A Wild Finish to BrandSmart; Thanks Chicago AMA
The wildest speaker at AMA Chicago’s BrandSmart conference last week was concluding presenter Amy Curtis-McIntyre from Hyatt.
As a journalist trying to get useful information for you, I cringe when conference speakers stick to a boring script. Curtis-McIntyre was fresh, informative, entertaining and a bit shocking for some (you don’t often hear four-letter words in formal business presentations; those are usually reserved for meetings back in the office. For the record, as someone who grew up in Brooklyn and went to high school in Manhattan, I was far from shocked. It was more like a mini-homecoming for me.)
Along the way, she also was honest, noting, for example, that Hyatt’s “brand strategy is confused.” She also echoed an earlier speaker when she said, “I think marketers over-complicate things because they can.”
Another great piece of advice: “turn anything you have into a marketing tool,” she said. She discussed how she did that as the first CMO at JetBlue Airways, getting involved in everything from designing crew uniforms to a spoof about doing yoga in the aisles of planes. She recalled how she explained to the JetBlue CEO at the time that it was good people were stealing yoga instructional seatback cards she’d created – it showed they were interested and feeling connected to JetBlue.
If you create promotional materials for a marketing effort and people don’t take them, you’re in trouble, she noted (although in far more colorful language than I’m writing here).
