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» Bob Pearson - Vice President of communities and conversations for Dell (#1)
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We all know Xerox. It’s one of those business icons that seem to have been part of our lives for forever. As a brand it’s well-respected worldwide for its history of innovation in the area of office solutions. As such, when I spoke to Barbara Basney, director of global advertising for Xerox, I asked her how she and her team incorporate digital tools into their marketing plans. Was there a specific Xerox philosophy relative to the space?
BB: I see digital as a natural extension of other media channels. It’s something we use as a matter of course. The question we ask at the beginning of each campaign is “What are the best ways to meet our goals?” Digital tools are now just part and parcel of the whole communication package. The key is to determine how to best leverage them to meet our business objectives. While many organizations see the digital space as something new, it isn’t, relatively speaking. I started using digital technology to help support the Xerox message in 2000. While that doesn’t seem that long ago, in digital time it is.
AA: Digital technology, the tools and tactics are continuously evolving. They add facets to the communication experience marketers didn’t have before. But, as you said, they must be used to meet a specific business objective. It’s not about just having fun. Can you give me an example of something you’ve done that makes appropriate use of digital tools?
BB: Xerox may be a legacy brand, which is great in many respects, but we’ve long been associated with black and white copying. We’ve also been wrongly perceived as being more expensive than other brands. In 2007 we launched a campaign, the objective of which was to change this perception. We needed to make it clear that Xerox was a leader in color copying solutions and affordable color solutions, at that. We could have just gone out with a simple, factual message, “we do color and we’re not expensive,” but in this day and age that wouldn’t have been effective, nor would it have helped us move away from our somewhat stodgy heritage. It’s not enough to be relevant these days. You have to be engaging and digital is the perfect engagement medium. We created a campaign entitled Frugal Color, along with a Web site, frugalcolor.com, which parodied the TV show, “The Office.” It was a tongue-in-cheek series of TV spots and online videos starring comedic characters that relayed the frugal color message in a funny, engaging way. In fact, we didn’t realize how engaging it would turn out to be. The average time people spent viewing the online videos was five and half minutes. You can’t buy that kind of voluntary engagement from consumers!
AA: Everyone I spoke to in preparation for my book BrandDigital expressed the same philosophy about the digital arena, that relevance isn’t enough. You have to find a way to get consumers to voluntarily spend time with your brand. You have to build a communication strategy that transcends the functional. Creative work is a key success factor in the digital world.
BB: You must motivate people to get into and then continue the branded experience. The message that Xerox offers affordable color solutions was not just received, but welcomed. We weren’t sure people would turn on the audio when they got to the site, which was advertised in the end frame of the TV spots, but the creative so compelling, they did.
AA: In addition to making sure you get people engaged in a relevant manner, what other lessons have you learned over the past few years about using the digital space in your marketing strategies?
BB: First of all, you’ve got to make sure all of your creative peas are in the same pod. You’ve got to have a single, comprehensive creative brief and everyone involved in the campaign must start together, working from the same page. We make sure all of our creative resources, TV, online, print, are working in an integrated way from inception to execution. While the financial benefit of working this way is obvious -you can maximize creative assets – so, too, is the business objective. The message to the consumer is consistent and familiar from contact to contact.
AA: Many people have told me this is one of the most challenging aspects of the digital era – getting everyone to work in an integrated fashion. You can’t work under the old business model rules in which traditional media drove the train. It doesn’t work today. You never know exactly where consumers are going to pick up messages. The brand idea has to drive the train and everyone involved has to understand this idea.
BB: Right. And among the other things we’ve learned along the way is that because digital is such a flexible medium, you have more freedom to try new things. Marketers have to be more willing to try new things. Embrace your fears! If you make a mistake in judgment with a TV ad, you’ve got a lot of sunk costs. If you find you’re off kilter online, you can make course corrections very easily. You can be very responsive to consumer reaction.
AA: Consumers have considerably more power today. While it’s important to keep this in mind, you also have to keep in mind the message you want them to take away pursuant to your brand idea. It’s very easy to get caught up in the fun and games, get so far away from the primary message that you – and they – lose sight of it.
BB: That’s another lesson learned. You have to have a “North Star.” With so many communication opportunities, you can’t lose sight of your business objective. As much fun as we had with frugalcolor.com, we never lost sight of the fact that we wanted to convey that Xerox is about affordable color printing solutions. You can’t get so caught up in being cool that you lose your business focus. As I said earlier, you can’t forget why you you’re taking on a specific campaign, why you’re doing this.