Turn, Turn, Turn: The Right Ballad for Today’s Brands
In a time of great transformation in the world, heed expert insights on the imperative of brand evolution.
To paraphrase Michael Smith, CMO of NPR, and Joe Jackman, CEO of Jackman Reinvents, and to quote Sheryl Crow from back in the ‘90s, “A change would do you good.” Granted, Smith and Jackman offer that as branding, not love advice, but these two experts agree that the times, they are a-changin’ and companies must keep up. After a brief break in delivering The Continuum, we felt that Q4 was the perfect time to bring you thought-provoking recommendations on transformation, in our fourth issue on brand + demand marketing.
In a recent article about the rebrand from SurveyMonkey® to “Momentive,” AdAge noted that “big ideas can be a big risk, and most companies end up taking the safe route.” This is exactly the route Jackman does not want you to travel, and instead encourages a “reinventionist mindset”—a belief that change is good and a necessity today for a brand’s very survival.
Karen Budell, VP of Brand Marketing of the newly christened Momentive, clearly agrees, noting that the company “was willing to go bold, but that we might need to gather some data to move forward with confidence.” That led them on “a 14-month journey collecting insights from our customers, our employees, and the market.” And that, in turn, led them to demote SurveyMonkey to a product within the Momentive portfolio versus serving as the overarching company name.
By building the company rebrand on clear customer insights, Budell was singing from another page in Jackman’s songbook. He acknowledges that change is hard, and that “people are fearful and try to protect something they know.” But, he warns, “The future is arriving daily,” and it’s essential to keep moving forward, offering a great line (apropos of our industry) on the danger of resting on one’s laurels: “Success is a very seductive force, sponsored by the status quo.”
“Michael Smith and Joe Jackman are of like mind on the topic of brand and demand. (Yes, even NPR – like many media brands facing the music – is employing performance marketing!) In this issue they offer examples about the time and the place for each tactic, and the value of employing consistent messaging no matter the approach.”
In my conversation with Jackman (available in full as a podcast), he suggests “There's probably only one rule in all of this work in transformation: You must understand who your customers are and what they care about most...beyond function, into the world of emotion.” Part of that emotion is how a customer feels about a brand’s values. In today’s values-driven economy, consumers are “de-selecting” in record levels products and services that are less purpose-oriented.
While they may not be acquainted, Jackman and Smith are of a similar reinventionist mindset. Smith, with whom I worked when he moved from marketing Food Network to being the first to dominate Scripps’ digital channels to then-helming Cooking Channel, has a comfort with change and an aptitude for the future. That’s a helpful trait, as he is now steering the iconic NPR brand more portside. He describes that brave shift as “redefining it as more diverse, for more young people, as a digital podcast brand, and less an older radio brand. A lot of it is just changing perceptions, and less about if the ratings go up 1% or 2%.”
While one might not question the brand values of the very venerated National Public Radio, Smith notes that the listeners’ “relationship and emotional connection with the personalities telling you the stories matters a lot more than just [that it comes from] an institutional source.”
Smith and Jackman are also of like mind on the topic of brand and demand. (Yes, even NPR—like many media brands facing the music—is employing performance marketing! The world HAS changed.) In this issue they offer examples about the time and the place for each tactic, and the value of employing consistent messaging no matter the approach.
Readers of The Continuum—and indeed most in the ad world—are familiar with Carl Fremont, CEO of Quigley. His January interview on the Marketing Agency Leadership podcast underscores the perspectives of Smith and Jackman: “For the brands and marketers that have had the most success it’s always, ‘What are we doing now? What’s new?’ Adoptability and adaptability to the times we’re in and being curious about what’s next, around data and technology and what that enables, is really how you progress forward.”
Right now, it’s key, he agrees, “to go beyond just features and benefits in building a brand’s image. It also includes building purposeful meaning and thinking about what the brand means from a social side. How is it giving back?”
Fremont walks the talk with his own agency, which revealed its own rebrand recently, adding, “We pivoted many, many times and evolved as the industry evolved. We’ve taken that heritage of direct-to-consumer / direct marketing and applied it in a digital world. We’re not only focused on the revenue creation, but on the brand as well, which is why we say our value proposition and what we stand for is both brand and demand. Now we have to make another big pivot, [and] continue our heritage of being nimble and flexible and adopting to the times.”
We will be bringing you many more words of wisdom on Brand + Demand in the next several issues, from such notables as Cadillac CMO Melissa Grady Dias, Tank Design COO Scott Watts, branded podcast guru Steve Pratt of Pacific Content, and more. But, per the break in The Continuum’s action as mentioned at the top, we are embracing change ourselves. In the new year we’ll have a new look for this content’s home as we heed the words of Smith, Fremont and Budell. And of Jackman, who says, “We've never seen anything quite like how the pandemic is compressing the timing to do something in a different way now. It's certainly shaping not just people's lives, but the dynamics of the marketplace, and in lots of ways for the better.”
Sounds a little like the poignant but motivating words of Sam Cooke’s song from 1964: “It’s been a long time comin’, but a change gonna come.” Yes, it will.
October 19, 2021
