Guest Speaker: Earl Cox

Throughout the semester we have been fortunate enough to have a handful of wonderful speakers. Each presentation had been very insightful and I have really enjoyed how different all the speaker’s messages have been. Tomorrow in class we will welcome out last guest speaker for the semester, Earl Cox. Cox is a Virginia Tech alumni and graduated with a degree in communications. He also received his MBA in marketing from University of Virginia. I wonder which school he pulls for when the two teams play each other every year?!

Earl Cox is the Chief Strategy Officer & Partner for The MartinAgency and his main task is to help clients position their strategic directions. The Martin Agency is an advertising agency that is headquartered in Richmond, Virginia and was founded in July 1965. The Martin Agency is one of the nation’s leading agencies; they have consistently been one of top five marketing agencies in the country. They represent many high profile clients such as UPS, Hanes, Comcast, Wal-Mart, GEICO, Pizza Hut and Discover. They are even responsible for creating the famous “Virginia is For Lover’s” campaign, which is still around today.

Most mainstream advertising agencies are located in the city that never sleeps, New York City. It’s commonly implied that if you have made it big and you are the best of the best, then your office is located in the heart of NYC. A strategic issue that I see with the Martin Agency is being able to continually compete as a big name player even though they are located in Richmond, Virginia. They need to make sure they maintain their strong reputation so they are not forgotten about.

Question:

1.       You have worked on many different campaigns, out of all of them, which one has been his favorite and why?

Home Depot's Social Media

Throughout the semester we have spent a lot of time examining the importance of social media advertising, which is a form of online advertising that focuses on social networking sites (such as Twitter, Facebook, Blogger, Bebo, etc.). Social media is the hottest topic in advertising right now and companies are starting to explore what all of the fuss is about. Advertising on social media sites provides companies with instant communication to consumers, but more importantly, it helps companies to target their ads appropriately. The key to advertising with social media is knowing how and what to communicate to your consumers. The Home Depot is a top home improvement retailer and is headquarters in the outskirts of the Atlanta perimeter. Home Depot has been one of the front runners of how to use social media to engage customers. In a Advertising Age article, they discuss how Home Depot is changing the way their business interacts with their online audience and customer base.

Home Depot has redefined the roles their employes play within the company. A group of floor employees from all different stores handle customer interaction on a face-to-face level, while also conducting interactions with customers on different social media sites. These hybrid employees live a double life, working as store associates three days a week and creating/managing social media the other two days a week. These employees specifically manage Home Depot's "how-to community" (such as: Home Depot’s How To Blog, Apron blog, serve as on-call experts in the Garden Club and on HomeDepot.com). Brad Shaw, the VP-corporate communications say this about these social media/store associates:

"They've become a center of gravity around content creation and customer interaction for the company." 

What better than to have a team of blog writers for your business that directly interacts with your audience on a personal level? These blended employees use information in their content that is a direct result of communication on the floor. They know best about the type of project they are working on, the supplies they need and the problems they are wanting to fix. Because they interact with customers on a daily basis, they know what kind of topics to blog, tweet, tag, and post about in order to successfully advertise to customers. Home Depot has found a way to incorporate a strong social media effort without breaking the bank.

One suggestion I thought could help Home Depot connect and advertise to there customers is sending a tweet reminding them to give their new bushes a little extra water because of the drought conditions, and offering them a new drought-resistant plant that was just introduced. It would be useful if Home Depot could channel their knowledge of their customers and demographics even more and further advertise to their specific needs.

 

Home Depot has found a way to successfully advertise with social media sites. These hybrid employees  create a content synergy between floor experience and online connection, that allows them to know they best possible way to connect to the customers.

Guest Speaker: Kelly Fisher, Got Milk?

Tomorrow in class we will be welcoming Kelley Fisher who has assisted in the production of the Got Milk campaign?  The campaign launched in October of 1993 and hasn’t looked back since. This advertising campaign was created by the advertising agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners for California Milk Processor Board. A few years later in 1995 the slogan was licensed to the National Milk Processor Board (MilkPEP). The purpose of the campaign was to encourage milk consumption and to help raise awareness about the nutrition milk provides.  

This “big idea” has been alive for decades and is still going strong. The campaign has been advertised all around the world and has hundreds of ads that are executed differently yet all have the same message.

“Ultimately a good strategy is inspiring. You can pull hundreds of rabbits out of the same hat, creating widely different execution that are all on strategy. The ‘milk deprivation’ strategy, for example called forth a long string of wonderful ‘Got milk?’ executions.” – Sullivan, 1998

The Got Milk? campaign is one of the most recognized and respected advertising campaigns of all time. As the campaign has matured, it’s become increasingly popular in recent years for the ads to depict famous actors, musicians and athletes sporting the “milk mustache" trademark.

Questions: 

      1. How did you begin working on the Got Milk? campaign?

      2. How is milk competing with the growing number of beverage choices available to consumers these days,  especially within the category of soft- drinks?