An interview with:
Interviewed by Sam Narisi
Michael Williams has had the chance to work for several of
the most admired brands in the world, including Disney, the National Football
League, the National Hockey League as well as with the
global advertising agency J. Walter Thompson, where he managed a $50M annual
portfolio for Ford Motor Company. In his current role as Chief Marketing
Officer for The Grand Prix of America, Michael is responsible for running
general business operations including all sales and marketing matters, event
programming, and customer experience and engagement, as well as establishing
the brand position and strategic business model that will guarantee long term
growth for the Grand Prix and Formula 1 in North America and throughout the
world, a job he says allows him to use all the skills and experience he has
gained throughout his career.
Williams is joining us at this year’s 15th Anniversary MARKETING WORLD 2014: AFrost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange, this week in Boston, to share
his expertise and insight around the future of marketing. We caught up with Michael
to talk about some of the ways the role of marketers is changing and what CMOs
and others must do to stay ahead.
As marketing’s role
changes, what are some of the key skills marketers need to stay relevant?
I think those skills are always changing. Successful
marketers are the ones who are able to realize how the landscape is evolving
and apply their skills to what is needed at the time. For instance, the
challenges we’re going to face with Formula 1 in the first year are going to be
vastly different from the challenges we’ll face in years two through fifteen.
In year one, it’s mostly about awareness building and creating a platform to
deliver this race, while in years two through fifteen, it’ll be about customer
engagement, the value proposition, renewal and retention of consumers, and
ultimately creating a clear, effective, and engaging communication channel to interact
with people on a continual basis.
Nowadays, marketing isn’t just about creating a single
interaction with a consumer. It’s about relationships. For instance, when you use
social media now, it’s not a one-way conversation. We’re talking with
customers, rather than to them. I think that’s one of the biggest evolutions
within marketing. It’s not just blindly throwing blanket statements out there
and hoping it resonates with people. You need to create relevant, topical, and
engaging content, deliver it in a strategic manner, and make sure that once you
have that engagement, you never do anything to discourage it or break up the
relationship. You have to nurture the relationship and deliver on what you
promise and what your brand represents. More so than ever before, you have the ability
to do that in a very clear and concise manner.
As organizations
continue figuring out the best ways to use social media, what do you think
marketers should be doing to change their approach?
The role of a CMO is changing from just a traditional
marketer to someone with the skill set of a marketer, but also with the ability
to be a good listener. You have to listen to your consumers and what the market
is telling you, and then you have to be nimble enough to go back and change your
strategy and how you’re delivering your messages to people, if necessary.
Never before has the power been so strongly in the hands of
the consumer. The speed with which things are done now forces you to be concerned
with listening and engaging the consumer. But it also forces you to do the
traditional work of recognizing a problem, devising a solution, and then
figuring out the best way to communicate that solution.
What other trends
within social media and technology do you think will impact marketers moving
forward?
I think consumer-developed content is going to make up a
larger portion of how companies communicate the positive attributes of their
brand. Before, marketers used to think they were the ones managing and
dictating what was happening with the brand, but now you need to realize that
there are conversations about your company that are happening constantly,
whether you’re involved or not.
A lot of times, depending on what your product is, if you’ve
gotten people emotionally invested in your brand, then they’re going to voice
their own stories. You’re going to see a big shift where brands will embrace
those stories and give customers a platform to speak on behalf of the brand,
which is different from what has happened before.
How can companies
create that emotional investment?
You need to recognize the difference between creating a
brand and marketing a commodity. Those both might be the same product or
service, but the difference is in how you go about doing it.
Take a company marketing bottled water. In one case, it may
be a commodity where the company sells it on price and that’s how they compete,
and in another you could find a company that creates a story – for example, a charity
water, where a portion of the revenue goes back to deliver clean water to
someone else. In doing so, you’ve created an emotional connection where people
may be willing to spend more to do something because of the story and what the
brand represents. You’re actually selling the product based on the brand
attributes and the core value, rather than the tangible product itself. Tat
makes you different from everybody else.
What are some of the
challenges around these areas you’re facing with Grand Prix of America and how
are you overcoming them?
One factor with Formula 1 is that it’s not well known in the
U.S., so there is going to be an educational and awareness-building component.
But bringing a race to the New York and New Jersey market offers a tremendous
amount of opportunity that you may not have elsewhere. There’s a large
percentage of the population that reside throughout the northeast that are
either from another country, have some kind of international influence, or do
international business of some kind and already know the value of F1 and have an
enormous passion for it.
Ernest Hemingway said that “There are only three sports:
bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.”
The Grand Prix of America has the unique opportunity to do something truly
spectacular. We will deliver an exceptional race experience that is grounded in
creativity, innovation, safety and the highest standards found in live event
production around the globe. The genesis of our brand may have been born from
racing, but the DNA of who we are and what our brand represents is so much
more.
It’s our responsibility to deliver a compelling story
alongside an incredible product. After all, we are creating moments that will
forever change the way that people look at Formula 1.
