Breaking the Marketing Mold: Professor Laurence Minsky Of Columbia College Chicago On 5 Innovative & Non-Traditional Marketing Strategies That Can Engage Audiences Like Never Before
An Interview with Chad Silverstein
Implement a Voice AI marketing program: Currently over 63% of Americans use some form of voice assistance on their smart speaker or phone. Voice is transforming the way brands engage with audiences; from customer service support to delivering exclusive experiences and promotions.
Traditional marketing methods are no longer sufficient in today’s dynamic and fast-evolving market. To truly engage and captivate audiences, businesses need to think outside the box and adopt innovative and non-traditional marketing strategies. What are these strategies, and how can they transform audience engagement? I had the pleasure of interviewing Laurence Minsky.
Called a marketing guru by CNN Business, Laurence Minsky is a professor of advertising, an award-winning marketing consultant known for developing effective cross-channel marketing solutions, and a best-selling author on various marketing topics. Minsky’s client experience includes AARP, Amazon, McDonald’s, United Airlines, United States Postal Service, and many other large and small organizations. And his best-selling books include Voice Marketing: Harnessing the Power of Conversational AI to Drive Customer Engagement; Global Brand Management: A Guide to Developing, Building & Managing an International Brand; and Audio Branding: Using Sound to Build Your Brand, and his articles can be found at The Harvard Business Review, among other publications.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! To start, could you share how you got started in marketing?
It’s great to talk to you and thank you for inviting me to be part of this series.
I started in marketing because I wanted a career that combined my interest in psychology with my love of writing, so I became an ad copywriter at an in-house agency. I then worked at to a trade show company, where I innovated their attendee recruitment program, before making it into the ad agency world, first at a small agency working on a variety of business-to-consumer and business-to-business brands. Next, at the world’s top marketing firm of the time, where I helped create marketing programs for some of the world’s top brands
Meanwhile, I co-wrote a highly successful book on advertising, How to Succeed in Advertising When All You Have Is Talent, enabling me to make the switch to academia — while continuing to consult for agencies and brands.
Today, I divide my time between teaching, particularly on advertising and social media, writing books and articles on branding, career success, and other business topics, and helping ad agencies and organizations across the globe develop innovative marketing solutions and advertising elements.
My current clients range from huge Fortune 200 companies to entrepreneurial start-ups. About half are business-to-business and the rest, of course, are business-to-consumer brands. They range from packaged goods to services to not-for-profits. I do everything from helping marketers create their foundational branding elements to generating the marketing programs to guiding teams and executing individual marketing elements.
I even have one client who sends us the work developed by their other agencies so that we can critique it, provide feedback on the elements, and suggest strategies for coaching the agency to get better work out of them.
What has been the biggest shift in the marketing industry, and can you give us an example of how it impacted you?
I’ve been through quite a few big shifts in my career — the advent of in-store marketing, of web and digital, of social and then mobile, and of voice assistants — these were all new mediums for placing brand message and delivering valuable brand experiences — and now there’s AI, which can be a groundbreaking enabler for marketers as well.
The brands that won, new or established, were the ones who stayed ahead of these advancements. They innovated and tried new things. They anticipated the market shifts — or created them. They tested, iterated, and refined. They all used the new opportunities to solve problems consumers were experiencing. And they created value. This might sound academic,
These changes taught me that I needed to stay on my toes. It’s not what I’ve accomplished in the past that matters. Rather, it’s the promise of what I can deliver in the future.
A client of mine was once a specialist in animating in Adobe Flash. Remember Flash? He was an early adopter, an innovator. He built up his client base. They came to him because of his specialty. But then Flash went away, and he struggled for a few years before he could reinvent himself. I don’t want that to happen to me. To be caught off guard. I’m always looking for the new opportunities, the new platforms, the gaps, the chance to provide something new for my clients and break new ground.
One more thing about the shifts in marketing strategy — it’s important to keep in mind that there’s a history of veering between hard sell and soft sell. Often, the emphasis is a response to the economy. But there’s a camp that believes we need to push the urgency to create FOMO to “buy now.” And there’s a camp that believes it’s about creating the emotional connection. Really, the focus should come from solving the problem. Sometimes, the problem requires using hard-sell techniques. Sometimes, it requires an emotional connection. Most of the time, it’s somewhere in between or requires both approaches.
This fight between hard-sell proponents and soft-sell proponents, which combined make up most marketers, and the fact that the best solutions require using both approaches taught me to focus on solving the problem. Since every brand is unique, or should be, their problem should be unique too. If one focuses on solving that unique problem, the solution will be unique, which, by definition, is innovative.
Can you explain why it’s essential for businesses to break away from traditional marketing and embrace new strategies?
Innovation is at the core of being successful in marketing. It’s as simple as that. And as I just mentioned, it should be organic to the problem.
The first order of business in marketing is standing out. And using marketing strategies and tactics that are not being used by others in your category is one of the easiest ways to achieve that goal. “Me too” strategies get attributed to the market leader, even if they’re being implements by the challenger.
Then, once prospects notice you, the second order of business — if you don’t include inspiring people to make a transaction — is get them to talk about your brand to others. Again, this is easier to do when the marketing strategy or tactic is not being used by others in your category — and is appropriate to your brand. The newness gives it talk value.
Finally, embracing innovation can open distribution channels for your brand as well as new products and services. That’s what the web did, all the social platforms are enabling it, and now voice assistants.
Could you share and briefly explain the first major change you made to break the trend of traditional marketing that was not so common?
The problem with giving examples in marketing is that once an innovative strategy has been executed, it is no longer innovative. So, when you talk about it as an example of innovation, people wonder. It feels old to them.
One of the first major changes I implemented was when I was at the trade show company. People would register to attend and not show up. So, exhibitors who paid big money to be at the show would not get the ROI they expected. I rethought the attendee fulfillment program and it boosted attendance beyond expectations. Just small changes, but they were innovative because no one had thought about them before I did or at least implemented them. (like what? Needs an example)
I’m sure there were some things I did when I was at the educational publisher, but that’s the first one I remember.
By the way, another early innovation of mine was writing the book about succeeding in advertising that I mentioned earlier well before I even landed a job in an ad agency. I was struggling to put my portfolio together, which I needed for job interviews, and I wondered how the industry legends did it. I told this idea to a colleague, and she liked it, so we pitched a publisher and got a contract. I guess that was a self-marketing innovation.
What specific results did you see after implementing this change?
I can’t give the specific numbers, because they’re confidential, as most marketing results should be. But for the trade show, the number of attendees substantially increased. And we ran the new program with a second trade show and the numbers increased there as well.
What happened after, however, was interesting and brought me to my second biggest insight: Management needs to be comfortable with using innovative marketing strategies. Even though the innovations were successful, they wanted to see how much money they could milk from the program, so they cut back on some of the elements of the program and the results dropped proportionately.
But it was still higher than the original baseline. In their minds this was still successful — and more profitable than the original innovation.
They then eliminated even more elements, enabling them to spend less money than the previous round. As a result, the numbers of attendees showing up dropped again. And they continued this process until they were back to the original number of attendees and the program looked very close to the original one.
In the end, the trade show had to be merged with a group of other failing trade shows because it wasn’t attracting enough attendees to satisfy the exhibitors who paid the big money to be at the event.
I’ve seen this happen with other clients and with other programs too.
The bottom line: It’s not just the marketing innovations that matter, but the comfort level of the organization with the innovation and, perhaps being more successful, that matters even more. It’s too easy to fall back into old patterns, because they’re comfortable.
How do you ensure that these new marketing strategies resonate with your target audience?
First you need to fully understand your audience to develop the strategies. You need to look for the problems and frustrations they’re experiencing and their desires. You must reach for opportunities to connect, and your solution should come from those insights. Of course, you should always test and tweak and refine until you optimize the results.
Can you share an example of something you tried that didn’t deliver expected results or ended up becoming a financial burden, and what you learned from that experience?
The great thing about advertising and marketing is that unless you do something really dumb with your brand and it becomes a case study of what not to do, people won’t even notice if an attempted innovation fails. I think a bigger concern is marketers not sticking with successful innovations because they’re more comfortable with the status quo.
Great. Now, let’s dive into the heart of our interview. Could you list “5 Innovative & Non-Traditional Marketing Strategies That Can Engage Audiences Like Never Before”?
Sure, but rather than explicit strategies, I’m going to give areas where marketers should explore:
1. Implement a Voice AI marketing program: Currently over 63% of Americans use some form of voice assistance on their smart speaker or phone. Voice is transforming the way brands engage with audiences; from customer service support to delivering exclusive experiences and promotions.
Voice is also broadening the audience for branded communications, opening the ability for the visually impaired (and hearing impaired) individuals to interact with brands, facilitating cross-language communication, and enabling low literacy people to access brand information. It’s also changing search and search rankings that resulting from them, so it can help your SEO.
And finally, it’s a great tool for anyone who wants to interact with people who’re using their hands such as when they’re driving or cooking but need to access information. I believe any brand that offers curbside pickup or has a drive thru option should have a voice app.
In my most recent book Voice Marketing: Harnessing the Power of Conversational AI to Drive Customer Engagement, which I co-wrote with conversational AI experts Susan and Scot Westwater and the audio branding expert Colleen Fahey, we give lots of case studies in which brands are using voice technology, from shoe drops that sold out in minutes for Nike and Reebok to mobile ordering for McDonald’s UK to instructions on how to address dishwashing issues for Finish Detergent.
One of my favorite case studies looked at how Butterball used voice for their turkey hotline. People need their hands to be free to prepare their turkeys. What better way to help their customers than is to create a conversational AI app to walk people through the steps without requiring them to touch their phones.
2. Create a sonic brand: Another still underutilized strategy, at least in the US, is the use of sound for marketing and brand-building purposes. But it really works. It cuts across language barriers to communicate the emotional core of a brand. And it gets noticed. As I said in another interview, “you can close your eyes, but you can’t close your ears.” The use of an audio language can bring consistency to the brand, helping to increase awareness. Music and sounds are truly a universal language.
You can implement the brand across all its audio-enabled touchpoints, from their TV commercials — think Intel Inside — to the products themselves — think of the roar of a Harley motorcycle or the pop of a Snapple lid. Even the sound of a car door closing is now a composed, engineered experience.
And more and more items are becoming audio enabled. You can even integrate the audio brand into the music for your internal meetings. When considering developing an overarching audio brand identity, you need to keep in mind that it’s not the same as a jingle. As Colleen Fahey and I explained in our bestselling book Audio Branding: Using Sound to Build Your Brand, audio logos, and the overall musical language, convey the meaning in the music while the meaning is conveyed with the words in a jingle and the music is a disconnect bed for the words to “sit.”
One more thing to consider: the use of audio branding can help save you money in the long run, because you don’t have to keep licensing music for your commercials, meetings, and more.
3. Look for aligned categories into which you can put your brand or at least your message: Surprise is the secret ingredient for gaining attention and one of the best ways to create surprise is to place your brand and its messages in aligned but in unexpected media, places, and environments and in creating unexpected experiences. For instance, a pet product is expected to be featured in a blog about pet supplies and pitching the content creators for this blog type should be included your basic, traditional marketing strategies.
But getting the pet product mentioned in a blog about working, traveling, camping, home organization, or other unexpected topics would stand out and become even more memorable. Of course, the pet product would need to make sense being mentioned in these unexpected mediums and places. Can the product make it easier to travel or go camping with the pet? Can it help your home become more organized? Can it help you feel more comfortable leaving the pet at home while at work? Ask questions. That’s where creative thinking is required. Look to all the possible usage occasions and product features to find the opportunities to identify the possible aligned categories to put your brand message. And look at the interests, concerns, and issues experienced by the prospects.
Don’t just focus on the obvious. You might be surprised at what you find. This exercise can even help you identify new usage cases for your product and new products or services you might want to want launch.
4. Go small: Marketing traditionally has been focused on reaching the largest possible audience for each segment — and finding the largest segments. But what if you look for smaller segments who are more engaged with your product and/or product category? This approach is consistent with what works when marketers recruit influencers. There are mega influencers. They have over one million followers. The next category down, macro influencers, have between 1 million and 100,000 followers. Meanwhile, micro influencers have between 100,000 and 10,000 followers, and finally nano influencers have below 10,000 followers.
The natural inclination is to try to use costly mega and perhaps macro influencers. It’s easier to tell your board you booked someone famous. Micro and nano are not famous, except for the people who follow them. But these followers are more engaged with micro and nano influencers, so you’re more likely to convert them. In addition, these influencers also tend to be more engaged with your brand and category and tend to be more knowledgeable about how to position the products with their followers, bringing you more creative ideas to implement.
The drawback: It takes more work to coordinate micro and nano influencers, because you’ll need more of them to achieve the same audience numbers. But the return on your investment should make if worthwhile to do this extra work.
5. Become a “de-marketer:” Marketing has traditionally been about getting people to replace the old version of the product with the newest one, buy more of the item, and buy it more often. But what if you work to convince people to buy less of your product or service? Just think of the goodwill you’d be generating by helping the world address our collective environmental issues. What’s more, that constraint would challenge you to look for new ways of generating revenue.
For starters, you might be able to charge a premium because your product would last longer, which means you could be realizing income you have been leaving on the table. Durability would become a feature that you could promote. Secondly, the new constraint might inspire you to identify additional revenue streams. One possibility could be the marketing of new services that don’t ask customers to buy more “stuff.”
I recently interviewed Dr. Philip Kotler, the father of modern marketing science, for the Advertising and Society Quarterly, where we explored the role that businesses can play in enabling a more sustainable future. It can be done while still achieving profitability.
Just look at Patagonia. Many years ago, they ran a poster campaign with the line, ‘Don’t buy this jacket’. Their goal was to get people to think about how their purchases impact the environment. What’s more, they have a lifetime guarantee on their products. As a result, they built a community of supporters that have remained loyal to them, and it shows that companies focused on sustainability can be successful.
Dr. Kotler believes it’s going to become a more important priority as our environmental crisis increases. Jump on it now and your brand can stand out.
What challenges might companies face when transitioning away from traditional marketing strategies, and how can they overcome them?
You must always cover the basics, making sure that everything is easy for your customers, and you deliver what you promise. It’s where most marketers fail. And it’s the small things. In the olden days, one mistake was making the coupon too big to fit into the customer’s wallet and cash register.
So, execution is your priority.
But once you have that down and you find an innovative yet effective strategy, you need to stick to it. You need to feel comfortable with the results. (?)
How do you measure the success and ROI of these new marketing strategies?
The same way you’d measure success with traditional marketing strategies — return on marketing spend, and your success or failure in achieving your business and marketing plan objectives. You can measure the change in how people feel about your brand and whether you’re able to sell your products and services at a premium rather than at a discount. These are just some of the key measures. What an organization specifically looks at depends on the problems they’re trying to solve and their goals.
Looking forward, how do you see the role of innovative marketing evolving in the next 5–10 years?
Keep at it. AI is just at its infancy, particularly in its applications to marketing. Now is the time to jump into it, if you haven’t already. We won’t know what they world will truly be like in ten years.
What advice would you give to business leaders who are hesitant to move away from traditional marketing methods?
You don’t have to move away from everything. Experiment. Test. See what works. Focus on your customers and on organically solving their problems. You can’t go wrong if you start there. And the marketing strategies will feel natural, so the innovative part becomes not as daunting.
Can you share any upcoming initiatives or plans you have for further innovating your marketing strategies?
No. One of the key reasons non-traditional marketing strategies and tactics work is surprise. If I talked about what I’m planning and the strategies that my clients are going to implement than they won’t be effective in the marketplace, as I’d be alerting others to them. But you can be sure that they include conversational AI, audio branding and using highly targeted influencers!
How can our readers follow your work and learn more about your approaches to modern marketing?
They can connect with me on LinkedIn. And I hope that your readers check out my books. You can find my Amazon author’s page. Just go to amazon dot com slash author slash Laurence Minsky (amazon.com/author/laurenceminsky) or to any bookstore. They can also check out my articles by Googling my name along with Harvard Business Review. I think that these articles, along with my books, can put your readers on a track to developing effective, non-traditional marketing strategies.
This was great. Thank you so much for the time you spent sharing with us.
About the Interviewer: Chad Silverstein, a seasoned entrepreneur with over two decades of experience as the Founder and CEO of multiple companies. He launched Choice Recovery, Inc., a healthcare collection agency, while going to The Ohio State University, His team earned national recognition, twice being ranked as the #1 business to work for in Central Ohio. In 2018, Chad launched [re]start, a career development platform connecting thousands of individuals in collections with meaningful employment opportunities, He sold Choice Recovery on his 25th anniversary and in 2023, sold the majority interest in [re]start so he can focus his transition to Built to Lead as an Executive Leadership Coach. Learn more at www.chadsilverstein.com
