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BRITE16 Columbia University Day 2

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These are my notes, you can also see the videos on YouTube at LINK

Day 2: Tuesday, March 8th

8:20 am – 9:00 am – REGISTRATION and NETWORKING

9:00 am – 9:45 am – MORNING PLENARY

From Jet Engines to GIFs: Why GE Moves First

Linda Boff, Chief Marketing Officer, GE

  • GE prides itself on being an innovator in both business and marketing, and being first is part of the company’s core DNA. The digital industrial giant is relentless in its pursuit of early adoption and deliberate experimentation with all forms of marketing — emerging platforms, technology, media, and storytelling. GE’s chief marketing officer Linda Boff shares how unapologetically being out in front has paid off for the iconic brand and helped it get in front of new audiences.

Transformation from a business and a story telling point of view. GE tells great stories, I wish their culture was as feel good as their stories. House of Cards, binge watching, NO COMMERCIALS, what does a marketer deal with this. Another way of thinking about storytelling. Do Breakthrough. Tell Breakthrough stories. Great directors and Great talent. Is this sort of what Ford Motor Co. Did by sponsoring, commercial free, to undo some of the damage of Founder Henry Fords anti-Semitic Dearborn Press editorials of the 1930’s. Maybe GE is atoning for its sins. Which I feel from experience, is more cultural. Maybe they will change. It’s all a feel good thing. Great message. Little if any followup. Business as usual. I hope this lady runs GE one day. I hope sooner then later.

GE is big. They want to be human. Not to act like everything but to share one. Show humanity, show accessibility. Be first, be early, does that mean that the results of primary science no, it’s about being first on social media. Social is organic. It’s free, if those who share you stuff with others don’t get paid. It’s earned. It’s good business and it, if done properly, doesn’t affect the P(L).

Sneakers project, make GE tangible. Makes super materials. As part of sneakers. Relevant and contemporary, that is the brand challenge.

And don’t forget data and analytics, the go to corp speak word of today.

GE is moving to Boston. Good for Boston, now not so many students will go elsewhere for work. Boston has always been a great exporter of talent. Educate them and then you leave.

CMOS define where growth is coming from. Where to sell? How people are buying?

How is GE making the planet healthy?

GE transformation from media, financial and now energy, medical, etc.

Leaning into industrial side.

How to manage a story, a brand in multiple countries?

Get comfortable with who you are and get comfortable. Let’s tell your story.

CDO chief digital officer driving digital within the organization. Marketing and IT a great relationship. CDO more then just digital marketing.

Changes in marketplace how to management keep up to date. GE spends about $1B a year in continuing education for management.

Formerly product, feature and benefits now have to focus on outcomes.

9:45 am – 10:05 am – NETWORKING BREAK

10:05 am – 11:00 am – PARALLEL BREAK-OUTS 1

A Battle for Talent:

Managing Brand Reputation in an Omnichannel World

Ethan McCarty, Global Head of Brand and Employee Communication, Bloomberg LP

Roopesh Nair ’12, President & CEO, Hodes

Jean Brandolini Lamb, Head, Brand Strategy and Identity, Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Ripa Rashid, EVP, Center for Talent Innovation; Managing Partner, Hewlett Consulting Partners

Michel Tuan Pham, Kravis Professor of Business, Columbia Business School

  • Talent acquisition and retention is one of the key benefits of building a strong brand. With job mobility becoming a given and messaging in an omnichannel world becoming more challenging, how should brands be thinking about both their reputation and how to reach and keep great talent? This panel will examine best practices and strategies to make sure your brand stands out not just among consumers, but in the talent marketplace as well.

Omni Channel world. End of audience segmentation. Overall experience. Ending with interaction with company employee. Meaningful in person interaction.

Managing Talent, HP from branding perspective, linked to history and history of innovation, culture we are trying to build based on core values of innovation. Call for action. Acting in new digital age. Helping customers transform in a digital age.

Brand comes through life through its employees. Values and work. Systems and programs to accomplish this. Introduced culture to the company. Help managers with playbook start conversation what HP Enterprises means for them everyday.

Annual reviews introducing the values and measure with work force.

Bloomberg. Widely knows Mike, the man. Bloomberg media brand. Core product is a Bloomberg terminal and enterprise services. Technology company. Systematized one on one ,for employees, aligned editorial, into new market story, sharing with employees. Employee communication team now employee communication and branding team. Using video for what is it like to work at Bloomberg. Using YOUTube channel Inside Bloomberg. Link to apply. Turning recruiters into content marketers. Awareness, comparison. Increase effective conversation with prospective employees. Sharing on social media. Exciting place to work. 954 applicants from 3,500 subscribers and 100,000 views. Now ROI has a basis and results.

Omnichannel complexity. both much more complex but also rewarding. Employee live their journey. Define goal. Cleaning define. Hire, diversity, etc. Benefits of organization. What are personas and key messages to attract those you wish to attract. Authentic brand experience. Omnichannel talent club, tag impressions. Social, paid, etc, towards measuring the results of your goals.

Example United Health Group, define employer brand. Get to the details. Job is nothing but a product. How to think about a job as a product. Social media empowering their recruiters toward prospects and employees. Employee advocacy programs working to obtain new hires. Talent marketing organization interfacing with different part of organization. Fire Dept of NY. How to build diversity. Define diversity. What are the gaps. What talent do you need? Where do you spend time? What is value proposition.

Research benefits of diversity in an organization from a branding perspective. Companies are working towards defining brand and employment brand perspective. Tremendous opportunity. To become an employer of thoughts. Tech sector example of reactive nature, re crisis as well as proactive to complete in small talent pools. What will attract and retain employees? Pay equity and LGBT rights. That’s Salesforce. Authenticity. Working and open to change. OUT IN THE WORLD, study about LGBT friendly employees 82% more likely to buy from a company with LGBT. How far tech companies have to go towards diversity. Companies responding to these risks. Salesforce is a great example. CEO as public leader. Also Apple.

Managing brand and public information towards managing talent.

Digital, intranets, conversation much more fluid. Responsibility of employees to interact with their companies digital assets. I.e. Social media presence. If you don’t understand the business strategy, you should ask. Employees invest in company.

Home Depot, employees know what they are doing? Sometimes.

IBM social strategy, manage main channels, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. Most effective to manage those networks as place for employees to have conversation.     IBM Voices. Ibm.com/voices. Content generated by experts. Let your nerds run free. Adds face to the corporate brand. Values as operating system.

Gather some best practices and help companies talk about them publicly.

Figure out micro conversion points.

What is your company culture. You have to understand before you can act. Best approach is to be the company you want to be. Work it out.

Bloomberg likes economics of employees sharing content with prospects.

Partnering with external organizations, i.e. Giving Tuesday, organization take on a volunteer philanthropic initiative. Enhanced employee experience and positive brand identity.

Beer, Watches, and Records:

What Can We Learn from the Revival of Craft?

Ben Blackwell, Chief Archivist, Third Man Records

John Kimmich, Head Brewer & Co-Founder, The Alchemist

Bridget Russo, Chief Marketing Officer, Shinola

Mike O’Toole, President, PJA Advertising; Host, The Unconventionals

  • Digital dominates our everyday lives, and we increasingly organize our world around the software, platforms, and devices of the world’s largest technology brands. At the same time, there is a renewed craving for brands that are small, hand-crafted, and proudly analog. We’ll hear from leaders of three such brands, and we’ll discuss the role that scale, product quality, location, and story play in reviving categories and driving fierce loyalty.

The frightful five set up to dominate our lives. Addicted to devices, but crave the small, the hand crafted. The revival of craft. Here comes analog and third dimension.

Starting in 2003 a small brew pub in Waterbury, VT. Pub destroyed by tropical storm Irene while building a production facility. Sold first beer 2 days after Irene. Heady Topper, best craft beer.  Tweet, plane ticket, customer arrives by plane from Florida to drink Heady Topper. Word spreads.

Shinola started 2012 in Detroit. Build a watch factory. Create jobs in the U.S. Worked for Bono’s fashion brand Eden in 2004, conscious fashion. Now you talk about the process.

Jack White’s record label. Third Man Records. All these bands or other artists I haven’t heard of. That shows you how old I am. Repositioned YouTube video of Carl Segan, the astronomers words, with musical background.

What is behind revival craft. Too much digital, feel disconnected in human way. People want that human experience.

Cultural rejection of this watering down of society. I.e. Wonder Bread. Giant corporations took over, dumbed down. Not for me, there is so much more to my life.

People need connection to quality to realness. The appreciation of a finely made time piece.

Is craft a fad?

Desire for quality, who makes them. Faces behind who makes it and who supplies them. Issue of quality.

Would people spend more to buy U.S. manufactured. More value made in Detroit. Made is U.S.A, is somewhat diluted.

Third Man Records also in Detroit near Shinola. Record label, merchandising. VInyl manufacturing. First new vinyl new press machines made in 35 years.WOW! DYI record label. PSI beyond his pay grade. Record sales have gone from 1mm to 14mm in annual sales. Have you bought any vinyl? Third Man Records 350 titles, 2mm pieces of vinyl. Third Man a good face for vinyl. Smaller, interesting, craft things.

Most interesting parts of industry.

Word of mouth.

THe Alchemist Heady Topper goal is to creat good jobs and compensation. Never forget the lousy jobs I had and I wouldn’t have my experience in my company. But family and lifestyle first. If work is done, only work 4 days, take the 5th day off.

Limited edition only buy in store. Lack of immediate gratification. People get upset. Buy record listen or object. Local businessman hired homeless people to wait on line to buy records from the shop at $30. Now on EBay for $500.

How big is the craft business?

These craft guys are acting like fashion guys. They each have their version of their Hermes “Birkin Bag”. How do they scale? At what point do they get so big that the craft comes apart at the seams?

Competitive Advantage is Dead: Long Live Competitive Advantage

Rita Gunther McGrath, Professor, Columbia Business School

  • The holy grail of traditional strategy was to find an attractive position in a high-growth industry and fiercely protect it with traditional entry barriers such as cost of entry. But the nature of a long-lived competitive advantage has changed, with new entry conditions, such as network effects, taking over from traditional ones. We’ll discuss the new sources of advantage and how firms should be thinking about them in a more transient society.

Think arenas, not industries.

New ways of thinking about strategies. Hard for existing.

THe new playbook for strategy

Continuous reconfiguration

Healthy disengagement

Deft resource allocation

Innovation proficiency

A discovery driven leadership mindset

Entrepreneurial career management

Always keep moving. Change is good. Repurpose resources for change. Selling safe cash flow no growth businesses, i.e. Verizon selling Yellow pages, land lines. Get out why there is still time, when there is still value.

Walkman, playing albums, battery powered, spinning media, CDs or cassettes. Sony didn’t have will but had the resources to make an iPod. But didn’t. GIve up 10% of budget and reallocate pool to what’s we feel has the most promise, what’s next.

Build innovation as a talent and a task. Not to pay lip service.

Governing, funding, metics.

You can’t manage a secret.

Work as team, no hierarchy

Tour of duty career strategy, hired for task, gig economy. Boundaries, networks much more important. We are all entrepreneurs now.

Schisbsted, separated print from digital. One of largest publishers of online classifieds in the world.

Trends in the new advantage

Increasing marketability of anything. Access to assets, not ownership of assets. Overlay of social turns these markets into experiences.

Peak stuff, we have bought as much as we need.

Influenced by others buyers and users, not so much by advertising, marketing.

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