A veritable Who’s Who in the marketing world gathered in San Francisco last week at the 7th Annual Economist Marketing Forum, which Modern Media helped to program. These included CMOs from such companies as Wells Fargo, Nickelodeon, Denny’s, Del Monte Foods and Frito-Lay among others. They discussed managing for the present, preparing for the future.
The opening session featured two economists offering insights into when the recession may end and the upturn arrive.
“This is the first time we’ve had a recession with the Internet,” said Ward Hanson, a Stanford economist. “That means bad news spreads super fast. The shockwave travels fast, but the turnaround can also happen that much faster.”
He advised marketers to track Google’s advertising prices to see when the turnaround has arrived. Michael Lehmann from the University of San Francisco told the audience that the one statistic to watch is private non-financial borrowing. When that finally starts to trend up, the turnaround has begun, he said.
Asked about how they are coping in an economic downturn, Pam Kaufman, CMO at Nickelodeon/MTVN Kids and Family Group, said she is keeping up spending on research. Christine Petersen, CMO at TripAdvisor, is pouring money into launching new sites overseas. Sylvia Reynolds, CMO at Wells Fargo, said her goal is to hold marketing spending flat, but change the way money is allocated and distributed.
Clearly the recession is affecting behavior. When you type “marketing” and “recession” into Google, you get more than 22 million results, according to John Gerzema, Chief Insights Officer at Young & Rubicam Group.
The second day featured a fascinating panel on lessons corporate marketers could learn from the success of building the Obama brand. “Do you allow controversy to occur on your own Web site?” asked Jim Margolis, Senior Partner at GMMB and a key advisor for Obama who managed the campaign’s advertising. “Take some risks to be part of the conversation. It benefits you more than it hurts you.”
Social media is a key part of the marketing effort at Virgin America, according to Poter Gale, Vice President of Marketing. The company is a heavy user of Facebook and Twitter. On a recent flight, celebrity MC Hammer sent a tweet about how nice Virgin America was and a company employee saw that, tweet’d back and not only did it catch the attention of thousands, it made MC Hammer decide to feature Virgin America in a future episode of his reality TV show – all for the cost of an intern paid to constantly monitor and respond to Twitter.
