Carly Fiorina Defines Integrated Marketing-PMA Day 2

We had the great privilege of having Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, as our keynote speaker who kicked off day two of PMA's Integrated Marketing Conference. Over the past year PMA went through a strategic branding initiative that resulted in changing the name of the conference as well as creating a new logo. The association is no longer just focused on promotional marketing, but instead is championing the understanding and meaning of integrated marketing which it defines as the integration of all disciplines in the marketing mix to deliver one unified message to the consumer.

Carly defined integrated marketing as “The collection of every impression that the customer has about a company.” She followed this up with saying “companies can’t always control with their marketing what the customer takes away about the company. We’re in a period of extraordinary change in our business today and we all know that change is difficult. PMA is now trying to integrate marketing as well as build accountability and measurement into what we do."

Carly then shared with us this quote which I think is great…”Change is like heaven…. everyone wants to go there but nobody wants to die.”

As with most great speakers Carly shared with us a story. It was about a man who called HP and wanted to speak with the CEO because he was very irate about a certain printer. Now they had what they called at HP the CEO hotline that was just for these types of customers who are so mad that they want to talk to the CEO. This team would take the calls and inform Carly about the situation. This man was so upset and told the woman that he was going to shove the printer "where the sun don't shine". The HP employee calmly told him that if he did that "it will void your warranty". This turned the customer totally around and he ended up calling back to tell the CEO how wonderful that woman was who took his call.

Here are some of Carly’s key take-aways for us marketers:

1.    Authenticity – if your marketing is not accurate and true, it just won’t work. People will reject it if they don't see it as authentic.

2.    Judgment – the ability to know when to act and when to pause...when to panic and when to stay calm. We need to make quick decisions, however there are always those times when the data is saying one thing and you just know it is wrong. That’s the time you should pause and reflect.

3.    Perspective – this is what really matters…remember that you can use information to prove just about anything.

Carly's comment about marketing not always having control is so true today. Many brands have not been comfortable embracing social media because they have to loose some control in order to do this successfully. I'll talk about that more in my next post.

I really enjoyed hearing Carly speak and found her to be very authentic and true. She reminded me a little of myself when I first started in this business...a secretary working before the age of computers.

Carly wrapped it up by saying that successful marketing is all about finding ways to connect a message that's important to both the brand and to it's customers. Simple and true.

Comments

[Tammy]

Hi,

Great stuff...

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Tammy

[Donna DeClemente]

Thanks Tammy for the info on FastPitch! I recently received an email about this network and haven't had the chance to check it out yet. I will make a point to do that this week now that I'm back in the office and not traveling.