ANA Masters of Marketing Offers a Path Ahead for Marketers
Mid-October traditionally marks the annual ANA Masters of Marketing Conference, a significant week in the calendars of top marketing executives—whether they represent some of the world’s legacy companies or today’s disruptors and challenger brands.
The 2024 event occurred last week with the theme of “Setting the Agenda.” Bob Liodice, ANA’s Chief Executive Officer, explained the departure from past emphases on “Growth” by stating in his opening address, “Growth is fundamental to the ANA. Now, we are shifting to the lens of Brand Marketers as they drive success into the industry, making winners for everyone. Strong brands can unlock financial returns… It all starts with brands.”
Every year, I look forward to assessing how marketing conversations reflect new business and cultural concerns, as well as technological, social, and even geopolitical change.
Three things stood out for me this year:
- Mark Penn’s outline of the tenets of political advertising and, more importantly, how brands should respond in an era of polarization.
- The ANA’s focus on the Brand Marketer and how that lens subtly changes the organization’s perspective and benefits its members.
- AI, of course! More specifically, how marketers use (or don’t use) Artificial Intelligence and the emotions it imbues—from fear to confidence.
ANA’s Bob Liodice and Stagwell’s Mark Penn on the main stage at Masters of Marketing.
Let’s Start with Mark Penn
Mark Penn is impressive in his accomplishments, fair in his assessments, and balanced in his advice.
Yes, he is the Chairman and CEO of Stagwell with a career that spans 40 years in market research, advertising, public relations, polling, and consulting. He has advised world leaders, led companies, written two bestselling books, and is a globally recognized strategist. In addition to serving as Microsoft’s Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer and co-founding Penn Schoen Berland, a high-tech market research powerhouse he built and sold to WPP, Mark Penn also became CEO of Burson-Marsteller.
Perhaps most notably for this topic, he served as President Bill Clinton’s White House pollster for six years and was the chief strategist of Clinton’s 1996 re-election campaign. Penn established the concept behind “Soccer Moms” and is credited with developing several unique ad and polling methods, including being the first to implement overnight polling.
With the US election less than a week away, he discussed what marketers can learn from political campaigns, shared a framework for how strategists position their candidates as brands, and provided commercial examples of how marketers can do the same. From a Memorable Slogan to a Biography that Reflects One’s Values to Strategy, Clear Issues to Run On, and an Edge Against the Competitor, he outlined how these basic political principles can shape brand marketing concepts—whether you’re an incumbent or a challenger.
Interestingly, Mark Penn’s message to marketers was “stay out of politics.” He outlined, “If your brand appeals to 80% of the population, and you take a stand in a 50/50 polarized world, keep in mind that you can lose 30% of your audience in one day.”
He added that negativity and, sadly, name-calling in politics has reached a new low and cautioned brands against taking a similar tack. He showed ways something negative could remain positive, mainly if it relied on purpose or even-handed humor. For example, Gilette welcomed back Harry’s users in an ad based on statistics that 50% of Harry’s users returned to Gilette. Perhaps this hardly feels “negative” by today’s standards, but that’s the point.
“Regardless of who wins the election next week, the nation will be divided,” said Penn. Most importantly, in my assessment, he advocates that marketers should call for national unity and a shared American purpose after this election. The Edelman Trust Barometer has told us for years that consumers trust business more than politics. Perhaps this is one of the best ways that Marketing Can Make a World of Difference at a time when aspects of brand purpose are evolving.
Illustration: Natalie Peeples/Axios
Shards of Glass Phenomenon
Penn’s sentiment also coincides with what Axios describes as the “shards of glass phenomenon,” or America’s new fragmented reality that affects perceptions of business, products, technology, culture, and current events.
This week, Axios’ Mike Allen wrote, “America is splintering into more than a dozen news bubbles based on ideology, wealth, jobs, age and location. This means where you get your news, the voices you trust, and even the topics and cultural figures you follow could be wholly different from the person sitting next to you. So instead of Red America and Blue America, we’ll have a dozen or more Americas — and realities. This will make understanding public opinion, and finding common agreement, even more complex and elusive.”
Again, there is no better time for brands to rethink a message of unity.
Turning to Brand Building
Coincidentally, this week, McKinsey released new research on How the Role of CMO is Evolving based on a survey of more than 100 marketing decision-makers, including marketing chiefs, chief growth officers, and chief brand officers across North America and Europe. The majority saw their role as building strong brands and delivering growth while maximizing the effectiveness of marketing spending.
However, the research also cited how marketers are taking on more responsibilities:
“Marketing leaders are expected to apply new energy to identifying growth opportunities, bring their companies’ missions to life, build immersive and connected brand experiences, link purpose to business outcomes, capitalize on new technologies, and more. At the same time, CMOs are under increasing pressure to provide results and serve as responsible stewards of marketing resources to achieve growth agendas. They’re growth leaders whose remit continues to expand, with CMOs taking on more functional areas traditionally seen as outside the purview of marketing. Such areas include generative AI (gen AI), innovation, sales, and e-commerce.”
The CMO Survey also cites Barriers to Success, which include internal silos (36%), insufficient budgets for marketing activities (34%), a lack of in-house talent (32%), and incoherent strategic vision (32%). According to McKinsey, failing to address these concerns means that brands may miss out on emerging opportunities.
Fortunately, Marc Pritchard, Chief Brand Officer of The Procter & Gamble Company and ANA Chairman, believes, “Marketing is complex but doesn’t have to be complicated.”
In his opening address, he added, “Complexity will increase. So will acronyms and jargon. Growth will be hard. However, it is possible to find inspiration for growth in the everyday.”
While he admits that personalization at scale is inevitable, a marketer must make a difference to the consumer by finding everyday insights that matter to them. “Your brand-building efforts should meet their needs and uniquely solve how to make a moment better.”
After showing P&G work worldwide that has grown brands dramatically, he advocated, “Think expansively about how a brand can deal with both sides of the brain through the emotional and the meaningful. AI can’t do that. Find a brand idea that makes human moments matter more. Dramatize problems that can be solved inspirationally and delight people.”
Other keynote speakers emphasized consumers in fresh ways.
For Marian Lee, Chief Marketing Officer of Netflix, it was: “Fandom solves all problems.”
According to Lee, marketers must reimagine what it takes to connect with people and ultimately turn them into fans. Effective marketing isn’t about having total control over your brand. She shared how Netflix listens, responds, and co-creates with fans and brands to tell engaging stories and shape conversations.
Kellyn Smith Kenny, Chief Marketing & Growth Officer of AT&T emphasized that CUSTOMER CENTRICITY was a brand’s “Silver Bullet.”
“Companies and brands that obsess over the product do better, have more motivated employees and more loyal customers.”
She shared how both “thin” and “thick” data work together to innovate in service of the customer. “Big data is where we see patterns. It’s helpful but doesn’t tell the whole story. This is thin data. By contrast, thick data contains customers’ emotions, their root stories, and the folklore that drives motivation.”
Kellyn Kenny demonstrated how pairing thin and thick data could build better products and services to unlock new audiences. For AT&T, this included Gamers, the Economically Stressed, and Sole Proprietors. Today, the three groups are surging.
She stressed, “This is not innovation for innovation’s sake. Don’t highlight a capability if the customer doesn’t care. Innovate in service to the customer.“
Diana Haussling, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Consumer Experience and Growth at the Colgate-Palmolive Company, asked the audience, How does a brand last for 200 years? Her answer: It’s PEOPLE OBSESSED.
She added, “People are complex, inundated, and distracted, but they are more open to new brands and experiences than ever. The key is to connect with them on an emotional level.”
Her advice? “Don’t start with the brand; begin with the human truth.” She shared a Colgate brand story about the emotions associated with gaps in people’s front teeth and how your smile can become your own imperfection. “People,” she says, embrace brands that are also imperfect.”
“We have to connect with culture in the moment. But we must do so authentically… and not in ways “irrelevant” to consumers. It’s not about buzzwords. And while we’re tempted to replace strategy with technology. The heartbeat of AI is human; it should start and end with a human touch. It’s about being authentic. Understand your brand purpose, identity, and the consumer… then connect in a real way in real-time. When you listen to people and understand their wants, they become engaged and involved.“
From the Era Of Mass Media to the Era of Digital & AI
Asmita Dubey, Chief Digital and Marketing Officer at L’Oréal Groupe, presented a view of integrating brand marketing and artificial intelligence, or “augmenting marketing with creativity, founded on a strong digital & tech core.”
While she outlined the Four Centricities of the L’Oréal Groupe- Consumer, Brand, Technology, and People, she also stressed how we have moved from the Era of Mass Media to the Era of Digital with business success dependent on Influencers, Data, and AI.
“Big brands,” she says, “are at an inflection point.”
However, she adds, “The French word for brand is marque. It represents a unique set of values and emotional connections. Our brand is our promise. Brands are more important now than ever.“
L’Oréal Groupe uses AI throughout the company. Yet Asmita Dubey stressed that “beauty is deeply personal. We do not feature AI-generated photos.”
AI-generated lifelike images of faces, bodies, hair, or skin are not included in advertising or external communications, although they may be used for idea generation. The company informs its AI by using data from thousands of beauty images representing various skin tones and hair types throughout the world, along with insights from consumer conversations or through customer care teams.
She admits that 70% of consumers are overwhelmed by the sheer number of beauty products. As a result, Gen AI and 11,000 terabytes of beauty information are fueling L’Oreal’s Beauty Genius, a personal beauty assistant with the ability to make product recommendations. It’s now in beta testing.
“Our best outputs are human creativity and AI with strong creative direction. This enables us to generate a high content volume at great speed. We digitalize a brand’s essential code.“
Reemphasizing how brands have moved from mass marketing to the Digital era, she outlined how L’Oréal works with more than 60,000 influencers and creators globally. “There’s a democratization of brand building, and therefore, everybody can be a brand builder, and everybody can be a creator…. So I would encourage all of you just to go there and try and test because digital and technology are also breaking many barriers for a lot of people around the world.”
Interestingly, today’s Influencer Industry is estimated to be worth roughly $250 billion, and Goldman Sachs predicts it will grow to nearly $500 billion by 2027. This week, Forbes also announced their annual Top Creator List, which includes 50 individuals, from MrBeast to the D’Amelio sisters, who earned almost $720 million over the last 12 months.
Gülen Bengi, Lead Chief Marketing Officer, Mars and Chief Growth Officer, Mars Snacking at Mars Incorporated, stressed that the company thinks generationally, “so we are no stranger to adapting.” Their strength is to “go to the consumer and listen.”
She added, “We believe in tech and common sense, so our work is practical and grounded. We focus on this order: people, creativity, technology.“
Mars’ pet food brand Pedigree has been making headlines for its AI-driven Adoptable campaign. Not only does the AI behind Adoptable use geographic data to match dogs with locations, but ads direct consumers to personalized landing pages for the featured dogs. (When a dog is adopted, it is immediately removed from the media rotation and replaced by another dog through AI.) Launched earlier this year, 50% of featured dogs were adopted, and traffic to partnering shelter websites increased more than sixfold- all within the first two weeks of the initiative.
“We’re really using leading-edge technology that’s never been done before to help us as an activist brand really move our purpose forward,
Soon every dollar we spend on media will not only help to bring our products to the world, it will help bring the dogs to the world.”
… Gülen Bengi of Mars
Remi Kent, Progressive Insurance‘s Chief Marketing Officer, demonstrated how the brand continues to lead with humor but now finds new inspiration for driving growth through the impactful use of innovation such as AI.
Progressive’s use of AI is focused on customizing creative to individual consumers with personalized headlines and copy and featuring relevant vehicles. In the latest rounds of testing, she admits that incorporating AI has led to double-digit percentage increases in the number of new policies.
“AI is another tool in our toolbox,” says Remi Kent. “And we’re doing more pre-testing. Yes, we want technology to drive business by providing personalization with creativity that reflects our customers’ personalities by showcasing the cars they drive. We’ve found a double-digit lift is possible… and repeatable.”
She garnered a lot of laughs in her presentation by showing a spoof featuring AI versions of spokesperson Flo, Jamie, and the rest of the insurance company’s advertising characters discussing an AI future.
“I would like to say we are very thankful to have a brave executive like Remi Kent championing the technology that will one day eliminate her species entirely,” said the AI Flo character in the Progressive spoof, highlighting how AI still has some issues with hands and fingers.
Remi Kent has an answer of her own: “I don’t know about you, but I think I’ll keep my humans.” The spoof itself was completed in less than a week, she said.
ABOUT ANA’S MASTERS OF MARKETING
ANA Masters of Marketing is the association’s signature event and the largest of their conferences. The 2,520 in-person attendees surpassed last year’s by more than 200, and another 2,145 attended virtually.
It is where marketing visionaries and leaders converge to shape the industry’s future by transforming it into a collaborative, impactful, and continuous engagement event that aligns the entire marketing ecosystem. It features world-class speakers, innovative workshops, and strategic discussions that address the industry’s most pressing challenges and opportunities.
