Interview
Q: What was your first job? My first job was really fascinating. I started as an intern working for Sen. Birch Bayh of Indiana in the press office. It was a very exciting time. I stayed working as a journalist in Washington D.C. covering labor issues.
Q: What was your most interesting job? I am happy to say I am in the most interesting job I have ever had! I’m the president of Wunderman New York! I have the opportunity to work on major brands across a variety of business sectors in a global capacity, partnering with some of the best and brightest in the marketing profession. Oh, and it helps to have a resident legend like Lester Wunderman in the building!
Q: How did you get into Direct Marketing? I learned about direct marketing from my political days when building grass roots campaigns to support candidates. I saw first hand the importance of getting the right message to the right person to motivate action – whether writing a congressman, voting for my candidate or contributing dollars to a cause. It was a lesson that really stuck with me. My first agency job was Reese Communications in Washington, D.C. and they were the first licensee of PRIZM and Claritas. In fact, Reese pioneered many of the data practices we deploy today.
Q: Who, or what, are your major influences? Three major influences: 1. Political campaigns. Working on both presidential and state elections, I learned how to tailor messages in a way that reached and motivated a wide range of constituents. 2. The WPP Network. From my tenure with WPP, I have built a reputation of collaboration and partnership. As a result of these partnerships, I am a firm believer that the best way to service clients is to bring ideas and solutions from multiple sources. 3. My staff. Over my career, I’ve had the opportunity to work with many talented people and learned hands on that the most reliable way to achieve long term profitability was to create a motivating environment based on fairness, loyalty and trust. To this day I still keep in touch with people from my past jobs who often remind me of the impact we’ve had on each other both personally and professionally.
Q: Of all the projects you have worked on, which one(s) stand out? Early in my career I had the chance to develop one of the first relationship marketing programs within the infant formula category – Enfamil Family Beginnings. Today, I’m again working in this category in launching the new Similac Strong Moms program – and it’s just as exciting. Both campaigns have been incredibly rewarding because they offer best case examples of how relationship marketing can influence sales and loyalty. For me personally, the opportunity to use my marketing, strategic, creative skills to benefit both our clients business and the lives of new mothers is rewarding. Thanks to the information and education inherent in the program, these programs are examples of how a brand can build advocacy by giving customers true value and meet unmet needs.
Q: What is the most exciting aspect of the DM field right now? Convergence of customer empowerment with the technology to now deliver one-to-one communications.
Q: How do you see direct marketing evolving in the next 10 years? I believe the ability to now build ongoing dialog and conversations, relevancy will come from real time behavior and the industry will have to adjust their practices so they respond appropriately. This means a greater competency around listening, engagement, social media, and behavior-based analytics. Direct marketing industry may have once confused personalization for relevancy. Just because we can use data to make communications more personal does not mean the recipient will find the piece of interest! And too often, the direct marketing industry has been assumptive in using data – only to find that what was assumed was incorrect.
Q: How are you responding to this challenge? At Wunderman New York, we’ve built a new tool called the Listening Platform that takes search, social conversations (e.g. blogs) and call center data and put it through our analytic process to see what conversations are occurring, what languages is being used, in what channels for what type of services. The Listening Platform helps us understand how best to craft messages, where to engage and what services to offer. Today, we are using it to supplement our insights process; I expect the Listening Platform to be the basis for how we engage and communicate with our clients’ customers.
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