Marketing, Interrupted

by Dave Sutton

  Yet, like all transformative marketers, the team at Chick-fil-A doesn’t rest on their laurels. They know that to continue to build their business they must find ways to delight customers and deepen relationships every day. That’s why the company periodically makes strategic moves to boost its Brand Story, revisit their Strategy, and assure that the right Systems are aligned to execute with ruthless consistency.

  After more than 22 years working with The Richards Group, Chick-fil-A ended its relationship with the agency, shaking things up for the brand. The now famous cows, created by advertising legend Stan Richards, were enshrined in the Advertising Hall of Fame and earned their place in the Smithsonian Museum in July 2015.

  “No Mor Kows?”

  Does the change to a new agency signal a move away from the wildly successful “spokes-cows”? Hardly. They’re not completely crazy!

  The leadership team at Chick-fil-A now refers to their marketing strategy as “Kows-plus”, building on their tremendous brand equity. But perhaps, they are tipping their hand that they will be relying a bit less on their iconic mascots in the future. Their strategic goal is to amplify the brand’s message by emotionally connecting and building relationships with new and existing customers through new stories.

  “While the cows will remain an essential part of our brand, we are also working on new stories to tell. To do that, we are moving to a new strategic model to enable innovation and brand growth nationwide.”

  — Jon Bridges, Chief Marketing Officer at Chick-fil-A

  Boosting (not Blurring) the Brand Story

  Chick-fil-A’s new “Kows-plus” initiative is designed to move the brand story beyond the cows. The idea is to tell a compelling story focusing on the chain’s competitive advantage, and highlight topics such as quality of food, customer service, and offerings that may not have fit well into the cow theme.

  “The cows are an integral part of the brand. They’re our mascot if you will.

  But they aren’t the brand. The brand is bigger than that.”

  — Jon Bridges, Chief Marketing Officer at Chick-fil-A

  Branding is all about storytelling—the story of your brand—the advertising images and copy may be part of it, but the heart of the brand story is why you do what you do, and why that matters to your customers. Chick-fil-A is innovating around the existing narrative and raising the bar to focus on creating a compre- hensive and compelling brand story of why Chick-fil-A does what it does, with the goal to deliver more value to its customers.

  Refining the Strategy to Create More Raving Fans

  The new “Kows-plus” strategy will enable the brand to focus on its core compe- tencies and differentiate its best-in-class products and services.

  “Ask yourself how you can deliver more value to your customers, not get more money from them.”

  — David Salyers, VP of Brand Activation at Chick-fil-A

  Delivering a productive and profitable customer experience is at the heart of the Chick-fil-A strategy. Chick-fil-A aspires to create “Raving Fans,” customers who are happy to pay full price, come to the store more often and tell other people about Chick-fil-A. For customers, value equals what they get divided by what they pay, so the goal is to charge the right price and focus on the numerator (what they get) to actually create value for the brand’s customers.

  Chick-fil-A looks for ways to create valuable customer experiences by deliver- ing quality through its products and services. The “Kows-plus” approach is a path to shift the brand’s focus on creating more personalized customer experiences through the chain’s key competitive advantages. If you ask a Chick-fil-A Raving Fan to share their opinion, they will likely say that the food and service are so extraordinary that they don’t even think of it as fast food.

  Innovating Through Systems Aligned to Execute “Kows-plus” Whether in a store, on a billboard, on the web or on a mobile device, Chick-fil-A people don’t think of customer interactions as a simple transaction; the people strive to create remarkable customer experiences. Or, as Seth Godin would say, “Experiences worthy of remark.” The processes, people, and enabling platforms

  required at every touchpoint on the Customer BuyWay must be fully aligned to successfully bring the brand to life.

  In order to accomplish this, the fast food chain strives to bring out the best in its people at every level of the organization and instill in them the values of the brand. They encourage and recognize those employees who build relationships with customers by going above and beyond customer expectations.

  In the company culture, this is referred to as “second mile service. By execut- ing with operational excellence and delivering “second mile” service, Chick-fil-A knows they can create an emotional bond with their customer that will not only differentiate the brand, but also generate advocacy. Raving fans make the Chick- fil-A story a part of their own story.

  Chick-fil-A One, the restaurant’s new mobile ordering app is a great example of using Systems to drive innovation.

  Chick-fil-A was certainly not the first to market in the quick-serve restaurant (QSR) category with a mobile app. But by all accounts, they have one of the best in the industry because the app was specifically designed to support their unique strategy and story. The mobile app eliminates the painful experience of waiting in a long line, giving the customer the chance to place their order from their phone. To launch the mobile ordering service, the brand offered a free Chick-fil-A sand- wich to anyone who downloaded the app and created an account.

  On the campaign launch date, the app went from receiving an average of about 1,500 downloads daily to approximately 400,000 downloads per day. Consider for a moment the data comparing Chick-fil-A One adoption to the mobile apps to fellow QSR competitors who barely have a pulse! It turns out that a free Chick- fil-A sandwich is a pretty good driver of online behavior!

  “Treat your company culture like the ultimate competitive advantage”

  — David Salyers, VP of Brand Activation at Chick-fil-A

  The app also enables the customer to earn free food based on a running his- tory of their purchases. Rewards are referred to as “Treats,” and the app features a graphical representation of how close you are to earning your next “Treat” like waffle fries, soft-serve ice cream, or a fruit cup (yeah right!).

  Truly characteristic of the “second mile service” brand promise, the app allows you to personalize your order in ways you probably never even thought of. Add

  bacon to that grilled chicken sandwich? Sure, everything is better with bacon! No ice in your sweet tea? No problem. No pickles on that fried chicken sandwich? Turn your nose up to a Southern tradition? Whatever.

  “Kows in Vertual Realitee”?

  Of course, the spokes-cows, with their provocative and humorous personalities, continue to play a starring role in Chick-fil-A’s brand story as a fun way to con- nect and engage with customers. Turns out, they will also be playing an impor- tant role as ambassadors (ambassa-cows?) for Chick-fil-A’s experimentation with innovative technologies.

  The cows are currently focused on leading the way for the brand in experi- mentation with virtual reality. And they want to want to share their discoveries with the world. In new Chick-fil-A brand stories, the cows are seen gifting unsus- pecting people Virtual Reality (VR) headsets.

  While virtual reality is new for Chick-fil-A and the Kows, it has been a win- ning formula for their new agency, McCann. The agency’s collaboration with Framestore on Lockheed Martin’s “Field Trip to Mars” campaign won 19 Cannes Lions, making it the most-awarded advertising campaign at Cannes in 2016. The virtual reality experience was designed to show school children what Mars looks like.

  The Kows may be jumping into VR at just the right time. The VR consumer adoption trend line shows no signs of downturn. Samsung recently announced it has sold 5 million Gear VR headsets, and a new report from Super Data esti- mates 6.3 million VR headsets were shipped in 2016. By 2020, Forrester pre- dicts that there will be 52 milli
on units of VR headsets, or goggles, in circulation. VR may hold the key to helping marketers break through the clutter and open doors to unimaginable storytelling possibilities. Why? Because VR allows build- ing brand awareness, while authentically engaging consumers in productive ways:

  • It’s completely immersive—users wearing a VR headset are completely immersed in the content, which means fewer distractions and more attention on the brand story;

  • It delivers high impact—the intensity of a VR experience is greater than

  traditional media generating strong emotions for its users which are linked to real behavior change;

  • It generates lasting memories—our brains are built to remember events linked to locations, this means that VR experiences have a longer trace in the audience’s memory;

  • It’s cool and novel—with high media and public interest in VR, early adopters will continue to benefit from favorable media exposure.

  Today, Chick-fil-A generates more revenue per restaurant than any other fast- food chain. They have shown patience and diligence in how they put Systems in place that help them execute with operational excellence while not distract- ing from or blurring their brand story. The brand understands the importance of finding new, innovative ways to tell their brand story and create delightful customer experiences that make people want to engage, want to learn more, and want to advocate for Chick-fil-A. So, are you ready to “Stik ur fase in vertual realitee and git ur hooman mindz blown?”

  Chapter 20

  Unleashing the Ghost in the Machine

  eet Evisu, a premium denim and lifestyle brand with a global presence. Like all global brands, their goal is to engage their customers with the right message,

  at the right time, through the right channel and with content that’s relevant and timely. They have a very small online team, and managing all their digital market- ing needs, specifically, SEM and Social channels, is an overwhelming task. The brand turned to Albert, the first artificial intelligence marketing platform for the enterprise. Albert removes the complexities of modern marketing by performing many of the time-consuming, manual tasks which humans are unable to perform

  at the speed and scale required for efficient and effective consumer interactions.

  Before using Albert, Evisu was running campaigns on a global scale, with a distinct lack of specific geo-targeting. Albert was able to pinpoint which coun- tries and specific cities they could get the most engagement and allowed them to redirect their efforts to targeted regions. More importantly, Albert discovered never-before-known high-value audiences. For example, Albert determined that Facebook users with the occupation “Engineer” engaged 300 percent more

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  with Evisu’s ads than other Facebook users. This led to a significant boost in conversions on social campaigns, where they had previously had little success.

  Stop Thinking Campaigns and Start Thinking Conversations

  The multitude of mediums and technologies that are being used to speak to the marketplace is revolutionizing how the work of marketing is performed. The days of campaigns—the practice of start-stop-measure-tweak-repeat—are over. Today, for marketing to build brands and drive revenue, it must facilitate a con- tinuous, meaningful conversation with customers.

  Traditional marketing campaigns are sponsored by the brand owner and are demarcated by periodic sales seasons, budget cycles, product launches or responses to disruptive market forces. A campaign may last a day or a month, but if we’re thinking about it as having a fixed start, middle and end, we may miss the opportunity to focus on the bigger picture—the idea that a winning marketing strategy must be adaptive and integrated across channels.

  By initiating and engaging in conversations, Marketing can take advantage of the immediacy and the reach that technology has provided us with social media and email to communicate with our audience continuously and meaningfully, targeting our message by media type and inviting the recipients of that message to engage with us and respond.

  These traditional outbound marketing campaigns are far less effective at win- ning and retaining customers than they once were. To achieve sustainable growth in today’s always-connected, real-time world, marketers must deliver continuous, cus- tomized, two-way, insight-driven interactions with customers on an individual level.

  Brands that understand this and put the right Systems in place to scale are creat- ing competitive advantages that are very difficult for their competitors to replicate because it’s not just about technology. It’s about delivering the perfect combination of content and context: the right Story, the right Strategy, and the right Systems. Forrester Research refers to this as creating a “Contextual Marketing Engine.”

  In their 2016 survey of 115 technology, marketing, and customer experience professionals, Forrester found that, across the board, organizations’ investments revolve around implementing customer personalization initiatives, solving people’s challenges, and assembling digital experience systems.

  Forrester analysts suggest that contextual marketing engines create sticky, highly engaging environments for customer interactions. These Systems also yield proprietary data that you cannot replicate with traditional marketing methods or purchase from third-party data sources. The results translate into unprecedented levels of customer engagement, increased revenue, and better product experiences.

  One company that is leading the way is Nike. In the three years leading up to 2012, Nike decreased their advertising spend in mass media channels in the US by 40 percent and still managed to grow the company by $9 billion in three years. They deliberately pulled back on their traditional outbound campaign spending.

  So, what was the secret to Nike’s growth strategy? The answer: contextual marketing.

  Nike began using customer health data collected from devices such as the FuelBand to nudge consumers back to its digital platform NikePlus every day. NikePlus is a contextual marketing engine that uses social sharing and fitness contests to generate

  more interactions, creating a scale that rivals paid media. At the end of the first year of operation, Nike Plus had 18 million members, with 15,000 joining each day.

  The truth is that most of us don’t have the resources and/or the brand equity of a Nike to pull off this kind of transformation. For most marketers, we struggle might- ily to practice contextual marketing at scale. That is, managing real-time coordina- tion of digital interactions across all channels, with the right customer and the right message, at the right moment… It may be easy to say, but it’s hard to execute.

  Why?

  Here are several reasons why contextual marketing is such an onerous task for marketers and why Artificial Intelligence will transform the discipline of market- ing in the immediate future.

  1. Big Data Begets Big Complexity. Let’s face it: there are so many channels, devices, and segments creating so much data that it’s nearly impossible to do personalization and contextual marketing at scale. Humans are just not capable of wrapping their heads around the data, and they can’t pos- sibly test the thousands, and perhaps millions, of messaging permutations to calculate the right solution for optimizing business results. Even the most talented marketers and data scientists are ultimately constrained by how much data they can identify and process. Machines are much better equipped to unravel the enormous complexities born from big data gath- ered continuously in an always-on, always-connected, real-time world.

  2. Technology Amplifies the Gap Between Strategy and Systems. Most marketers are not trained to be technologists. In school, they learn about Marketing Strategy—how to research markets, segment and define them; how to understand customers and communicate with them; how to drive demand and desire, and how to communicate efficiently and effectively. It should come as no surprise that this is the kind of work that many market- ers want to do.

  By contrast, rarely do marketers learn how to operate email or social media marketing platforms as part of their marketing degree program— ev
en though this is one of the more common responsibilities for entry- level marketers. Technology vendors play an important role in providing certification programs and training, but for most marketers, much of their MarTech training is on the job.

  Thus, many businesses never know if they have the right talent to oper- ate increasingly sophisticated marketing technologies. And, even for the most tech-savvy marketers, dealing with the integration of multiple data sources, workflows, rules engines, reporting, and analytics is a heavy lift. Often these tasks occupy so much of a marketer’s time that they have far less time to spend on more strategic marketing activities.

  As newer and more sophisticated technologies become available, the gap between a marketer’s time spent on Strategy versus Systems will continue to widen and leaders will seek alternative approaches to close that gap.

  3. Demand for Customized Conversations and Personalized Experiences Accelerates. Thanks to advances by companies like Amazon, customers have come to expect more customized and personalized brand experi- ences. Most brands don’t have the deep pockets to make the kind of Sys- tems investments that Amazon has made over the past decade. That said, once customers get a taste of an experience they like, they hold many other brands to the same standard.

  Marketers can’t deliver these types of personalized experiences without having the right Systems in place. They need to understand the customer and take immediate action to engage them at the “moment of truth.” That’s pretty tough to do if you’ve outsourced your marketing (and much of your data) to agencies, or if you’re counting on humans to keep up with the dynamic demands of customers and volumes of interaction data. There needs to be a better way.