertake the journey in his Toyota van. Erin survived, but that day will haunt Longworth forever, and not as a near miss. “What I didn’t tell in that story is that my infant son died,” Longworth writes in an e-mail. Whatever allegiance Longworth held toward Peugeot was lost when his vehicle flunked the life-

or-death test. He immediately began to search for a new car, eventually choosing a Toyota, the same brand he turned to with his wife’s life on the line. He would not be disappointed when, years later, another desperate trek was needed to save a different child who had contracted malaria. Toyota again transported Longworth and family safely to the hospital. Longworth, now 38, has since moved to Canada with his family, taking his newfound appreciation for reliability with him. Now when he considers products, he prizes reliability. “I decided to incrementally improve the stability and efficiency of my life by strategically improving my purchasing decisions, even if it meant delayed gratification,” he says. His focus reflects that of a growing swath of consumers unified under the mantle of buy it for life, or BIFL. The philosophy purports to strip products of sentimentality and measure the performance and durability of the underlying components. Instead of the best price, BIFLers emphasize the greatest value. The implied proposition is that upfront costs are higher than average, but the performance and lifetime of those products will exceed their cheaper counterparts, even with heavy use. “There are a lot of people out there who prefer high quality instead of pinching a penny,” Longworth says. On one hand, this is nothing new. Consumers have

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bought pricey items for their supposed quality since time immemorial—and marketers have taken note. Some claim the word “dependability” was coined a century ago in a Dodge Brothers automobile print ad. “At one time the word on the street was, ‘You can judge quality by price,’ and there was some merit in that,” says Ronald Savitt, a retired professor of business administration and co-founder of the Conference on Historical Analysis & Research in Marketing. “Consumers still have difficulty knowing what quality is and making judgements that reflect purchasing higher quality at higher prices.” What is new is the level of identity and organization BIFLers have achieved using the internet to warehouse their gathered knowledge. The desire for high-quality, durable goods, whether borne out of painful memories of the Great Recession or the spending splurges of recent years, have amplified what was a small and threadbare network of obsessives. People constantly search the web for insider recommendations for the “best” stuff— restaurants and travel destinations or consumer goods—as well as to brag about the deals they get. Add to that the mounting consumer guilt over disposable plastics and electronics components, and you can understand the growing desire for durable goods among people like Longworth. Two years ago, he launched his own site, Well Rigged, to spread the gospel of risk-averse consumption and review consumer goods for reliability. “My main motivation to buying high-quality products grew out of a realization that I was unnecessarily sacrificing safety and a lot of stability in my life because of poorly chosen and unreliable products,” Longworth says. Well Rigged is a small site. Longworth says that he’s hoping for 30,000 visitors by the end of the year, which he acknowledges is not many. But he says traffic has doubled in the past month and his potential audience is enormous and engaged. “The hub of the buy-it-forlife movement is Reddit,” he says. “To get an idea of how active the community is, Reddit ad stats project that one ad on the Buy It For Life subreddit can garner over 300,000 average daily impressions.” Reddit is arguably the BIFL nerve center, spawning a cottage industry of linkback articles describing the movement’s organizing principles and promoting its most celebrated brands. As of May, the BIFL subreddit had almost 600,000 subscribers contributing product advice and consumer support tips, as well as fawning over pictures of well-made or strangely durable antiques. The site is a user-created extension of more formalized, hierarchical review shops such as Consumer Reports and Wirecutter. The latter launched in 2011 as a tech-focused

property belonging to news and culture site The Awl’s constellation of digital brands. Its first five years of existence generated more than $150 million in affiliate marketing revenue. The Awl itself died in January 2018, but Wirecutter lives on, having been acquired by The New York Times Co. in 2016. Both Wirecutter and Consumer Reports placed in the top 1,000 most-visited websites, according to Alexa Internet. Wirecutter vaulted more than 1,000 positions from mid-March to mid-May to No. 912. Meanwhile, 83-year-old Consumer Reports sits at No. 691, while also mailing out 3.6 million print subscriptions of its magazine as of 2017. Consumer Reports is a nonprofit organization, and its most recent public filings show a revenue of about $250 million.

here’s a kernel of frustration within the BIFL movement that is important for marketers to hear. “I began advocating for BIFL because I believe the wider market is drunk on cutting corners and compromising quality for an extra 1% profits,” Longworth says. “BIFL is a growing voice coming from consumers that’s saying, ‘Stop selling us junk.’ Cranking out low-quality products is short-sighted and leads to huge pollution problems.” Savitt says that the consumer backlash is the result of decades of clashing consumption trends, namely the drive for better-quality goods and simply wanting more stuff. The conflict started in the aftermath of World War II when expanding product lines created an outlet for pent-up demand after years of war and economic depression. “In the late 1950s, there was a general trading up to higher-price and -value goods, especially in automobiles and white-goods appliances,” Savitt says. “Much of this was a function of greater wealth and the desire to show an ability to purchase higher-order goods. This began to change with globalization and the availability of imported goods. … What happened was the frequency of buying new items became more important.” BIFLers want to slow down the consumer buying cycle, embracing—if not exactly minimalism—a spend-more, buy-less mindset. This supposition plays into the hands of luxury brands that coat an exclusive image with a veneer of practicality. “[BIFL] goods are often luxury goods such as watches and jewelry,” Savitt says. “‘A Diamond is Forever,’ was the De Beers theme for years.” Nowadays, these aspirational, reduced-consumption messages are delivered particularly well by lifestyle brands. Patagonia’s outdoor wear is priced at the top of the market, trading partly on eco-warrior imagery that JUNE / JULY 2019 | MARKETING NEWS

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BUY IT … FOR NOW THREE BRANDS THAT LOST THEIR BIFL POSITIONING PYREX – The classic cookware has become the brand BIFLers love to hate, going so far as to create in-depth infographics documenting the brand’s fall from grace. Its crime? Swapping borosilicate glass for soda-lime glass in the manufacturing process, a move that many viewed as quality sacrificed in the name of cheap production. Borosilicate glass has a higher resistance to thermal shock when heated, although the sodalime glass is more resistant to breaking when dropped. Parent company Corelle Brands declined comment for this story.

DR. MARTENS – The innovative boots designed by a German WWII medic were long considered to be the most durable around, even as the brand ascended to the realm of fashionable footwear. But a nearbankruptcy in 2003 drove the company to move its factories to China and Thailand. Some say that the quality hasn’t been the same since. In 2018, the company announced it would discontinue its “For Life” range of products.

MOEN – For nearly a quarter-century, faucet and fixture manufacturer Moen embodied the BIFL mindset by incorporating it into its slogan, “Buy it for Looks. Buy it for Life.” As recently as 2016, the company released a round of ads touting its longevity, reinforced with the sentimental flair of a father bathing his young son. All that changed last year, when the company decided to ditch the tagline as part of a refresh, according to a PR spokesperson. No word on whether the BIFL sentiment was also dropped.

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purports to keep goods out of landfills. Competitor L.L.Bean makes a similar claim: The outfitter long justified its higher price point with a lifetime warranty that saw virtually any product replaced at any time (although such generosity ended with the introduction of a more limited lifetime warranty in 2018). “Marketing to the BIFL crowd has the benefit of selling higher-ticket items,” Longworth says. “As an affiliate marketer, I’m making way more on my commissions because the vast majority of sales are higher-priced, quality items.” He also thinks that the majority of BIFL consumers are in the middle class, consumers who are methodical and well-researched. “They usually practice delayed gratification. They know what they want and wait to snipe top-quality products at big discounts once they have the means. I consider myself in this category and write for folks in this category.” But not all BIFL brands are so exclusive. Take Lodge cast-iron cookware, for example. Its skillets are found in some of the most high-end kitchen stores in the world, but they’re also sold at Wal-Mart. Lodge Manufacturing was founded 123 years ago, making it only 23 years older than the expected lifespan of its skillets. “If you take care of it, it will last forever,” says Mark Kelly, Lodge’s public relations manager. In most instances, buy it for life does not literally mean the rest of a consumer’s existence. BIFLers accept that there’s a certain amount of care required on the owner’s part for an item to attain its longest possible longevity. There’s also an acknowledgement that people will tire of some objects. “Who wants a pair of underwear to last a lifetime?” asks Longworth. Cast iron is an exception. With proper maintenance, cast iron easily becomes an heirloom item. Lodge recognizes that status and promotes it. A few years ago, Lodge marketed the fact that George Washington’s mother willed cast-iron cookware to specific relatives when she died, putting the story at the front of an official company cookbook. “We have had great success touting the multigenerational use of our products,” Kelly says. “When you use something as often as people use their cookware—you can use it for every meal of the day and desserts and everything in between—the cost is very low compared to other types of cookware. Consumers really connect with that. It’s a term we call pricing value and people, in kind, value you.” It may not appear to make financial sense for a company to sell long-lasting products at a reasonable price, yet Lodge is bigger than ever. Kelly says that the company has grown steadily after introducing preseasoned pans in 2002 and witnessed a sales explosion

in the fall of 2010 that fueled a factory expansion three years later. “In a matter of three years, we increased our production capacity a matter of 125% and sales continue to go well in all categories,” Kelly says. Additionally, Lodge has expanded its international presence from 60 countries to 80 in that same timeframe. Globally, the cast-iron cookware market is likely to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 3.4% from 2017 to 2025, becoming a $3.3 billion industry during that time, according to a report from Transparency Market Research. Assuming customers aren’t replacing previously bought Lodge products, what’s fueling this insatiable demand for more cast iron? The answer is variety. Lodge now offers a greater assortment of products than at any other time in its history. According to Kelly, the company has the largest line of cast-iron cookware in the world. “It’s like the old Lay’s potato chip commercial: ‘[Bet you can’t] eat just one,’” Kelly says. “Skillets will always be our best growth market. That’s way outside the parameters of the bell curve.”

he BIFL movement can be understood as a desire for quality and reliability, but there’s also an underlying current of paranoia. Encoded within the DNA of the movement are sneaking suspicions that some brands don’t care about their products after a sale is completed—or worse, that some companies are intentionally sabotaging products by designing them to break down after a predetermined period of time. This concern has its roots in the concept of planned obsolescence, which describes a design and economics strategy with an artificially limited lifetime. The phrase was popularized in the 1950s by industrial designer Brooks Stevens, but the concept started a few decades earlier. Savitt doesn’t think that executives are nefariously plotting to foist sub-par goods on the marketplace, but he does think “false” obsolescence is real, especially when consumers (and shareholders) are primed to expect new iterations of existing products rolled out every 12 to 24 months. “[Planned obsolescence] has always been part of the automobile industry when each new car was slightly different, mostly in appearance, than the one before,” Savitt says. “P&G did the same with Tide. Blue chips one year, yellow the next. The cleaning power was basically the same, and (it caused) a lot of grief for women seen with the old Tide in the shopping cart.” Apple is one recent example of a company that may be hitting a wall in its purported planned obsolescence JUNE / JULY 2019 | MARKETING NEWS

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BUY IT FOR LIFE ITEMS AND BRANDS WITH GREAT BIFL REPUTATIONS DARN TOUGH – A company that wears its durability on its sleeve ... er, heel. Most clothing companies don’t guarantee their garments for life, but this Vermontbased producer of Merino wool socks makes use of specialized knitting machines to produce eye-popping warranties. “At 1,441 stiches per square inch, these Merino wool socks are super-high quality. I love mine so much I reviewed them,” Longworth says. No doubt that lifetime promise makes the higher price easier for consumers to swallow.

JANSPORT – The backpack brand still offers an old-school warranty it established in 1967. It’s considered the gold standard in the category, one that prioritizes durability marketing. “They’re still backing their bags with a true lifetime warranty without any fine print,” Longworth says.

DIRECT SALE PRODUCTS – Maybe it’s the need to stand apart from the pack without big-budget marketing that drives direct sellers such as Tupperware and Cutco to invest in quality and offer generous, ironclad warranties. Whatever the reason, the products have earned praise from the BIFL community for their replacement guarantees, even if some question their methods of selling.

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strategy, he says, as the company has seen declining iPhone sales. “Why upgrade when the new product is not dramatically different than the current?” In 2014, claims of Apple’s planned obsolescence designs bubbled to the surface. Harvard economics professor Sendhil Mullainathan wrote a post for The New York Times Upshot blog, citing a graduate student’s experiment comparing Google search trends for “iPhone slow” with similar searches for Android. The student found people search more frequently for “iPhone slow” than anything Android-related, giving the impression that iPhones slow down faster than Android phones. The slower phones were finally acknowledged by Apple in 2017, but the company denied engaging in any type of planned obsolescence. It said that older phones that updated to newer operating systems would inevitably work more slowly. Whether this constitutes planned obsolescence is debatable, but even the perception of such corporate behavior can poison a brand’s fortunes. Apple’s acknowledgement of slower phones sparked a class action lawsuit at the end of 2017. Governments are now intervening on behalf of customers. In 2015, France adopted a law criminalizing the manufacture of planned obsolescence goods. Last year, the country opened a criminal inquiry into Apple, following the company’s admission of iPhone slowdowns. French consumer activists are agitating for similar actions to be taken against printer manufacturers Canon, HP and Brother. As of last year, the country was debating a labeling system for electronics that state a product’s longevity rating.

ot all consumers are BIFLers. Many shoppers will prioritize frugality over longevity. And despite the recent emphasis on endurance, many consumers don’t want their possessions forever, according to Leighann Neilson, a marketing historian and professor at Carleton University. Much of Neilson’s work focuses on the disposal stage of consumption, or what happens to items when people are finished with them. From her home in Ottawa, Ontario, a city of about 1 million people with three full-time auction houses, Neilson witnesses aging baby boomers pawn their housewares collected over a lifetime as part of their downsizing efforts. Neilson says that supply far outstrips demand for these products, resulting in a flood of well-constructed furniture going unwanted because it’s out of style with modern tastes. “The problem (is) that fashions change,” Neilson says. “I’ll give you an example that almost had my dad in tears: He was at the auction with me and there was a walnut king-size bedroom set. Headboard, footboard,

two night tables, men’s dresser, women’s dresser and a mattress. The whole thing sold for 80 [Canadian] dollars. Dad says to me, ‘Oh my God, I wish I had a place to put that. That’s such a crime. Look at that.’ And I looked at it and said, ‘But it’s ugly.” Neilson also doesn’t see a desire for making lifetime purchases among the generation of undergrads she teaches. Rather, she sees a cohort attached to brand names and cheap price tags. “I talk to my students—who are considerably younger—they’re telling me they don’t want to make the investment [in furniture] because what if they get that great opportunity to work overseas,” Neilson says. “They’re going to just sell everything and go.” Neilson’s exposure to these two distinct age groups gives her the impression that BIFL is only relevant to a certain segment of the population. This is confirmed in part with market research demographics for Consumer Reports and Wirecutter. In 2016, Consumer Reports reported the average age of print subscribers was 65, and the average age of an online subscriber was 56. The New York Times, meanwhile, claims the average Wirecutter user ranged in age between 41 to 53 in 2018. Her examples also suggest that some items are poor ground for BIFL marketing—furniture and fashion in particular. But when it comes to items where function trumps form, BIFL will likely win the day, even if the customer hasn’t heard the term. Neilson herself admits that she uses the same cookware she’s owned since the 1980s. If marketers whose products fit BIFL take the effort to engage and satisfy these consumers, they will win fiercely loyal advocates for their brand. Lodge presents a successful blueprint: Convert a few top influencers and get out of the way. “Third-party endorsements are the best way to promote a company,” says Kelly. “It’s a slow build honestly, but once it gets rolling it just keeps on rolling.” It’s a process similar to getting a just-right seasoned cast-iron skillet. Marketers looking to appeal directly to the BIFL crowd need to be honest about their product specs. Transparency is key. This is one type of marketing where it might be better to work more closely with designers and engineers than with sales and customer support. “The thing that’s hard about marketing to people like this is you have to be ruthlessly honest and your content has to be deep and thorough,” Longworth says. “These people are hardcore researchers. They already know a lot of facts, so in many ways they can sniff insincere marketing or an uninformed opinion a mile away.” m JUNE / JULY 2019 | MARKETING NEWS

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Directory of Marketing Research Providers

Qualitative, quantitative, focus groups, online surveys, modeling and sampling. Marketing research impacts every level of business from the products and services that are developed to the prices that are set. Since the information gleaned from marketing research can set the course of your marketing plan, finding a qualified market research provider to deliver accurate and relevant results is important. The AMA's Directory of Marketing Research Providers can help guide your choice of research practitioners. Whether you are seeking a full service research firm or someone that specializes in a specific research technique you can find information on leading firms in this special Marketing News directory! AN ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT TO THE JUNE / JULY 2019 ISSUE OF MARKETING NEWS. COPYRIGHT 2019 BY THE AMERICAN MARKETING ASSOCIATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. JUNE / JULY 2019 | MARKETING NEWS

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Directory of Marketing Research Providers INDEX TO THE

Directory of Marketing Research Providers FULL SERVICE

Complete Research Connection (CRC) Dynata Karchner Marketing Research, LLC

ANALYTICAL RESEARCH Dynata

ANALYTICAL SERVICES Ascribe

BRAND/BRANDING RESEARCH Culturati Research & Consulting, Inc. Dynata Fletcher Knight Karchner Marketing Research, LLC

BUSINESS TO BUSINESS RESEARCH Dynata Karchner Marketing Research, LLC

CONSUMER LOYALTY Karchner Marketing Research, LLC

CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

MULTICULTURAL RESEARCH

Ascribe Dynata Karchner Marketing Research, LLC

Culturati Research & Consulting, Inc. House of Marketing Research

DATA COLLECTION/ PROCESSING

Symmetric

Complete Research Connection (CRC) Information Specialists Group IntelliSurvey L&E Research

ONLINE SURVEYS

Culturati Research & Consulting, Inc. Dynata KMR Research Studio

IntelliSurvey Symmetric

FOCUS GROUP FACILITIES ClearView Research, Inc.

FOCUS GROUP RECRUITMENT ClearView Research, Inc. L&E Research

GLOBAL MARKETING CONSULTING

PRODUCT RESEARCH Dynata Karchner Marketing Research, LLC

QUALITATIVE RESEARCH Complete Research Connection (CRC) Culturati Research & Consulting, Inc. Dynata House of Marketing Research Information Specialists Group Karchner Marketing Research, LLC

Fletcher Knight

QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH

HEALTHCARE MARKETING

Culturati Research & Consulting, Inc. Dynata House of Marketing Research Information Specialists Group Karchner Marketing Research, LLC

Karchner Marketing Research, LLC

Dynata

Ascribe Dynata

ONLINE RESEARCH

FIELD SERVICES

ClearView Research, Inc. Dynata

CUSTOMER LOYALTY

Symmetric

Confirmit

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH

Confirmit Fletcher Knight

ONLINE FOCUS GROUPS

Culturati Research & Consulting, Inc. Dynata IntelliSurvey KMR Research Studio

ENTERPRISE FEEDBACK MANAGEMENT

CONSUMER RESEARCH

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MANAGEMENT

ONLINE COMMUNITIES

LOYALTY RESEARCH Dynata

MARKET RESEARCH Confirmit L&E Research

SEGMENTATION Culturati Research & Consulting, Inc. Dynata

WEB-ENABLED MARKET RESEARCH Civicom

MOBILE RESEARCH

WORLDWIDE FOCUS GROUPS

Civicom

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Directory of Marketing Research Providers

Founded in 1999, Ascribe helps the world’s largest market research firms, corporate researchers and customer experience professionals make confident decisions based on rich, real-time insights using a world-leading verbatim analytics platform. Ascribe’s comprehensive and flexible SaaS-based technologies enable accurate and fast analysis of verbatim comments regardless of channel or language. Resources for Market Research and Customer Experience Professionals include: Coder, CX Inspector, CX Snapshot, Illustrator, and Ascribe Services.

Ascribe Cincinnati, OH Rick Kieser, CEO of Ascribe 1-877-241-9112 sales@goascribe.com http://www.goascribe.com

Complete Research Connection (CRC), an Impulse Survey Top Rated, certified womanowned business enterprise, is a Columbus-based qualitative research company offering superior consultation, moderating, research design, project management, questionnaire development, auditing, recruiting, data collection, data processing and analysis. Experienced with a variety of research methodologies including online, in-person, CLTs, sensory tests, HUTs, dial tests, shop-alongs, intercepts, virtual shopping and more. CRC offers an 8,000+ sq. ft. facility with four viewable research suites and a large creative space room.

Complete Research Connection (CRC) info@crcmr.com http://www.crcmr.com

Civicom is the global leader in facilitating web IDIs and focus groups worldwide. Our suite of services include an online bulletin board solution, a mobile insights app for mobile qualitative research, mobile ethnography, and mobile or website usability testing; we also provide respondent recruitment, translation and transcription services, and an intuitive online platform for audio and video content curation and management.

Civicom Contact: Annie McDannald P.O. Box 4689 Greenwich, CT 06831 United States Phone: 203-413-2423 Email: inquire@civicommrs.com https://www.civicommrs.com

Confirmit helps businesses operationalise feedback to drive change throughout their organisations using the world’s most secure, reliable and scalable solutions for Voice of the Customer, Employee Engagement and Market Research programmes. Confirmit’s solutions enable companies to run feedback and research programmes that increase revenue, reduce costs and promote culture change.

Confirmit Info@confirmit.com www.confirmit.com

ClearView Research, Inc., established in 1996 has made it a goal to give clients the highest level of service and in response, we have been consistently rated a top notch focus group facility. We have two locations to serve you – Chicago and Orlando. We have in-house staff in both locations to recruit reliable, personable, qualified respondents to your specifications. We will complete every project on time and within budget with a management team ready to give 110%. Doesn’t your next project deserve the best? Mention this listing to receive one free room rental on your next visit to our facility when we recruit at least 2 or more groups – valid in both Chicago and Orlando!

ClearView Research, Inc. Chicago (Betty Holm): betty@clearviewresearch.com

Orlando (Jeni Marsh): jeni@clearvieworlando.com

www.clearviewresearch.com

Looking for cultural intelligence that inspires? Culturati is a polycultural market research firm committed to skillfully uncovering insights and delivering actionable results to inspire connections between people and brands. We specialize in the New Total Mainstream and U.S. Hispanic markets. And, offer groundbreaking syndicated segmentation models for all consumer segments: Total Market Cultural Mosaic™, Hispanic, African American and Asian. Contact us for traditional qual & quant research, online research, syndicated market knowledge, and in-culture consulting.

CulturatiResearch Marissa.Romero@ CulturatiResearch.com www.CulturatiResearch.com Ph. 858.750.2600 JUNE / JULY 2019 | MARKETING NEWS

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Directory of Marketing Research Providers

Dynata is one of the world’s leading providers of firstparty data contributed by consumers and business professionals. With a reach that encompasses 60+ million people globally and an extensive library of individual profile attributes collected through surveys, Dynata is the cornerstone for precise, trustworthy quality data. The company has built innovative data services and solutions around its core first-party data offering to bring the voice of the customer to the entire marketing spectrum.

Dynata Web: www.dynata.com Email: info@dynata.com Address: 5800 Tennyson Parkway, Plano TX, 75007

Fletcher Knight Inc. is a global marketing consulting firm that promises to change the way you think about building brands. Using a new level of creative intelligence, we translate customer, consumer and expert insights into breakthrough ideas and strategies for growth. Our passion is to create inspiring and intuitive new consumer experiences at the intersection of physical, rational and emotional needs. Over the last fifteen years, our team of talented innovation growth specialists has crafted an approach called Experience-Based Innovation, which dramatically enriches the way we position brands and innovate. We deliver results that exceed benchmarks for success, while minimizing risk and increasing reward.

Fletcher Knight One Dock St., Suite 620 Stamford, CT 06902 203.276.6262 info@fletcherknight.com www.fletcherknight.com

How many more a-ha consumer insights could you glean about lifestyle, personal buying behaviors, and brand preferences if your research was conducted in Spanish? Or Mandarin? Or Tagalog? Language is a powerful bonding tool that creates a uniquely trusting rapport. Multi-lingual, multi-cultural diversity is what HMR brings to the research table. That, and our longstanding reputation for research excellence on a nationwide scale. HMR creates ideal environments for game-changing qualitative and quantitative market research. Our specialty is multi-cultural, your advantage is multi-beneficial.

House of Marketing Research Contact: Amy Siadak, President & CEO 2555 E. Colorado Blvd., Suite 205, Pasadena, CA 91107 Phone: 626.486.1400 Website: www.hmr-research.com

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Directory of Marketing Research Providers

ISG offers data collection and full-service quantitative and qualitative research capabilities, with over 20 years serving clients in B-to-B, B-to-C and public sectors. Projects range from voice of customer to branding and product development to advertising testing. Our in-house data collection facility can handle the toughest phone or online recruiting or surveying projects, and our consultants excel at thoughtful, custom study design and analysis – providing clients with insight and guidance that yields results.

Information Specialists Group Contact: Bob McGarry Jr. Email: rmcgarry@isgmn.com 2626 E. 82nd St. Suite 220 Bloomington, Minnesota 55425 Phone: 952.941.1600 http://www.isgmn.com

From Patients to Consumers, B2Bs to HCPs, The KMR Research Studio delivers premium quality ECONOMICALLY, inclusive of desired amenities and accoutrements. Designed from client & respondent input, this facility offers a relaxing oasis, uniquely satisfying their vision, while eliminating their pet peeves! The Studio is aesthetically pleasing. It accommodates BOTH a small client caucus, viewing from a sun-lit backroom on chocolaty couches with a fireplace; OR large, extended client teams, viewing from the conference room, also with a fireplace. Nestled in the true suburbs of Philly, respondents are fresh, interested, and available from over 300 zip codes. Respondents are relaxed and more forthcoming, allowing them to share more deeply, more openly, more authentically. The differentiator setting The KMR Research Studio apart from other facilities is the recruiting insight co-founders & moderators Mike and Helen Karchner contribute, to ensure recruiting success every time! Each of the 4 Rental Options includes complimentary concierge service, meals & beverages. Value has its prominence! Our Mantra: 1-Client 1-Project 1-Price

KMR Research Studio www.KMRResearchStudio.com

IntelliSurvey helps its clients make important business decisions using online surveys. Our industry-leading online survey software powers advanced research to gather critical market research data, and our online reports illuminate the results instantly. Our expert project managers will guide your project every step of the way.

IntelliSurvey 27261 Las Ramblas Suite 200 Mission Viejo, CA 92691 Phone: 949-298-4400 Email: info@intellisurvey.com https://www.intellisurvey.com/

At L&E we make connections to create conversations that help our clients make better decisions, so allowing us to give back to our communities and grow our connections. Since 1984, L&E has successfully recruited consumers, healthcare professionals, and business professionals – for virtually every type of market research project.

Karchner Marketing Research, LLC, is a full service boutique firm offering customized research, recruiting, and a focus group facility, for the general market clients as well as the healthcare (pharmaceutical, bio-tech, and medical device) clients. Since 2003, co-Founders Mike & Helen Karchner have conducted research in 86+ general market industries and 145+ therapeutic areas. Their proven successes precipitate from understanding their client’s needs, selecting apropos methodologies, and engaging in articulate conversations with qualified respondents (Consumers, Patients & HCPs alike). Frequently partnerships are often overshadowed by price, familiarity, or brand recognition. Yet, KMR identifies the overarching quintessential focus as inter-communication with respondents, flexibility with clients, and knowledgeability (not expertise) within an industry or therapeutic area. KMR offers the best respondentmoderator dialogue skillset, engaging in unique activities, which illuminate and effervesce their innermost drivers of choice, opinion, and action. Choose KMR as your strategic partner!

Karchner Marketing Research, LLC www.KMRInsights.com

Symmetric (a Decision Analyst company) provides sampling services to companies that place a very high value on representative samples, scientific sampling methods and advanced fraud detection systems. Symmetric applies advanced technology and sophisticated systems to create and manage some of the best online panels in the world.

Symmetric Contact: Jason Thomas, President of Symmetric URL: https://www. symmetricsampling.com/ Email: info@ symmetricsampling.com Phone: (817) 649-5243 JUNE / JULY 2019 | MARKETING NEWS

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career advancement

EMPLOYMENT BRANDING

How Marketers Can Help Their Companies Develop Powerful Employment Brands Don’t count out job seekers in your company’s branding. Creating a strong employment brand is crucial to employee retention and recruitment. BY MARK SHEVITZ

 mshevitz@cbdmarketing.com

f you’re a marketer, you may not think you can make an impact on the success of your company’s hiring and retention

efforts—but you can. In today’s tight job marketing, where the competition for talent is fierce, it’s

critical that companies have strong, targeted employment brands. In fact, according to a recent MRINetwork study, nearly 70% of candidates say that a potential employer’s employment brand is important when considering or accepting a job offer. And there’s no group better suited than marketers to create resonant, candidatefacing brands that set their employers apart. Marketers can play a key role in developing employment brands because they typically have the brand-building background and skills that their HR and talent acquisition (TA) counterparts do not. With the pursuit of quality talent becoming more and more competitive, HR and TA professionals are focusing on filling positions of people leaving their company and keeping up with adding headcount, rather than committing the resources to

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EMPLOYMENT BRANDING

build a strong employment brand. As a result, many companies don’t consider their talent acquisition as a brand experience, which leads to poor recruiting results. Prospective Hires Are Your Company’s Customers, Too If you think of prospective hires the way marketers think of customers, it becomes easy to understand why marketing should have a say in creating an employment brand. Job seekers research potential employers in similar ways to how they research products—they comparisonshop online. The MRINetwork study showed that 56% of job seekers say that they look at employers’ websites when determining who best meets their needs and how companies are different from each other. Nearly 40% look at review sites such as Glassdoor. The typical job seeker’s hunt probably starts with identifying their most desirable employers, based on perceptions created by those companies’ strong employment brands. You can see why the traditional brand development process is critical to creating a compelling employment brand. Marketers bring the right skills and experience to help the company understand and address target talents’ key decision-making factors. Companies should look to their marketing teams to: • Research the needs of the types of candidates the company wants to hire: what’s important to them rationally and emotionally, what might be a dealbreaker and how candidates recognize when a prospective employer embodies the characteristics of their ideal place of work. • Understand the competitive landscape, knowing how each competitor for talent positions itself as an employer. This leads to critical understanding of how a company can differentiate itself in ways that are meaningful to its target talent audiences. • Remember that brands—including employment brands—are about promise and delivery, so aligning the employment brand with what a

company can believably deliver on is crucial. • Create segmented employment brand messaging that directly addresses the different needs of various target talent audiences. • Develop employment brand activation strategies that map to target talents’ media habits. Examples of Marketing’s Role in Successfully Developing Strong Employment Brands When helping companies develop or enhance their employment brands, I’ve had the most positive experiences with teams where marketing and HR professionals work collaboratively. One of the nation’s leading flooring companies leveraged the power of its marketing leadership to develop a new employment brand aimed at attracting corporate employees, as well as outside sales reps and installers. The marketing team led the project with HR and TA staff contributing their insights about and experience with the recruitment process. The company also introduced traditional marketing metrics to gauge the success of the new employment brand, setting a goal of increasing its employee Net Promoter Score in conjunction with its traditional customer Net Promoter Score. In another assignment, the world’s largest commercial roofing manufacturer made the development of its new employment brand a specific segment of its corporate rebranding project, which was spearheaded by the marketing team. The team viewed prospective hires the same as prospective customers, as another key audience group that needed to be understood and communicated with in a way that resonated with their needs. Because marketing was used to treating audiences as customers who needed to be persuaded to choose this manufacturer over a competitor, it could easily develop a strong employment brand that directly addressed what prospective hires wanted in a career. Getting Started with HR and TA Marketing often needs to make the first

career advancement

move with HR and TA when it comes to partnering on employment branding. Often, the best time to develop a new employment brand is in conjunction with a corporate branding project. Bringing HR and TA to the table as the corporate rebrand project is concluding is a natural time to introduce them to the refreshed brand platform and brand messaging. It gets HR thinking about how the company’s new brand might influence how they talk about the company as a place to work. This is exactly the scenario that happened with one of the nation’s largest futures brokerage firms, which leveraged its marketing and HR teams to create its first-ever employment brand as part of a larger corporate rebranding project. If your company is not currently undergoing or considering a rebranding project, suggest to your HR and TA counterparts that today’s low unemployment rates and ever-increasing demand for qualified talent means being innovative when it comes to recruiting efforts. And that your marketing team can help them create a competitive advantage, resulting in more qualified applicants and faster times to fill open positions by developing a resonant employment brand. You’re there as a collaborator and partner to make their jobs easier. It’s more important than ever for companies to actively develop strong employment brands that differentiate them from their competition in ways that are relevant to the types of candidates they want to recruit. Marketers with expertise in branding, target audience insights, messaging and brand activations, have the skills and knowledge to partner with their HR and TA counterparts and play a critical role in shaping employment brands and bringing them to life. Consider this your call to action. m MARK SHEVITZ is executive vice president of brand strategy at CBD Marketing in Chicago. He has created employment brands for Aflac, Allstate, Chipotle Mexican Grill, OfficeMax, Pfizer, Sears and dozens of other companies.

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AMA Recruitment Classified Advertising Need to hire qualified, skilled marketing professionals? Looking for qualified marketing or business professors for your University? AMA’s Recruitment Classified Ads are the most cost effective way to reach your target audience!

ADVERTISING RATES ■ Straight Classifieds: $165 for up to 50 words (minimum charge) $335 for 51-100 words; $670 for 101-200 words; $1,000 for 201-300 words; $1,650 for 301-500 words.

■ Display Classifieds: $150 per column inch; minimum one inch. Column widths for display ads: 1 column = 1 1/2˝; 2 columns = 3 1/4˝; 3 columns = 5˝ ORDER INFORMATION To place a classified ad in Marketing News, please contact Samantha.Couture@ CommunityBrands.com or call Samantha at (727) 497-6565 x3302. To post your job on AMA's online job board, go to http://jobs.ama.org.

POSITIONS OPEN ACADEMIC PLACEMENT UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI – Coral Gables, Florida. The University of Miami invites applications from interested candidates for one or more tenure-track/tenured faculty positions (subject to Provost’s approval). The position is for Fall 2020 and rank is open and contingent upon research record. Qualified candidates should have a Ph.D. or be in the final stages of their dissertation, have a willingness and capacity to conduct highquality scholarly research, and demonstrate teaching competence. They are expected to pursue an active research program, perform undergraduate and graduate teaching, and engage in service activities. To apply, please go to https://umiami. wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/ en-US/UMFaculty/job/ Coral-Gables-FL/AssistantProfessor-in-Marketing_ R100026743 upload a cover letter, CV and three letters of recommendation in PDF format, by no later than July 1st, 2019. Information about the Marketing Department

at the University of Miami is available at: http://www. bus.miami.edu/thoughtleadership/academicdepartments/marketing/ index.html. The University of Miami is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer, and a drugfree/smoke-free workplace. MARKETING MANAGEMENT DIRECTOR, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, Menlo Park, CA, Brose NA. Plan, lead & manage Brose Grp bus. dev efforts in Silicon Valley (SV) to expand worldwide customer base to include CA OEM vehicle makers. Identify & dvlp business relationships w/ OEM electric vehicle & autonomous vehicle market & technology leaders. Explore automotive market & bus trends & latest technologies, trends & application opportunities in SV. Secure Brose’s leadership position in mechatronics for automotive & boost generation of new business for Brose in automotive industries. Scout for advanced technology, market & consumer trends discovering innovative technology & application engrg opportunities in NA. Supervise & set tasks for Technical Assist. Monitor market dynamics in correlation w/ innovation validity for mass production introductions, assessing technical maturity for consumer product implementation & map out best time to market strategy & cost to revenue ratio. Report findings & valuations to corporate decision makers & prepare strategy docs for leadership. Bachelor, Engrg, Business Administration, Computer Science, or related. 12 mos exp as Director, Managing Director, General Mgr, or related, planning & managing automotive mechatronics syss, or automotive electronics syss dvlpmt services, business dvlpmt efforts in SV to expand in CA, or related. Mail resume to Ref#3127, Human Resources, 3933 Automation Ave, Auburn Hills, MI 48326.

STANFORD UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS Faculty Positions in Marketing

The Graduate School of Business at Stanford University invites applications for tenure-track faculty positions in marketing beginning September 1, 2020. All ranks and relevant disciplines will be considered. Candidates should have or expect to complete a PhD by September 1, 2020, and should possess a strong and active research record. The successful candidate will be expected to conduct research and to teach both MBA and PhD courses in marketing. Applicants should submit their applications electronically by visiting the web site http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/recruiting and uploading their curriculum vitae, research papers and publications, and teaching evaluations, if applicable, on that site. For an application to be considered complete, all applicants must submit a CV, a job market paper and arrange for three letters of recommendation to be submitted by June 30, 2019. For questions regarding the application process, please send an email to faculty_recruiter@ gsb.stanford.edu.

Stanford is an equal employment opportunity and affirmative action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Stanford welcomes applications from all who would bring additional dimensions to the University’s research, teaching and clinical missions.

The Marketing Division of Columbia Business School is currently searching for qualified applicants for positions at the assistant, associate, or full professor ranks for a tenured or tenure-track position beginning July 1, 2020. Applicants should have a PhD degree from an accredited institution or expect to receive their degree within the year. All applicants must have a strong research background and the ability and desire to conduct high quality research. Associate and full professor applicants should have a proven track record of institution building and service in addition to exceptional scholarship in marketing. Columbia Business School is also seeking applicants for visiting positions. Applicants for such positions must have a PhD and a strong academic research record. Columbia Business School is seeking applicants who would promote the diversity mission of the University through their research, teaching, and/or service. Columbia University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. Priority consideration will be given to applications received before July 1, 2019. Please visit our online application site: http://pa334.peopleadmin.com/postings/2982 for further information about this position and to submit your application.

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advertisers’index

ADVERTISERS’ INDEX Quick source for contacting the suppliers in the June / July 2019 issue of Marketing News. 2019 AMA Summer Academic Conference . ....... p. 19 URL: a ma.marketing/AMASummer19

AMA’s Marketing Resource Directory ................. p. 72 URL: marketingresourcedirectory.ama.org

2019 AMA Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education Conference ......................... p. 68 URL: a ma.marketing/highered2019

Ascribe ............................................. inside front cover URL: GoAscribe.com / Phone: 1-877-241-9112 x55

2019 AMA Directory of Marketing Research Providers ........................................ pp. 69-73 AMA Bootcamp — Digital Marketing ................... p. 13 URL: a ma.marketing/AustinBootcamp

Collegis Education ..................................... back cover URL: CollegisEducation.com Confirmit .......................................................... pp. 10-12 URL: www.confirmit.com Marketing News ...................................................... p. 77 Email: sales@ama.org / URL: mediakit.ama.org

AMA Bootcamp — Marketing Management . ................................... inside back cover URL: a ma.marketing/BostonBootcamp

Thank You to the 2019 AMA Leadership Summit Sponsors ............................... p. 21 URL: ama.org/LeadershipSummit

AMA Professional Certified Marketer® Program ................................................ p. 23 URL: a ma.org/PCM

Thank You to the 2019 AMA Marketing + Public Policy Conference Sponsor ....................... p. 17 URL: ama.marketing/MPPC

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career advancement

GOLDEN GUIDE ADVICE

Golden Guide Career Advice Wise words for young people poised to enter the “real world” from a former admissions and career services dean BY LYDIA LAZAR

 lydialazar@gmail.com

olden Guide Career Advice is a new series on AMA.org in partnership with Lydia Lazar, author of Dean Lazar’s Golden Guide: Pragmatic Career Advice for Smart Young People. Lazar’s guide is designed for all young people who want to find professional and personal opportunities and be paid to think and continue to develop their skills. GOLDEN TIP NO. 1

Make Greatness a Routine “You are what you repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”—Aristotle You decide your level of effort and your attention to detail. You will learn the most if you try your best to do A-plus

work, even if it is not recognized or rewarded by others. There is a lot of helpful advice about time and task management in the world. You can and should incorporate whatever systems of notetaking, task-alerting, technology use and scheduling that make the most sense for you. But Golden Tip No. 1 is not about task management: it’s about your habits of mind, heart and behavior as you rise from your bed each day to face the world. For many of us, it is a daily struggle to stay focused and give 100% of our effort, because we fall into slumps where we think, “What does it matter?” When we are not in a good mood—whether about our jobs, our social lives, or even about the world around us—it is tempting to shrink into a protective or defensive crouch just

to make it through the day. The work week seems to stretch ahead endlessly, the weekend a shimmering goal just out of reach. We plod through the weeks, counting the days to our next vacation. Embarking on a career is like taking a hike across a forest without a map. Even as you plot your course, you do not know what the next turn will be—the terrain must guide your steps. Similarly, as you move ahead in work, you must “read the landscape” all the time, looking for opportunities to develop new skills and meet new people. You already know that if you are spending all your time plotting your next vacation, there is something you need to change about your work life—but what is it? Do you need a new job, a different kind of job or maybe a different way of working? Golden Tip No. 1 is a reminder that “you get what you give” in life. Giving your best effort every day to be excellent at whatever you are doing will bring you the absolute best outcome—whether that outcome is skills mastery, recognition or promotion at your current job, or the opportunity to interact with new teams and different people in a new enterprise. Anyone can find themselves in a work situation that they want to change; we all know people who seem to glide effortlessly from one opportunity to another. Successful people are those who take steps every day to prepare themselves so that they are ready to be “lucky” when new opportunities appear on the horizon exactly when they want to make a move. GOLDEN TIP NO. 4

Be Intentional and Strategic The world doesn’t care if you succeed or not, so the burden is always on you. Focus your attention, continually motivate yourself and take steps that enable you to grow and prosper in your career. Be intentional with your time and your energy. Without realizing it, many

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GOLDEN GUIDE ADVICE

people drift along and wait for things to happen to them. They wonder why their friends seem to be doing exciting things or getting great chances in life. In fact, it is far too easy to be complacent when you have gotten into college or started your first job. The distractions and pleasures of life can fill your days and leave you with no energy or time to seek new challenges. Those who have your best interests at heart—perhaps your family or a special mentor—care about your happiness and professional achievements. You must care about yourself with a fierce energy that will get you past the naysayers, haters and sheer indifference of the world. This is not selfish: It’s pragmatic. Remember that the world of work is constantly changing, so you must be vigilant about updating your skills, refreshing your social and professional network and keeping track of developments in the industries that you care about. GOLDEN TIP NO. 6

You Join an Ecosystem of Opportunity by Communicating with People Networking and socializing are the keys to finding your niche in the work ecosystem of your choice. Every job and career option is embedded in a larger world, a world it helps to think of as an “ecosystem.” There are many professional ecosystems corresponding to the industries that make up our economy. Industry is a broad term that includes commercial entities and the government agencies that regulate them, along with the nonprofit organizations and trade associations that study and monitor them. There are many serendipitous overlaps between one set of people and another; you may be interested in more than one professional ecosystem. What’s an example of a professional ecosystem? Let’s look at bike helmets. Helmets are designed, produced and

marketed by many different competitive companies, all of which need talented people who are passionate about bicycles and bike riding. People who care about bicycles and bike riding might be interested in working with government agencies that regulate the safety of bike helmets and sporting gear, or with nonprofit organizations that advocate for safe alternative transportation, or even with sporting goods and outdoor gear stores. And, of course, there are marketing and communications agencies working with each of these entities. When you begin to look around, you will find there are many analogous professional ecosystems—and your goal is to be part of the ecosystems that you care about. When opportunities materialize, you will already be known to the decision-makers and will be in the mix as they cast around for candidates. As you network, be sure to talk with people who are already doing the work that interests you. You should ask them what they consider important and what they think their biggest challenges are so that you can learn how to add value in that world—how you can help them—and ultimately get hired to think about the things that interest you. Becoming part of the ecosystem means positioning yourself to be considered for a job before it even gets advertised. Proactive, consistent networking is the most important strategy to master if you want to find exciting job opportunities and create a rich and substantial career over your lifetime. m

career advancement

The world doesn’t care if you succeed or not, so the burden is always on you. Focus your attention, continually motivate yourself and take steps that enable you to grow and prosper in your career.

Read more of Lazar’s Golden Guide career advice at AMA.org.

LYDIA LAZAR is founder and president of LHL Consulting. She is the former associate dean for recruitment and career services at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and previously served as dean of international law and policy overseeing international student admissions (LLM) at Chicago-Kent College of Law.

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And now a word from …

CAPTAIN OBVIOUS Superfan of Hotels.com How did you first get involved with Hotels.com? About four years ago, I was honored with the official title of Captain Obvious. And let me give you a little advice from a Hotels.com superfan: Getting your foot in the door is not nearly as impressive as getting your whole body in the door.

What’s your preferred type of destination, a bustling metropolis or remote paradise? They say it’s about the journey and not the destination, but without a destination you don’t have a journey so um, what was your question? What makes the perfect hotel? A perfect hotel has a lot of great walls, beds and floors. Floors are key, as is what you need to get into the room.

Aside from grapestomping and goat yoga, what are your other favorite vacation activities? Line dancing. My dancing always crosses the line. What’s the best advice you’ve ever given? When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s a near-fatal injury. How did you earn your rank of captain? I climbed the ranks.

—JULIAN ZENG

Why is giving out Hotels.com rewards so … rewarding? The best part about free things is that you don’t have to pay for them.

STATS

Organization Sloppy, like this old roommate I had named Joe. Rank Isn’t it obvious? Captain, of course! Favorite destination A hotel bed, so I can sleep in it. Best travel memory After visiting all corners of the Earth, I learned many things. Most notably, the Earth does not have corners. Bucket list vacation I wanted to take a cruise this year, but that ship has sailed. Age I wasn’t born yesterday. You can tell by the fact that I’m a full-grown man and not a newborn baby.

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