Guest Speakers Address The Planning Community

Jeffrey Rayport, Strategy Expert, Author, And Former Harvard "B" School Professor


Jeffrey Rayport, founder/chairman of Marketplace LLC, a Cambridge, MA-based strategic-advisory business started off the event by giving us a brief background of the online world and where we stand presently.

In the 90’s - it was about just getting online.
In the early 2000’s - web entered the mix.
In 2008-Digital enables broadband.

We have witnessed enormous changes over a decade of living with digital. We are now living in an online word of amateur content, viral videos, re-purposed advertising & brand interaction.

He tracked the maturation of the web with a handy list of easily referenced digital entries.

• Amateur Content: “I Kiss You” (1997–98)

• Viral Viewers: Star Wars Kid (the most downloaded video of the male species, with the current You Tube count approaching 600 million)

• Repurposed Advertising: Diet Coke and Mentos
  

• Brand Interaction: German Coast Guard

He also touched on the subject of changes in the way we access information (new devices and new uses of old devices). Also mentioned was how connectivity is everywhere (more than half the U.S. population is “always on”—engaged in some sort of media exposure, 24/7). He noted as well that social networks are reality (new context for content).

He then shared with us the "5 hypotheses for how we create value":

1) Target the core: overwhelm the Microcosm-deliver a commanding but focused abundance of content, tools and services .
-Examples are celebrity sites like Gawker, TMZ, Toyota Scion

2) Activate the community: Ensure membership has its rewards-forge communities of
conviction based on location, identity, interest and condition.
-Just an implication of a community or social connectivity is appealing.
-Communities affiliate around 4 dimensions-location, identity, interest and condition.
-Examples included Yelp (location), cafemom (identity), corkd.com (interest), the
know (condition)

3) Work the web: let the outside in and let the inside out. Adopt “open source” thinking as an aggregator.
-Sites can generate massive traffic by allowing other sites to link to their own content.
-60% of YouTube’s streams are viewed on 3rd party sites.

4) Design for occasion: Tailor each interaction to its form factor-customize online content
-Apple and Starbucks are very good examples of this
-Consumer engagement rises when content is optimized for specific usage occasions

5) Integrate the experience
- For example, ESPN provides ESPN.com, mobile ESPN, and ESPNHD.
- Apple retail stores have the Genius Bar and generate $5,000/square foot.

John Anton, Marketing director of Mars Petcare
















John Anton, Marketing Director of Mars Petcare, whose portfolio of brands includes Pedigree dog food, started off with a planner’s brief. He informed us that there are 75 million dogs in the country; 65 percent of dog owners include their pups in family pictures and another 16 percent throw their dogs birthday parties.

However, Pedigree’s “Adoption Drive” effort starts with two sad facts: there are four million dogs in animal shelters and only two million will make it into a new home. This is where we all got the chance to “meet” Echo.




On the bright side, over 14,000 television viewers called Pedigree to offer to adopt Echo. We were then shown the spot “Echo Gets Adopted”, where Echo is shown happily running around his new home. This was the whole point-allowing dog lovers to share the joy of a homeless dog being adopted.




Pedigree’s planning brief had encouraged parent Mars to tap into the group of loyal family-picture-taking, birthday-celebrating lovers and to rebuild the brand around a “Help Us Help Dogs” multi-media platform.

“We aren’t just selling dog food, we’re selling an emotional connection,” Gamgort explained.

Pedigree payed attention to detail —For the first time ever the dog food packaging was shown with the dog at eye-level. Gambort said this is because “When people first meet a dog, they get on their hands and knees and this is how they see them. This strategy helped generate 3.5 million in donations to animal rescue organizations.

Sales have seen a double-digit increase every year since it first began in 2005.

He taught us the importance of raising awareness, encouraging participation with your brand, and embracing advocacy.

Planning And Politics









Political consultant and strategist, Alex Castellanos, talked about a few common points between political campaigning and advertising.

• Sell a Product v. Create a Cause: It gives consumers a chance to vote for a purpose greater than themselves.

• The Law of Car Keys: Consumers ask both brands and candidates, "Where are you going to take me?" "Who are you?" "Can I trust you?" A consumer won't buy your brand or promise if values, motives, and interests are not aligned.

• Your Brand Is a Candidate: You shouldn't try to sell your customer a Ford when it's clear he wants a Toyota. Politicians and marketers need to do the homework to discover if they're a problem or a solution for their target audience. And that tracks back to brand character, just as in politics it reflects the character of the candidate.

Castellanos states, "We are fighting for the same thing in different worlds".