Keynote Via Disembodied Voice #1: John Costello
I admit it: this is my first Ad:Tech. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Little did I know that showing up blithely about 10 minutes before the Keynote was about to start Monday morning was the best way to end up in some overflow room where you were treated to Keynote Via Disembodied Voice. It was a little confusing. But I hung in there and actually took some copious notes, with this blog in mind.
Disembodied Voice #1 was John Costello, EVP of Merchandising and Marketing for The Home Depot. His presentation started out in fairly standard form: let me talk about my company and the great things we’re doing.
The thing is, Home Depot’s marketing approach is probably a best-in-class example for companies who can afford it. They identify a market segment and then they really cover all their bases.
Take their approach to target segment NASCAR enthusiasts.
-Start with a NASCAR-themed Home Depot commercial, liberally flavored with humor.
-Have a presence at actual NASCAR events, including set-ups where NASCAR dads can have something to do with their kids.
-Top it off with technology, because you better not assume NASCAR enthusiasts are all unwired, offline bozos. [Check out how active Knight Ridder’s NASCAR site/blog/forum is if you think that.]
Or, their approach when they launched the ability to purchase appliances on their site. Sure, they launched an easy-to-use site, but they bolstered traffic with search engine marketing and assuaged customers who don’t dig the always-online lifestyle with an accompanying print catalog.
Costello calls it “High Tech; High Touch.” Jealous me…I call it “Have a big enough marketing budget to do everything you should.”
So far, so typical.
But where I really started to dig Costello was when he talked about what he considered the “next wave.” Because now he started talking about the things I care about: the shift to consumer power over their own content, whether media content or advertising content. Did he list anything new? Actually, no, he listed internet, iPods, Addressable TV, PVRs, Satellite Radio and Video on Demand. All that same good stuff. But he articulated pretty well what this consumer control means for the marketer. It means they have to think about, no, grok, the following 6 points:
1. Differentiation and relevance matter.
2. It’s a permission-based world.
3. You must adapt to convergence of the various next wave of consumer tools listed above.
4. 360 degree marketing gets more important.
5. Technology is the ultimate marketing tool to enable all of the above.
6. And you still want to drive ROI.
Bottom line: you and your message can be filtered, don’t you doubt it. Differentiation is not enough…it must be relevant. Does this mean further segmentation? Migrating to one-to-one marketing? Maybe. What helps you do that efficiently? Technology. (Oh, and budget!)
