Find out why this regional director of marketing communications believes strongly in integrated strategies.
As regional director of marketing communications for Marriott’s South Central Region, John Padwick brings more than 10 years of award-winning expertise in marketing/brand development, strategic planning, design and research. Based out of Dallas, he oversees industry and property-level marketing programs to align field and corporate marketing.
At Marriott, Padwick has focused on marketing message alignment and initiating aggressive internal/external metrics tracking systems and best practices benchmarking. In his quest to integrate online/offline marketing tactics, he strives to follow CRM expert Don Peppers’ vision that, “The cyber world of direct-to-consumer deliveries must be reconciled with most companies' more restrictive real-world channel structures… using real-world strengths to leverage on online presence.”
iMedia: With P&G's recent announcement that it's pulling some dollars from network TV, and ZenithOptimedia's new predictions showing internet advertising increasing, it seems "spray and pray" is starting to feel some pressure. Is this a good thing for interactive marketers? Has it opened some budget for you?
John Padwick: For the most part, this is a great thing for interactive marketers! The good news is that as the larger leading brands push more dollars into online advertising, this trend trickles down to boost interactive marketing spending at lower threshold brands as well. The bad news, however, is that the current ROI success metrics now being reported -- numbers that, counter to popular belief, cannot truly be substantiated -- will likely start to erode with the increased spend. When this happens, we can expect to see the pendulum swing back, not toward the domination of traditional mechanisms, but back to where it should be: where interactive marketing is simply another channel along with old favorites such as direct mail, yellow pages and the like. As marketers, we need to caution against the over-exuberance that tends to result when previously unreachable goals are dangled in front of us like milk bones in front of hungry dogs.
iMedia: Following up on that, how has the media mix changed for you over the last few years?
Padwick: We have tried to stay slightly ahead of the shifts we see in consumer purchasing patterns. Within the hospitality and overall travel segments, we analyze the previous years’ online revenue contribution as a share of overall revenue and increase it at the pace of estimated growth. At this point, depending on your hotel brand, online marketing generally ranges from 15 to 30 percent of total marketing dollars.
iMedia: What was your most successful online or integrated campaign recently and what made it successful?
Padwick: We have found that what invariably makes the greatest inroads and generates the greatest results is integrated strategic partnering with companies that have similar target demos but offer a vastly different product, preferably a tangible, offline product. Such alliances offer us a different consumer base and, hopefully, add incremental audience to our combined integrated effort.
iMedia: What do you think is the greatest benefit of online advertising? The ability to measure? Precisely target? Gather data? Something else?
Padwick: In my opinion, online advertising has shifted this discipline forward significantly based on its ability to pinpoint previously elusive success metrics. In the past, marketers could truthfully say, “This is marketing… you can never fully measure or appreciate its impact." The danger nowadays, however, is that traditional marketers still say that, and, as a consequence, are often pushed into online marketing by senior management to chase these touted success metrics. My concern is that this can easily go too far. I believe it is possible to push too much marketing into online channels.
iMedia: Is there a "killer app" for you? What is it (email, search, advertising on certain sites, integration of advertising)? Why do you believe that works for your company/product/service?
Padwick: Search is the latest, greatest killer app for me. Like everything else online, though, there are fewer than a handful of companies executing strategic search solutions effectively. Most agencies out there, unfortunately, are still reacting to client demands to place media and earn a commission, ala traditional ad agencies. The impact of this traditional approach on an untraditional new app is a high degree of inefficiency and, quite frankly, yields unwise search strategies. My bottom line: Unleashing the full potential of this killer app demands a great deal of discipline in its application.
iMedia: What still frustrates you most about online advertising? What can be done to improve the situation?
Padwick: What frustrates me the most is the lack of standardized metrics. Imagine you were a hotel advertiser who was pitched an online marketing program with an apparently disciplined approach to ROI tracking. So far so good, right? Upon digging deeper, however, you realize that the vendor is creating their own tracking methodology and serving it up as a supposed new "industry standard". Now, multiply this occurrence by the number of hotel properties you have jurisdiction over and you have a literal army of online providers pitching to your client hotels, each quoting different "industry standard" metrics. Too much of our time is now spent countering these claims and educating our client hotels to the nitty-gritty truth of ever-changing metrics -- a problem that would be totally eliminated with standardized metrics.
iMedia: What’s the next big thing and how will it affect you?
Padwick: I believe blogs could be one of the next big things, and I hasten to add that I don’t think anyone has mastered communicating effectively to blog audiences. A very dear friend of mine who continually educates me on all things great and small is now onto blogs and, much to her chagrin, finds that she has been pulled into one such community herself. She notes she finds them personally therapeutic and that there is a growing potential audience who follows her life and provides input/feedback. Watching her go through this has revealed to me the potential power and impact blogs can have. In essence, she is building a whole e-community around her "constant struggle". This is a very powerful concept, and one marketers need to find a way to tap into.
It seems to me that in aggregate these are self-designated interest-based, and therefore highly active, groups. As marketers, if we could match these interest groups to our business segment, we'd be hard-pressed to identify a more tightly focused target market. For my part, I hope to continue learning from my friend’s personal experience and wisdom about how marketers such as myself can tap into the blogging community.
iMedia: Speaking of blogs, are you being affected by consumer-generated marketing? Are you using any blogs or other social networking tools to market?
Padwick: CGM is the next significant area of interest in the travel industry, particularly the hotel segment. Hotels are brands and, as such, are like a bag of chips. If one chip in a bag of Doritos is bad, then the perception is that Doritos as a brand is bad. By and large consumers permit hotel brands little to no variation in terms of experience: Violating consumer expectations leads to negative CGM, which then leads to negative brand perception -- this is a significant but largely misunderstood issue for the hotel industry.
iMedia: Are you doing any behavioral targeting? If yes, please describe.
Padwick: I would note that, industry-wide, travel-related companies have been basing online content on the explicit preferences of web visitors. We’re seeing a deliberate shift toward delivering more online travel content around implicit visitor preferences. In short, I agree with CRM expert Don Peppers, who noted on OneWWWorld.com that, “The one-to-one marketer recognizes that every relationship is based on the inputs of both parties and that it continues to evolve over time.” Further, “…when a customer expresses an interest or states a preference over and over, a genuine relationship marketer should find a way to act on it.”
iMedia: What's the key for having a successful relationship with agencies?
Padwick: I believe strongly in giving agencies a stake in our success. As far as I’m concerned, the days of "I'm a great marketer, sign up with me, pay me a retainer and we'll meet weekly for martinis and a night on the town” are over. Some of my best friends head agencies -- they understand the rules have changed. I choose to put a stake in the ground and give them a share of the gain, but then hold them accountable to growing our mutual stake. If they can’t succeed, we move on. If they do, we all win!
iMedia: Any final words of wisdom for other marketers? Something you've recently learned, perhaps, or some advice someone has given you?
Padwick: INTEGRATION, INTEGRATION, INTEGRATION!!! I love the I-media community. It offers great minds, great personalities and great meetings. But I believe that we need to move beyond the narrow focus of "Interactive or Internet Media" toward understanding all marketing channels equally. As an example of what I mean, look at kids these days. If you follow their behavior patterns you’ll find they don’t make the distinctions professional marketers do. They don't come home from school and say to themselves, "I think I’ll check my traditional media (TV, radio and newspaper) now to see what's new. I’ll save my online media (text messaging, web searches, and blogging) for after dinner." Rather, they move rapidly between the marketing worlds we so carefully delineate (traditional, new media, et cetera). Successful marketing to this emerging audience necessitates an understanding of and commitment to INTEGRATION.
Before we can achieve integration, though, we first need to understand the pressures between traditional and new media marketing. It’s true that both groups are competing for one pool of money. And most often, you'll see traditional has tended to lead and only begrudgingly has given space/time to the rebellious and often non-conforming interactive forms of marketing. There is a natural friction between both of these forms of marketing just as there is also a natural friction between the advocates of each of these forms of marketing. But, if the example of how today’s youth use media is any indicator, we are moving quickly towards an integrated marketing approach that neither side really understands. Internet marketing is not the answer 100 percent of the time. For that matter, neither is traditional marketing. Rather, each marketing medium has its own strengths and its proper uses. The key to marketing success in the future is to integrate traditional AND new media marketing in order to take full advantage of the strengths and proper uses which each method affords. Let’s face it: From this point forward, those who understand all forms of marketing will achieve the most enduring success.