Cendant's top marketer for Avis and Budget prefers offense to defense, effectiveness to metrics.

Scott Deaver doesn't like to fit in.

Unlike most marketers who try to retro-fit an existing media model, Deaver says he accepts online for its own merits and capabilities. He starts building a marketing program with a clean sheet of paper, rather than having to use a defensive strategy. As executive vice president of marketing for Cendant Car Rental Group, Inc. -- the parent company of Avis Rent A Car and Budget Rent A Car -- Deaver leads development of strategies to build the brands' images, customer loyalty and market shares. 

Deaver has more than 20 years of marketing experience, the past 10 spent on various assignments of increasing responsibility within Cendant and its predecessor, HFS Inc. In his last position, he was chief marketing officer for move.com, an online real estate and home services portal launched by Cendant. Deaver was senior vice president of corporate marketing at Cendant, working with the company's entire portfolio of travel, real estate and direct marketing brands. He also worked as a marketing executive for several major hotel brands, including Ramada, Howard Johnson and Holiday Inn.

iMediaConnection picked Deaver's brain about what makes interactive marketing work.

iMediaConnection: What is your definition of "marketing integration?"

Deaver: The notion of integration is to create a powerful impact for your money in a world that is no longer driven by one thing. If all of your marketing mix is considered a snowball, broadcast advertising used to be the large rock making up this snowball. But in today's marketplace, it's made up of a bunch of pebbles. Integration is the way you align all of the pebbles to behave like a rock. Marketers are still trying to define the rock, but there isn't one -- the world has too many component parts.

If you treat online as if it lives in one universe, you're assuming a segregated world. But if you integrate online into the overall mix, it gives you much more opportunity for buy-in in the organization. In the travel industry, online is growing to be the largest distribution channel.

iMediaConnection: How are you changing Cendant's internal structures to support an integration engine?

Deaver: Tradition has power and people aren't excited about radical change. Our online department used to be called the global distribution group and was run by technical people. I had to change it into a marketing tool that could make money and track data, and prove that I could double the sales growth rate.

I've also made sure that branding is built through our online experience. A reservation online with Avis.com is a much more branded experience than a phone call to our center, which is why I privilege online pricing over pricing with a third party like Expedia. Part of what we do online is try to find out how to make this experience more memorable and personalized.

iMediaConnection: How do agencies help you achieve your marketing goals?

Deaver: All of our broadcast and print media is bought and planned by Cendant's centralized entity, but we have a different agency for online. This doesn't help to facilitate integration. I believe that agencies haven't caught up to the industry's best practitioners. Clients too often over-manage their agencies. Our online media buyer has control and she doesn't have to have my authorization.

iMediaConnection: How much does your Web advertising resemble broadcast and other media?

Deaver: We don't believe that we have to always use the color red or have the exact same message, but we do focus on aligning our brand strategy and goals. We have to determine what the proper role of online will be to carry out that strategy, since online is experienced differently from other media. I'm a beginner at thinking about this.

iMediaConnection: How do you resolve the metrics problem?

Deaver: I'm not a slave to metrics. I'm interested in measuring the effectiveness of the messages. When I'm measuring television campaigns, I'm much more interested in measuring to what degree sales jumped during a period of business growth than I am in the impact of putting an 800 phone number to that campaign. One of the things that you have to love about online is that it's so measurable.

iMediaConnection: What will be your next goal?

Deaver: I'm working to achieve a world of integration. I want to get Budget.com really powerful and integrated. It's more of a retail brand than Avis. I'm watching with interest the shift in distribution in the travel industry, and trying to find out how I can begin to influence outcomes, partly by distribution, partly by pricing, and partly by an online branding strategy. Internal structures need to have less separation of online and brand marketing employees -- they're learning to love each other. Eventually, we want them all to see the same vision.