A couple of weeks back Hill Holliday and Harvard Business Review hosted a roundtable discussion with a group of leading CMOs — Joanne Bischmann (Harley Davidson), Jim McDowell (Mini), Pio Schunker (Coca-Cola), Scott Laporta (Levi Strauss) and Ken Dice (Discovery). Julia Kirby from HBR moderated. This was the topic setup:
Have we learned anything yet?
It’s been five years since BMW Films launched. Two years since American Express teamed up with Seinfeld and Superman to create their “webisodes.” And eighteen months since Burger King taught us a chicken could be subservient.
So what have we learned? Do we know enough about innovative media and marketing programs to separate the one-off stunts from the ideas that actually engage audiences and trigger sales? Or is it still all marketing R&D — where we shoot first and review our ROI later?
It’s a fascinating topic. Essentially — what are the new rules for this new marketing landscape we find ourselves in? Or is it too early for rules? The discussion was pretty rich, and we’ll plan to write about aspects of the conversation over the next several weeks here.
An idea to start: One of the panelists (I’ll let you guess who) turned the entire conversation on its head early on: “If you had a great new product that you wanted to bring to market this year, I think you’d probably start with the proposition to introduce it with non-traditional media and then only reluctantly add traditional media back if it helped you accomplish that end.”
Baba Shetty 
Now we’re getting somewhere. Thanks. Great insights are driven by the quality of the question. I can’t wait for more on this subject.
The last quote is right on the ball.
I’ll put my money on Jim McDowell (Mini).
Interesting topic…
It seems to us that an effective interim strategy has been using traditional media vehicles (TV, Original Programming etc.) to drive non-traditional vehicle response. For example, marketers are using a break-out reality shows to drive viewers to use cell phones to enter a sweepstakes, vote or opt-into a promotion.
The strategic purpose of motivating a mobile or online response is to condition behavior so consumers are ready, willing and able to use mobile and online technology for real-time fulfillment at point of sale when the marketplace is ready.
Conditioning consumer behavior might not be a goal of awareness advertising, but it is a goal of brands. It seems the opportunity set of agencies and marketers might intersect here to condition the audience to be willing participants in a new two-way paradigm that covers the whole product lifecycle from launch, introduction and acclamation to advocacy.
We’ll be interested in hearing the panel thoughts.
[...] A couple of weeks back we reported that at our recent Roundtable with Harvard Business Review, one of our guest CMOs had posed the question: “Why not start with non-traditional media?”. That CMO was Jim McDowell, the head of the Mini division of BMW. Jim’s point was pretty provocative – why do we start from a position of assuming that traditional media must be the core of a marketing plan, and that non-traditional elements can be added in only after clearing some threshold of justification? If it’s an ROI hurdle that needs to be cleared, Jim points out that it’s harder to prove effectiveness with television than most non-traditional media — so why the hesitation? Interesting perspective coming from Jim. He was the guy that – - while heading up BMW marketing – launched the Z3 roadster largely on a product placement in a James Bond film. And later on, he commissioned the (admittedly overdiscussed) BMW Films effort. So when BMW launched Mini, a very small car with a very small (relative to industry standards) volume target, the organization had the courage to try to launch the new automotive brand with minimal use of television. [...]