The following is an excerpt from Selling Top Management to Get Incremental Activity on the Net, presented by marketing consultant Neil Perry at iMedia’s Brand Summit in February. Perry is a frequent participant in iMedia events and led McDonald’s corporate Internet marketing team as part of his 23-year career with the fast-food giant.
I must say I am very happy to have been asked to lead this discussion, since for the last 20 or so years of my life, that’s what I did -- found creative ways to get top management to give me the money I needed to make the things I wanted to see happen … happen!
There’s no magic formula, and the road to “making things happen” is frequently challenging and unrewarding.
So I tried to capture six ways that worked for me in getting the boss’s attention as I headed up Internet marketing for McDonald’s. I call these approaches:
The Factual Follies -- the easiest and most effective way of gaining support.
Budget Blues -- save a buck for the Gipper.
Child Support -- how can I help you take care of things here at the house?
The Bundle -- it’s a package deal; learn to love it.
The Big Idea -- Corporate America’s never-ending quest for the next big idea.
Those Nasty Other Guys -- the competitor ploy; look at what the other guy’s doin’.
The Factual Follies
Presenting facts and figures is often times the most effective and indisputable approach to helping top management understand and appreciate the benefits of adding significant Internet marketing support to their offline efforts.
There are the more sophisticated approaches, like presenting the IAB Cross Media Effectiveness study with research guru Rex Briggs, and adding in someone with financial support, like Greg Stuart from the IAB. There’s also lots of additional support that you gain from working with the other great brand marketers involved in the study, and getting similar results. These findings are incredibly beneficial in convincing management that the Internet does work effectively as part of a complete media purchase.
And best of all, once you have the data, you can do cross tabs like we did at McDonald’s to understand how different ad sizes worked, or didn’t work. This information was clearly a breakthrough for McDonald’s, and led to our use of Unicast and Eyeblaster ad units on a regular basis.
You can also bake a media study into a large media purchase. MSN’s recent Winter Olympic package included an option for a brand awareness study run by Dynamic Logic, which McDonald’s utilized to further our understanding on the role of Internet in our media purchases.
Of course, you also can design and structure an awareness study by working directly with Dynamic Logic or one of the other fine research companies in our space.
Budget Blues
And then there’s the budget blues … is there any marketer out there right now who won’t respond to the call to save a few bucks?
The IAB XMOS study (Cross Media Effectiveness Study) has shown savings from 10 to 13 percent in media spending, while still growing reach and not sacrificing the quality of a promotional message. Implement XMOS findings, or as close as you can get to it, and generate media savings for your organization.
You can also effectively address important targets lacking media support, as we did at McDonald’s against our Tween target. We found that we could adequately reach Tweens through the Internet alone, at a time when TV dollars were getting squeezed and budgets were tightened up.
While saving money, you can also show different ways of reaching consumers with important message detail, far outside the scope of a cramped and inflexible 30-second TV commercial. We launched McDonald’s new premium salads with a total media blitz, but used the Internet to communicate a lengthy and complicated ingredient and nutrition message that just wouldn’t work on TV.
Child Support
Child Support, in this case, is providing support for the child -- or program -- of the offline side of your marketing organization. We’re talking here about using the unique flexibility and in-depth communications capabilities of the Net to support key corporate initiatives.
I mentioned salad support earlier. We delivered the key ingredient message that was too challenging for TV; and the nutritional information that rarely drives incremental visits, but is important to communicate nonetheless.
McDonald’s also supported its Monopoly Game Boards distribution to the general public by economically including the game board with a digital game piece tracker on our Web site and Internet ads.
And finally, the Internet team provided additional support for the offline Tween Marketing initiative through sophisticated ad programs on Nickjr. and Neopets.
The Bundle
The bundle, in this case, speaks to those all-consuming package deals your agency and media department spearhead. Don’t fight them; get engaged. Major packages like these frequently include significant, incremental Internet executions.
A McDonald’s CBS Sports buy had a CBS Sportsline opportunity included. So did a package deal with MTV, including both online and offline opportunities. Similar opportunities exist with ESPN and Disney, etc. This list can go on and on.
The Big Idea
Corporate America has a never-ending quest for the next big idea. What unique ideas are out there that can only be executed on the Internet?
In Monopoly, our game board distribution program online saved us a bunch.
In the gaming space, unique successes from integration into online games like the Sims and video games like Disney’s Extreme Skate Adventure were well received by the investment community.
And finally there’s McDonald’s effort to become the pre-eminent sponsor of Fantasy Sports on CBS Sportsline.
All unique, all attention getting, all effective as Internet communications’ programs.
Those Nasty Other Guys
Watch the competition. Sometimes what they decide to do can provide you with the ammunition you need to prod management into re-investing in the Internet opportunities.
BK’s Kid Club focus online led McDonald’s to re-examine the effectiveness of our own kid’s area on the Web. Wendy’s Salad approach game us ideas for an even stronger approach online for the McDonald’s Premium Salad launch. KFC’s couponing led to our own testing in this area.
Well that’s it for my six proven ways to motivate management to spend on the Net.
Wait, I just thought of one more approach -- you could bring in an industry expert with years of big brand experience to talk with your management about the role the Internet can play in their overall marketing initiatives.
