Speaker: Gini Dietrich, founder and CEO of Arment Dietrich and and co-author of Marketing In the Round.

Topic: Marketing in the round

Location: Lawrence Technological University 

Sponsor: Ford Motor Company

Overview:

• Companies such as Dell and WPP completely integrated marketing disciplines. This was the beginning of integration.  
• And then, the dotcom bubble burst, 9/11 tragedy hit and the 2008 Great Recession started. Everyone scurried back to their respective corners.  
• It’s time to do things differently. It’s not new stuff. The companies with silos and not adopting new technologies or not talking to each other won’t survive. Time has come to work together again and break down the silos and integrate.
• Remembers when PRSA came out with AVEs (ad value equivalency) for measuring. Now so many better options to measure with social.
• Idea of “it’s not my job” is ridiculous. Everyone should be harnessing social tools.
• The marketing round – team of people who work together. Person who holds the hub together is typically marketing person. Then you bring in teams like HR, sales, legal and execs and all work together.
• Marketing person knows how to communicate internally and externally. Building a team of people who can communicate with everyone.
• Two types of organizational silos: Lonely silo is indicative of a startup or small biz (no team to work with). Functional silo – team of people work well together, but you’re not working together as a whole for the agency or company.
• Reason we have these silos is that people are scared to death of change. Marketing in the Round talks about breaking those changes.
• Have to figure out which tools make sense and tell your executives where they should be paying attention to integrate social. Tell execs you can’t have silos.
• Go into organizations and ask who is willing to be in the marketing round. 10% will be excited to take the risk and be willing to work on it because they know it’s the right thing to do. Others will fight and try to tear you down. Then 80% watch those who fight get fired, then join you.
• The four approaches – direct (direct email, email), top down (influencers and 3rd party, traditional PR), flank (when you don’t have loyal customers), groundswell (evangelists, SM influencers).
• Flank example is Chrysler changing the conversation with its Imported from Detroit commercial by using a superstar (Eminem) and social media because they didn’t have loyal customers.
• Figure out what you have internally. Map your resources. Do this exercise – if money and people aren’t an object, what do you want to do? What talent do you have internally to execute that? Where are competitors’ strengths and weaknesses? Figure out how to do what you need to do from a competitive standpoint.
• Measure your results – baloney that there is no ROI in social media. Link to things and figure out where it’s coming from. Then go out and kick butt.
• Summary: Break down the silos, build your marketing round (needs to be someone from every discipline and someone who understands how they all work), choose your approaches, select your tactics, measure your results.