New CMOs Take The Helm At Anheuser-Busch, Balenciaga, Trustpilot And More

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This week sees a number of shifts in executive marketing roles. AB InBev names a new US chief marketing officer and luxury brand Balenciaga appoints Ludivine Pont Masssignan to helm as CMO amid growth at the label.

Benoit Garbe Ascends To CMO Role At Anheuser-Busch InBev

Benoit Garbe is named as new CMO for Anheuser-Busch InBev as Marcel Marcondes moves to a different role at the beverage company. This is part of larger organizational changes Advertising Age reports.

Christine Feuell Named CEO Of Chrysler

Coming from Honeywell, Christine Feuell is moving to Stellantis to oversee the Chrysler brand as CEO. She comes to Chrysler with a marketing background and previous experience in the auto industry from Ford.

Alicia Skubick Joins Trustpilot As CMO

Trustpilot, a consumer reviews platform, appoints Alicia Skubick as Chief Marketing Officer starting in early October. Skubick comes from Intuit Quickbooks and will now be responsible for growing the Trustpilot brand.

Coslov Promoted To Sr. VP Of Marketing For Republic Records

Alex Coslov is being promoted to the post of Sr. VP of Marketing at Republic Records.

According to the press release, “Coslov will continue to devise, engage and enact marketing strategies and initiatives for a diverse roster, including Pearl Jam, Eddie Vedder, Florence + The Machine, Lorde, James Blake, Clairo, John Mellencamp, Yung Gravy, Glass Animals, Lord Huron, James Bay, Bastille and others.”

Cindy Davis Steps Down From Post As Chief Brand Officer At Bed, Bath & Beyond

Davis is stepping down as Chief Brand Officer of big box retailer Bed, Bath & Beyond. The company has appointed Rafeh Masood as interim Chief Brand Officer in the meantime.

Amid Growth At Luxury Label Balenciaga, Ludivine Comes Aboard As CMO

Luxury label Balenciaga is scaling up according to Business of Fashion, and part of that scaling includes bringing in Ludivine Pont Massignan as CMO from Montcler.

Deutsch NY Brings In First CMO

Nicole Souza is coming to Deutsch NY as CMO, helming the agency’s lead generation efforts. Souza previously held post at The Integer Group\TBWA.

Social Media Has A Trust Problem

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Social Media’s Trust Issues Are Global

Is social media good for society? By and large, its own users think not. The report surveyed over 688,000 internet users between the ages of 16 and 64 across different markets around the world.

While 95 percent of the world online continues to use platforms like Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and more, a pessimistic view towards how social media impacts and engages with society continues to be pervasive. 

In North America, those negative views are the strongest, with 21 percent of social network users reporting that they have a positive view of social media’s impact on society. In Europe, that number is only slightly more hopeful at 27 percent.

In Asia/Pacific region, that number jumps up to a still-worrying 41 percent while Latin America sports 43 percent and the Middle East and Africa have the most positive view of social media in the world at 45 percent.

Gen Z Is Raising Alarms About Social Media’s Impact On Mental Health

Fueling this pessimism is a concerning high percentage of users reporting that social media causes them anxiety—with the highest percentage among Gen Z at 19 percent. That’s 1-in-4 teenagers and young adults telling us social media is having an adverse effect on their mental health.

If we have such a dismal view of social media, why then are we still using it?

While pre-pandemic, the incentive for using social media shifted from connecting to consuming content, the effects of social isolation during lockdown gave platforms a boost. Users cited keeping in touch with their loved ones as the main reason for why they continue to log on.

But look to Gen Z for how our relationship to social media is changing in the future. This generation utilizes platforms to primarily consume content, with 1 in 4 citing live-streaming in particular as the reason for logging in. They are also still using it to follow famous people as well as brands they love in the name of filling spare time (44 percent).

Building To Transform Society With R/GA’s Ashish Prashar

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Ashish Prashar (or Ash) is the global chief marketing officer at R/GA. He has a unique background in politics and the creative space.

In this episode, Ash and I discuss his corporate experience and how he got his start, which was being incarcerated for a year as a teenager. Ash says the experience was more transformative than any other in his life, and it gave him the drive and determination to build his career with a lens toward social reform.

Ash joined R/GA most recently from Publicis Sapient. Ash and I discuss his time in advertising and his lengthy career in UK politics. Listen to hear how his incarceration and political career inspire his current work at R/GA and marketers’ role in social reform. 

In this episode, you’ll learn:

  • The role of marketing in social reformation
  • Taking responsibility for the influence you have
  • The power of designing around people

Key Highlights:

  • [01:32] Ash’s experience being incarcerated 
  • [10:18] Ash’s first job out of prison
  • [14:56] Moving from politics to creative 
  • [20:40] Marketing’s role within social reform
  • [26:21] How campaigning prepared Ash for CMO
  • [30:11] Incorporating the human element
  • [34:28] R/GA’s focus
  • [40:01] Putting the focus back on humans
  • [43:40] Ash’s defining experience,
  • [45:54] Ash’s advice to his younger self 
  • [47:41] What marketers should be learning more about 
  • [50:10] The brands and organizations Ash follows
  • [52:15] The biggest threat to marketers 

Resources Mentioned: 

Subscribe to the podcast:

Connect with the Guest:

Connect with Marketing Today and Alan Hart:

Alan B. Hart is the creator and host of “Marketing Today with Alan Hart,” a weekly podcast where he interviews leading global marketing professionals and business leaders. Alan advises leading executives and marketing teams on brand, customer experience, innovation, and growth opportunities. He has consulted with Fortune 100 companies, but he is an entrepreneur at his core, having founded or served as an executive for nine companies.

What DTC Brands Are Learning From The Pandemic

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Last year, direct-to-consumer (DTC) ecommerce sales grew 45.5 percent, generating $111.54 billion and comprising 14 percent of total retail ecommerce sales. This upward momentum will continue into 2023 when ecommerce sales are expected to reach $174.98 billion, according to eMarketer.

In its latest report, eMarketer unpacks the primary drivers of the model’s success—data and feedback—and the DTC trends marketers need to know, with insight from DTC leaders on the key marketing tactics they’re currently leveraging, their view of the current state of retail and their learnings from the past year.

Over the past few years, a greater emphasis on owned and operated online channels has pushed more brands to adopt a DTC model. In 2020, the model became particularly attractive as the pandemic rattled supply chains, delayed orders and closed stores.

The DTC model allows brands to collect first-party data and to leverage that data to scale or improve operations, control brand messaging, choose how products are presented and determine which products require customization and which need to be created, effectively improving margins in all facets of their strategy.

Though digitally native brands faced a tough year, collectively these brands grew their ecommerce sales by 40 percent in 2020—an upward revision from eMarketer’s earlier estimate of 24.3 percent growth.

As the firm notes, the adjustment was due to the fact that 2020 was a mixed bag of performance and at the same time, because these brands returned to their digital-first roots and experimented with secondary distribution channels. In fact, digitally native brands outperformed the market average of 33.6 percent growth, mostly due to the performance of certain brands like Peloton, HelloFresh and Barkbox.

Looking ahead, eMarketer predicts DTC brands will continue to branch out into multiple distribution channels—for example, Harry’s offering deodorant and Allbirds selling apparel and socks. In addition, brands will focus heavily on their values as consumers pay more attention to sustainability, locally sourced products and whether brands are helping to serve communities.

“Now is the time for DTCs to get into expansion mode and figure out how to capitalize on the growth they saw last year. With shoppers feeling more comfortable returning to stores, these brands will likely face heightened competition, so the last thing they want is to lose relevancy with the customers they’ve just acquired,” said Cindy Liu, eMarketer director of forecasting at Insider Intelligence.

As eMarketer points out, what a lot of these digitally-native vertical DTC brands have in common is they’re hyper-focused and usually launch with just a few SKUs, they have a customer-first approach, they built their sales models around subscriptions and memberships, and they have a solid grasp on the power of influencers and word of mouth.

For Quip, vice president of growth Shane Pittson says it’s important they don’t exclude people that don’t want to shop online, and that brick-and-mortar distribution was always part of their plan given “retail is still a very fun place for product discovery.”

As for Scentbird, co-founder Mariya Nurislamova says the company likes to have “really strong influencer relationships.” The company started off by giving free subscriptions to several influencers and eventually, one blogger they gifted drove roughly 300 sales in 10 minutes.

According to John Sheldon, chief marketing officer at SmileDirectClub, the upside to ecommerce is the flexibility to tweak, listen and improve based on feedback to create a superior experience — compared to committing to a retailer a year in advance.

A major part of improving the overall customer experience for DTC brands is leveraging first-party data, to which many have direct access. With so much data at their fingertips, however, some brands don’t know how to utilize it while others don’t feel they have the correct data to work with. Brands should focus on creating more personalized and elevated customer experiences versus simply building transactional relationships, suggests eMarketer.

To better understand the power of DTC last year, eMarketer spoke with David Lester, co-founder of Olipop, a soda brand that didn’t even have a website in its first year of launch in 2017 – until last year when SMS helped drive the brand’s monthly subscriptions.

As Lester notes, cans of heavy drinks at a $3 price point weren’t particularly suitable to the DTC channel but when shelter-in-place orders took effect, Olipop jumped at the opportunity. The brand launched its website in fall 2019, and then ran its first Facebook ad around February 2020. As a result, the brand has seen a tenfold increase in DTC sales over the past 12 months or so, according to Lester.

As Olipop growth marketing manager Steven Vigilante notes, since last fall Olipop has expanded to multiple different acquisition channels and is adding on as they go while at the same time leveraging SMS to build a base of subscribers.

Since making some changes to its site last summer to emphasize subscriptions more, Olipop has grown its subscribers tenfold. Typical open rates on the brand’s texts are about 80 percent, 40 percent of which convert. What’s more, when Olipop launched its blackberry vanilla flavor, it did about $15,000 in sales in 15 minutes. Today, ecommerce makes up close to 50 percent of Olipop’s revenues.

Game Publishing Costs: What Every Developer Needs To Know

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Editor’s note: This article has been updated as of September 2nd, 2021 to correct Ben Walsh’s title and role at A List Games.

As the Senior Director of Business and Product Development at A List Games, I’m the individual responsible for finding talented developers to work with. I then evaluate those developers and their games before I conduct my due diligence on their teams. After championing those projects, those games then go through ALG’s greenlight process. Once greenlit, I shepherd the developers through the development process, ensuring that they’re able to create the best game possible within the budget and timeline.

I’ve been with A List Games since November 2020 and began my role as the Director of Development. In May 2021, I adopted the business aspect of my job and have been enjoying the challenges ever since. 

Prior to A List Games, I founded and grew an independent studio of 20 individuals—Pure Bang Games. After having engaged with game development and publishing in one form or another for over two decades, I’ve recognized several issues related to the costs associated with publishing. As a follow-up to my colleague Steve Fowler’s game marketing guide, I’m sharing the costs developers and publishers should budget for and why neglecting certain costs could spell disaster for a project. 

Publishers, whether on the boutique side or the AAA side, have a set of services that they provide—nothing more, nothing less. A List Games, on the other hand, is a bespoke publisher that tailors what they do to their partners’ needs. This dynamic allows for developers to do what they do best and leave everything else, including any issues or holes in the process, to the A List Games team. Developers looking to be featured are advised to start building relationships before the development process. Luckily, A List Games has the network to make that a possibility.

Development

The first cost publishers should take into consideration is the cost of development. Simply put, this equates to the initial outlay necessary to pay developers, which typically comes in the form of an advance on royalties. To developers, it’s like a contractual work-for-hire arrangement with the promise of upside on the backend in the form of rev share.

When building out budgets, one crucial area of development costs that many developers fail to note is overhead—computers, software, rent and other requirements associated with staying in business. 

Developers should also decide whether the game is going to have an early access or soft launch period. If so, the budget must include a liveops budget. It’s typical to plan for three to six months of continued development in a liveops scenario. 

There are instances where people underestimate how long it takes to polish a game. The issue with this is that the most difficult part of developing a game comes at the last 20 percent. While most believe that figuring out the game, implementing the core functionality and other up-front tasks are the most difficult, it’s actually after all of these are in place that you have to ask, “Is it fun and how can we make it more fun?” For this reason, I always suggest developers add 20 percent to their schedules.

Internal Costs

Of all internal costs, labor costs the most.  From business development and labor to quality assurance and project management, production is the true traffic controller. Depending on the scale of the project, there might be social producers, executive producers or a director of production that manages the entire production department. Regardless of the number of producers, production is often unseen and undervalued. 

As the glue that holds everything together, production is the department that reviews milestones, reviews and approves builds, interfaces with accounting, communicates with all other departments and ensures that marketing and development are on the same schedule. It also conducts game evaluations, ensures quality control and communicates with first parties like Microsoft, Sony or Steam.

One other area of internal costs worth mentioning is the quality assurance (QA) team. For companies with a pipeline of games, the QA department can be fully utilized around the clock. Without a consistent pipeline of games, those in the QA department become functionality testers, which gives the developers another group of people testing their game. This ends up becoming an added cost for publishers.

In this scenario, the QA team conducts functionality tests, though sometimes their task can comprise narrative testing to ensure that elements of gameplay and the story are consistent with and true to the brand.

Another area of internal costs is product management – a hybrid role between project manager and designer. The product manager is typically focused on KPIs, specifically, revenue. Many companies I’ve worked with skimp on this cost given that it’s relatively new and thus there aren’t many people who are experienced with it. The pool of people who have even five years of experience managing a liveops game is still relatively small.

So, a product manager who can look at the game in the beginning and offer design guidance, coming back to nudge it in the right direction toward the end, is key. 

Due diligence and evaluations are two indispensable internal costs that are sometimes overlooked. At times, a publisher may sign a deal with the studio head without ever having spoken to anyone else at the studio. The issue with this is that one can ever be too careful. Every publisher must be aware of and confident in the team behind the studio head. For this purpose, a due diligence team is imperative. Despite the cost, risk mitigation can’t be stressed enough.

Another internal cost that companies tend to neglect that they shouldn’t is usability and focus testing. Early usability testing is advised, even if the testers are “ninjas,” i.e., family members, friends or individuals not necessarily associated with game development. Having these testers play the game while the developer watches them take notes is invaluable. Receiving their comments to make improvements to the user experience is important once the game is in open beta. This cost could fall into the third-party cost category unless the usability testers are in-house.

The last internal costs worth mentioning are legal costs and business development, which include first-party relations and licensing.

Third-Party Costs

Depending on whether a developer is doing retail or going on console, age rating requirements may be necessary and potentially varied for different regions. For example, what would be rated for a 10-year-old in the US may not pass in Australia or the UK. China is a perfect example of how geopolitics plays into age ratings. China has rules against certain types of games such as gacha games, and aspects such as zombies and the display of blood of any color. Consequently, maintaining an awareness of which regions a game will be sold is necessary for efficiency and avoiding legal issues down the line.

It should be noted that age ratings are only important if you plan on doing retail or console, given that mobile and PC don’t require age ratings in the same way. The trick with Age ratings is that they’re concerned with what is on the disc, not just what the player sees in the game. There have been instances where moderators or hackers made changes to anatomically correct characters to remove their clothing, effectively going against the age rating of the game. Developers must keep a close eye on these sorts of occurrences.

One third-party cost that companies can’t fail to consider is customer service: who is handling the returns, who is engaging with angry customers, who is answering questions about how to do something in a game? Most companies don’t consider customer service in their plans or take it seriously until there is an influx of returns or negative reviews. Addressing this before it happens is advised, and it’s a role that can be outsourced or internalized. Typically, if the game is very successful, the developer should outsource customer service to a call center.

The Bottom Line

There are several costs within the three categories of publishing a game I outlined above. While no one cost is indicative of the success or failure of a given game, there are some that must be prioritized and internalized. To anyone publishing a game or in the process of doing so, remember to maintain an unwavering focus on the gamer’s experience, as that is the light at the end of the tunnel. To get there, adhere to best practices, don’t skimp on anything mentioned above, give your production department the authority and resources they need to get the job done and your project will have the best chance at success.

What We’re Reading—Week Of August 30th

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Takeaways from advertising and marketing articles making the rounds this week.

When Big Influencers Steal Content, Small Original Creators Lose Out

Mint

Amid the race to gain followers, content intellectual property theft has surged, with big and, sometimes verified, accounts stealing content from popular micro-influencers, then blocking the micro-influencer or turning off comments when they get called out on it.

Why it matters: Platforms like Instagram let users report cases of copyright infringement but by the time the violation is recognized and reaches Instagram, the damage—in terms of views and followers lost—is already done to the micro-influencer.

Unlike YouTube, which has better guidelines to safeguard creator interests, Instagram’s Reels makes it difficult to distinguish what’s original and what’s plagiarized as users must tap ‘more’ to see the caption and comments plus the video doesn’t show the date it was posted.

Boards Need Real Diversity, Not Tokenism

Harvard Business Review

The US stock exchange will now require all listed companies to disclose board-level diversity using a standard template and to have at least two directors from underrepresented groups, “including one who self-identifies as female and one who self-identifies as either an underrepresented minority or LGBTQ+,” or explain why they don’t.

Why it matters: To evolve boards’ views of diversity to go beyond tokenism, board members must work proactively to utilize circles outside of their current reach by creating new relationships beyond familiar ones. Boards can also accomplish this goal by engaging organizations specifically founded to help meet their diversity goals, such as Women on Boards, Board Ready and the Latino Corporate Directors Association.

AB InBev’s Natural Light Enters Vodka Category

Food Dive

In an effort to boost sales, AB InBev’s Natural Light has launched a vodka product in three flavors including lemonade, strawberry lemonade and black cherry lemonade.

Why it matters: The vodka category has been gradually growing for years. According to data from Statista, in 2020, nearly 76.8 million nine-liter cases of vodka were sold, an increase of more than 30 million cases from 2004.

NBCUniversal To Select Multiple Measurement Providers; Nielsen Submits A Pitch

Campaign

NBCUniversal sent RFPs to 54 partners after Nielsen, its current provider, requested its third service hiatus in a year. Eighty percent confirmed participation by the August 23 deadline and NBCU expects to conclude the review process the week of September 20. Six months after that, it plans to start data integration with its new partners.

Why it matters: In previous months, networks that use Nielsen for measurement, including CBS, ABC and Fox, have expressed grievances that it was no longer accurately measuring its performance.

TikTok Partners With Influential To Help Brands Find Creators

Ad Age

TikTok has integrated influencer marketing company Influential into its Creator Marketplace, enabling advertisers to invite influencers to campaigns and access key creator stats plus keywords, engagement rates, growth trends and TikTok audience demographics.

Why it matters: Influential, which has previously worked with McDonald’s and DoorDash on campaigns, claims that the new integration will provide clients better first-party data to support those partnerships.

A Masterclass In Agile Masterbrand With Lippincott’s Nital Patel

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Nital Patel is the Senior Partner of Lippincott, where he works at the intersection of business strategy and customer insights with almost two decades of experience. He works with global brands across industries on different issues such as brand architecture, portfolio, assessment, and positioning.

In this episode, Nital and I discuss agile masterbrand, a new version of brand architecture from Lippincott. They explain what it is and dive into the critical aspects of how to implement and use it in your strategy. Nital pays specific attention to the governance of your brand using this model and setting specific timing and criteria for when you merge an extension into the Masterbrand. Listen in to learn all you need to know about managing an agile brand approach.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

  • The concept behind agile masterbrand
  • Connecting new ventures 
  • What you need to manage an agile brand approach

Key Highlights:

  • [01:26] Inspiration for a French whiskey brand
  • [02:55] Nital’s journey to brand marketing
  • [04:45] What is an agile masterbrand?
  • [07:37] Key elements of a master brand
  • [11:27] How connected should a new venture be to the master brand?
  • [13:42] Managing an agile brand approach
  • [18:42] Brands becoming a platform
  • [21:20] An experience that defines Nital, makes him who he is today
  • [23:29] Nital’s advice for his younger self
  • [24:30] What marketers should be learning more about
  • [25:40] The brands and organizations Nital follows
  • [29:09] The biggest threat and opportunity for marketers

Resources Mentioned: 

Subscribe to the podcast:

Connect with the Guest:

Connect with Marketing Today and Alan Hart:

Alan B. Hart is the creator and host of “Marketing Today with Alan Hart,” a weekly podcast where he interviews leading global marketing professionals and business leaders. Alan advises leading executives and marketing teams on opportunities around brand, customer experience, innovation, and growth. He has consulted with Fortune 100 companies, but he is an entrepreneur at his core, having founded or served as an executive for nine startups.