Yesterday I had the opportunity to interview Will Prest, the CMO for Transamerica Retirement Management, for yet another great CMO 2.0 Conversation (these are proving a ton of fun for me – hopefully for you, our listeners, too). Will and I talked about some of the issues and obstacles around creating  a new “challenger” brand within a larger company and in an environment that is heavily regulated.

From a marketing perspective, Will faces unique and interesting challenges. While retirement investment decisions may be some of the biggest decisions in one’s life, most people procrastinate and actually spend very little time making those decisions. Unlike the tax world, where you have to pay your taxes every April 15th, the retirement market has no such deadlines. For most people, retirement investment decisions are, surprisingly perhaps, not top of mind. Add to that the fact that the products one can choose from are fairly complex and you start understanding the unique marketing problem he faces – how do you get people’s attention in a space like that and how do you alter their behavior when you know that current behavior is not in the person’s best interest?

Here again we covered a wide variety of topics, including how:

• you switch market penetration strategies when your initial plans prove harder to achieve than previously thought
• to reach people when they increasingly make buying decisions based on information that does not come from the company
• to insert branded content into conversations that you do not control and in a heavily regulated space
• you can get customer and market insights into your product innovation process

We also talked about the importance of the company culture in allowing a startup to flourish by trying things, failing fast and learning.

You can listen to the CMO 2.0 Conversation below. We will also be posting transcripts of the interview soon.

CMO 2.0 Conversation with Will Prest [ 59:53 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (7515)

I had a great CMO 2.0 Conversation today with Paul Levy, the President and CEO of the Harvard affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) here in the Boston area.

Just as with his blog Running a Hospital, or his Twitter and Facebook streams, Paul’s no-nonsense attitude and his sharp mind provided for a really fun and insightful discussion.

Paul spoke at length about how transparency was a key factor in changing the culture within BIDMC that allowed it to transform itself from a near failing Academic hospital to a viable institution. He also talked about how they reframed themselves with a focus on the science of care delivery instead of cure delivery (it reminded me of the Eli Lilly story where the reframing of their purpose led to a true transformation.)

In the case of BIDMC, success meant a fair amount of behavioral changes for a staff that does not necessarily take top-down advice – something that is really hard to do. In that context Paul described the importance of creating a blame-free zone as well as including the people whose behavior needs to change into the change management training process.

The conversation went into many different and interesting directions – including:

• the role of social media in scaling word of mouth and changing the way people make health care decisions
• the role of social media in transforming marketing, advertising and communications
• the importance of customer satisfaction in the health care space
• the difference between protecting brand reputation vs. earning it
• how far to take openness
• general health policy issues

You can listen to the full interview below. We will soon put edited transcripts on the site as well.

CMO 2.0 Conversation with Paul Levy [ 59:13 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (8104)

Today I had another opportunity to interview a true CMO 2.0 – Jeffrey Hayzlett, the CMO of Kodak.

Jeffrey and I started off by talking about the remarkable transformation and near-death experience that Kodak had to go through to remake itself as a digital company. We covered a wide array of topics, including how:

• “branded content” can become part of the conversations
• social media is in fact nothing more (and nothing less) than the platform that allows the “socialness” that makes us humans to scale
• you have to be pragmatic in the ways you measure the impact of all marketing activities on sales
• you need to train people to engage with others in a 2.0 world
• generational differences impact marketing and new product innovation
• gaining market insight and new product ideas have changed over the years
• the acceleration of product lifecycles is impacting the way we develop, launch and release new products

It was truly a rich and informational conversation. I will update this post with additional topics in the near future, and also make this and other CMO 2.0 conversation transcripts available soon.

(this interview will also be make available in the Marketing 2.0 Group – http://www.marketingtwo.com)

CMO 2.0 Conversation with Jeffrey Hayzlett [ 54:52 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (7821)

I had a lot of fun interviewing Best Buy’s CMO Barry Judge yesterday as part of our CMO 2.0 Conversations. Barry is truly a 2.0 CMO – no doubt about that.

We talked about the changes that are shaking the fundamentals of marketing, and what that means for a multi-billion dollar company like Best Buy. Topics ranged from obvious changes – like the fact that broadcast messages no longer work – to changes that are not as often covered – like the impact of labor laws on social media marketing and the potential scalability issues of social media-based programs.

I will try writing up more posts with additional information from the interview, but for now you can listen to the recording below.

CMO 2.0 Interview with Barry Judge [ 52:18 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (7636)

The second CMO 2.0 Conversation was a truly fun discussion with Jay Gillespie, the VP of Marketing and New Product Development at Fiskars, Suzanne Fanning, Director of Communications at Fiskars, and Geno Church, the Word of Mouth Guru at Brains On Fire.

If you are not familiar with the Fiskateer community, you should listen to the interview. It is a great case study of how very traditional companies can leverage the marketing 2.0 techniques and programs. What they created is not a community – it’s a movement. You could not shut it down, even if you wanted to. And it also delivered some hardcore results – think 300% increase in store sales and 600% increase in online chatter.

I will distill some of the other nuggets from this great interview in a later blog post, but for now you can listen to it below.

CMO 2.0 Conversation with Jay Gillespie, Geno Church and Suzanne Fanning [ 49:53 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (8533)

I had the pleasure to interview Paula Drum, the VP of Marketing for the Digital Division of H&R Block. It was a lot of fun to speak with a forward thinking marketer like Paula on a variety of social media marketing programs.

Topics that we covered include:

• How did social media change marketing at H&R Block?
• What are the scaling issues for marketing 2.0 programs?
• How do you overcome internal resistance, and especially legal objections?
• How do you measure progress and success?
• How do you decide to extend a brick & mortar brand into the digital world vs. creating a new brand?
• How does marketing 2.0 affect the organizational structure of marketing?
• Should you integrate traditional marketing programs with social media programs?

We will write additional blog posts with content from the interview, but for now I wanted to make sure the interview was up there as quickly as possible.

Comments, suggestions, or ideas? Send them my way at francois [at] beelinelabs.com

CMO 2.0 Conversation with Paula Drum [ 58:14 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (7452)