Joel J. Ehrlich Event Recap

Joel J. Ehrlich- President of The Harmony Group LLC

4/20/11

What Is Marketing?

- Everything that happens from a point when a product is manufactured and produced to when it

is purchased.

- EVERYTHING to make someone buy something

- The real fun of marketing is observing consumers as though you are a psychologist

- It is so important. E.g. most people in the US do not know who the US Secretary of Defense is,

whereas people in Europe would know straight away. What is the problem? Lack of marketing.

- Constantly changing.

What Do You Need?

- Learn to be comfortable asking questions and asking the right questions-best way to learn about

people

- Don’t get caught up in the academic approach to marketing

- Need to know the subtleties and need to know everything – make sure you are constantly

checking marketing resources/blogs etc (list of recommended resources at the end of notes)

- Should take a psychology class to understand how the brain works

How Did Marketing Begin?

- In order to see the future, you must be a student of the past

- Example of when a woman wanted to pick up a man, she left foot prints in the sand. This is

marketing herself – there is clear direction and purpose

- About bringing people and products/services together

- Must open the door for an emotional connection and attachment, understanding the

psychological insides of a human being.

Key Trends

The consumer is the most important - they control everything.

- They have the power to dictate where, when, how and from whom something is delivered. This

is new for marketing.

Content delivery and access is changing – delivering content to be noticed using media, which is how

you get marketing to people, it is the delivery system and the tool to communicate something. People

want to be entertained.

- Branded entertainment – delivering an experience e.g. product placement in a movie. These

can work really well and have great potential (check out Batman Onstar). However, celebrity

endorsements also have problems because they can easily become ‘lame’ or ‘stupid’ or viewers

get caught up with celebrity rather than the product. There are more mistakes in this area than

other areas in marketing.

- Digital Media – taking already existing content or newly created content and delivering them

electronically.

Tools are changing

- IPTV- Internet Protocol TV, TV channels are delivered online and give viewers opportunity to

interact with media and information. Future = more interactive commercials.

- Mobile marketing- bigger use to be better but it is not anymore

- Social Media is growing extremely fast but has pitfalls – people don’t know how to use it

properly, too many assumptions and people forget about platforms.

- Marketing in Games – growing very fast and using more product placement, understanding

where people spend money. 18 billion dollars was spent on virtual dollars.

Changing demographics and targeting

- Largest growing is Hispanic population (50 million out of 313 million US population), African

American at 13%. Need to know their family values, where they live etc

- Aging populations

- Marketing to children

- Marketing to women – role of women becoming more prominent in society, but still maintaining

role of making household decisions

- Micro-targeting using hyper-local marketing

Recommended Resources

- PR2.0

- Mashable

- Blogstorm

- Seth Godin

- Duct Tape

- The Marketing Minute

- PSFK

- Trendhunter

- Marketingvox

- What’s Next Blog

- Social Media Explorer

- I Believe in Advertising

- Only Dead Fish

- Grokdotcom

- Emergence Marketing

- Brandflakebreakfast

- Brandautopsy

- TechCrunch

- AllThingsD

- AVC.com

- http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

- Fourhourblog.com

-Logic + Emotion

-Ad Rants

-Web Strategy

-Brainsolis.com

-Brand as Business Bits

-Marketing Pilgrim

-Church of the Customer

-WSJ

-NYT

-Brandweek Magazine

Marketing Panel With Pepsico and Dunnhumby Event Recap

Summary of Q&A

There are so many different professions within the marketing field, how did you narrow down the

options to the one you’re working in now?

- Many of the panels members did not necessarily start with a major in marketing, they ended

up working in their current field mostly through their other interests, for example data mining,

math, technological platforms etc. which lead them to an interest in marketing.

What are the biggest challenges you face in your job and how did you overcome them?

- Establishing yourself in a large organization, understanding acronyms, Investing and continually

building trusting relationships with clients

- Comes with experience, also remember to get the little things done and done well

What skills do you think is most important to get hired?

- Ability to adapt to change and try a different way of doing things. The world of marketing has

shifted to being more data-driven, and there are always new channels that didn’t exist before

- Make sure your social profile is corporate-friendly

- Need to be digital savy- understanding all the different platforms

How important is an MBA?

- Could help in the long-run working for a large organization

- Everyone is more balanced in a small organization

- MBA could offer more networking and broader benefits

- Overall they don’t feel there is a correlation between years spent in school and how successful

they are within marketing

- However more specialized fields e.g. data mining etc. having a MBA could be a huge advantage

How different is working in NYC compared to working somewhere else?

- In reality the difference is not wide, NYC has a faster pace, longer hours and more concentrated

central talent pool, more pressure to perform – these could drive innovation

Working in NYC usually means working at Headquarters and therefore means have to be more

professional, chances of bumping into CEO etc.

- Depends on what you’re looking for and where you grew up (if you come from a big city, you

might find it easier to transition)

Do you feel the current social media platforms will mature faster than we expect, and new platforms

will be needed? Do you think there is still great potential in platforms like Facebook and Twitter?

- All these new channels have great potential, all along the spectrum

- Facebook is only scratching the surface of what they could achieve. Facebook is so integrated in

everyone’s lives. There are so many applications of this data that we have not even seen yet.

- Usually these platforms have a 2 year timeframe with Facebook and Twitter as exceptions.

-

An interesting factor to consider is when you get to the generation that does not want to be on

the same platform and the same network as their elders e.g. parents

How available are positions in your company and how competitive are they? What are the promotion

possibilities?

- Dunnhumby always has open positions at entry levels and to move up to because the company

is growing. Promotion opportunities- there are lateral, international opportunities etc

- It is really competitive, but if they find the right people they will make space and find jobs

for them. It is a really tough market place but there is huge value of just being yourself and

understanding why you want to work there.

- Often the basics are overlooked by candidate e.g. stock question: what do we do?

- If you are passionate then it is hard to be successful, then it is not about competition but where

you want to work?

Do you ever question what you do?

- It is normal to be attacked – crisis communication

- Important to question and to understand issues people may have, sometimes have to anticipate

what people would ask

- Proud of making the brands that people love, better

- Sometimes it is important to question what you do in a different way – take a step back and

think that in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter that much in the sense that people

don’t die (compared to police or firemen)

What are some of the frustrations of working in a multinational company?

- It is always harder working with someone on the other side of the world compared to someone

sitting next to you – instructions have to be very specific, video conferencing etc

- Need to figure out cultural differences

- But being in a multinational company is good because clients are global, helps when the office is

filled with international people

- Challenges will become less problematic for people in your generation because you grew up

with the technologies

In your opinion, is it better to have good grades or good networking?

- Usually there is minimum GPA so getting the position you want might be more difficult but that

is where networking can help

- If you can work for free, it is good to get the experience.

- Personal relationships with people you want to work with are very valuable. Try blogs of people

you want to work for or work with, and engage them in conversation. You can learn more about

their business.

- However, important to have personal life experiences because sometimes college is the only

time you get to do them- and what takes you from being a candidate to someone that is hired is

the stories and things you can reference

What is one thing you wish you knew before working?

- Having perspective in the sense that recruitment is not as scary as people make it out to be, it is

just about understanding the company and proving that you can be a part of their solutions

- Money comes with a price- don’t lose sight of yourself and make sure you are doing something

you enjoy because as responsibilities grow it only gets harder to fake if you don’t enjoy it

- Do not be timid about reaching out to organizations and trying to get somewhere

- Hard to get back to the things you wanted to do e.g. Peace corps, if you get chance to do what

you want, just do it

What is your favorite project?

- Reshape blog and social media strategy for Pepsico

- When a small project gets implemented and impacts the whole corporation

BBDO Event Recap

BBDO

4/06/11

Background

- BBDO has 287 offices in 79 countries

- It stands for Batton, Barton, Dustine & Osborn

- BBDO is the most awarded agency network in the world since 2007

- The ad agency in Mad Men is inspired by BBDO

- Examples of clients: Starbucks, HBO, The Economist, Mars, Campbell, Bank of America

HBO Case Study

- Constructed outdoor film campaign, of a cube. During the night each side of the cube shows a different angle of the film. Viewers would have to see the film from 4 angles to understand the story properly. These shots were filmed simultaneously.

- The cube directs people to the online website which has more film clips and material. When people watched all the clips the viewer is then rewarded with a final payoff film.

- Good example of non-linear interactive campaign

True Blood Case Study (Original HBO Show)

- The first season of True Blood was a huge success for HBO, the challenge HBO gave BBDO is help sell True Blood Season 2 on DVD or Blu-ray. This is an increasingly hard task as most people no longer feel the need to purchase physical copies of their favorite TV shows. They tackled this by suggesting that watching True Blood Season 2 marathon experience will transform the viewer.

- Created TV, print, flash banners, and rich-media banners (these were interactive so people can type in their own experiences and their own confessions on how watching True Blood ‘transformed’ them)

- Blu-ray live feed technology, which allows viewers to connect to Facebook. The technology changes the Facebook status picture the more the viewer watches the show. It also detects viewing habits and changes Facebook status accordingly.

- 4 million impressions, DVD and Blu-ray sales soared and surpassed performance of season 1 sales

- Broke records for HBO box sales, until the Pacific was released.

Q&A

What is it like working for such a big agency?

- Around 500 people in the New York office

- Difference depends more on the clients rather than size. The accounts vary a lot, some have a lot of personnel and some have well laid-out hierarchy structure e.g. Bank of America

- It does not feel so big because the company culture is quite loose and the company has bars.

What did you do before BBDO that makes you qualified for the job?

- Wasn’t the most qualified, she started in a small media company and worked a lot on spreadsheets

- She left and wanted to go into digital because it is such a flourishing area.

- More about how you sell yourself e.g. learns fast, digital savy and cannot be afraid working in big agencies like this.

How do you convince clients who do not revolve around digital to use digital marketing?

- Even if brand does not really revolve around digital, at the end of the day it is about getting the word out. Digital is the more prolific way of doing this. It no longer makes sense to just look at the traditional methods.

Do you feel people with an undergraduate business degree are more confined; is it harder getting into creative and making an impact on creative work?

- A lot of different people with different backgrounds add to the diversity of BBDO.

- People from business schools tend to be more involved in strategy and media.

- However, no matter which background you come from you will always have an impact on creative work.

How did you land the HBO accounts? Do you have a choice?

- There are always openings every year when people move up, you have to interview for them.

- Depends ultimately on your fit with the needs of the client, so you do not have a choice.

What is the most difficult part of your job?

- Hierarchy of the organization. BBDO is more vertical than the company she came from, which is more horizontal. So decisions sometimes take a long time to get made. It is a challenge making sure things go where they need to go.

- Client time. Working at an agency like this can require interaction time with clients outside of standard 9-5. Must always make time for clients, being patient and making sure you make the right decisions. Must also need to be on tap all the time.

Contact Information

Email: Hannah.park@bbdo.com

Telephone: 212 459 5031