Renegade Marketers Unite

A company without values is like a tree without roots. As soon it faces adversity, it will tumble over. When Denise Broady arrived at WorkForce Software, she was alarmed to find out that the company did not have any written values in place. To make matters worse, WorkForce had an international team with employees spread out across the globe. Broady had her work cut out for her when she decided to rethink the brand's vision and communicate that message to the whole company. In this episode, you'll learn how her marketing team convinced fellow WorkForce employees to embrace new core values and amplify the brand message.

Boxed.com is in the business of delivering joy. Whether you work for the e-commerce startup or order from them, there's a good chance they'll make you smile. On this episode, Boxed.com's CMO Jackson Jeyanayagam discusses his role in helping the brand maintain its sparkling reputation. You'll learn tips for reaching customers emotionally, as well as how to create a specific vision for your company.

Although the Equifax hack put cybersecurity on the priority list for 140 million Americans and scared the heck out of many others, it is hardly a new issue for consumers. Major hacks at Yahoo and Target a few years back put many on high alert. So what is new here and why should cybersecurity be a priority issue for senior marketers? Well, as it turns out, all that marketing technology you've recently brought into your company has created even more exposure for your company's data and that of the consumers with whom you do business. Sure enough, your pursuit of big data to optimize your sales, marketing and customer experience efforts, have put your companies at risk, in a remarkably big way. And of course, a data breach will inevitably become a brand breach as the folks at Equifax can attest. So batten down the hatches and have a listen as Norman Guadagno, Senior Vice President of Marketing shares his thoughts on why this is such a big problem and some of the steps that marketers can take to prevent or at least mitigate the impact of a security breach.

If you're not focusing on customer experience, you may be missing out on a huge opportunity to build brand love. Dan Gingiss—Senior Director of Global Social Media for McDonald's—believes in the power of service. He identifies social media as a key medium to address customer questions and concerns. As a published author and podcast host, Gingiss offers professional advice for connecting with audiences and getting involved in consumer conversations. Technical note: Drew apologizes for the sound crackles - he was too close to the mic and hopes it won't distract you from his guest's sparkling insights! He'll try not to make that mistake again.

Many fuel companies struggle to build loyalty among customers. With so many potential gas options out there, most consumers won't go out of their way to choose a specific brand. At Shell, it is the job of Dan Little (Head of North American Marketing) to get drivers to go that extra mile. Little and his team launched a rewards program called Instant Gold Status earlier this year that encourages consumers to fill up at Shell on a regular basis. In this episode, you'll learn how the campaign aims to create brand love and what you can do to improve customer retention.

Is virtual reality putting us on the brink of a new marketing revolution? Google's creative think tank, Zoo, has initiated a study on VR in hopes of recognizing its full potential. Abigail Posner, who is the Head of Strategic Planning at Zoo, boldly believes that this new technology will show immense promise for marketers in just a few years. In this episode, you'll learn how some brands are already taking advantage of VR to go from storytelling to story living. Here is a sample Q&A from the interview: Drew: VR has been talked about for years and years and years as the next thing. Are we finally at the point where this is going to become at least semi-mass? Abigail: I think it's a combination of a number of things. One is that we have enough experiences under our belt to recognize the value of it, whether it's gamers playing it, whether it's porn, whether it's the fact that doctors are using it. All of a sudden, there's a range of different worlds that are recognizing its value and it's hitting mainstream. That's number one. Number two, as we brought up before, the actual physical headsets themselves are becoming more accessible, whether it's accessible that we can wear them or accessible price wise. That helps. And then finally the technology itself is evolving. So it's becoming finer tuned. It's becoming more accessible so that we can use it on a number of different platforms integrated into our phones and so forth. It's a combination of a number of different factors. And then I just think generally we are becoming just more comfortable and agile with what it means to create a story in this space.

Not all heroes wear capes. Trip Hunter, CEO of Silicon Valley ComicCon, just happens to work with people who do. When he was tasked with creating buzz for the con from scratch in its inaugural year, Trip had just two weapons at his disposal: a renegade mind and Steve Wozniak. Two cons and a couple star-studded celebrity squads later, the event is looking to build on the massive success Trip helped generate. In this episode, you'll learn the secrets that make Trip one of the bravest marketers in the world today. He has led groundbreaking campaigns for an array of companies like Renegade, Fusion-io, and Primary Data—always looking to boldly go where no marketer has gone before.

Virtual Reality (VR) as a marketing tool is in the very early stages of development which is why we recorded this special episode live from the launch of "The Hard Way – a KFC Virtual Training Escape Room." In this episode, you'll learn why KFC spent six months developing this unique training experience and how it fits into to their overall marketing strategy of "re-kernelizing" the brand. By that they mean putting the founder Colonel Sanders back into the heart of the brand and in this case, bringing to the forefront his fanatical attention to the details of the chicken cooking process. Jonathan Minori, the design director at W&K Lodge, the developers behind the app, will help you understand the laborious process of putting together a unique experience like this. And while KFC's Chef Bob did not reveal the secret recipe, he did explain how they keep secret even from him.

The goal of Renegade Thinkers Unite is to present you with fresh approaches to age old problems — and this episode does that in spades with guest Jerome Nadel, CMO of Rambus. Nadel will introduce you to the idea of design-led marketing and how rather than just accepting the products as given, CMOs can help drive product development such that the marketing is baked into the outcome. And as Nadel notes, better products are a whole lot easier to sell! Here's a sample from Jerome's interview with RTU host Drew Neisser: Drew: When did user experience and design thinking really take off? Jerome: As we came into the 2000, the notion of differentiation through user experience became sort of the mantra for product success. So, as we go deeper in the conversation, what I'll suggest is the difference between user experience and marketing or design-led marketing are really minimal. What user experience professionals focus on is the upstream concepting of, what's the narrative that makes product great? Not just in terms of its features but how should it work and how does it support use cases? Often what marketers are focused on is telling stories about why products are great. If you connect the stories that made the product great with the stories that reinforce and articulate their greatness, you have beginning to end of full marketing. Ironically Drew, I don't think that such a radical construct but I think it's not embraced to the extent that it should be in the profession that we share.

It's not easy to get a breakthrough marketing strategy off the ground; it's even more difficult to kick start a new idea in a highly regulated industry. This roadblock didn't stop Manny Rodriguez, CMO of UCHealth, from developing an eye-opening campaign. Through patient-centric storytelling, he managed to help the university hospital network invigorate its message. This tender approach isn't just business for Rodriguez. He is a leukemia survivor who underwent many of the types of treatments his team now promotes. Rodruguez's healthcare marketing philosophy goes against the grain. Hospitals and clinics often showcase their technologies and services in advertisements, much to Rodriguez's chagrin. "I just believe healthcare marketers in general have lost sight of what matters," he says. "We've gotten away from the fact that what we do is about the patient." Instead of explaining how great UCHealth's treatments are, Rodriguez set out to reach patients on a more personal level. Rodriguez wanted his UCHealth's advertisements to focus on clients and their experiences. Being a leukemia survivor, he understands the pain patients have to deal with. Rodriguez says, "Most health care brands look at themselves as the hero. We believe that our patients are the heroes." UCHealth decided to let its heroes tell their stories from their own perspectives. The result was a series of heartfelt video testimonies given by actual UCHealth patients. You can't help but cry during these 90-second flashes of affection. As Rodriguez notes, "You really feel, hear, and sense the heartache and the emotion and the feeling in the story." Although the scripts are written internally, the patients themselves deliver the lines. Who else could? One of the biggest challenges Rodriguez has faced is advertising services that have such a negative connotation. "Nobody wants what I have," Rodriguez says. "Nobody is sitting there going, 'I can't wait to have my liver removed or my heart surgery!'" The UCHealth marketing team remedies this problem by delivering what Rodriguez calls a "lifestyle brand." The CMO continues, "I want to provide you [with] content and resources, and talk to you in a way that prevents you from being broken more than selling you a service when you're broken." Warmth is at the heart of the strategy, giving patients hope and comfort in UCHealth's message. Enhancing patient experience plays a big part in the brand's marketing strategy. When someone goes to a hospital, obviously the biggest goal is to leave healthy. For Rodriguez, the peripherals of a hospital visit also matter greatly. Elements like staff friendliness, parking accessibility, and cafeteria food quality make a difference in the patient's experience. "It's the softer side of healthcare that I think we're looking at as an organization—How do you build the softer side?" Rodriguez wonders. UCHealth answers this question by staffing itself with sympathetic employees. While health remains the top priority, patient experience is still important. It's been a bumpy ride for Rodriguez, as his own encounter with terminal illness has driven him to help other patients in need. He says, "Being a survivor of ultimately a disease that takes many lives is a motivator for everything I do." Rodriguez recalls the personal experiences he's had with medical professionals—some great, and some not so great. Ultimately, those instances have given him the drive to connect with patients through heartfelt passion and understanding. (These show notes were prepared by Jay Tellini.)