The AHAA Media and Account Planning Conference Wrap Up – Part 1.

It was a conference of firsts for AHAA this year – kicking off on April 1st, the first time AHAA has held a conference in Vegas, and the first time two Gringos chaired the conference.  If you missed it, here’s a snapshot of the sessions, awards, and highlights.

Conference co-chairs Tracy Decker, of Globalhue and Ken Deutsch of Grupo Gallegos took the stage dressed in Las Vegas garb:  Tracy in a headdress and Ken in an Elvis costume to welcome Hispanic marketers.  “Our industry is at a crossroads,” they said.  “Media is moving at a rapid pace with more options to consume and interact with content then ever before.  Clients are looking for actionable insights and we need to deliver in high definition.”

The conference – themed Hispanic HD:  the definition of US – brought into focus ideas and strategies to inspire and provoke discussion among Hispanic agencies.  The first day featured Keynote Speaker Angel Martinez, CEO of Deckers Outdoor Corporation and developer of the Reebok Freestyle shoe.  Renowned for taking the smallest idea and making it big…his presentation: 

Brand building 101:  Art or Science?

Angel Martinez, the Cuban-born, Bronx-raised, transplant to Alameda shared how a pair of Chuck Taylor Converse shoes were the impetus for his career in footwear. He’s a leader in product and marketing innovation and a shaper of future trends.  His personal stories, humor and no frills approach was riveting.  He told the audience of Hispanic marketers practical thinking needs to ground the opportunities to reach and connect with the Hispanic consumer and he provided 15 key insights to brand building and professional growth.    

#1  Pay attention: keep in touch with your brand, how consumers are interacting with your brand, why its important to them, etc.  “Converse,” he said remembering his first pair of black hi top Chucks, “is an example of a brand that didn’t pay attention.”  An iconic standard of athletic footwear with a cultural following around the country and Converse didn’t have any idea about the difference between the white low cut and the black hi top; who was wearing which; the names each group had for the shoes.  Even with greats like Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and Dr. J endorsing the shoes, they lost market share because they lost touch with their brand.

#2 Stick to what comes naturally:  don’t stop dreaming but know your limits and stick to what you know and what you can do.  Find your passions in life and build around them.

#3 Love what you do and do what you love.

#4 Marketing is the rhetoric of business:  logos (meaning), ethos (purpose), pathos (empathy) are all meaningful and effective communication is grounded in these things.

#5 The “last 3 feet of the sale”:  Unlike other industries, the biggest ad budget in the footwear business doesn’t put your shoes into the cart.  The person who brings you the shoes is the most important person because they have the biggest influence on your purchase.  His strategy was to let Nike’s ad budget deliver the consumer to the store and then Reebok would close them three feet from the wall of shoes where consumers make their purchase decisions. It was a simple idea with a more compelling story and told by the clerk in the store.  Reebok passed Nike that year and Martinez’s shoe, Reebok Freestyle, started it all.  31 million pairs sold worldwide in 3 years.

#6 Aerobics had nothing to do with shoes:  Reebok was about women discovering their physical potential.  Everyone was trying to knock off the aerobic shoe but they didn’t get the insight and the essence of our message to women:  aerobics was just the vehicle.  He said, “That’s the most important thing to extract from the Reebok experience and that has the most consideration in marketing a brand.”  They had to understand the product and its appeal – visual, tactile and intellectual.  Understanding how a consumer’s brain works is embedded in the marketing process.

#7 Have a story that can change someone’s life and stick to it:  the story around aerobics was a very personal one to women.  They invited instructors to become ambassadors on a journey for their students and created an instructor alliance.  It became a movement to those involved.  It was a compelling story full of belief, and emotion and they changed peoples lives in a big way.  The brand was built on the product but they evolved that to mean so much more over time.

“Eventually all brands become irrelevant, obsolete, without reinvention born of innovation,” he said.  “Brands lose their way eventually because every CMO, CEO, Brnad manager, wants to leave their mark on the brand territory.  They want to impose their vision.  Ralph Lauren survives because it’s his way.  They live the brand.”

#9 – Brands endure because a creative vision stays intact: reinvent around the vision.  Brands evolve the consistent passion around a shared vision.  That’s what it takes to avoid becoming a fad.  You can evolve the brand and develop it but you can’t usurp it like Crocs. 

#10 Learn more by observing what not to do then by figuring out what to do:  brands need vision keepers. The vision keeper in the succession plan of a brand is the agency.  First, you must be clear in the vision and understand the conceptual and strategic intention for the brand.  Everything is measured against that internal “compass.”

#11 Without brand vision we are blind to opportunity:  don’t jump at any great idea that comes down the pipe if it doesn’t contribute to the brand vision.  That’s how you measure value from an agency.  Keeping focused and bringing the right consumer to the brand, not just the brand to the consumer is critical.  Know the brand’s core value and step back, assess, and analyze ideas against the vision and strategy. 

#12 Core brand values are DNA.  They cannot be altered without disastrous genetic effects.

#13 Build your strategy on the core values – duh!!!!  Rely on your gut instinct and resist the temptation to give into a great idea if it doesn’t match the brand vision.  Everyone wants to grow their business but make sure it’s in the right direction.

#14 Resist the temptation to “dumb it down”:  keep the brand vision and core values in tact.

#15 An agency should be the keeper of the eternal flame that makes a great brand. 

So…is brand building an art or science?  Martinez says, “Art.  If marketing is the rhetoric of business then advertising is its propaganda arm with the power to move the masses toward a better future and with that comes great responsibility.”

SESSION 2

Redefining Agency Value and Why It’s Important – a panel discussion with marketing association leaders Adriana Eiriz, CMO Council Advisory Board; Nancy Hill, president and CEO of the American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA); and Bod Liodice, president and CEO of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA).

AHAA Chairman José L?pez-Varela facilitated the impassioned discussion that examined the needs of today’s advertisers, the importance of deeply engaging with cross-cultural markets, measuring and reassigning value to agencies, and why more personalized, timely and relevant communications are more important than ever before.

Q.  Hispanic marketing is generally treated as a discretionary budget line item (excluding Wal Mart).  As such, it is generally one of the first things to be cut, particularly during a challenging economy such as the one we are currently living.  How do we elevate Hispanic marketing from discretionary to strategic?

A.  Clients are looking for ideas that solve business problems and they don’t care where the ideas come from, Nancy said.  Help advertisers define the problem, come up with the idea that helps them solve that problem and you and the agency become invaluable – despite your cultural reference or what type of agency you represent.  We need to elevate the conversation. 

Q.  CMOs are under enormous pressure to deliver quantifiable results, yet many of the accepted measurement tools are not available in the Hispanic market yet.  How do we help meet this CMO challenge?

A.  Adriana said, in this environment marketing departments are more about measurement and accountability than ever before.  At the end of the day it is going to be the performance and that comes from developing a strategic partnership, optimizing efficiencies, and looking at performance on the inside of their organizations.

Bob and Nancy added that CMOs don’t really know if their investments are translating into returns so the agencies have to do it.  Find ways to integrate the marketers, the analytics people and the logistics people to work hand in hand and create a culture of solving problems together and create measurements and identification of core data to determine whether objectives are achieved together.  They told agencies, “You have to drive the alignment across the organization.  You have to facilitate that conversation.”  

Nancy said, “Agencies have done a lot of complaining about losing their seats at the table but they need to open up and understand the business objectives of their clients better.”  Bob added, “This is a consistent irritant.  Agencies and companies must work together – get in there and make the reorganization happen.  Marketing and sales and finance folks have to push it forward and get measurement established.” 

Q.  Does such a thing as multicultural marketing really exist, i.e. is it possible to create a single message or campaign that effectively connects with Hispanic, African-American, Asian-American and GLBT markets at once?

A.  We may get to the point where bringing integration in to marketing would be counterproductive and for example, lose the focus of Hispanic specialized marketing but Adriana said, “There needs to be a realignment for marketers to be more connected with customers and understand and own the customer experience.  The brand strategy is broad but who we are talking to, how the customer is expecting to listen and get information – these are the things that are important.”  Decisions must be made for what’s right for the business not what makes your job easier and the common language is not Spanish.  We have to speak to latinos as individuals.

Q.  Looking ahead to the 2010 Census, what percentage of the U.S. population will Hispanics need to compromise in order for the market segment to be taken seriously?  At 15% of the population, there are still many advertisers who do not recognize the Hispanic market.

A.  Hispanic marketing is taking this seriously in many cases.  If the companies aren’t doing it – they may have a strategic reason for not investing but if a company is making a discreet decision not to target this segment with 15 percent of the population Latino – he’s not sure why they would do that.

Nancy added, “It’s not about the percentage of the population it’s about the percentage of influence.”  Hispanics are influencing the rest of society.  Marketers are challenged in understanding Hispanic marketing and they are just learning how it works. It’s similar to digital marketing.  Only about 25 percent of marketers feel that they are digitally savvy.  So the same is true with Hispanic and they have to divide their money and skills across a lot of areas. 

They said, agencies can’t let themselves get marginalized by other agencies or general market competitors.  They have to find a way to be an integral part of the team bringing strategic insights that solve their business problem that the client just can’t do without.

Bob said, “You need to fight and elevate your game by being in the marketers mind and distinguishing yourself in the mind of the client.  What’s the next Crispin standing out in the multicultural and Hispanic market – are you performing at that level?  If not, ask yourself, ‘how do I get my business there?”

CONFERENCE attendees broke for lunch and the HispanicAd.com Media and Account Planning Excelencia Awards presented by HispanicAd.com’s Gene Bryan.

SESSION #3

When attendees gathered again for the next session they were in for a treat from Alex  xxxxx, of Naked Communication’s presentation on Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC).  Alex introduced Naked Communications – an integrated marketing communications agency that is media agnostic to recommend the best approach for clients based on the brand’s vision. 

She share the Four Naked Truths about IMC :

1. Everything communicates
2. People are your partners – not a passive target.
3. There is a better way – the industry has been keeping the same structure for more than 60 years and working the same way but does it have to be that way.
4. See the full picture – before even starting to think about how to solve the problem, understand the problem fully.   

Clients want it…they say IMC is their top priority but they aren’t getting it, according to ANA research.  Times of changed, Alex said, and with a fragmented media landscape and unlimited opportunities to communicate with consumers we can no longer keep doing things of the past.  “You have to make sure every single touchpoint makes sense and has relevance,” Alex said. 

The misconception is that IMC is expensive and takes too much time but in reality, it doesn’t have to be complicated and is proven to drive brand profit.  IMC isn’t just adopting the “shiny new thing” like digital just because everyone is doing it.  “IMC isn’t sexy but unsexy is the new sexy,” she said.

Forget about any preconceptions we have in mind:  IMC is a holistic process to deliver profitable brand growth.  It’s a process for working together to align business objectives with communication objectives.  It’s not about developing a creative idea but determining consumer behavior and then translating that into consumer facing.  For example, she shared Naked’s work on Kleenex brand.  They understood very quickly that it was all about trial and getting the product into people’s hands.  Kleenex was declining and they needed to work fast.  At any touch point they wanted to make sure consumers experienced the difference between Kleenex and its competitors…they needed to feel it.  From soft wrap on the packaging, experiential in-store demonstrations, an FSI with sample, and experiential POS, to name a few tactics, they translated the marketing message into touchpoints with the consumer.  The results – 34% increase in sales at key retailers, 15% category lift versus a year ago. 

Alex said, “When you have the right strategy and action it through the right channels it works.  Try to liberate yourselves from only the traditional channels.  She shared the pillars for IMC:

1.  Be media neutral. 

2.  Be consumer centric.  She shared an example of work Naked did with the paint brand Dulux.  “Everyone is claiming the same thing – excellence in making colors,” she said.  “We put ourselves in the consumers’ shoes and found 75% like color in store, they go home, paint their walls and they hate it.  It wasn’t about being the paint expert it was about being the decorating consultant.  They created a Web site to tell them about colors in their home to help them match colors.  A call center and customer helpline.  It even created a new revenue stream for them – paid-for color consultancy where they would come to your home and help you choose paint.  They combined the efforts with print ads, online ads, online quiz, events, content…color chemistry.  They increased market share in a static market by 10 percent.   

3.  Collaboration.  Get everyone around the table – not just marketing but finance, sales, research and development:  you need to get everyone thinking about integration.  It’s hard to think out of the silos but you need truly integrated discussions.  It is a great opportunity for Hispanic agencies.  You can actually start the discussion in a different place and rethink what you’re currently doing.  The recession is a challenge but the good news is that it’s  forcing organizations to rethink their entire business along with marketing communication and Hispanic agencies that integrate communications will have an advantage.  Clients will have to be forced to rethink.

The first day of the Conference wrapped up with a session that took the audience behind the screens of Fox Searchlight’s multiplatform, multi-audience campaign for the very compelling movie “Bajo la Misma Luna.” Rick Ramirez, vice president of marketing, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment presented their unique strategy.

Throughout the conference Voodoovox sponsored questions allowing audience members to text in their answers on pressing industry issues like their predictions on consolidation of Hispanic agencies in the future, and the percentage of the population that must be Latino for the market to be taken seriously.  Answers were shared during each session and the results will be posted online at www.ahaa.org http://www.ahaa.org/> .

Following the session, attendees headed downtown to the original Las Vegas strip to tour the first 100% High Definition Hispanic TV station in the country. Telemundo hosted AHAA Conference attendees at a reception at their new state of the art studio.

To read second day coverage CLICK on link below:
https://hispanicad.comcgi-bin/news/newsarticle.cgi?article_id=26770>