"Disruption is alive and well," Jeff Charney, chief marketing officer of Progressive, said. "All the things we do inside our company is disruptive. Be disruptive."
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- "More has changed in the last five years than in the last 100 years combined," said Jeff Charney, chief marketing officer for Progressive, speaking at a Content Marketing World breakout discussion on Tuesday morning. "More will change in the next 12 months than in the past five years."
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View full sizeJeff Charney, chief marketing officer, Progressive "How are you adjusting to it?" he asked the packed room of 200-plus people at the Cleveland Convention Center.
For those in charge of branding and marketing, the challenge is that from the moment we wake up until we go to bed, "we are exposed to 5,000 marketing messages a day," he said. "How are you standing out? How are you breaking through? Don Draper wouldn't do well in today's market."
Charney offered his insights via a 10-question ICQ (Individual Content Quotient) quiz, sweetening the pot by saying that anyone who got all the questions right would get a job offer from Progressive. (No one did.)
"Disruption is alive and well," Charney said. "All the things we do inside our company is disruptive. Be disruptive." The way to break through and get people's attention is by giving them something they're not expecting.
"True or false: Don Draper is dead," he said. "Not on the show, but ad guy Don Draper."
"True," Charney said, after a moment. "Ad guy Don Draper is dead, but his creative spirit lives on." Contrary to those who think "the marketing arms race has finally peaked, and marketing spending will go down," large companies are still willing to spend on great campaigns. To compete with that, the key is not to focus on your budget, but to focus on your creativity, he said. "You can beat your competition by out-creating. Out-create, don't out-spend."
When there was a 34-minute blackout during last year's Super Bowl, for example, Oreo tweeted: "Power out? No problem. You can still dunk in the dark." The tweet was retweeted more than 10,000 times. Charney was blown away.
Power out? No problem. pic.twitter.com/dnQ7pOgC
-- Oreo Cookie (@Oreo) February 4, 2013
So he and his creative team brainstormed for weeks before the 2014 Super Bowl on what might happen and how to react to it when it did.
"Literally three hours before game," they threw up their hands and gave up, asking themselves: "What does Flo have to do with the Super Bowl?" Deciding the answer was "Nothing," Flo tweeted: "What do car insurance and football have in common? Nothing. Talk to you after the game!"
What do car insurance and football have in common? Nothing. Talk to you after the game! pic.twitter.com/43oyfp99WS
-- Flo from Progressive (@ItsFlo) February 2, 2014
That honesty won the 77-year-old company praise from the Wall Street Journal, Mashable, and Adweek, who said things like: "Progressive stays out of the chatter."
"You can run a marketing operation the same way you run a Hollywood studio," Charney said. In 2010, Progressive had 500,000 fans on Facebook. Today, thanks to Flo, Progressive has 5.4 million Facebook fans, twice as many as all three of Progressive's insurance rivals put together.
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View full size"Flo," Progressive's perky spokeswoman"Flo is very, very risky content. It is written for her," not for the typical corporate boardroom. And although Progressive has put her in more than 100 commercials in seven years, people don't seem to tire of her. "Storytelling works," Charney said. "It will stand out over time."
And instead of relying solely on a brand book, it's far better to be open to improv, he said. "We've got great writers within our company. Let them be themselves. Let them write like people talk."
As proof, Charney showed two versions of a commercial Progressive hasn't yet released, of Flo consoling a colleague who lost a customer after showing him Progressive's rate with a competitor's. When she offers to take the coworker out for ice cream, he brightens and asks: "With sprinkles?" Flo sadly shakes her head and says: "Sprinkles are for winners."
You don't need a sexy, sizzling product with a big-budget campaign to succeed in today's content marketing world, he said. "You can make anything interesting. Just look at the ALS [ice-bucket] challenges."
Look what Blendtec founder Tom Dickson did with his low-budget "Will it blend?" videos, Charney said. "You love to hate this guy," especially in the hometown of Vitamix, but there's no denying the popularity and shareability of his approach.
Finally, he showed off Ikea's commercial launching its 2015 catalog, a "bookbook" introduced with the reverent photography and style of an Apple new product launch. "With 328 high-definition pages... even if you close the application, you can easily find the bookmark again," the voiceover intones. "Or you can upload yourself to the Ikea store and find the book there."
"Beautiful, beautiful content," Charney marveled.