Q: What did you do while you were there?
A: The whole social media campaign for this program was riding on whether the public would want to follow this person and if they would find them compelling. Basically, is this person going to be likeable or relatable where someone would want to hear this person’s perspective? Before I started, the museum had outlined their goal in terms of my social media presence. I was to produce at least four Facebook posts, four tweets and one blog post per day, as well as 3-4 videos per week that I shot and edited. It was a challenge to find the balance of doing the activities [such as getting behind-the-scenes of various exhibits and meeting with school groups] and then writing about them in a way that people would relate.

People would ask what the point was of the program. My take on it was that people come to the museum for a day, and they try to see and do as much as they possibly can, but there is so much to take in, you can’t possibly do it all. For many, a singular experience at the MSI can change their perspective on science, learning and museums in general. So I thought, what could a person do with 30 days? If one visit could change someone or stick with them throughout their life, how much would someone change if they dedicated an entire month to learning, experiencing, pushing all the buttons, talking with the people who put together the exhibits and meeting with scientists? I wanted to be able to give the public that chance by allowing them to experience it vicariously through me.

Q: Overall, how do you think you benefitted from the experience?
A: It absolutely was beneficial in terms of reinforcing my faith in my writing and communication skills by getting the additional practice. I think a lot of the foundational areas that IMC touched on related to what I was doing at the museum. Michelle [Weinberger] likes to joke that I got this opportunity because of IMC and because Medill was really generous in terms of picking it up and putting it on the website, but in the end it wasn’t a popular vote that chose the winner. Ultimately, the MSI chose based on who they thought the public would respond well to.

Q: The “Month at the Museum” program has been a highly successful marketing campaign for the MSI. Why you think it resonated so well?
A: My theory—which informed my approach when I was there—is that people like behind the scenes. My goal was to be a conduit for people to feel as though they were experiencing the things I was doing with me. The idea of a normal person being plucked from their normal life and being put in this weird situation, I think, is very appealing.

Q: Now that it’s over, do you ever get recognized?
A: [Laughs] Rarely. The first time I got recognized was when the doorman in my old building said, “Did I see you on the news?” But mostly, it’s just somebody who’s like, “You look familiar.” But then it’s awkward because it always turns out that I just look like their cousin or someone.

Images courtesy of the Museum of Science and Industry

The Best
These top ads ran away with the votes, and each spot was separated by only one vote. The top three ads have nearly 17 million YouTube views combined on their official pages, suggesting they are as popular as they were well-executed.

M&M’s “Just My Shell”

Chrysler “Halftime in America”

Volkswagen “The Dog Strikes Back”

The Worst
The voting for the worst ads was not as clear-cut. More ads fell to the bottom than rose to the top. More than 20 ads received at least one vote for worst ad. In no particular order, here are our choices for worst ads of Super Bowl XLVI.

Pepsi “King’s Court”

Hulu Plus “Hulubratory”

Go Daddy
Because Go Daddy has opted to only post their ads on their personal site instead of YouTube, we have chosen to not include a video link in our post.

Tax Act “Free to Pee”

Scope: All about how marketers frame the world and their goals.

1. Accept marketing is about ideas, not channels: In the Talent Q survey respondents revealed the most “overhyped” skill is digital and social media, but respondents also indicated a top factor impacting the future was ever-increasing media options, including digital. The conflicting responses show that skills like digital and social media should not be viewed in isolation, but viewed as an element of a greater idea and/or strategy.

2. Put the audience first: The companies that are most successful in marketing and communications have a real understanding of the wants and needs of each their audiences—their external customer AND their internal employee audience.

Strategy: How marketers get to their desired goals.

3. Find the right balance of breadth vs. depth: Companies have varying needs for breadth versus depth for talent and the key is to find the right balance. Both attributes are equally valuable and must be determined at a company-level.

4. Embrace that big ideas can come from anywhere: Marketers must strive to find the right balance between old and new talent. A case study on the talent behind the Allstate “Mayhem” campaign by Leo Burnett revealed that a good idea can come from anywhere. The original campaign idea came a young, fresh creative mind and was elevated from “good to great” with the help of more knowledgeable, experienced marketers.

5. Own your “value-add”: The marketing landscape is evolving and the demand for talent is shifting from a generalist to a specialist model. As this shift occurs, it will be ever-more important for individuals to understand their strengths, focus on them, and leverage them to collaboratively build more effective communication programs.

Style: The tactics marketers use to get to desired goals.

6. Be passionate (enthusiastic and committed): 30 percent of companies state passion is an important attribute for an ideal hire. Passion is deemed important because people with this attribute push themselves harder and hold themselves to a higher standard.

7. Be nimble and resourceful: Problem-solving, resourcefulness (80 percent of respondents) and nimbleness (76 percent of respondents) were identified as important attributes in identifying talent today.

8. Communicate well, persuade effectively, and tell a story: Successful campaigns hinge on the marketer’s ability to effectively tell a story. As a result, 32.5 percent of companies state “ability to communicate well” is an important attribute for an ideal hire.

9. Be curious, creative and collaborative: The combination of curiosity, creativity and collaboration are essential attributes in creating winning marketing teams.

Did you miss the IMC Talent Q? Check out the webcast from the event.

The brainchild of Medill’s Integrated Marketing Communications graduate program, the IMC Talent Q will feature IMC graduate students and industry professionals sharing the latest research and insights on successful talent cultivation.

Keynoting the event is Dana Anderson, senior vice president of marketing, strategy and communications at Kraft Foods, who will undoubtedly inspire attendees to toss aside conventional thinking and take what she calls “leaps,” an idea that aligns with the new risk-taking philosophy being embraced by Kraft.

In addition to the findings that Medill IMC students will share from their research on the traits of effective marketing communications professionals, a panel of  industry leaders will lead a discussion on effective talent cultivation. Panelists include Fred Cook (president & CEO of GolinHarris), Jill Perkins (senior consultant at Towers Watson), Melanie Steinbach (managing director at Russell Reynolds Associates), Sherman Wright (co-founder and managing partner of CommonGround Marketing) and Dan Jessup (head of people strategy at Groupon).

The event couldn’t be more timely. According to Marty Kohr, adjunct lecturer and Medill IMC Talent Q advisor, the magnitude and velocity of change in the marketplace have never been greater, nor has the need to better understand the talents and skills of the people who drive effective marketing communications.

And who better to learn from than the event’s A-list group of speakers. “I have been inspired by the individual accomplishments and collective wisdom of the panelists,” said panel moderator and Assistant Professor Dan Gruber. “I look forward to a lively, engaging and enlightening panel.”

Kohr agrees and congratulates the Medill IMC students for taking on this quest. “The students benefited from the journey and their efforts will help fellow students better prepare for the future as well. The same is true for our alums, our faculty and our corporate partners. We know identifying, developing and retaining top talent is a critical issue for all successful managers,” he said.

Visit the IMC Talent Q website to learn more and to register for free. Can’t attend the event? It will be live streamed and archived on the IMC Talent Q website.

Have a question for one of the panelists? Include it in the comments or tweet it with the hashtag #IMCTalentQ and we’ll ask it during the Q&A session.

Follow IMC Talent Q on Twitter: @IMCTalentQ, @danielagruber, @MartyKohrNU, @fredcook, @danjessup

So let’s talk shopper marketing and digital marketing for a bit.

Target: Target recently took its online business in-house. Prior to the site’s relaunch, Target.com had been powered for 10 years by Amazon, and in 2010, Target reported 10 percent growth online and 2 percent growth offline. Part of its strategy to take control of its e-commerce platform is to focus on differentiation and delivering a better guest experience for its customers online.

What’s interesting about this? As more people purchase online and reduce trips to the store, there’s more pressure on CPG companies and retailers to provide a flawless online experience and figure out how to upsell customers. I can’t even tell you how many times I have walked into a Target store looking for a few specific items but walked out with a basket full of unplanned purchases. Target, along with stores like Whole Foods and IKEA, do an outstanding job of providing a unique experience for shoppers in the store. Now, the challenge will be to replicate that experience online.

Walgreens: In August Chicago was the first market to be offered Walgreens’ WebPickUp service. This online ordering program gives consumers the option to purchase items through its website and then pick them up in-store. Walgreens reported that in the last two years its online traffic has increased by 50 percent.

A few weeks ago I decided to give it a try after I was sent a direct mail piece with a coupon for $20 off my order online, but I can’t say it was a great experience. It took me longer to find the products I needed online than it would have taken me in the store. It will be interesting to see how consumers respond and if this service is something people will value.

Amazon: Amazon is to e-commerce as Google is to search as P&G is to shopper marketing. Amazon leads the pack in e-commerce with a 47 percent e-tailer household penetration. It’s proof that consumers are willing to forgo the shopping trip for convenience and the often lower prices that can be found online. In 2010 Amazon had 40 percent growth online with sales at $4.1 billion, and it continues to expand its offerings by acquiring e-commerce sites, including Diapers.com, Soap.com, BeautyBar.com, Wag.com, and YoYo.com.

Best Buy: Recently Best Buy announced plans to decrease the footprint of its stores and focus more on its online business. In a way, it really doesn’t have a choice. Consumers have shown that while they might prefer to walk into a Best Buy store and interact with its products, they’re also walking out the door and then getting online to actually make their purchases. This practice, also known as “freeriding,” puts retailers like Best Buy in a sticky situation since consumers are researching and buying electronics online more so than any other category to date.

My prediction: The convergence of shopper and digital marketing will play a major role in the development of effective marketing campaigns to consumers. Marketers will be challenged to create a consistent online and offline experience for their brands while social media marketing will play a more tactical role and be part of a larger overall strategy to connect with consumers online.

Do you agree? Disagree? Let us know in the comments!

Dr. Chang-Gyu Hwang is the former CEO of Samsung Electronics Co, Ltd. and the current National Chief Technology Officer and Head of the Office of Strategic R&D Planning in Korea. A true visionary in the digital technology and research field, Dr. Hwang was in charge of developing the world’s first 256Mb DRAM and was named one of “25 Stars of Asia” by BusinessWeek.

This Tuesday, November 8, Dr. Hwang will speak to a group of Medill IMC and Kellogg graduate students at Northwestern University. In anticipation of the event, Dr. Hwang was kind enough to give us insight into the future of digital technology.

You speak of information technology “big bangs,” including the spread of networked PC technology and mobile technology more recently. What do you expect the next IT big bang will be? How do you think it will change the way we communicate and interact? How will we as marketers be able to leverage these technology advances to serve our customers?

Dr. Hwang: There are three macro trends for us to anticipate with the next IT big bang. First digital devices are more and more interconnected and furthermore, non-digital objects will be seamlessly connecting with each other. And future technologies will respond without external stimulus and will be something that looks familiar, even though we have never actually seen it. One of the current devices reflecting these three trends is the smart phone, but this is just a beginning. In the next IT Big Bang we will experience a dramatic change in the quality of life, going beyond just convenience and efficiency. More advanced IT technology will become more intimately connected to our daily lives and will touch and inspire human’s nature, manage our health, and enable a greater consciousness of our environment. I believe these points will be a key leverage for the marketing process.

Some of our classmates visited Seoul this summer and were blown away by the cutting-edge communication technology that they encountered. As national chief technology officer for Korea, what types of R&D projects are you working on that we as marketers would be interested in?

Dr. Hwang: I, as national CTO, am focusing on twin strategies for development of R&D in Korea. One is “market pull”-based R&D and the other “open innovation.” In “market pull” – based R&D, customers’ potential needs are always top priority. It is totally different from “technology push” –based R&D. The center of technology is a human being. At the same time, “open innovation” is a very important issue for Korea. Nobody can do everything by themselves. We are willing to collaborate with others and, in fact, many world-leading companies have a strong interest in the Korean market. Why? Because Korea is a very attractive test market for many reasons. If you want to know the reasons, please join my speech. You, as marketers, can hear many valuable points from my presentation.

We appreciate your support for Medill’s integrated marketing communications graduate program. What does IMC mean to you? How do you see IMC fitting into the marketing world?

Dr. Hwang: I believe integrated marketing communications is a process for managing customer relationships in many aspects. As I already mentioned, the touching of human nature is a key of future technology. From the marketing point of view, it has been moving from mass media to more specialized media, which are centered on specific target audiences and from a manufacturer-dominated market to a consumer-controlled market. I believe these phenomena will prevail through the whole process of marketing. It means the importance of IMC is getting bigger and bigger.

Students, faculty and alumni are welcome to attend the event. To reserve your seat, please RSVP here. 

Event details:

Website optimization is very similar; it’s using the same resources to squeeze the most out of the investment in the site. Be it through altering landing pages, registration forms, or calls to action, site optimization can increase conversions like Albert Pujols hits homeruns.

This simple recipe makes it possible for even time-strapped marketers to focus on their site to drive conversions, whatever the end goal may be. Many companies have seen tremendous increases in revenue through site optimization.

Ingredients

• A website
• Somebody who knows how to install code on pages  (possibly your friendly IT guy)
• Google Website Optimizer or any other web analytics or optimizer program

Mix the ingredients in the bowl until smooth, and do the following:

1. First, think about your goal. Is it to get customers to sign up for a newsletter? Complete a purchase? Then consider ways that may help or hinder customers from achieving that goal.
2. Start small. Test differences in color, placement of your corporate logo, and position of text boxes. Keep a control page, and observe which configuration is most successful in getting customers to complete the goal.
3. Go bigger. Create different landing pages, and test different elements. Fiddle with sign-up or check-out information. Are you asking your customers for too much information, such as your neighbor’s mom’s boyfriend’s dog’s date of birth? Does it prevent potential customers from completing the conversion?  Experiment with elements that might impact or influence your consumers. Sometimes, those elements are not necessarily intuitive. As this HubSpot webinar points out, the words “register” and “submit” can connote very different things in the subconscious minds of consumers.
4. Always test, test, test. Never settle. Your company’s website is one of its most important assets. Don’t leave it on the stove without proper attention; after all, a burnt pot is really hard to clean. On the other hand, there’s nothing as tasty as a perfectly baked cake. But it takes the right temperature and a lot of love to make it that way.

But when you’re a business and losing money on that first daily deal or hovering right around cost, make sure you have a plan for how you can convert these transactional customers into repeat business or make additional money on that first visit. Otherwise, what is the benefit?

This is my last quarter of graduate school at Medill IMC, and in one of my classes on e-commerce we’ve been zeroing in on the online daily deal industry. I was surprised to find out that there are more than 350 online deal sites for consumers to use beyond the well-known players like Groupon, Living Social, Buy With Me, Gilt Group, etc.

All of these sites seem great for consumers. Deals are delivered to your inbox every morning, guaranteed, and they’re categorized, localized, and seemingly relevant. But are these deals good for businesses? How many companies really understand the risks and rewards of using online daily deals to market their products and services?

If you’re offering customers too many deals and promotions throughout the year, you’re running the risk of conditioning consumers to not pay the full price for your product or service. Essentially, you’re training people to wait for a discount.

Partnering with a daily deal company and running an online promotion puts you on the frontline. It can be good for business—or really bad depending on the type of customer you bring through the door and whether or not she returns.

There are many scenarios where daily deals work well for companies but there are just as many that do not. Consider running a daily deal promotion….

• If you’re a new business and trying to get the word out
• If you’re introducing a new product or service
• If there’s an opportunity to upsell customers upon their initial visit
• If you have high margins
• When you can handle the increased traffic and won’t risk the relationships you have established with existing customers
• When you have a plan to measure the ROI for your daily deal investment—how are you going to make sure you follow up with customers? How can you get them to do business with you again?

More than 30 years later, I feel this same sort of nostalgia as I browse Twitter and Facebook reading others’ tributes, adding a few of my own thoughts and reflecting on how Jobs’ vision for a better world through technology has impacted my life. From the Macs I’ve used at home and on the job to the hours of music I’ve listened to on my iPod to the numerous ways I use my iPhone every day, it’s probably not much of a stretch to say that Apple products have changed my life.

This sense of loss extends to my student/professional life too. After all, we’ve discussed Steve Jobs and Apple in all of my IMC classes over the past year. Apple has been held up as the sterling example of a brand built by focusing on the needs of the customer (including needs the customer didn’t know he had), creating perfectly integrated, consistent communications, and differentiating by emphasizing not only function, but form as well. The result: a brand that commands premium prices and creates value for its shareholders. No doubt Jobs’ wildly successful approach to innovation, marketing and the consumer experience will be studied in business schools and at Medill for years to come.

I’ve read tweets tonight describing Jobs as the Thomas Edison of our time, but I prefer to compare him to Walt Disney—another extraordinary visionary who opened up new vistas for all of us and in the process built an extraordinary brand. When he introduced the iPod in 2001, Jobs remarked, “In our own small way we’re going to make the world a better place.” That’s something all of us as marketers can aspire to.

Let us know what you think about Steve Jobs’ marketing legacy in the comments.