Leading a team of 60 marketing and sales professionals at USOC, Baird is responsible for managing 35% of the USOC’s revenue in a calendar year through sponsorships. But after seven years in her role, Baird—who previously served as senior vice president of marketing and consumer products for the NFL—is up to the challenge, hardly able to contain her enthusiasm for the events surrounding the upcoming Summer Games. In the middle of one of her busiest weeks of the year, she talked with Marketing News about the ever-increasing requests for experiential marketing, how the USOC is staying ahead of the curve by marketing to a younger generation and what sponsors are doing to impress her the most.

Q: What is the biggest challenge you face in marketing the Olympic Games?

A: The Olympic property is different every single time. It’s a new city, a different set of athletes, a different course of marketing progression. The biggest challenge for us is reinventing ourselves every two years. But it’s fun, because you get to bring a lot of creativity and innovation to that.

Q: When you talk about being creative, what are some ways that you and your team find inspiration?

A: One source of creativity for us is always where the games will take place—how to capture the spirit of that and talk about our athletes’ journey on that particular road to that destination. “The road to” has become a big marketing platform for us and our sponsors. Each [Olympics] is different, and we reinvent that. That’s the biggest form of inspiration. But how you talk to consumers and how they engage with athletes and our content is also rapidly changing, so we’ve thought through a ton of change based on social engagement, fan experience and how people are joining us now. That’s all part of the challenge.

Q: How do you maintain a balance of new sponsorships without losing sight of the personal nature of the games for athletes?

A: The more money we can raise, the more money we can give directly to athletes and national governing bodies. From sponsorships, 82 cents of every dollar goes directly to athletes. What we always want to do is make sure that through controlled media, we’re telling America the stories of how these athletes are doing what they do to be the best in the world and how they’re overcoming challenges. We talk with media a lot to tell those stories, and we engage with our sponsors, like P&G and BMW, to make sure they’re using athletes to tell their stories as well as market their products.

Q: Are advertisers asking for new or different things this year?

A: Yes. This year is going to be one of the most marketed games of all time. Every sponsor is working on ever-more interesting, ownable ideas to their property. The fun part for us is to be able to dive deep with a brand to say, “Here’s your brand, here’s our platform. Where is that unique area where we can tell the story?” 

Q: Are you embracing experiential marketing this year?

A: Very much so. The demand for experiential keeps growing. One of the areas we have a lot of difference in this year is how USA House (a gathering place for USOC staff, Team USA members and families, corporate partners, suppliers and licensees) at Rio Games will be used as an experiential platform for brands to reach back to U.S. audiences. Our USA House is where we entertain a lot of people during the games. [Sponsors such as] Budweiser are doing things that will be fun for fans back home to also experience.

xQ: How do you manage expectations of sponsors and advertisers while keeping athletes happy?

A: We work on a lot of different levels with the athletes. We help sponsors create personal endorsements with athletes, so we make sure all our sponsors are sponsoring what we call, “the unnumbered ambassadors.” The more athletes you sponsor, the better it is for us. One of the things we love doing is working with our licensees to bring branded apparel to life—Nike with their podium apparel, fan gear and village; Ralph Lauren with what they do for opening and closing ceremonies—that’s really our segment. The athletes love to get that Team USA gear. Nothing makes you feel more like an Olympian. When they get their gear, they’re so excited to be a representative of Team USA. 

Q: How are you dealing with fears around the world about the threat of Zika virus? Are you expecting it to affect attendance?

A: We’re doing everything we can to make sure the latest information from the CDC and the World Health Organization is available on our website. They are the experts. We’re also taking all the precautions we can when we entertain and with hospitality, providing things like insect repellent. So far, we’re really excited about ticket sales. Every Games, we encourage our sponsors to host private events at USA House, and the Rio Games are no exception. We are sold out completely. We’re expecting a pretty big convention of Americans to travel to the Olympic Games.

Q: What new technologies are you employing in your marketing efforts?

A: One thing we’re excited about is virtual reality (VR) demonstrations of different Olympic sports, a showcase in our Road to Rio fan tour. It’s really cool. Getting to experience a dive from a 10-meter platform with virtual reality is very interesting to see.

Q: It seems like in the coming years, VR could be a game changer in how people watch the Olympics.

A: Yes, I think it will be. Americans are very familiar with sports like basketball and football because they see them on their TVs every week during the season. But I think being able to experience gymnastics or diving or speed skating, that’s not something every American can see and know about. [VR is] going to help us expose our national governing bodies (NGB) in sports to a whole new generation of Americans. We have to continue to get in the pipeline for sports to grow and recruit those next generations.

Q: Speaking of generations, how will Generation Z influence your marketing efforts in the future? 

A: We’re already there. If you look at the growth of our fan base, where we continue to be very strong, the Olympics is a No. 1 property for millennials and teenagers, and it’s because our sports are exciting and engaging to that audience, so we’ve already been there working. It goes to the great job the [International Olympic Committee] has done to innovate on sports. Things like “snowboard cross,” where it was just snowboard initially, then some of the new things they’re doing with action sports, get people exposed to that via the platform of the Olympics. We’ll always go to our sports as our core area for every new generation that comes up. Now that we’ve reached Generation Z, we’re already thinking, “What’s next?” 

Q: What is your strategy for social media?

A: We have an enormous social strategy for the Rio Games. It starts with understanding what our core messaging and communications are. We want to tell the stories of our athletes, plus make sure that all Americans are going to be able to watch the games on TV, so we’re making sure that we’re telling people what the schedule is and when to tune in to NBC to watch. We’re also supporting our sponsor initiatives through social media. A lot of our sponsors will integrate with us and do branding content video, and that is distributed via our website and social media channels. I think the thing that’s new to these games is that because the fan base of the Olympics is so diverse, we’re able to utilize a different voice on each social media outlet—Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook—to really target those specific users. That’s been a lot of fun to see how the core messaging is interpreted.

Q: You’ve been CMO since 2009. How has your job changed over the past seven years?

A: We started with a very small footprint of our marketing platform, and it’s gotten bigger and bigger as we’ve had success filing more sponsors. We’re still a fairly small nonprofit, so being able to keep up with the exploding world of media, the number of sponsors we have and the increasingly long time frame of work with future Games is definitely challenging.

Q: Through your career, what have you learned about building relationships with sponsors?

A: I think the most valuable relationships come when you, as a property, understand [a sponsor’s] business problem and their business objective. The mistake I see is people say, “I have a program, sponsor it.” Instead, we try to come at it from a customer point of view. For example, United Airlines has been our partner for 35 years, so they have a very different goal and problem to solve than someone like Chobani, which is a brand new sponsor. We’re on our third games with them, and they’re still trying to introduce the U.S. to their yogurt. It’s about really understanding how different sponsors have very different problems to solve and initiatives to get behind, and then creating the time to listen and understand how you can help them achieve their business objectives.

 Q: Any other new sponsors that you’re excited about?

A: Hershey’s just came on, and it’s fun to work with them and all of their brands to create programs for Team USA. We’re also excited to have the milk board that markets on behalf of milk processors. People talk a lot about virtual reality and e-sports, and that’s all exciting, but I love to see the creativity and innovation that our partners are bringing to things like packaging. Coca-Cola has done so well to make their packaging more expressive and in the moment. You see what Hershey’s is doing to change their chocolate bar wrapper, which they haven’t changed in 122 years. And every time you open a cup of Chobani yogurt, you’ll see a quote from one of their athletes. I’m really enjoying the packaging and points of purchase at retail programs more than ever before.

Q: You spent time in high-level corporate marketing positions at General Motors and IBM before working for the NFL, and finally landing at USOC. What makes sports marketing unique from other marketing roles?

A: My last job before the NFL was with IBM, where I was the senior vice president of marketing and communications across all the countries IBM marketed in. It’s a very different and fast industry. You really have to keep up with all the fundamental differences in technology because they are the industry leader. In sports, we’re trying to preserve brand leadership, and we’re making sure we’re changing our marketing objectives, strategies and platforms to keep up with the market, but a lot of our work is to make sure that all of our stakeholders are coming along with us—whether its NGBs, volunteers, athletes, federations or sponsors. There’s a lot more of what I call “evangelizing the movement,” making sure we’re constantly telling the story of how important those stakeholders, and particularly Americans, are to the future of Team USA. How we can bring Americans along in our journey to ultimate success is probably the biggest change.

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When a discussion of negotiation techniques began, Kevin eagerly related a recent encounter with a client: “I opened the meet with Jim at the Children’s Hospital by dialoguing about where to summer this year. I wanted to beach-out in Hilton Head, but my wife argued we should holiday in the Caribbean. I championed my preference and positioned that we could attend the charity golf tournament to which we got an invite, and perhaps get a golf ball signatured by Arnold Palmer. I’m actioning my successful negotiation by booking our flights and hotel tonight!”

To the chagrin of those who revere language, it should be evident that Kevin has fallen into a practice that has become popular in some marketing circles, i.e., using nouns as verbs and verbs as nouns—a phenomenon known as “verbing.”

Here are some cringe-worthy examples of verbing we have encountered recently, from b​oth students and marketing professionals: “We haven’t languaged that yet.” “Can we action that by next week?”  “We are efforting to find a solve for this.” “Let’s focus on the build.” 

Does verbing make a speaker sound more professional, more intelligent or more competent? On the basis of our observations, the answer seems to depend on whom you ask. To many, it seems goofy. It is business speak at its worst. It cannot be justified as the jargon of a discipline because it is simply a flagrant violation of linguistic norms and listeners’ expectations. Others perceive it as a colorful and clever use of language, as hip and even impressive. Reactions to verbing may also depend on how egregious the example is. Whereas it is normal to “head” a committee, “shoulder” a burden, or “eye” a dessert,

it is jarring to “incent” a salesperson or to “over-choice” customers with too many options.

We conducted a small study to see how our own students would react to verbing in a sales presentation. The evidence shows greater acceptance of the practice among marketing students than we found among a sample of working adults.

Given divided opinion, should marketing educators ignore, promote or combat verbing in the classroom? Our answer is simple: Verbing is bad English. It betrays a lack of knowledge about the English language. It shows wanton disregard for non-native English speakers who have bothered to learn the language that facilitates our thinking, learning, communication and mutual understanding. It conveys an unprofessional image to people outside of business and to many inside business.

Consider that people in other respected professions have not adopted the odd practice of noun-verb reversal. A surgeon does not “scalpel an incision.” A lawyer does not “affidavit a witness.” But some marketing professionals (and aspiring marketing professionals) appear to go out of their way to speak goofily.

There are many reasons to combat verbing in the marketing classroom. Verbing violates the rules of standard English and linguistic norms, which in turn violates listeners’ expectations. When expectations are violated by use of substandard English, educated listeners may draw negative inferences, such as assuming the speaker is uninformed and, by extension, speaking with low credibility.

Verbing, like other forms of business speak, is the subject of mockery outside of business circles. Its use undermines the image of marketing among other professions and in educated society.

Insistence on proper communication practices is an educational quality issue. We set high standards for students on other dimensions. Why would we encourage or even permit the habitual use of substandard English?

By analogy, verbing is to business speak as syllable multiplication is to airline rhetoric (e.g., “Federal law prohibits passengers from utilizing smoking materials in the lavatory facilities,” i.e., “Don’t smoke in the toilet”). It is an attempt to dignify a speaker and her profession using inefficient prose to unintentionally comical effect.

In defense of verbing, one may argue that usage dictates meaning—meaning does not dictate usage. The flaw in this argument is that mutations in usage are justified only when they bring about improvements in the outcomes language facilitates. Verbing rarely brings about such improvements. Moreover, students should master a language before presuming to improve it. How many practitioners of verbing are aware of the linguistic rules they violate?

Our suggestion is straightforward: Don’t verb or use excessive business speak in the marketing classroom, and correct students when they lapse into this practice. As marketing educators, we want our students to succeed. Do we want to indulge students in the delusion that speaking abnormally will help them achieve success? We have an opportunity as marketing educators to inform our students in a way that distinguishes them from the mindless masses of verbing practitioners.

Returning to our salesperson friend Kevin, we are not suggesting that he needs to speak with the erudition of William F. Buckley to communicate effectively in a business setting. However, we do believe that a world where business English is transforming into creative patois is bad business and bad for the image of the marketing profession.

Having opinioned our take on the topic, we must now get back to professoring.

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Stories often support tactical communication objectives. But there is also a strategic role for stories that is developed in an article by Jennifer Aaker and me entitled, “What Are Your Signature Stories?” in the spring 2016 issue of California Management Review. 

We call such stories “signature stories” because they represent some form of strategic statement about a mission, values, the brand, customer relationship or strategic intent. Signature stories do this much better than a recitation of facts, which usually ends up sounding not only boring but similar to a host of other firms.

Consider L.L. Bean, a brand aiming to communicate its innovation culture, passion for the outdoors, commitment to quality, concern for the customer and the functional benefits of the Maine Hunting Shoe. Stating such facts is unlikely to create interest, credibility or even a connection to L.L. Bean. 

In contrast, consider the following story: Leon L. Bean, an avid outdoorsman, returned from a hunting trip in 1912 disgruntled because of his cold, wet feet. With little resources but a lot of motivation and ingenuity, he invented a new boot by stitching lightweight leather tops to waterproof rubber bottoms. The boots worked so well he offered them for sale via mail order as the Maine Hunting Shoe, using lists of nonresident Maine hunting license holders.

Unfortunately, most of the first 100 pairs sold had a stitching problem and leaked. Bean faced a defining moment. His response? He refunded the customers’ money, even though it nearly broke him, and fixed the manufacturing process so that future boots were watertight. This story communicates the L.L. Bean brand far better than any presentation of facts. 

A signature story is an intriguing, authentic, involving narrative (as opposed to a stand-alone set of facts or features) with a strategic message that enables growth by clarifying or enhancing the brand, the customer relationship, the organization or the business strategy. It is a strategic asset that can be leveraged through time, providing inspiration and direction both internally and externally.

A signature brand story needs to: 

1. Be intriguing—some combination of thought-provoking, novel, provocative, interesting, informative, newsworthy or entertaining to the audience. 
2. Be authentic—the audience cannot perceive the story to be phony, contrived or a transparent selling effort. Further, there should be substance behind the story and its message in the form of programs, policies or transparency that support it. 
3. Be involving—the audience member should be drawn into the story, which can precipitate a cognitive, emotional or behavioral response. 
4. Be strategic—have a message linked to the brand that enables growth by clarifying or enhancing the brand, the customer relationship, the organization or the business strategy. 

A signature story is an asset with enduring relevance and capacity to inspire and provide direction over a long period of time. As they get retold, signature stories gain authenticity, traction and influence. 

The principle targets for signature stories are employees and existing and potential customers. Signature stories can provide employees a source of inspiration and a cornerstone for organizational culture and values. The story supports a higher purpose around innovation, the passion for the outdoors, quality and the customer. Millennials, in particular, are attracted to firms that are aiming for more than sales and profits. A signature story can help with making that purpose authentic and clear.

Customers are also a valuable target because there is a segment that will find a brand’s values, customer relationship and strategy important to them as they develop loyalties to brands and firms. Advancing the strategic position of the brand and organization in the eyes of this audience is challenging because of message clutter, media dynamics, growing customer ownership of context and the complexity of social media. Signature stories can be an answer, providing not only breakthrough visibility, but communicating the basic essence of a brand and organization. 

To determine what story content would be useful, it is important to understand who you are, what you do and where you are going. Look to your brand vision and value proposition, drivers of customer relationships, your organizational culture and values, as well as your business strategy. What are the priorities? What perceptions and attitudes need to be created, reinforced or changed to allow the business strategy to succeed? 

To find or create signature stories, look broadly for story heroes. Stories can be motivated by a variety of heroes such as customers, employees, programs, a founder, an offering, a business revitalization strategy or a future business revitalization strategy.

The customer as hero can be effective because there is no “my brand or product is better than yours” connotation, and the customer story is likely to be closely linked to either the organizational values or the brand’s value proposition. LinkedIn has a series of professionally created, one-minute stories about “creating you own success” that involve leveraging LinkedIn. Dr. Chavez told about his dream of getting pets off of processed foods using LinkedIn to share his big idea. Jenni was laid off during the financial meltdown and several months of intense networking led to a marketing position and, ultimately, supported her decision to be on her own. 

The employee as hero can be a source of a strong and memorable brand story because employees are on the front lines. Zappos.com, the online shoe store, has a set of signature stories about its 10 core values, one of which is to deliver “wow” customer service. One such story involves a Zappos.com call center employee who, at 3 a.m., received a call from a customer who could not find an open pizza store. Instead of gently turning the customer away, the employee actually found a pizza store open and arranged a delivery. 

The business revitalization story can clarify and motivate a new strategy and inspire employees and customers. Consider , who became the CEO of a troubled Chinese appliance manufacturer, Haier, in 1982. Early in his tenure, he used a sledgehammer to destroy 72 defective appliances. The story and its symbol, the sledgehammer, served to define a new strategy and culture that ultimately led to Haier becoming a global leader.   Not all stories are worth elevating to signature status. There needs to be an evaluation process to identify the strength and promise of candidate stories. When candidate stories emerge, make sure that they are not just a list of facts (or features) but rather a narrative that appears intriguing, is perceived as authentic, engenders involvement and has a strategic message.

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Marketers should be literate in the language of digital tracking and advertising so that they can inform an integrated marketing campaign. 

Cookies

One of the oldest tracking technologies, a cookie is a script added to a URL to track visitor engagement with a webpage. Most consumers are familiar with cookie use for retargeting​, wherein their visit to a website or their product browsing is tracked by a cookie, and once they leave that site or browsing session, an ad is served to them related to the site or products they just viewed. 

“At the most basic level, we’re using cookies 
 to identify that someone has either visited a site or seen an ad and [then] identify that same user again when there’s another advertising opportunity,” says Matt Ellinwood, senior director of data products at advertising software platform . 

Using cookies, advertisers can assign anonymous IDs to consumers. “The industry has to infer more about those groups of IDs,” Ellinwood says. These assumptions could be about the gender of the users, their purchase behavior or any number of characteristics to narrow segmentation.

​When a visitor has provided a website with personally identifying information such as a name, e-mail address or log-in information, the site can assign a deterministic ID to that person. Actions that the visitor takes on that site can be tracked as first-party data. “That’s really similar to point-of-sale data,” says Ellinwood. “If your customers are coming to your website and are logged in, you can use a cookie to identify them and follow their purchase behavior.”

Device IDs

In the mobile world, cookies are notably less useful to advertisers. That’s because 90% of consumers’ time spent on mobile devices is in-app as opposed to the mobile web, and without a web address, there can be no cookies. Instead, advertisers use device IDs to track and target consumers.

Device IDs differ from cookies in that they don’t have to be placed by an app the way cookies are on a web page; they are recorded from the device on which the user accesses an app—be it an iPhone, Android or tablet—and they are rarely reset, making them reliably consistent across many visits from the same user. “It’s an anonymous ID you’re able to use to identify the same user at different times,” says Ellinwood. “The way you set it and the way you get it is a little different [from a cookie], but the application is almost identical.”

Just like cookies, Ellinwood says, device IDs can be grouped by segments to create audience targets. “Whether it’s a cookie or device ID, the way the industry is going, we don’t really care anymore. We know we want to serve a user a specific ad because we’ve seen them before, and we know they’re male, for example, and we’re able to make that decision based on the ID right then and there.”

IP Mapping and Geolocation

Advertisers can also use location-based data points to segment their audience​. On desktop, the best way to gather this information is by IP mapping, and on mobile it’s geolocation. Unlike cookies and device IDs, IP mapping and geolocation serve different purposes. Whereas identifying the location of a mobile device can be advantageous to bricks-and-mortar businesses looking to drive traffic to their stores, IP mapping can be studied to surmise characteristics about the consumers who are browsing on an address.

“We’re turning the router inside your home into the most accurate way to target digital ads to you,” says Greg Mosley, director of sales at , an ad-targeting company that has mapped IP addresses to physical households, which can then be cross-referenced with publicly available data sets. Mosely describes the use of IP mapping to digitally target advertising to consumers like a direct mail campaign. For example, a car dealer could target the home addresses of car lessees whose leases are near expiration or owners of competitors’ cars and cross-reference them with IP addresses that have been verified with home addresses to serve those households digital advertisements.

Limitations

“Cookies are really your online behavior,” says Dustin O’Dell, senior director of business development at , a tracking platform. But there are limitations to knowing the behaviors of an anonymous consumer, Mosley notes. “One of the big concerns in the online advertising space is who’s seeing the ads. When you’re targeting in a cookie-based world [the web], you’re targeting an unknown. If I’m selling luxury vacations, cookies say all the people who’ve gone to Forbes.com are highly affluent. That’s not accurate.”

​A good marketer won’t rely solely on cookies, but even with the incorporation of device IDs and geolocation technologies, it can still be difficult to recognize consumers across devices. Imagine a consumer sees your ad on a tablet, browses your mobile website on their cellphone and converts on their desktop computer. The data provided by those impressions would suggest your brand interfaced with three different consumers because the tablet and phone will have unique device IDs, and the cookie you may have used on your site recognizes the desktop visit as unique from the mobile visits.

“If you target them as three different people, your targeting may not be as effective as it could be,” says O’Dell, because it removes the possibility of targeting sequentially or upselling your target.

The Tracking Tool Belt

A smart digital marketing strategy won’t rely on a single method of tracking, nor will it take data at face value. What differentiates the spray-and-pray approach from an integrated marketing approach is data science. 

Big Data must be translated into smart data. From IP mapping marketers can learn a consumer’s postal address. When a particular device ID, tied to a particular geolocation, shows up every day from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m., it can be assumed that that device lives there, says O’Dell, allowing marketers to deduce that the person using that device lives there as well. When the geolocation of the device matches up with a postal code, any devices in that home environment are representative of the same consumer—or at least a small set of consumers (a family) who are interested in seeing the same ads. And to those devices, a persistent ID is assigned. 

“If I’m targeting you at home, whether you’re going to Forbes.com or PerezHilton.com,” Mosely says, “because we’ve identified you as the right target, we’re no longer having to bid on the context of the website.”

Cutting out the guess work or the chance of serving an ad to the wrong audience is every marketer’s aim; achieving that efficiency is a process of experimentation. “That’s the goal: to make assumptions about where you’re going to see better performance for your ads by getting them closer to your target, inspecting performance and then shifting your budget and your strategy according to whether or not those targeting strategies are delivering for you,” Ellinwood says. “What we’re gravitating to is how to serve the best ads to the fewest number of people at the right time so there’s more efficiency and less waste. But that’s really hard.”

Experts agree there is no single best practice or technology for knowing your customers online. Rather, marketers need to evaluate the right mix for their budget and goals. “You balance scale and precision in a lot of cases,” O’Dell says. “I call it the dartboard effect. You can shoot for the bullseye, and those are super premium, top-level audiences, but you may only get 10 people. You should absolutely use those 10, but we understand you need scale, too. The more scale you get, you have to understand the precision may not be there, but if you use a combination of both, that will get you to a place that’s beneficial.”

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These were the headlines that brought Iceland into the international consciousness in the spring of 2010. Although the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull was less explosive than other notable eruptions such as Mount St. Helens in 1980, the ash it spewed eight miles into the sky complicated life for more than the 800 Icelanders who evacuated its perimeter. 

Air traffic came to a standstill at the crossroads of Europe and North America for seven days. Media told stories of floods, air pollution, lightning storms and possible climate disruption. Rather than the glossy images of cavernous glaciers, mossy fjords or the Aurora Borealis, would-be tourists saw towers of ash and bursts of lava. Just more than a month out from the tourism season, the island nation’s summer could go one of two ways: The international coverage could either pique the interest of travelers far and wide, or the tourism industry could take a serious hit.

Within a week of the eruption, the country’s tourism organization, , put out a request for proposal. The challenge was twofold: reverse the negative perception surrounding Iceland as a tourist destination for the summer and get people to book vacations immediately. The chosen comrades in arms: London-based global branding agency the  and Iceland’s largest advertising agency, .

“In Iceland, they have a phrase, ‘Keen is the eye of the guest.’ That means you don’t see what you walk past every day. It was a very enlightened move for Iceland to appoint a partner from overseas, but they saw the benefit of a fresh perspective,” says George Bryant, strategy partner at the Brooklyn Brothers.

The perspective that Brooklyn Brothers brought was to embrace nontraditional strategy. “Traditionally, we recognize tourism as some of the poorest marketing,” says Bryant. “It often feels like propaganda: ‘Come here; the sky is always blue.’” Compounded by the fact that Iceland’s budget was small compared to its competitors, such as the U.S. and Scandinavia, Bryant says the marketing plan had to defy conventional thinking.

“We started with a fact,” Bryant says. A survey of tourists revealed that 80% of visitors to Iceland would recommend it as a destination, making it the most recommended of any European destination. Realizing the power of word of mouth, the agency turned its aim on fans of Iceland to spread the island’s message. Why not let those inspired by Iceland share their stories?

“We look at ‘Inspired by Iceland’ as an unfolding story, and each year is a chapter,” Bryant says of the testimonial campaign that galvanized Iceland’s rebranding. Although 2010 marked the first chapter of Iceland’s renewed tourism campaign, the rising action of its story began two years earlier.

Economic Collapse and Marketing Consolidation

Prior to 2008, says Hlynur GuĂ°jĂłnsson, Iceland’s counsel general and trade commissioner for North America, “What we were lacking was some vehicle to give us awareness.” Then, in the span of seven weeks from October 4, 2008, more than 600 articles were written about the island—equivalent to roughly two decades’ worth of content, GuĂ°jĂłnsson estimates. The subject: the international financial crisis. When Iceland’s three largest banks collapsed and its currency, the krona, depreciated by more than 30%, it provided a vehicle, unlikely or not. “After the downturn, suddenly Iceland became a value destination,” GuĂ°jĂłnsson says. 

With multiple marketing offices abroad, however, Iceland’s tourism messaging was mixed among markets, and 2009 saw a 1.6% decrease in foreign visitors—the first drop since 2002—followed by another decrease in 2010, that time 1.1%. The government of Iceland conducted an audit of its international tourism marketing operations in 2008 and deemed them too disjointed. The Trade Council of Iceland, Invest in Iceland and the marketing efforts of the Icelandic Tourist Board were consolidated under one organization, Promote Iceland. More than 100 companies gathered with the government of Iceland and the city of Reykjavik to form a public-private marketing initiative with the unified goals of increasing off-season tourism, getting tourists to travel farther in Iceland and stay longer.

The design target for these goals would be called “the enlightened tourist,” says Inga Hlín Pálsdóttir, director of tourism and creative industries at Promote Iceland. “We identify that person to have education and income above average. It’s a person who will travel independently, likes to book on her own—a person who has an interest in culture, is open to taking a vacation out of season, seeks adventure and is ready to share the stories of the country.”

​Perhaps the most important trait is the last. “According to Google, 92% of tourists use online tools when choosing their next destinations, 62% of whom use a search engine as their primary source of inspiration,” says JosĂ© Filipe Torres, CEO of nation- and place-branding agency . “The search is the consequence. The cause can be social media, a conversion or something published offline.”

22 Million Testimonials

Iceland’s social push began with a national call for chatter. On June 3, 2010, schools, parliament and shops closed as President Ólafur Ragnar GrĂ­msson kicked off “Iceland Hour” with a request for the people of Iceland and its friends abroad to share a story of positivity about the country. The address was broadcast on live TV and live-streamed via the internet. Participants could compose their own stories and share them through their own social channels, or they could submit them through the Inspired by Iceland site and use prepackaged content, such as Icelandic singer Emiliana Torrini’s music video for “Jungle Drum,” featuring a montage of people dancing in tourist destinations across the country. Within one week, they answered with 1.5 million stories. 

“It created a buoyancy in Iceland,” Bryant says. At the beginning of the initiative, more than 80% of the hits “Iceland” turned up on Google were negative stories of natural disaster and financial distress. Ten weeks after Iceland Hour, close to 22 million stories of positivity—from riding Icelandic horses to welcoming locals to “magic” landscapes—had been shared via image, video, post and comment on Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo and YouTube. On the Inspired by Iceland website, visitors could see an interactive map of Iceland with pins dropped around the island geolocating each story. Even celebrities contributed. Submissions from Bjork and Eric Clapton were filmed and circulated through the site and social channels while Yoko Ono endorsed the campaign from her blog and Twitter account.

“The digital country is the new platform that very few countries are looking at with the care, focus and investment they should,” says Torres. “Whatever you find on the first page of a Google search is the ultimate measurement of the first impression someone may have about your country. The country with the best brand—not the biggest budget—and the best positioning wins.” According to Bloom’s digital country index, which measures brand appeal, Iceland ranks 29 out of the top 50 countries in the world for tourism, ahead of the U.K., Switzerland and Argentina, among others.

The summer of 2011 proved the reach of the campaign; the island saw 565,600 foreign tourists, 77,000 more than the previous year and equivalent to a 16.6% increase. “It became the most successful summer in Iceland’s history,” Bryant says. The campaign grew as well, focusing on video aimed at promoting Iceland as a year-round destination. 

Though strong summers were beneficial for the tourism industry, Eyjafjallajökull proved the vulnerability of single-season reliance. “The tourism industry is very sensitive to any issue, like the eruption of 2010,” PĂĄlsdĂłttir says. “When Promote Iceland took over, we put a lot of effort into increasing awareness of the culture and the people, and that’s why we’ve been getting Icelanders involved to tell the stories.”

Fans of Iceland had proven with their testimonials that they were not just leisure-seekers. “They’re people who love stories and experiences,” Bryant says. “They don’t just want to go to Disneyland and get the mug. They want a story to take home. They want to live it.” Iceland invited these enlightened visitors to tour the country like an islander. They called the campaign “Honorary Icelander.”

Upon deplaning, tourists arriving in the winter of 2011 received an official Icelandic passport and became honorary citizens. They were taken in by more than 1,000 Icelanders, including the president and his wife. They were brought into recording studios for live musical performances. They picked wild mussels with Icelandic families. They relaxed in hot tubs alongside locals. “The president said, ‘Come to my house, and I’ll make you pancakes and we’ll go on a nature walk,’” Bryant says. A British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award-winning documentarian was commissioned to document the most successful winter the tourism industry ever fielded.

Just fewer than 673,000 foreign tourists visited Iceland in 2012, nearly a 19% increase that shattered the previous year’s record-breaking numbers. In 2013, following a marketing campaign to rename Iceland—the winner, out of 10,000 entries, renamed it the island of Aweland for a day—134,000 more foreign tourists traveled to the island than the year before, a 20% increase, making for three straight years of double-digit growth. Contributing to that surge were strong performances in the winter months, starting with a 27% increase in visitors in January 2013, a 43% increase the subsequent February, a still greater 46% increase in March and bookended with a 26% increase in November and a 49% increase in December.

Continuing the trend in 2014, just shy of a million foreigners visited the island, a 23.6% increase from the year before. The winter months again saw the biggest gains with increases between 26% and 40%. At the end of that year, the tourism industry accounted for 28% of foreign exchange earnings, a 9% increase from 2010. With seasonality effectively mitigated, a third pillar of Iceland’s rebranding had yet to be tackled: getting tourists to travel farther.

Enticing the Enlightened Tourist

The supremacy of digital had thus far proven a true guiding light, so 2015’s chapter opened with another web-based campaign. “We set up a human competitor to Google,” Bryant says of the “Ask Guðmundur” series. Seven ambassadors from each of the regions of Iceland—all citizens really named Guðmundur, or the female Guðmunda—were recruited to answer questions from fans such as, “‘Game of Thrones’ is partly shot in Iceland. Any of it shot in the North of Iceland?” and “Are Akureri’s red traffic lights really heart-shaped?” (They are.) And, “Why are there always three sheeps [sic]? I mean, literally: always!” Curious tourists submitted their questions from spring to fall using the hashtag #AskGudmundur on Facebook and Twitter. More than 200 video responses were recorded.

The GuĂ°mundur campaign, much like its predecessors, relied on volunteers, not paid actors. “Citizens are the best ambassadors,” Torres says. “People want to feel the culture and learn.”  

The endearing quirkiness of the campaign has been carried through, setting a new brand aesthetic for “Inspired by Iceland.” Acknowledging that enlightened tourists want to understand customs, respect nature and behave in a culturally conscious manner, and that sustainability is central to Iceland’s brand, the focus has shifted again in 2016 with the launch of “Iceland Academy,” a video series allowing viewers to earn badges for completing different courses about how to visit Iceland responsibly, safely and in a culturally appropriate way. Each “term” has four “classes,” and viewers who complete all the classes can win a “field trip” to Iceland to apply what they’ve learned. The series is led by eight experts, this year referred to as “tutors.”

While the production value has certainly gone up with scripted scenes and a departure from the home-video aesthetic of the Guðmundur campaign, the videos still have an artistic quality á la Wes Anderson with a bouncy harpsichord soundtrack, dynamic text (in hip typefaces) and characters with just enough idiosyncrasy to make them intriguing. “Iceland has an amazing Scandinavian aesthetic,” Bryant says. “It has amazing design cues and taste, but it also doesn’t take itself too seriously. There’s a wit and a humor and self-deprecation. It’s a very humble country, which is why it’s so welcoming.”

“Iceland Academy” has garnered nearly 3 million views since its launch in February 2016, and more than 7,000 people have completed courses online. Thus far, viewers have been able to earn badges for avoiding hot tub awkwardness, staying safe in Iceland, travelling responsibly in Iceland and understanding winter sports on the island. Soon, they’ll have the opportunity to prove they know how to eat like an Icelander, drive in Iceland, navigate Iceland’s festivals, capture the Northern Lights and travel farther.

In half a decade, Iceland has reinvented itself, bringing its tourism industry from the brink to a new apex every year. The strategy of “Inspired by Iceland” has evolved with the needs of the country, Bryant says, and rather than fighting the attention brought on by early trials and tribulations, it has ridden the wave

of adversity, says Torres. What’s next for the island will likely reflect new goals, new interests brought by Promote Iceland and changes in international tourism. In Torres’ estimation, Iceland has found the sweet spot for destination marketing, a perfect mix of luck and authenticity, putting it right on trend with the market. “Iceland said, ‘This is who we are, and this is what Iceland is all about,’” Torres says. “Consumers want something exotic, different and not massive. Iceland is a different planet. [Tourists] want to live that experience.”

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The next big thing in payment technology is expanding thanks to an American morning Ritual: coffee and doughnuts.

Although the age of mobile payments isn’t here yet, technology has already paid dividends for the quick-service food market. Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks enjoy industry accolades, sales and return customers thanks to the launch of their unique mobile payment apps. 

, released in 2012, has been downloaded 18 million times and has bolstered the company’s 4.9-million member DD Perks loyalty program, according to Angela Abdallah, manager of digital marketing and innovation at Dunkin’ Donuts. Apple Pay and Visa Checkout are integrated into the app, which she says gives customers the opportunity to make in-store or in-advance purchases, allowing their order to be ready for a quick pick up.

“Enhancing convenience for our guests through technology-based loyalty programs has been huge for our guests,” Abdallah says. “Whether mobile payments will be adopted on a wide retail scale is up to the demand of the market. That being said, customers want to be able to get in and out and on with their busy day, so we believe mobile payments’ presence will continue to grow.”

It didn’t take much marketing for the app’s success, Abdallah says, because customers want speed, convenience and brand interaction: perks that make their transactions easier. These desires have made mobile payment an “extremely powerful marketing tool,” instead of something that needs to be pushed to consumers, she says. Tying the rewards program into the app—offering five points toward personalized offers and free beverages for every dollar spent—helps keep new members coming in, Abdallah says.

, says speed is of the essence in quick-service transactions. Customers don’t want to fumble with cards, money or change; they do want to speed up interactions, earn rewards and move on with their days. 

 is even bigger than Dunkin’s offering. With more than 17 million active users of its app in 2015 (according to the company’s 2016 shareholder meeting), the app has made news and helped mobile become a focal point of sales. During a Q1 2016 earnings call, Starbucks revealed 21% of its transactions are now via mobile at point of sale or using the Starbucks’ app. 

Starbucks also gives customers incentive to download and regularly use the app by providing rewards points and the ability to skip the morning line with advance ordering. CEO Howard Schultz has called the company the and it’s a hard argument to dispute.

“Starbucks counts on people going in every day,” Horne says. “At Dunkin’ Donuts, their core group of customers comes in twice a day. It helps to sell an addictive product.”

​Every Market can’t Be Like Doughnuts and Coffee

While mobile payment adoption has been expected in the larger consumer market for years, success seems to be concentrated within the food industry.  found that, of those who use their mobile device to make payments, 40% use mobile for quick-service food and drink sales, 39% use it at the grocery store, 34% use it at the convenience store and 33% use it at full-service restaurants. Other markets see less mobile traffic than food payments: 31% in retail, 29% for household bills and 27% for telecom services. 

“There has been a slight but notable shift in usage patterns for consumers who do pay with smartphones. They still typically use them most often for quick service food/drink, grocery and convenience store purchases,” the Accenture report says. For the better part of a decade, market analysts thought that the ubiquity of smartphones would mean more mobile payments. The technology–which is said to have the potential to save both time and money, reduce fraud, and improve customer tracking—would soon become the standard, many experts believed.

However, mobile payment use has not yet hit critical mass. Consumers have shown a lack of enthusiasm toward adoption and use of mobile payments. Even in 2016, Horne says mobile payments are a bit of a quixotic idea, akin to flying cars.

“We’re just a little ways away from really seeing it,” he says, chuckling as he mentioned a 2007 report that said a third of all U.S. spending would be mobile by 2015. EMarketer, an independent research company, predicted mobile spending would reach  after totaling $8.71 billion a year prior. , however, was $11.5 trillion in the second quarter of 2016, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. All told, mobile spending is less than 1% of U.S. spending.  â€œEven this year, all the mobile phone transactions altogether will end up being equivalent to Gap’s sales,” Horne says (fiscal year 2015 net sales from The Gap were $16.2 billion, according to company sales results). “It’s happening much more slowly than anyone, except the people who study it, predicted.” 

Outside of coffee and doughnuts, mobile payments in the U.S. have seen steady, if unremarkable, growth. In 2012, , but set the 2016 value expectation at $62.24 billion. 

Tony Craddock, director general of the U.K.-based  (EPA), says a “flurry” of mobile wallet failures has delayed the technological tipping point and dampened consumer excitement. However, Craddock says many apps, such as those from Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts, have identified areas of the value chain to capitalize on. If the value proposition is there, customers will use mobile payments, he says. 

“You have to be quite careful that you have a discrete edge on the competition. Just having a place you can store value on a ph​one is irrelevant to a consumer,” Craddock says. “They won’t know why you’re doing it.”

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The mobile malaise could give way to a bright future. A , with 56% of millennials ages 22 to 39 now regularly using mobile payments. An additional 18% of consumers would use mobile payments if more stores accepted it, Mintel reports. In all, 28% say they believe the technology is the “payment method of the future.”

Bryant Harland, senior technology analyst at Mintel, says services such as Apple Pay, Android Pay and Samsung Pay have led to greater adoption of the technology in the past year (). Before 2015, branded apps were the only mobile payment apps seeing heavy use; now, Harland says every age group has expressed some interest in mobile payments.  

“Younger generations have adopted it more so than baby boomers, but there’s still a fair number [of baby boomers] who are interested,” Harland says. “For example, only 9% of people ages 45 to 54 say they’ve actually used mobile payment and like using it, but 23% say they’re interested. A lot of it is getting that 23% from the point of being interested to actually using.”

Where’s the Infrastructure?

Craddock says mobile payment’s tipping point exists at the nexus of an advanced consumer base willing to adopt, a technical infrastructure, the omnipresence of a contactless payment system and the brand power of companies such as Visa, Apple and Samsung. 

“If you’ve got those magic ingredients, fantastic,” Craddock says. “If you haven’t got one of them—and in the U.S. you don’t have the omnipresent contactless usage—then these are innovations that won’t fulfill their potential yet.”

Horne, who has extensively studied consumer payment, says another issue is non-users who are somewhat interested in mobile payments but have no incentive to adopt. They’re inert, he says, in that they’re not paying much attention to alternative payment methods. 

“The systems they have in place now, especially the card technology, they’re used to it and it works. And it’s fast,” Horne says. “There’s no imperative to change. 
 Even the really frequent Subway shopper is going, what, once a week? Twice a week?” Horne says, using nationwide retailers as an example. “At that point, you’re starting to lose the incentive to use this thing. That’s the next place it has the potential to go, but if you’re a Macy’s shopper and you’re going once a month, why would you [have a specific app for it]? Your card works.”

​​Consumer interest in payment technology changes when special offers come into play, Horne says, as has been the case with Starbucks’ and Dunkin’ Donuts’ apps. However, “new for new’s sake is not good enough,” he says, and infrastructure investment from a retailer will likely cost more money than it’s currently worth. 

“Eventually we will hit a critical mass and people will have to [adopt the technology],” Horne says. “But don’t be on the bleeding edge of this one, because it’s going to be a while. 
 You need it if a consumer expects it, but consumers don’t expect it yet.”

Security and regulations may also be a concern for consumers and businesses. Mintel’s report shows 18% of customers believe mobile payments are less secure than traditional methods. In addition, Harland says there are a handful of legislators pushing for more regulatory control over the financial technology market. 

“When that happens and there is more focus of the law on that, the companies that aren’t familiar with what they need to do to be competent could face a lot of fines and a loss of trust,” he says. 

This confluence of uncertain regulations, security and poor infrastructure, Craddock says, is creating a frustrated payment technology community that has a difficult time innovating. “The consumers are not sufficiently well-educated because the rest of the things meant to be in place aren’t in place,” Craddock says. “As a result it’s actually improving very slowly.”

Adoption on a Global Scale  

, a 90-market perspective on “digital money readiness” by Citi and Imperial College London, categorizes both the U.S. and 

U.K. as “materially ready.” This means both countries are familiar with digital solutions and have regulation-friendly environments, but have yet to create a digital payment ecosystem. The U.K. moved up from the seventh-ranked country in 2015 to the fourth-ranked country this year while the U.S. remained in third place behind Finland and Singapore, respectively. 

The EPA, Craddock’s group, has goals in the U.K. of establishing the country as “the global hot spot for payments innovation” and advancing payments innovation, per its website. A key for this movement, according to Craddock, has been de-monopolizing the infrastructure by opening up mobile payments to competition and technological advancements. Instead of government-owned infrastructure, the U.K.’s Payment Systems Regulator watches over the country’s $98 trillion payment-systems industry. 

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“If you haven’t got that and you haven’t got the economic mode—upon which such an infrastructure depends—you will find yourself likely to have a mobile wallet with friction,” Craddock says. “And these things cannot have friction in them.”

Friction in the U.S. market comes from the lack of regulation to support and encourage transformation to mobile payments, Craddock says, as well as the absence of an omnipresent contactless infrastructure. The recent U.S. adoption of  cards may also slow the process, as consumers are wary of another payment change. The U.S. has “an approach to regulation which is likely to inhibit rather than promote innovation,” Craddock says.

A unique approach could help develop U.S. the mobile payment infrastructure. Other countries on the path to widespread adoption have used government-to-person disbursements, for example. In this model, governments use mobile payments to send benefits, such as tax rebates and social security payments, to citizens, thereby putting an infrastructure in place and getting consumers familiar with the technology. Citi predicts that this method will have a global market value of $12 trillion by 2020, just $1 trillion less than B-to-B digital payments and a bit less than the $31.7 trillion customer-to-business flow will be worth in 2020. 

Mexico is currently looking to implement the government-to-person model, Craddock says. The country has submitted a request for proposal to his organization for a 7-million-card system and mobile phone probate program to be used for distribution of benefits. The EPA invited its members to showcase different forms of technology for the RFP.

“Financial inclusion is a major strategy objective of Mexican government,” Craddock says. “This product—a combination of a mobile phone- and  smartphone-based mobile wallet, plus supporting payment card—has the potential to enable improved transactions, reduced fraud, reduced cost and ultimately improved inclusion in the social and economic ecosystem. 
 It’s a lovely example of the world of the mobile wallet reaching maturity.”

China has seen success with the aforementioned customer-to-business model. Xueming Luo, a professor of marketing, strategy and management information systems at the Fox School of Business at Temple University, says there are more than 500 million mobile payment users in China.  says approximately two-thirds of customers use their smartphones to pay in bricks-and-mortar shops. In comparison, Statista reports the U.S. had approximately 23 million proximity mobile payment transaction users in 2015, with 37.5 million expected in 2016 and 50 million in 2017. A separate  by the end of 2016, making for a much smaller ratio of mobile-payment users in the states. 

Imperative to Change

Marketing author Seth Godin famously said,  Many people are talking about mobile payments, certainly, but experts say there’s still opportunity for increased adoption. 

Lara Balazs, Visa’s senior vice president of North American marketing, says Visa is trying to start the conversation with . For example, Visa has partnered with Chevron to implement mobile payment at gas stations with videos playing at pumps that show how to use mobile payments. 

“It’s really important to recognize that product and marketing are one in the same today. Marketing is well beyond advertising and communications: That product itself is marketing. How your brand shows up in that experience is marketing,” Balazs says. 

Visa’s incentives to innovate and adopt mobile payment solutions come from competition among financial institutions. Large companies have an advantage in the market due to trust and name recognition, Mintel’s Harland says, but coming to market early with a useful product can make a big difference to the success of an offering and how customers adopt. This has driven the company to build products they believe consumers will use, whether there are initial incentives or not, Balazs says. 

“There’s always the ability to drive a behavior [by] putting an incentive in the marketplace. That’s your classic trail strategy,” she says. “That’s certainly something you can use just to build [a customer base], but you’re never going to get repeat usage if it isn’t a wonderful experience.” 

Most marketing in mobile technology focuses on convenience, Harland says, but convenience still lacks in shops across the country. However, online, delivery and on-the-go services have been capitalizing on the consumer desire to make fast, easy and secure mobile purchases. 

Marketing, according to Craddock, is a “cog in the wheel.” It can’t compensate for a weak customer proposition or poor customer experience; those have to be in place. However, fulfilling a great promise to the customer and delivering on that promise can make for a seismic shift in consumer adoption of a product. “If you haven’t got those two things, no amount of marketing can make any difference at all,” Craddock says. 

The Power of Millennials 

There’s no doubt the country will be paying differently once millennials have more spending power, Horne says. “They’re used to doing stuff on their phone,” he says. “It’s almost like it’s automated to them. That’s how payments will be once they start. The reality with any new technology like this is the people who are most resistant to it eventually stop spending as much money.”

Millennials’ willingness to spend money via smartphones will likely build trust in mobile purchases, eliminating the lack of consumer confidence in security as one of m-commerce’s biggest worries, Harland says. 

“With mobile payment being used in stores and potentially online later on, this hesitance will dissipate and it will help retailers and other businesses do a lot with mobile they couldn’t do before because they couldn’t keep mobile users throughout the entire purchase process, and that’s going to change,” Harland says. 

Although hopes are high, the mobile payment infrastructure in the U.S. is largely nonexistent. Until these issues are solved and a mobile payment ecosystem is created, the technology may languish as the “future of payments” while the present money is spent in other ways. 

“Who is going to build it?” Horne says of the infrastructure. “It’s a bit of a chicken and egg thing. Do we build the system to accept it at the point of sale, or do we wait until consumers demand it? Consumers don’t demand it until they want it. Who moves first?” 

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A recent story in the national business press . Gifts, such as $20 meals as part of a promotional event, were associated with increased prescriptions of branded drugs relative to generic alternatives.

The study questions the notion that visits by sales representatives are purely educational. The researchers argue that gifts improperly influence medical decisions and inflate drug costs.

Industry representatives counter that they don’t “pay to prescribe” and that they educate doctors about the latest treatments and appropriate uses of new medicines.

This report raises several issues for marketing practitioners, both on the science of measuring marketing effectiveness and a wide array of non-scientific issues. In some ways, both sides of this issue (medical professionals and pharmaceutical marketers) agree on the facts: marketing works. They differ on whether that is a good or a bad thing. There are also some important questions about application of the scientific techniques, and whether the interpretation of how marketing works is correct.

The non-scientific questions relate to the context in which the research is conducted and used. What are the goals for medical professionals and the constituencies they represent? s? These different groups may never agree on the proper role of marketing, arguably destined to have a somewhat adversarial relationship. However, it behooves each side to understand the perspective of the other, which might lead to some areas of agreement and improved practices and policies.

Scientific Research Issues 

The story generated some lively discussion over the scientific accuracy of the analysis. Were all the proper statistical controls included so that the estimated effect of the promotion was correctly identified? Could the apparent effect of meals be due to selection of doctors to who are responsive to information? Could it be due to other associated aspects of the sales process, e.g. product samples given by sales representatives, information/education provided and the frequency and quality of sales visits?

Perhaps the relationship was merely correlative and not causal. Scientific methods could be used to consider the possibility of alternative explanations for the observed association. Was the impact big or small? Is the gift associated with a difference in prescribing behavior closer to 1%, 10% or 50%? Is the difference a “tiebreaker” for a close decision or a  compared to other drivers of behavior? Is it important or large enough, in aggregate, to make a difference in the overall market?

​Quite a lot of research has been done on this topic by medical researchers, as well as consultants and marketing researchers. It would be helpful to know, from a synthesis of all prior research, the different influences on prescription behavior, in various treatment contexts, and how they vary at different stages of the prescription process, e.g. information search, awareness, brand salience, consideration and repeat prescription.

Findings from the latest study would be especially interesting if they looked at new types of data and variables, framed the question in a new way and yielded unforeseen results. The implications of new research would be clearer if we had background on what is generally known, what’s new and what questions remain to be verified. Is the new study likely to alter the “consensus” of how marketing works?

Non-scientific Issues

Research of this type, especially when reported in mass media, is embedded in a broader business and policy environment. What struck me as interesting and potentially important were several aspects that are distinct from the veracity of the analysis itself, such as non-scientific factors that effectively surround the scientific issues.

One is disclosure: Who did the research? Medical professionals, public health specialists, health economists or marketing professors? Consultants who specialize in understanding the effectiveness of sales and marketing processes? In some circles the sponsorship of research automatically raises credibility questions. Disclosure and discussion of these issues enables all parties to acknowledge potential conflicts, state their case and weigh the evidence.

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Data sources are another factor. Where did the data come from? When marketers conduct mix modeling and , they assemble a wide range of data from multiple sources, including marketing spending inputs and touch points, behavioral and financial outputs and mindset metrics. The integration of these complex data sets is often a challenge to achieve and a significant source of value to marketers who commission the research. Adding variables from different and new domains that play a role in choice behavior (e.g. social media, content publishing and news reports) is a challenge, raising the specter not only of greater complexity and cost, but greater insight.

The data set for the study came from a relatively new source: a byproduct of government-sponsored healthcare and prescription drug programs. Perhaps more could be done to merge this source with traditional sources of marketing and prescribing variables to achieve a more comprehensive and accurate view. This might also help provide an explanation for some inconsistent or anomalous findings, including instances in which some brands were not prescribed more than generics.

​​Another factor is bias. What are the policy questions and “agendas” of the various parties with an interest in this issue? The topics cited as important to policy makers included reducing cost of drugs (to patients), increasing objectivity in prescription recommendations and leveraging government funding and data. There are others, such as the ongoing debates about the proper role of pharmaceutical marketing, the role of government versus private insurance payers and how to encourage product innovation via research and development.

Finally, we can consider goals. Marketers’ goals span the full range of financial, customer and market development topics. Some are common to many product categories, while others are specific to pharmaceuticals. Often the goal in ROI work is to use data to help decide on budget level and allocation to achieve optimal profit results.

This pharmaceutical market has a complex buying process in which products are promoted to doctors via a range of marketing channels, hospitals and directly to patients. The process is complex, and optimizing across all stages may be extremely difficult. 

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As in all product categories, there are factors beyond the control of marketers that influence consumer behavior and marketers’ options, such as macro-economic variables, government spending on healthcare and reimbursement rules and competitive offers and marketing tactics. Long-term factors such as the product development pipeline, patent issues and managing a portfolio of products can play a role.

The goals of policy advocates and marketers may clash in terms of reducing costs to patients while encouraging continued flow of investment into new formulations. How does marketing pursue business goals, improve affordability and protect against the inherent risks in medications as well as inappropriate uses that can cause harm?

Media attention on marketing practices highlights how different points of view are often associated with different scientific practices and different contextual factors. The future promises more and bigger data to consider for marketing and policy questions, and possibly more divergence in criteria for interpretation and action. It would be unfortunate if this data bounty merely enables more selectivity in finding support for established positions rather than more opportunity for discovery. 

The need for systematic ways of analyzing the data is only going to increase. In this case of marketing ROI, it will be important to answer questions regarding the effect of all the relevant choice drivers, how it varies by market context and who is advocating for the results. 

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Two calls to a customer service line can mean reiterating the same story twice. An e-mail to a company might result in an automated response that includes a promise for contact and a case number to keep on file. It can sometimes feel as though the customer is doing all of the leg work, provided it’s done on the company’s preferred platforms.

Now imagine a world where the customer can contact customer service on a variety of platforms, and they remember questions from a previous interaction. The company, in turn, uses this information to provide better service to customers and refine its marketing.

This is the goal of Gladly, a customer-service software that is based on the cloud and allows companies to recognize customers and communicate on a range of platforms. Gladly was co-founded by Joseph Ansanelli, Michael Wolfe and Dirk Kessler with the goal of changing the way firms interact with customers.

We spoke with Ansanelli, who serves as Gladly’s CEO, about the company’s plans, customer expectations and the benefits of flexible customer support.

Q: What do people expect from their customer service experience?

A: They want to be treated as a customer and not as a case or a ticket. I don’t think people really appreciate agents saying, “Call back and remember your case number.” They have an expectation today that companies understand who they are and understand the relationship they have. They expect they don’t have to be the one educating the company or the people in the customer service team about who they are. They don’t want to say, “I spoke to so-and-so yesterday and here’s the conversation I had with him.” The company should know all that. They expect to be able to communicate across any and all channels. They should be able to send an e-mail and call, and the person on the other end of the phone should have access to that e-mail. It’s an expectation that companies know who the consumer is and that both the company and the consumer can communicate independent of any channels.

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Q: Does the burden on the consumer keep them from reaching out to customer service at times? 

A: There are definitely some companies that you enjoy and have a phenomenal experience with because they’ve actually done some of this work, usually by building their own systems. A lot of consumers hesitate or go into a customer service experience assuming the worst. That’s probably company- and brand-specific, that wariness of calling or contacting a company for customer service. And it shouldn’t be.

Q What do you expect the customer experience to be like when a company uses Gladly?

A: To paraphrase Maya Angelou, it’s really about how you make people feel. It’s about the feelings that you create with your end-user customers: feelings of affinity, trust and empathy. Those feelings get created when agents, the people on the front lines, have the capability and tools to have a very empathetic, knowledgeable conversations with you as a consumer. As soon as an agent can have an empathetic conversation—for example, “I can see you sent an e-mail yesterday about this, is that what you’re calling about?”—that would be a legendary experience. With Gladly, these are the things we enable. That creates that feeling of customer affinity. Having that sense of empathy from an agent, where they actually know who you are, it just makes people feel cared for. That can dramatically change the relationship customers have with their companies.

Q: Does any specific type of company benefit from using Gladly?

A: There are certain types of companies that appreciate it more. It can help almost any B-to-C company. It’s usually the ones where they really understand and think about the lifetime value of their customers and know that it’s far easier to grow your top line and revenue by having a really happy and satisfied customer base that actually transacts with you frequently because they have a good relationship with you. For us, those are companies like retailers, people in the hospitality and travel and leisure space where their relationship with the consumer is really important, [and] financial services, where you have a high-value transaction relationship with the end-user consumer: those have been the sectors where there have been more people who get it. There’s no reason why the utility company shouldn’t provide great service, but because it’s a little more of a monopoly, those types are not always necessarily as focused on growing the lifetime value.

Q: Can companies that use Gladly use it as a marketing tool?

A: Service can be and should be a competitive advantage for a company. The more personalized you make your service, the more the people who interact with you 
 appreciate the service. When [consumers] feel like they’re going to get taken care of, service is a competitive advantage. The way to become the competitive advantage is to be very open with your customers, meaning that you let them contact you however they want to. That’s a starting point. When you say, “You want to use Facebook Messenger? No problem. You want to use Twitter? No problem. You want us to SMS? No problem. If you want to still call us? No problem.” That alone is a competitive advantage. 

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Then you empower those agents who are on the front line and turn them from champions of your brand into heroes with a customer. From a marketing standpoint, you should have a really highly engaged and satisfied customer. Just executing on that, word will spread of you as a brand.

Q: What has the feedback been like?

A: Generally, folks who have been planning to do those first projects tell us that they really like this customer-centered view for the agent, so the agent can—in five seconds or less—understand who the customer is and the state of the conversation that’s happening with that customer. The second thing is they can communicate across any and all channels with the customer, and the customer can do the same back in one system so that you have that unified lifetime of the conversation with the customer. The third piece is seeing a single history of all the communication. When you communicate with your friends you see the whole history of your communication. It may have been a week since you last spoke with the person, but you still see the whole history of the messaging. 

Q: Has there been any hesitance to moving this communication onto the cloud?

A: I was more worried about that when we started. People are realizing that to get the latest and greatest products and platforms that they have to migrate to the cloud because that’s where all the innovation is happening in technology. Every company is becoming a cloud company in some fashion. They’re leveraging so many cloud products today that it hasn’t really been an issue. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by that.

When you think about all the data that’s inside of a system like Gladly, where you have all these customer questions and answers, one of the big things we’re trying to figure out is how to turn the contact center, not only into a place where you have to have operational metrics, but a place where there is customer insight, where you can actually mine the data to understand the voice of the customer and understand the questions they’re asking, the answers we’re giving and [you can] unlock that data for the rest of the company to change the way they do business.

Q: Has this been one of the ways you’ve marketed Gladly, as a way to better understand the customer?

A: Absolutely. The idea of understanding the voice of the customer is incredibly valuable.

The post Gladly CEO Joseph Ansanelli Discusses the Future of Customer Service appeared first on ÂÜÀòÉçčÙÍű.

Western civilizations have always been about lines. Think of the R​oman legions whose basic fighting structure was a box-shaped phalanx. We still line up for school activities. Many, if not most, of our organizational structures are based on lines and boxes. We read in a linear fashion, one word after another, one paragraph after another, one page after another. No wonder much of our marketing and communication planning and implementation is focused on and driven by linear concepts and approaches. 

Compare that to the Eastern cultures where eating is commonly a group event, conducted on round tables. In the East, there are few hard edges. The most common response to a difficult question is, “It depends 
” Even Native American discussions, conferences and powwows are conducted while everyone is in a circle. Linearity seems to be unique to Western culture. 

Linearity has pervaded marketing philosophy. The most dominant marketing concepts have developed out of linear processes used to structure marketing plans, advertising campaigns and even media programs. All are planned, developed and implemented via linear structures. Just look at our planning process: We start with a situation analysis, then move on to marketing goals, then linearly flesh out those with advertising programs, followed by linear media plans. All linear. All one step followed by another. At the end of the marketing process, unless we can avoid it, we try to measure the results, again with linear models. All those seem to assume consumers move in lock-step through the marketing systems we have developed. 

For example, we use funnels to guide and direct our linear programs and control consumer behaviors. We put prospects at the top, apply our marketing and communication magic and then see them come out as enthusiastic brand supporters at the other end. We’re always in control, and prospects are always pliable. That’s the way it has always been, and that’s the way it’s going to be, or at least that’s the way we think it should be. 

I began musing on this linear marketing process several months ago, wondering how it started, how it developed and whether or not it makes any sense in today’s interactive, multilayered, circuitous, increasingly social media-dominated marketplace, where one post can start a landslide of public discussion and change of opinion. 

It seems much of this dominant linear marketing and advertising thinking started in the early 1960s with the still-dominant concept of the hierarchy of effects as proposed by Robert Lavidge and Gary Steiner.  

The hierarchy-of-effects approach, seemingly the mother of all linear marketing processes, was hypothesized by two Chicago-based marketing research gurus. They speculated that the basic model for marketing and advertising practice followed a linear process that started with awareness and led to consumer knowledge from which preference was developed. Finally, conviction completed the process. At that point, it was assumed consumers were ready to buy. Lavidge and Steiner argued that while their process didn’t lead directly to sales, as it was only a communication model, the end result came out the same. The key point was that marketing communication activities led prospects through the process. Therefore, the more marketing messages delivered, the faster the prospect would move to “conviction” and likely purchase on the next occasion. The model was all outbound and all controlled by the marketing organization, which made it particularly attractive to marketing managers focused on growing their brands and justifying their budgets and spending.  

While the hierarchy-of-effects approach was a useful methodology for marketers challenged to grow sales and profits in the last century, it is not so much the model itself that challenges marketers today as it is the marketing and media fallout it has created. For example, the concept of “share of voice” grew directly out of hierarchy of effects thinking and planning. If marketing communications directly drove prospects through the process, and, if I, as a marketer, outspent or out-communicated my competitor, I would move more prospects more quickly in the direction favoring my brand. Likewise, the hierarchy-of-effects model provided an easy and convenient way to track and measure the success of any marketing communication program. The marketing manager could watch prospects move from knowledge to preference, thus justifying the communication investments. 

Another fallout of the hierarchy-of-effects model has been the reach and frequency approach, which has developed in media planning. Reach is simply how many prospects or consumers were exposed to the marketing messaging. The question then became, how much frequency was required to generate movement through the hierarchy-of-effects process? Lavidge and Steiner never really addressed that issue, so it was done by someone else.

 in 1963, speculated that “television worked through three exposures.” In the first, the consumer said, “What is it?” The reaction to the second exposure was, “I understand it,” and the third exposure resulted in, “I don’t need to see it again,” or audience saturation. Media experts lifted this approach and applied it to the hierarchy-of-effects concept so that all media planning is based on this optimization of reach at three exposures. That is considered the base for all media planning. There is no real support for the concept, but every media optimization model around the world uses the “three exposures” as its optimization base. 

But, what about today? New media forms, new technologies, new mobile forms of communication; new everything—except the old linear models which support them. No wonder we have so much difficulty getting agreement on how we should communicate, at what level and what effect to assume or measure.

The greatest problem with these linear models and their fallout is that this is not the way the world works today. Prospects aren’t malleable and pliable receptors of marketing and communication messages, no matter how they’re delivered. They simply have access to too much external information. The traditional brag-and-boast approaches delivered to undifferentiated audiences are simply no longer relevant. Dressing up these messages and incentives in “engagement-stimulating activities,” such as price-reducing coupons and freebies, doesn’t seem to work either. 

So, what to do? Clearly, we can’t toss out all the historical research that has been done and start over. There are still too many customers and prospects who use and believe in traditional advertising and marketing communication to discard what we know works. Nor does it seem possible or practical to accept all the new concepts and approaches to interactivity. There just isn’t enough evidence of a hugely committed social media audience (with money) to keep a business afloat. We clearly need some new concepts, approaches and thinking to get over this transition hump. 

First, most of the hierarchy-of-effects models and their kith and kin treat all customers and prospects alike, assuming they all go through the process at the same rate with the same level of interest and acceptance. What if we simply created some groups of prospective customers based on their media consumption? Then, we treat them as individual audiences, moving them through the various stages based on the media forms they use. Same concept, different views on how to use it. 

When it comes to optimization, what if we flipped the model around? Not how to optimize media distribution, but what if we found ways to optimize consumer income flows that return to the marketing organization? Same principle, different view of the value.

Or, what if we scrapped the entire idea of a linear model? What if we accepted the increasingly recognized idea that consumers start, stop and reverse themselves, try new approaches, go out of the market for a while and even get to the “altar of purchase” and then simply walk away? We’re quickly learning that customer journeys aren’t linear or predictable; they’re more like a bowl of spaghetti that is all tangled up, messy and not very coherent. What that seems to require is starting with the customer and working back to the product and the problem to be solved so we can develop some type of understanding. 

In the classroom I use Legos and Tinker Toys to illustrate this concept. I ask students to build a consumer behavior model from the toys. They quickly learn that Legos only go together in one way and that is driven by the linear concept on which they are based. Tinker Toys, however, can be put together in infinite patterns based on the ingenuity of the student. They quickly grasp the concept. Maybe that’s what marketers need to do as well. 

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The ÂÜÀòÉçčÙÍű’s first intellectual agenda is meant to serve as a source of guidance and inspiration for marketing professionals as well as academics. In it, we lay out the “seven big problems” marketers face in the boardroom and in the marketplace. These problems are a large part of that intellectual agenda, and will help us hone in on how we inform and inspire you, the marketing community. 

Here, we dive into the questions that stem from each of the seven problems. ÂÜÀòÉçčÙÍű thought leaders discuss the “what” and “why” of each pillar problem, while we leave the door open indefinitely on the “how.” After all, marketing is about rolling with the punches.

For every big problem, there are a million small solutions. What are yours?  Take quiz below to understand how your firm is doing.​

Brian Gregg

Partner at McKinsey & Company

Too often, customers experience a company’s brand “via the org chart,” meaning a company communicates and interfaces with its customers through multiple uncoordinated teams (call center reps, store/branch associates, digital marketers, etc.) without a unifying mission. In this digital era, a critical barometer of success will be the ability to serve customers in the way they want to be served at key points in their journey. To pull this off, organizations will need to reorient internal mechanics with the customer as the ultimate guide: architecting cross-functional teams around customer journeys, building a holistic view of all customer touch points and governing decisions and incentives around customer metrics. 

Laura Beaudin

Partner at Bain & Co.

More companies are seeing value in a “digical” experience for customers—products or services that combine digital and physical elements. Digical can create effective targeted marketing where customers feel the company knows what they want and helps them find it. The Chinese cosmetics company Jahwa provides reps on the retail sales floor with mobile devices that tap into an integrated database. When the rep puts in the name of the customer she’s serving, the device provides recommendations tailored to that customer. This logic applies in business-to-business markets as well. A machinery manufacturer automatically collects electronic data about end users and product use. That lets the company’s marketers understand the needs of specific groups of buyers and design appropriate offers.

Alison Herzog

Director of Global Social Business & Digital Strategy at Dell

Ninety percent of the data in the world today was created in the past two years. The inherent challenge is knowing how to use this data to tell a meaningful, actionable story. While our day-to-day activities have changed, our psychological drivers haven’t. Digital transformation is really about eliminating friction, solving pain points, understanding needs before the customer does and putting the customer in the driver’s seat. The Internet of Things has made it possible to optimize something you don’t think of as digital, such as a farm, into a place where sensors aid in minimizing water waste, maximizing crop yield and even monitoring product lifecycle in real-time. Social listening allows us to perform real-time market research, understand where a customer’s real passion lies and understand the literal terminology customers use. The outcomes of these two digital transformation initiatives are what every company wants: happy customers, brand advocates, and increased revenue.

Beverly Jackson

Vice President of Social Media Marketing & Content Strategy at MGM Resorts International

The digital transformation of today’s organizations will be most successful when designed to include the entire infrastructure. The rapid acceptance of digital innovation can’t be fully effective when implemented in silos. There is no question the evolution brings organizational efficiencies, increased productivity and campaign effectiveness. However, the challenges to this ground shift towards digital transformation are the disproportionate allocation of technology, resources, training and a general lack of appetite for the resulting change.

The digital revolution is destined to fail if the entire organization is not included. The transformation and change management must extend beyond sales and marketing teams. Why not include people management, finance, public relations and other B-to-B functions that could amplify the transformation? When it comes to digital transformation, it’s an all-in proposition.

​Eric S. Pelletier

Global Director of Strategic Workforce Planning at Korn Ferry Hay Group

Digitization breaks down barriers in traditional corporations. The safe wall between inside and outside becomes porous. Customer value propositions and employee value propositions are merging. New business models imply new processes, new organizations and new, rare skills. Technology flattens our world and companies must dispense with silos and become less hierarchical to succeed and to attract the right talents. Speed of execution, internal information sharing and learning abilities become competitive advantages in themselves. The ability to manage legacy issues—from IT systems to product and service lines to workforce—will decide the fate of traditional corporations.

Pat Spenner

Director of Strategic Initiatives at CEB

The best way to guard against the myriad of disruptors associated with digital transformation today is to be so in tune with your customer that you can anticipate their unarticulated needs. With that insight, leading marketers then assemble the combination of product and service components—some of which may be provided by other parties outside the brand—to simplify whatever job it is the consumer wants done. And in the process, you disrupt your own business before the disruption happens to you.

Sarah Schaffer

Editorial Director at HZDG

Three generations—millennials, Gen X and boomers—are working today in corporate America, which means the modern C-suite must foster and support a variety of communications channels, many of which embrace what I’d call the post-digital age. Leading-edge marketing agencies are tracking emerging trends and incubating new ideas democratically (and quickly) using real-time messaging programs like Slack.

In my eyes, a team’s effective digital collaboration creates a “halo” effect for all things digital. If junior- and senior-level colleagues can brainstorm faster or make a project come together better via digitized internal communication, then their shared confidence in other digital products or service offerings is likely to rise. And when it comes time to evangelize the power of digital to clients, they can speak from a unified position of authenticity and strength.

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