This is the first in a five-part series that will profile this year’s finalists for the Cojones Awards to be presented on March 14 in Austin during SXSW. The Cojones Awards recognize marketers who have disrupted the status quo and who embrace the role of the modern marketer. Nominations were made by a distinguished advisory panel who, along with the public tweet-to-vote process, will select the winners in five categories: courage to innovate, to inspire, to be bold, to connect and to transform.
Today we will highlight the finalists who had the courage to innovate, to implement new ways of engaging customers living a digital lifestyle.
John Costello, President Global Marketing and Innovation, Dunkin Brands — Tweet2Vote
Last year Costello and his team rolled out a new mobile-based loyalty program that followed the highly successful launch of the Dunkin’ Donuts mobile app. Customers can manage their DD Perk points, receive exclusive offers and even share perks with a friend.
His advice for leading success marketing innovation projects:
1. Make sure you’re spending as much time looking through the windshield as you are the rearview mirror.
2. It’s all about the consumer: The key to success is not tactics but really understanding the consumer and figuring out how your brand can meet their needs better than anybody else.
3. Surround yourself with great people: Most great marketing ideas come from having great people on your team.
To Costello courage means making the tough calls that go beyond analyzing the past. “You’re not just looking through the rearview mirror at past results; you have to look through the windshield to anticipate the changes ahead.”
Bridget Dolan, VP of Interactive Media, Sephora — Tweet2Vote
In 2014 Dolan and her colleagues created the Beauty Board, an engaging online social shopping experience to upload, tag and share your beauty looks. She also enhanced the Sephora online shopping experience by adding content into commerce in a meaningful way.
Her advice for creating breakthrough innovations:
1. Be patient. Sometimes it’s too early to hit critical mass with your ideas. It’s tough to change client behavior so you have to wait for the [opportune moment or] tipping point.
2. Come up with radical ideas that drive key company initiatives. Others will be more likely to support trying your ideas if your ideas support a greater [company] initiative.
3. Test small, learn, then roll out bigger. Test fast, make changes, and then roll out a more [well-honed] experience.
To Dolan courage means “standing up and sharing those big ideas that you know are not slam dunks out of the door, but if they’re done right they really could be game changing. It also means knowing when to cut your losses, when to pull back. You’ve invested a lot of time and money and maybe even personal capital, but at the end of the day we need to be prudent business people and figure out when to keep pushing and when to call it. And that takes courage in a different way.”
Sanjay Gupta, EVP Marketing,
Creating a differentiated insurance company is no easy task. To do that Gupta set out to learn how Allstate’s customers lived their lives and to add value in new and meaningful ways. “We created a whole series of programs that were designed to help these customers.” Innovations included Digital Locker for archiving valuables, Quick Photo Claims to submit a claim after an accident and digital tools for helping car and home buyers improve the value of their purchases.
His advice for leading innovation initiatives:
1. Stay on the cutting edge of innovation. It’s easy to do what’s worked in the past but change is critical.
2. Defy customer expectations by maximizing the best technology and digital tools.
3. Embrace technology: Don’t view it as something that only concerns the CIO.
For Gupta courage means taking a stand for all the right reasons: for the customer, for a product launch, for a social cause. “Courage can manifest itself in many different ways, but it all comes down to having the conviction to go after something and pursue it with a passion.”
For more information on the Cojones Awards, visit http://info.nfusion.com/cojones.
