Steve Cone is managing director and head of advertising and brand management at Citigroup Global Wealth Management. Along with five other senior executives, he coordinates worldwide brand management for all of Citigroup's businesses in more than 100 countries, encompassing 200 million customers.
Over his 30-year career—half of it in financial services for such other large companies as American Express, Key Corp. and Fidelity—Steve has earned a reputation as an out-of-the-box thinker who creates advertising that gets results. He writes about his ideas about what makes effective marketing in Steal These Ideas: Marketing Secrets That Will Make You a Star (Bloomberg 2005).
I had the pleasure of chatting with Steve when we were both speaking at a recent conference of the Zyman Institute of Brand Science in Atlanta.
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Roy Young: What makes great advertising?
Steve Cone: There are three essential ingredients: visual and/or sensory excitement, real news about the product or service, and a compelling reason to respond. Without these ingredients, your promotion simply has a lot less chance of making an impression on your target audience and ultimately resulting in a sale.
The average American is subjected to 4,000 ad messages per day. Why should they pay attention to yours? They won't unless you impress their two senses, sight and sound, tell them something special they didn't know about your product and service, and be very clear about what action it is you want them to take.
RY: Why are you such a strong believer in "unique selling propositions," and what must brand managers know about creating effective USPs?
SC: Every brand manager should read David Ogilvy's Confessions of an Adman and any article they can find about Rosser Reeves—the inventor of the USP concept. Also, always remember one word—surplus. For example, there are 1,200 varieties of soda in America today. How can you make yours standout among this surplus? Or take the auto industry. All cars basically do the same thing. Most are superbly engineered today, and in fact one of the challenges the auto industry faces is that cars today simply don't break down after a few years as they did in decades past. How can you get your brand, your model, to stand out? You need a unique hook. A unique positioning. This quest for differentiation among a crowded field is the hardest and most essential part of marketing today.
Creating USPs is more important now than ever before. To create the right one in general you must rely on a few people who think differently about your product than you do. Invite marketing outsiders to look at your product or service and give you an honest appraisal of the top two or three features. Then, think of a clever and truthful way of condensing their observations into one simple phrase that will set your product/service apart—hopefully for all time. Best example I can think of: A Diamond is Forever. That line has been in use since 1948 and will be—forever.
RY: You write that PEOPLE are the most critical element of all good advertising. Why is that so?
SC: Without being flippant—because we are people. Everything we do or choose not to do is based upon how we want to appear to others. At the end of the day, you buy a product or service because you believe you are buying it from someone who cares about providing it the best way they can, to you. There is nothing more powerful than creating an emotional bond between seller and buyer. It's that simple.
RY: You say the most critical time in the relationship with a new customer is the first week after an initial purchase. What should we do during that period?
SC: We should reinforce by email or phone or letter that the new customer made the right decision by putting their trust in us. If you have their email address, that is the fastest way for saying, "Thanks for your order. I appreciate your business and you will receive the item in a few days." The term that retailers use for this is alleviating "post-purchase anxiety." They are right. The faster you respond, the more likely it is that this anxiety never develops and your customers stick with you.
RY: How do you meet the new challenges of fragmented media and declining television audiences?
SC: Media has been fragmented for many years, and television viewing is going up, not down—it's just spread over more channels than in past eras. TV will be around for a long time to come, and certain programs such as all manner of sports and dramas and even local news will remain popular as long as society exists. By the way, your chances of having your message seen on TV is dramatically better than on the Web—based on simple math. American adults spend on average a half hour a day (not including work-related tasks) bouncing around 11 Web sites out of 30 million that are accessible. They spend 4-8 hours a day switching between 11 TV channels out of, on average, 100 that are available. Math aside, you need to pick your spots across the medium spectrum and concentrate on a few prime spots with regular frequency. The longer answer is... read my book.
RY: Has the Web created "new rules" of marketing and advertising?
SC: The Web is great for doing repetitive transactions and poor to horrible in showcasing products or services for prospects who are not familiar with them. Thus, how you use the Web depends a lot on the type of business you are in and who your audience is. As a general rule, the more affluent the target audience the more attention you should pay to how the Web should be integrated into your marketing campaign. And, for certain, your own Web site must be best in its class. When given the choice to either call an 800 number or go to the Web to learn more about what you are offering, consumers prefer the Web.
RY: Tell me a bit about your background. What path did you take to get where you are today?
SC: I joined four database marketing pioneers fresh from Harvard Business school while I was a senior in college, and initially with seven total employees, we built a dynamic database marketing company that grew to $100 million in annual revenue and 1,000 employees. This chosen path taught me the benefit of being able to be utilize customer data in conjunction with promotional marketing techniques to create extremely powerful marketing programs for clients from every category of business and for all types of not-for-profit organizations.
After 15 years on the agency side, I made the leap to Corporate America in 1986, beginning at American Express and eventually to Citigroup, where I am today. I have stayed in financial services because I view it as a noble profession. After a family's health, the second greatest concern is financial security. This is a universal truth that crosses all borders and cultures. My job and the job of my colleagues from Citigroup and the job of our competitors is to make the world a better and more secure place for families rich and poor and in between. I don't think I could get as passionate about soda or pretzels or jeans or designer handbags.
RY: What has made you most effective in your marketing career?