Keep it Simple Still Works
I spent a fascinating day last week at an AMA Chicago chapter annual conference called BrandSmart, hearing a wide range of ideas about how marketing should be working these days.
Andy England, CMO of MillerCoors, advanced my favorite concept. “The best ideas are simple,” he said, and then discussed how involved it is to keep the best marketing ideas simple and direct.
Research, testing, product development, all important and necessary, but don’t let those divert you from finding and using simple ideas that connect with your core audiences and speak to them. His examples of brands keeping it simple, successfully – Apple, Mini and Acura.
One of his other talking points was that business is a team sport. Appropriate for him, since he’s bringing together the marketing teams at what had been rival brewers Coors and Miller into the new MillerCoors marketing group.
The old rivals are moving into a new joint headquarters in Chicago this summer. He expects them to be settled in by the end of August. Asked how he’ll overcome old competitive issues, he talks about playing to common treads everyone in his group will have regardless of which brand they marketed in the past –“we’re all in the beer business and we all want to win,” he said.
England was one of four winners of a new award established this year by the Chicago chapter. Other recipients of the BrandSmart Award are Amy Curtis-McIntyre, SVP of brand communications at Hyatt; Kim Feil, CMO of Walgreen Co.; and Phil Kotler, renowned marketing professor at Northwestern University. The chapter plans to make these awards an annual occurrence.
Comments
With all these big name companies, I feel it is important to mention that the same ideas work for small business too. We were started one year ago with a simple idea and it is helping us still grow today.
Posted by: Ben Silverstein | June 24, 2009 12:46 AM