Session on Brand Vision- BU Symposium 2007

I was in attendance at this year's Symposium, my third (yes, third) one since I began the program. One of the great benefits of being in the PEMBA...

The keynote speakers Kenneth Feld and Jim Koch were great. One of my favorite lines from Feld's morning session was "One day as a sophomore at BU, my dad called me up and said Ken, get on a plane now and meet me in Rome, we're going to buy the Circus." Interesting life story to say the least.

Jim Koch had a beer in hand during his speech, displaying the new ultra modern Sam Adams glass with curves and ramps to enhance the full sensory experience of malt and hops flavors.

Interesting how Koch hired a professional firm to help him come up with the name and concept and he only got back "Mystic River", "Silver Cod" and a few other terrible names. Jim actually came up with the name Sam Adams, and it fits well with the company philosophy and shapes the brand personality. Sam Adams was a patriot, a brewer through his family, a revolutionary thinker, and even somewhat of a prankster. This all fits very well with Jim's personality and life story and helps shape the Sam Adams brand today.

In terms of the marketing session "Building a Brand Vision" Prof. Fournier moderated the morning panel of four speakers: Tony Marzulli from Workbrain, Barrie Mirman from Microsoft, Adrienne Kelly from PepsiCo., and Jerry Antl from Timberland. The discussion of metrics came up (Note our group is presenting something similar to this Monday 2/12) and there were some interesting comments from the group. Adrienne from Pepsi mentioned how Pepsi was all about personal development of employees internally (her goals were 50/50 business and people) and how this was measured through career development, relationship with management, leadership in organization among many other areas. This is something our group also found in research for our preso on brand metrics, the internal buy-in and development of employees and ability to share in the vision is crucial to the measurement of brand effectiveness and ultimately a gauge on how this will resonate to the external world with customers, partners, competition, etc. This could be measured through employee satisfaction, training employees should have each year, and the adoption of internal collaboration and learning tools for employees such as intranet portals.

Jerry Antl from Timberland was all about the ROI, and how there is an increasing expectation from upper management to see quantitative results in all of the marketing actions so it can be tied to corporate objectives. This might include the ad campaign response or success rates via the website, measuring response value, eyeballs or click-through rates, among many other metrics. Jerry seems like the example of the modern day marketer, where its less glitz, glam, and creative, and more analytical approach. This "left brain" approach reflects the trend towards increased accountability on marketing actions in organizations. I think the more marketing groups can show direct correlation to the top line, the more the CMO and others will have an influential seat the table with the CEO and Board.

When the discussion shifted to career development and the panelist job history, Tony from Workbrain got up and drew an interesting two-dimensional model on how you might consider different areas of marketing and deciding where you want to be: Corporate vs. field, and Product vs. non-product. He noted small lateral steps are fine to figure out where you really want to be. He also noted that recent MBA are eager to move up in organizations without having much to show. I agree as it takes many months and sometimes years to show your influence before you can try to jump to the next level of management.

And of course, at the end of Symposium they had Sam Adams for everyone which was a nice touch. Great event this year.

To Throw Out A Little Plug-

Our group (Josh, Patricia, Torrey, Tim and myself) have pieced together some ROI type metrics for measuring brands and their impact on organizations such as SCPT/Archstone. Using the Balanced Scorecard as a guide, we mapped to four main areas, including:

-Turnover/Retention
-Branded price premium
-Occupancy rates
-Lower acquisition costs

We will go into much more detail on these Monday night. We have developed a great model to adjust each of these areas in real-time and show how branding initiatives could influence each of these areas, enhancing top line growth. Don't miss it!