Gliebers Dresses: CMO Candidate #2

We're here today to have a discussion with CMO Candidate #2, Maria Garcia, Online Marketing Executive at BlueDotRedDotGreen.com.

Glenn Glieber (Owner): "... this Twitter campaign to Save Gertie is out of control. Who the heck paid for the airplane to fly over the building for an hour yesterday with a 'Save Gertie' banner trailing from the tail section? Now we're being mocked in the SmartBrief on Social Media publication. Many of you didn't think I read that thing, but I'm a hip CEO. Roger set me up a bunch of alerts and subscribed me to all of the leading trade journals, so I can follow the madness. And this is madness. Pepper, you're in charge of marketing, if Candi cannot fix this via social media, then please issue a press release or something that tells our side of the story."

Meredith Thompson (Chief Merchandising Officer): "Kevin, is that you?"

Kevin: "Yup, it's me!"

Candi Layton (HR and Chief Customer Officer): "We're about to continue a great Gliebers Dresses tradition, the group interview! Today, our candidate is Maria Garcia. She's the Online Marketing Executive at BlueDotRedDotGreen.com, an online pureplay that focuses on personalized products. Let's start the discussion."

Meredith Thompson: "How do you forecast demand for personalized products?"

Maria Garcia: "We're never trying to forecast how many t-shirts will have the phrase 'Have a Blast!' on them. We do a reasonable job of knowing how many t-shirts we'll sell by size and color."

Lois Gladstone: "You don't have a catalog to drive sales. So ... how do you drive sales?"

Maria Garcia: "Honestly, we have a vibrant online community that sells for us. You only get access to our discounts and promotions by being part of our community, and you only become part of the community by being invited by a friend, sort of like the way that Gilt operates, an indirect discount competitor of yours. This creates a level of exclusivity that is hard to match."

Meredith Thompson: "But how do you communicate the message without a catalog?"

Pepper Morgan (Interim CMO): "Let me ask the question in a different way. If you had the advantage of having a catalog, like we do here at Gliebers Dresses, how would that change how you would communicate with customers?

Maria Garcia: "In many ways, I think the catalog represents a different shopping environment, and a different customer. If I were lucky enough to be hired here, I'd look to keep the audience that likes to shop with catalogs, and I'd look to build a whole new audience using the community-based tools I've developed at BlueDotRedDotGreen.com. I'd even consider creating a spin-off brand, similar merchandise, but different website, different brand identity, different level of community building, you know?"

Roger Morgan (IT and Operations): "Maria, can you describe the ingredients that comprise a hot dog?"

Maria Garcia: "What kind of question is that?"

Kevin: "I have a question for Maria. How do you measure the lifetime value of a customer who brings other customers into the community? In other words, you cannot be part of the community without being invited by a friend. So how do you measure the incremental value of community members who invite many friends?"

Maria Garcia: "Our database links all invites to the original community member. We allocate lifetime value on the basis of invites. We know that each invite is worth $70 of lifetime value. Before beginning this program, individuals who participated in our promotional program were worth $30 of lifetime value. So we know that each invite is worth an incremental $40 of lifetime value. Roger, would you be able to set up an environment like that here, so that if we implemented an invite-based community program, we could measure long-term value?"

Roger Morgan: "Sure, we'd just have to put that project on the book of work, and prioritize it as appropriate. Now Maria, I have a question for you. Which state was admitted to the Union first ... Wyoming, or New Mexico?"

Maria Garcia: "What kind of question is that?"

Kevin: "What type of tools do you use to analyze customer behavior?"

Maria Garcia: "We have an in-house customer database, and we feed database attributes from Google Analytics to our in-house customer database, called 'Cheyenne'. We do ad-hoc analyses with 'R', SQL, and Microsoft Access."

Roger Morgan: "How did you arrive at that toolset?"

Maria Garcia: "We purposely go with inexpensive, open-source solutions. Our merchandising systems are all written with open-source software, and are fully integrated with the customer database."

Roger Morgan: "Must be nice to build things from scratch, as opposed to having to integrate new solutions with old platforms."

Candi Layton: "You don't have a lot of catalog experience. How would you compensate for that lack of experience?

Maria Garcia: "I'd lean on Meredith, to be honest. Based on our discussion earlier today, she knows everything. I think the two of us could bring out the best in traditional techniques and new thinking."

Pepper Morgan: If Glenn asked you to forecast the change in performance of a catalog that was 116 pages, and now will be 124 pages, how would you do that?"

Maria Garcia: "I'd ask Meredith! Seriously, she would know of some sort of short-cut that I could use."

Lois Gladstone (Chief Financial Officer): We don't have a lot of money for marketing at Gliebers Dresses. How would you make every penny count in your marketing efforts?

Maria Garcia: "We don't have much money at BlueDotRedDotGreen.com. Outside of a bit of paid search, almost all of our marketing is community-based marketing, it's basically free marketing."

Glenn Glieber: "I love free marketing!"

Maria Garcia: "And honestly, we'd love the free publicity you are getting over the Save Gertie campaign. Why would you ever want to stop that? Let the drama play out for another week or two, and then actually Save Gertie, send her someplace to 'retire' --- heck, have your Twitter audience decide where Gertie is saved. That should be worth a ton of PR."

Roger Morgan: "I think we want to eat Gertie, right Glenn?"

Meredith Thompson: "At our core, we're a cataloger. I haven't heard you say anything that suggests you believe in the future of cataloging. As Chief Marketing Officer, how would you grow our catalog business?"

Maria Garcia: "I don't think you should hire me if you want to grow a catalog business. You should hire me if you want to grow your dress business. Last time I checked, your business was named 'Gliebers Dresses', not 'Gliebers Catalog', right? It is my opinion that catalog marketers are obsessed with the catalog marketing channel. Why aren't catalogers obsessed with the merchandise? I've spent a lot of time researching the catalog industry, and I must admit, I'm baffled. While online brands have grown like weeds in the last decade, the catalog industry seems mesmerized by vendorspeak, the non-stop messaging that suggests that there's no better marriage in marketing history than a 128 page catalog with 120 pages of dead trees that the customer couldn't care less about, coupled with a website that acts as a glorified order form. And then you read about who it is that puts out these messages, and it is companies like ResponseShop. You guys work with ResponseShop, right? Well of course ResponseShop is going to volunteer messages like this, because it is in their financial best interest to do so. Tell me why the catalog industry hasn't revolted against this type of information campaign, because this information campaign sure failed to launch catalogers into the 10% EBT stratosphere, right?"

Glenn Glieber: "Well, we have to get Maria on a plane, so we'll have to stop this stimulating discussion right here. Pepper, I'm feeling a little bit uncomfortable with our page counts for the March 2010 catalog. Could you work up a quick scenario where we add, say, eight pages, and then see what that does to the bottom line? Thanks!"