← Marketing Vanguard
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- [00:01]
Partnerize Representative
Partnerize is the only partnership management solution powering profitable growth for marketers through an end to end software platform and comprehensive service practice. The Partnerize platform delivers a fully integrated, comprehensive suite of discovery, recruitment, optimization, payment, brand safety and fraud prevention capabilities supported by unrivaled service expertise. With Partnerize, you're in control of the entire partnership marketing lifecycle, all on a single platform.
- [00:31]
Todd Kaplan
Being able to drive not just brands and business that will influence the future of how people consume food and how the role it plays in their life, but this idea of influencing the cultural aspect of it and connecting with people on a deeper level to drive excitement, bring the brands to life, tell stories in new ways. That's really what excites me about as I look at the vast portfolio of brands here at Kraft Heinz. And I'm really excited to dive in.
- [00:56]
Jenny Rooney
Hi everyone and welcome to the Marketing Vanguard podcast. I'm Jenny Rooney with Ad Week and we are coming to you live from Brand Week 2024 in Phoenix, Arizona. I am thrilled to be here and joined by none other than Todd Kaplan, newly CMO of Kraft Heinz. Todd, welcome.
- [01:14]
Todd Kaplan
Thanks. Happy to be here.
- [01:15]
Jenny Rooney
So excited to see you. And we just got off the main stage actually, which was really cool because I think that was your first public appearance in your new role. Obviously you're no stranger to the stage, to this industry, having spent 17 years at Pepsi previously. Talk a little bit about that transition. I mean, this is a big move for you, frankly, a pivotal time for Kraft Heinz.
- [01:38]
Todd Kaplan
Yeah, no, there's a lot there to unpack. So listen, I spent a lot of time at PepsiCo. It's a great place to work, great company. They were very good to me and I had a lot of amazing experiences there. I got to do stuff I never thought I would dream of being able to do. From creating and launching new brands like Bubly, to driving cultural moments like the halftime show, to changing the logo on Pepsi. There's so many examples of things that just were a ton of fun throughout the entire thing. And I, it just got to a point where I was continuing to grow and rotate and learn and do whatever at PepsiCo. But I also was just at a point where I was seeking some new challenges and new opportunities. And the Kraft Heinz opportunity, I think was, was just such a great fit because when you think of the breadth of the brands in their portfolio and the complexity of their business, they have 70 brands across 50 different categories, three different temperature states. It's just a very different business. And to your point, they're on an interesting point in their journey as a company right now and joining them. And so they've been through a big transformation over the last five years. And so I'm really excited just to dive in and be a part of that transformation with the role that marketing and creativity will play at the center.
- [02:39]
Jenny Rooney
Well, I mean, you're going from legacy legendary brand to legacy legendary brands, and so that is a point of connection. It's interesting when you think about you've lived your marketing life in overseeing brands that are so part of the fabric of people's lives. What is it about the ability that this role affords you to have impact? How do you think about that? That's a lot of influence. That's impact. Some folks would say that next to entertainment, brands have pulled more sway over people in their lives than anything else.
- [03:10]
Todd Kaplan
It's one of those things that obviously you want to drive the business and do what's right for the brands and all of that stuff. But at the end of the day, as a marketer, I use this example with my team a lot. I want our teams to do marketing. That happens. There's this expression that if a tree falls in the woods and no one heard it, did it ever happen? And you see a lot of stuff in marketing, and probably you see a lot of it, even with ad week here, just in the industry of we're talking to ourselves, we're patting ourselves on the back, feeling great about this great campaign, this great thing that no one saw it, never heard of it. Right. It wasn't in your social feed, wasn't in your friend didn't text it to you, all that kind of stuff. And so being able to drive not just brands and business, that will influence the future of how people consume food and how the role it plays in their life, but this idea of influencing the cultural aspect of it and connecting with people on a deeper level to drive excitement, bring the brands to life, tell stories in new ways. That's really what excites me about as I look at the vast portfolio of brands here at Kraft Heinz, and I'm really excited to dive in.
- [04:06]
Jenny Rooney
Tell me about a time you did something. I mean, so much of this industry is about taking risks. And I would argue that you're somebody who has done your share of risks. You consider yourself an entrepreneur, you bring an entrepreneurial mindset. But not everything always goes right. So tell me about a time when something misfired, didn't go exactly the way you had planned, and what did you learn from it?
- [04:28]
Todd Kaplan
I mean, listen, risk taking, and I'd say calculated risk taking is part of the name of the game. Sometimes it's not just for the sake of doing it, just to say you took a risk. Obviously you need to be smart. And it usually is in service of a great creative idea. A lot of times has friction with other parts of the business. So there might be legal risk. There might be. We can't get it to market in time. What would people think if we do it? But usually if you're close to that line, there's something that's powerful with the idea that you're trying to bring to life. And for the right things and the right fights, you got to figure out how internally to navigate a lot of that. And that's something with my teams. I've had this mantra of taking no as a request for more information. Because at a lot of these big companies, everywhere you turn, it's like, nope, you're trained to be conservative as a big company that has shareholders and all these kind of dynamics going on, that it's easy to do the steady eddy and do the thing that's right up the middle. But what you want to get to is a point of to really break through and sometimes disrupt. You got to take those swings. And sometimes they're not going to work. Sometimes you'll fail in getting alignment in your company to do them. I remember at PepsiCo, there was a time when I was launching one of our more famous kind of campaigns, Better with Pepsi campaign, that we did with these burgers where you found the logos hidden. And we were going to launch it actually way earlier than we ended up doing it. And we ended up internally, it was too risky. There was not the right alignment at the time to do it. There's a lot of dynamics at play that usually go into some of that stuff. And so sometimes you need to just take that feedback, reimagine, understand. And sometimes a lot of those things make the ideas better, too, frankly. And so you need to be stubborn for the right things, to really know when to push and when to fight. But also be thoughtful too, that not everything you want to do, you can do. And you need to be very choiceful.
- [06:08]
Jenny Rooney
Not always easy when there's a CFO looking at your work and saying, but how does this drive the business? And obviously that's such a big focus right now for so many marketers.
- [06:15]
Todd Kaplan
Totally. And listen, I like to talk about it with my team is this idea of the. And there's this perception that you either have to do boring stuff that drives the business and high roi and lower funnel or you do cool stuff that's just like, oh, you're having fun and you're making content and you're doing cool sports. There's this idea of the. And like you can do both things together. And it really starts with a lot of the hard work and the fundamentals of knowing who you are as a brand, knowing your consumer, having your right growth strategy, understanding all the blocking and tackling of the DNA of what you're trying to do, and then figuring out a way within your plans for the year, how you can do both. A lot of times you'll do hardworking, high roi, product focused stuff that's not sexy. You're not going for Cannes Lions. You're going for efficiency. To just hit a brick to someone's forehead with a message of this is what we're trying to say. There are other times you're trying to be real clever and culturally relevant and doing those things and how you play with those things together as you build your brand plan for the year is really where you can drive the business and drive that kind of cultural equity. And ultimately the reason why brand building exists is to drive pricing power and drive differentiation, which ultimately brings that economic benefit back down to excite the cfo, of course. Right. And so there's two ways to grow, the push and the pull of marketing. And you need to be doing a little bit of both.
- [07:30]
Jenny Rooney
So right now I'm hearing, or have been hearing from a lot of marketers this concept that my organization doesn't enable me to be creative anymore. Budgets are tight and obviously what's happening with Nike and the stories that we're seeing around you, the performance, brand fight, for lack of a better way to describe it. And flip side, agencies are feeling really constrained because their clients don't want to take any big swings, don't want to do any big risky creative work. So everybody feels like they're at this sort of weird standstill. And some CMOs I've talked to perhaps found more creative opportunity at agency side. Like, it just feels like there's a lot of dissatisfied and unhappy people right now who have the creative passion but are struggling with where the right environments are for them to exercise that passion.
- [08:17]
Todd Kaplan
It's a lot of. You have to read the tea leaves of your organization. Every organization is different. Different starting point, different business dynamic, different budgets, different capability on the team, agencies, the whole mix. Right. But once you understand what it is, you got to really figure out who are your co conspirators, right? Who are the people who you think you can build the idea with. You could figure out a small win to then turn into a bigger win to then start to. It's building the muscle memory. I remember some of the first things that were a little bit out of our comfort zone back at PepsiCo were, you know, you'd get a little more pushback, but once you start to increase your hit rate, people are like, oh, this is, I see what you're doing. The other part is a lot of those other stakeholders, finance, legal, supply chain, you name it. You can view them in two different ways. Sometimes people view these cross functional roles as must haves or barriers that they need to almost like get past to do the thing, which is a bit more combative and a bit more tough. Rather than view them as a part of your team and bring them in early and enlist them in the vision of what you're trying to do and let them help you problem solve to get there. And sometimes you'll, what you'll realize is whether it's finance, whether supply chain, legal, you name it, R and D, everyone wants to be a marketer and everyone thinks they are a marketer at some level, right? And so once they can say like, hey, well here's a fun idea and what if we did it like this? And then you start to see and they feel the celebration of the success when you're doing it right. And so it becomes this infectious kind of how you work with everyone together. So it's a little bit of just bringing everybody along on the journey with you was the good starting point. And trying to inspire and influence through inspiration and excitement rather than fight and push and just based on a sole rationale and data only, you need a little combination of both, I think to get going.
- [10:00]
Jenny Rooney
So as you're sitting in your new seat at Kraft Heinz, what are you most excited about digging into and bringing the signature Todd Kaplan flair to?
- [10:09]
Todd Kaplan
Yeah, I think it's all of it. I mean honestly, it's been so inspiring and exciting just meeting the team and the people are amazing and just getting to hear everybody's stories and everybody has a strong desire to win and do great things. I've already set up these little roundtables we're calling them, catch up with teacups with all the marketers in the company and just to really understand where we're at and get going. But I think as you look at the brand and the business and all the different brands in the building, it's like a kid in a candy store in terms of the amount of Stories and the amount of things we can do to build these brands for the future, to come up with new products, to come up with new ways to attack culture and figure out different ways in. And so I'm trying to right now to work with the team to prioritize on making sure we have a lot of the fundamentals right as you get to the kind of brand DNA, the positioning, the visual, all the kind of core fundamentals while we're doing the meetings, learning the business, hopping in obviously to the most critical businesses right now to us. And it's been fun and I'm excited just to kick off the journey and really get after it with the team.
- [11:05]
Jenny Rooney
Conversation that we hear a lot about. Do companies still need CMOs?
- [11:09]
Todd Kaplan
Yeah, of course they do. Like, please. Yes.
- [11:13]
Jenny Rooney
Why is that even a debate? And why are people even using that narrative?
- [11:17]
Todd Kaplan
Yeah, like no one's going to say do we need CFOs?
- [11:19]
Jenny Rooney
Nobody's ever going to question.
- [11:21]
Todd Kaplan
Right. And I think it's because marketing by its nature is a little bit squishy. The art and the science and science is easy to measure and that's where a lot of companies and financial metrics and reporting to Wall street and you got your annual report and all that stuff makes sense. The brands and the companies that get it right and understand the concept of brand building versus just product marketing, which are two very different concepts. Brand building, it's the long game at the end of the day by building equity and establishing a core point of difference for your brand that you can visually take through the product design, through how the brand's executed, through how you show up in the world consistently on a daily basis, can build much deeper brand, which ultimately again drives pricing power, which drives differentiation from the rest of your competitive set, which ultimately delivers on the bottom line for these things as opposed to, yeah, you can push and just lower funnel and just cut price on your product and have trade to get you extra shelf space and you can do all that and drive sales, but you're just going to be on a hamster wheel of short term successes and it's like a race to the bottom as opposed to really a more sustainable growth platform, which is really this idea of brand building.
- [12:33]
Jenny Rooney
Proudest work you did at Pepsi that really actually quantifiably drove the business.
- [12:38]
Todd Kaplan
I mean it's a tough question because I was there for probably like 150 years and so there's a lot of work I'm very proud of. And I will answer that more at the macro level as opposed to Even a specific campaign because there's so many elements. I'd say I'm really proud of the work. When I was leading the water portfolio to really take it as this big from two of we just had Awkwafina to creating these brands like Lifewater and Bubbly and becoming a driver for growth in the whole category and the sustainable like just really creating a brand from soup to nuts is a really tough and fun process and I'm very proud of the work there. And then I'd say on brand Pepsi it's interesting when you leave a company you look backwards and you see it a little bit differently than when you're in it or whatever. But the journey of that was a brand that was in a 10 plus year straight decline. The category was having a tough time. The brand had a bit of an identity crisis. And coming in, being able to for.
- [13:27]
Convene Representative
All your meeting, event and workplace needs convene is a partner, not just the place. A preeminent global hospitality company within the meeting, event and shared workplace industries. The company and its portfolio of brands provide clients with concierge style service in house, food and beverage in house, event production resources and dedicated service staff, all to ensure a seamless and memorable experience.
- [13:54]
Partnerize Representative
Partnerise is the only global partnership management solution powering profitable growth for marketers through an end to end software platform and comprehensive service practice. The Partnerize platform delivers a fully integrated comprehensive suite of discovery, recruitment, optimization, payment, brand safety and fraud prevention capabilities supported by unrivaled service, including the category's only in house support program. With Partnerize, you're in control of the entire partnership marketing lifecycle all on a single platform. Partnerize gives marketers a better way to.
- [14:34]
Todd Kaplan
Partner, reposition it, get its mojo back, help really grow it through innovation, focus it, set it up for success, get it reestablished to that cultural connection that it had back in the 80s and 90s during its heyday. But really do it in a modern way was I'm really proud of the work and on Pepsi at the time we had achieved 21 consecutive quarters of positive sales growth after 10 consecutive years of decline and their equity scores were through the roof and there's still a lot of work to be done. Done is you look at the portfolio there. But I'm really proud of the work.
- [15:03]
Jenny Rooney
We did for folks who are perhaps they're in college, they're in business school, they're looking at the landscape of opportunity in business. It's become so complex and it's so to your point, squishy. In all the best ways. And you said you love the messiness of marketing, but how do you as a young person in this industry navigate all that? Because everything. Education is so linear.
- [15:23]
Todd Kaplan
Yeah, it's a tricky thing. Cause it's business. But it's also like, think of a friend of yours who's gone into the arts or in theater or something that's super squishy. Right. And it's like there's a lot of. I feel it's not like a science. I know I'm good at this or not. And this is one of those crafts that is caught in the middle where there is some science and there is a lot of rationale. It's where psychology meets economics meets art. Right. And that's where I think marketing is really funny because depending on how you're wired, you get to play with different parts of your brain. There are parts of my day job where I'm only on the economic side and I'm running through scorecards and understanding, grinding the data and trying to figure out how we grow our share in our business and all that. And there's parts where I'm getting really weird in a brainstorm and just throwing shit on the wall and seeing what happens and having fun. It's a little bit of this blend of, like I said, of art and science and the economics of how it all connects.
- [16:14]
Jenny Rooney
And interestingly, you started at Pepsi as an intern, so you're a great example of somebody who rose up through the ranks and learned on the job.
- [16:21]
Todd Kaplan
Yeah, that's it too. I'd say finding a company where you can grow, that doesn't mean you need to stay at one company forever or anything like that too. But I think it's just you should always be aspiring to be challenged and have this philosophy, if you're not learning, you're dying. And so just I like to make sure, just be intellectually curious, try new things, push yourself into a role or part of the company you've never done before. And especially at a junior level, you have much more license to try new things. And if it doesn't work, you can try something else. As you get more senior, people want to know, like, oh, are you a specialist? Do you like this? Are you a marketer? Your general manager? What's your point of view? But yeah, I think just try all the things. It's important.
- [16:57]
Jenny Rooney
Last few questions I ask in this podcast. What do you want to be known for?
- [17:01]
Todd Kaplan
As I look back at the type of work I like to do and this idea of being an entrepreneur, but this idea of Disrupting in the best way. Right. Of, like, not settling for the status quo. It's easy to come in and just say, hey, here's the positioning, here's your brief, here's the stuff. Let's keep selling more stuff. Here's a new flavor. But, like, in the most positive way, question the assumptions to understand, like, are you doing it the right way? And it's very easy, especially in this industry where paid media and ROI measurement and all this stuff. And we think we have it all figured out. We don't know half of if the stuff is working or not and how it all really connects back to it. And so there needs to be trying to understand other ways in to attack the same problem and creatively coming up with solutions for the brands and the businesses that I'm working on and just most importantly, making sure the people on my teams continue to learn. In the latter part of my career, I've gotten much more interested and excited and fulfilled by this idea of teaching culture and trying to pay it forward and show people what great looks like, not by just sitting in a classroom, but by doing and getting reps and working those muscles. Because I think it's really empowering when people realize, like all these creative agencies, they're literally just people, like, you're a person. And the only difference is how they're thinking and attacking a problem versus how you think and attack and maybe how you're wired a little bit to some respect as well. And so how do you empower that yourself to think differently, to push your own thinking of your organization and influence to drive those results?
- [18:27]
Jenny Rooney
Well, speaking of influence, every time you post on LinkedIn, you get like a gazillion responses. Talk about that phenomenon. I mean, you just, you put your opinions out into the world.
- [18:36]
Todd Kaplan
Yeah. And people respond, listen, I want to pay it forward. There's no real secrets of the trade of any of this stuff like marketing. Anybody can do great marketing, great things. It's around how to think about things. And what I found, even through LinkedIn as a platform, is that there's a lot of people who are trying to still figure it out, and myself included, by the way. I don't have it all figured out by any means, but as I've gotten more into this kind of teaching culture with my teams and trying to understand whether it's career advice, whether it's how to think through a problem, whether it's. I have all these weird, call them like teacapisms of these things called culture bombs and all these fun, stupid things. I do with my team that are things that these aren't like proprietary things. Anyone can do this stuff. It's fascinating to me that anybody's interested in it, to be honest. But it's fun and it's great in this idea. And we were talking a lot, Jenny, about this idea of like the community of marketing. And that's the aspect. As somebody who's an extrovert, who loves people, who loves just the journey is like it's just nice to feel the connection to other people too. And even if they're not in my company and understand and hear people's problems or. Oh, that was so helpful. Thanks for the advice on whatever. So I try to get back to people and do those little things because they make a difference.
- [19:44]
Jenny Rooney
Well, speaking of people, who are your favorite celebrities you've worked with because you did so much of that? Tell us some skinny on some of those.
- [19:51]
Todd Kaplan
How long do you have? There's a whole bunch of stories that I could bore you with across my whole career. I mean, anyone who knows me knows I'm a big hip hop fan and I'm from Southern California. And so the last halftime show we did that I worked on with Dr. Dre and Snoop and Eminem and Mary J and Kendrick, that was a very nice moment for me. Just fulfilling a lot of my west coast hip hop desires, I would say. But listen, and everybody across the board, what you learn in this business too is celebrities, athletes, they're all just people. And like people, some are a pain in the ass, some are not. Some are really nice, some you have great relationships with, some you just come there, they leave. It's a privilege to be able to have worked with and connected with a lot of these folks over the years. And it's something as we look at Kraft Heinz and where and how we want to connect with culture moving forward is an area we're definitely going to looking at sports and entertainment and how we can connect those brands further is definitely an area.
- [20:40]
Jenny Rooney
As you now take the helm at Craf Heinz, it's going to be really fascinating to watch your journey forward. Everybody's going to be watching and going to be very intrigued and curious to see what you can do with those brands. So much opportunity there.
- [20:52]
Todd Kaplan
I'm really excited to get after it. And it's like I said, there's so many of them that it's trying to figure out where we going to go first and how we want to get after it as a team and make sure it's all in service of the business at the end of the day and driving that ant like I talked about earlier too.
- [21:06]
Jenny Rooney
So, yeah, one name last. Quick question. Who's next? Who else should I have on the podcast?
- [21:10]
Todd Kaplan
I think you should have a presidential debate on the podcast and have both candidates here. What do you think?
- [21:15]
Jenny Rooney
We'll go for that.
- [21:16]
Todd Kaplan
Yeah, I'm just. I don't know.
- [21:17]
Jenny Rooney
Mark Weinstein said we should have Paris on, so we'll get Paris on next.
- [21:20]
Todd Kaplan
Paris would be good. You know who would be good? My friend Gary Vaynerchuk would be fun. He probably wouldn't let you talk, though, is the only thing.
- [21:27]
Jenny Rooney
Well, a little plug. I think I'm going to interview him in a live Marketing Vanguard podcast format at our media week in New York.
- [21:34]
Todd Kaplan
So. Very nice. A little plug for that. I see what you did there. Okay. All right, all right. The marketer, I like it. But yeah, there's a ton of folks you can get here. And this I love the podcast format, by the way, is just such a great thing because it just. You can be free. It's like a little bit more chill and unfettered. Unfettered, yeah.
- [21:50]
Jenny Rooney
We'll do it again.
- [21:51]
Todd Kaplan
I would love to. Whenever you want to chat, Jenny, I'm always happy to.
- [21:53]
Jenny Rooney
Thank you, Todd.
- [21:54]
Todd Kaplan
Thank you.
- [21:56]
James Francis
Welcome back, listeners. Today we are joined by James Francis, head of product from Convene, and we're going to talk about key things to think about when planning an event. But first, James, Hello. How are you?
- [22:08]
Heya. I'm great. Thank you for having me.
- [22:10]
Yes, and we're excited to have you because I feel like most of our listeners at one point or another have been to an event at Convene. So it'll be interesting to hear, like, about the inner workings and behind the scenes. But let's start with the basics. So what are some learnings on your end from working at Convene that can apply to our marketers or anyone planning an event? How should they start and tackling it?
- [22:33]
Yeah, great question. My role at Convene as head of product is really creating the space and creating the entire end to end customer experience. And I think the same approach should be taken when creating any event. Every event has a different goal, a different target, a different audience. Right. Is it internal? Is it external? Are you trying to sell something? Are you trying to immerse people in a brand? Are you trying to convince people of something? Are you just trying to share content? What's the scale of it? Is it going to be a series or a single event? All of those things make such A big difference in not only creating your event, but also selecting the venue you're going to work with, thinking through the types of room that you're going to be utilizing, the types of space that you want, what brand are you representing? Do you want to be in a class a glassy office tower or a brick built warehouse? Those things make such a difference. It's also going to change the location you're asking invitees to come to and it's going to set a tone as soon as they see that it's in Shoreditch or Williamsburg versus Midtown or the City of London. Right. Depending on which city you're talking about. So I think all of those make such a huge difference in creating an event. And then from there every venue offers slightly different things. Conveners always try to create venues which are very much a seamless, one stop shop type experience. We have in house catering, in house food, in house hospitality, and in house av. So it's very seamless. You can very much plug and play your event, but not every venue necessarily does that. And different venues will have different levels of service and experience. It might be that you have to bring everything in, it might be that you have to create the event very much yourself with a series of vendors or the venue might do a lot for you. And that's going to make a big difference in how you might select. And I think from there it's really about what level of AV you want, what level of food, what types of room. As I said, at the top. So do you want lots of networking space? Do you want space for vendors and exhibitors? Are you trying to create a great in room experience where you want a large branded backdrop? Are you trying to have more of a gala or a party? All of these things will make such a difference in how you select, how you think about this. So I think setting an agenda and a tone and a brief for the event right from the get go is most critical thing. And really what you're trying to represent and do with the event, what is it trying to achieve makes such a difference?
- [24:49]
Convene Representative
I'm kind of hearing like here that purpose and attention to detail are two really important things. James. And I'm just wondering, do you have any guidelines you can offer our listeners when it comes to picking a venue where some basic places that they can start as they start to think about how they want it to look, how they want it to feel?
- [25:07]
James Francis
Yeah, I think it's going to vary a lot by the brand that you're trying to represent. And I Think as a really basic starting point, asking yourself, are we looking for a simple venue here because we're actually just trying to train a host of internal employees, or are we looking for a really flagship premium, high brand experience? Are we looking at five star hotels for Convene in there too? Right. Or are we looking at more of a simple venue? And I think starting from that perspective, just like in everything, there are a range of products in the marketplace, from very basic and simple to premium and even luxury spaces. And then I think the next big question to ask yourself is like, what level of team do I have an appetite for event planning? Because the less appetite you have and the smaller the team you have, the more you're going to need a venue which is going to be very all inclusive. So you're probably looking at someone like more like Convene or more like a hotel that's going to have in house catering. There are lots of beautiful spaces across the world which you can rent as a venue, but they will do almost nothing to support your event. You'll have to bring in everything from the outside and if you don't realistically have a team to do that and you're not on the ground near that space, it's going to be almost impossible to actually execute on an event in a serious way. And so I think in that case you're doing it remotely. Single team, small team, trying to find a venue which is going to be very hands on with you and help you develop the event is going to make a massive difference to that and make it so much more likely to be successful.
- [26:33]
I was going to say on that note, like, I feel like the events that I've been to at Convene you get a high end, a little bit more like sophisticated premium experience as opposed to like other workspaces. Right. Would you say that's on point for the Convene brand?
- [26:48]
Absolutely. Yeah. We've definitely positioned ourselves at that end of the market and we spent a lot of time ensuring that our product is really high quality. I'm sure your audience is familiar with NPS score. Right. We sit in the 80 to 90 range, typically year on year, so the sort of best in class. Most hospitality hotels sit around the 40 to 50 range and so we spend a lot of time and energy making sure that our experience end is really fantastic. I think few of the ways that we do that. One, we do everything in house, so we're always making sure that we're overseeing the entirety of the product. That makes a huge difference. And two, I think having an in house production team so every single event gets a dedicated production manager to walk you through the event, make sure that everything is coordinated, make sure that all your vendors, if you are bringing in anything external, are there on time, making sure they understand your run of show, helping make sure that the flow of people works, helping make sure that the venue understands what your needs are and be that translation between a general manager on site, the client. I think that makes such a difference in ensuring event success.
- [27:50]
Got it. Yeah, I feel like that's always been the experience at Convene, so that's super.
- [27:54]
Convene Representative
Spot on.
- [27:55]
James Francis
Well, thank you James for coming on for our first segment. We're excited to talk to you about branding an event, how to successfully brand an event for the next segment, but thank you for joining us today.
- [28:06]
Thank you for having me.
- [28:08]
Ad Week Production Team
Thank you for listening to Marketing Vanguard, part of the Ad Week Podcast Network and Acast Creator Network. This podcast was produced by Jordan, executive produced by Al Manarino and John Heil and edited by Lane McGibney at Boutwell Studios. You can listen and subscribe to all of Adweek's podcasts by visiting Adweek.com podcasts stay updated on all things Adweek Podcast Network by following us on Twitter at Adweek Podcasts and if you have a question or suggestion for the show, send us an email@podcastdweek.com thanks for listening.