An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Customer Journey Strategy: This is one of the more complex strategies as it requires a complete understanding of the consumer decision making and journey using primary research and mapping the many way consumers discover brands. It is becoming ever more important as shopping channels expand into areas such as social media, DTC and shop online pick up in store.
As part of our series about how to create a trusted, believable, and beloved brand, I had the pleasure to interview Mary Rodgers.
As Cuisinart’s Director of Marketing, Mary Rodgers has significantly expanded the marketing department and spearheaded industry-first initiatives that have given the company even greater stature as an innovative leader. Throughout her career, she has established a reputation as a transformational leader who is driven by challenge, undeterred by obstacles, and committed to further standards of excellence. Her expertise encompasses all aspects of business development and administration, from controlling costs and maximizing revenues to harnessing team strengths to improve companywide performance. Further, her ability to build consensus among executive teams and stakeholders to promote transparency and influence positive change has been repeatedly proven. Mary was instrumental in growing Cuisinart brand awareness and securing status as the highest profit contributor with the parent company, Conair. Mary has driven the success with full-scope oversight of brand direction and strategy, engaging digital transformation across new media space through complex strategy design and execution that grows traffic and boosts visibility. She develops and shapes programs that drive business metrics, manages a $30M annual budget while leading a staff of 20 top-performing marketing professionals that include 6 direct reports. She positioned Cuisinart as the Number 1 high-end housewares brand throughout a highly competitive industry, holding the first market share position in 13 to 15 product categories throughout distribution channels. Mary spearheaded brand overhaul to drive Cuisinart to the next level, transitioning from a manufacturing mentality to a consumer mentality and growing revenue. She consistently reviews advertising campaigns, instituting a systematic approach to evaluate campaign performance and develop an analytical decision-making model that continues to serve as a benchmark standard across global operations.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
It’s hard to believe when I went to college, I started out studying nursing, but my real talents fell into writing and literature, so after coming to that realization, I switched to English Literature. While in college I worked in the dining services and that’s when I started cooking in a large format setting. My career started in retail in the categories of housewares which encompassed small electrics, general housewares, furniture, dinnerware, and glassware. After I got married, the retail schedules once I got into operations were not conducive for newlyweds so I moved on to my first marketing job in publishing. After that I moved back into housewares working for Dansk International owned by Lenox, then Farberware and finally Cuisinart. Cuisinart was on my radar as an up and coming brand in the small appliance and cookware space. In between, I received my BS in business, management, and economics along with completing my MBA with a concentration in Global Brand Marketing. And since then, I pride myself on my continued education in brand strategy, digital marketing, and numerous other areas to keep relevant in an ever-changing business world.
Can you share a story about the funniest marketing mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
The first week I started at Dansk was the International Housewares Show which is the largest tradeshow in our industry. This was in no way funny, but nothing for our large booth showed up. I was the recipient of mistakes of others prior to my start. My manager at the time, was very resilient, and he knew the show must go on. I just remember dragging all over Chicago finding product, scrambling around to set up the booth and make it look amazing. I still use that lesson today with my teams, never give up, resourcefulness, and tenacity are some of the personal characters that serve you well no matter what field you are practicing in.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
I am super proud of the fact that I consider our teams scrappy entrepreneurs. The roots of the culture are based upon going the extra mile, never giving up and finding a way to make it happen. That’s the scrappy part. The entrepreneurial part is rooted in how the brand started developing iconic products that changed the way consumers cooked in the kitchen and still today we are doing that in categories other than food processors, like toaster oven air fryers in which we are a market leader.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
We have a lot of new projects in the works, most of which are technology based to drive marketing efforts. My team knows my number one priority is marketing automation. My goal is to make sure teams are working on strategic initiatives and not mired in work that can be automated. Over the last few years, we’ve implemented a product information system (PIM), launched a new CMS driven DXP website and now we are going full circle where our PIM will be driving our product information pages on the site, so we will have one point of truth driving not just our site but out retailers’ digital shelves. This was a long term 2021 project that we will be launching in the next month.
Additionally, with all our digitally based and TV based campaigns behind the scenes we are building data platforms that bring together point of sale results with campaign efforts to understand the direct impact on our business. This gives us the opportunity to understand best performing channels and make future adjustments accordingly.
Ok let’s now jump to the core part of our interview. In a nutshell, how would you define the difference between brand marketing (branding) and product marketing (advertising)? Can you explain?
Brand = Longevity, long term impact vs. product marketing = short term impact
Brand building is the foundation of success for the long term. Product marketing is the activity that drives specific products and often, when those campaigns or activities sunset, so does the impact on point of sale. It’s like stepping on the gas and then taking your foot off the pedal entirely, it directly affects the product velocity in the marketplace.
Brand marketing is the emotional aspect of what the brand delivers to the consumer via the product offering which are the items that they physically interact with. Both must be in sync to meet the consumers’ expectations.
Can you explain to our readers why it is important to invest resources and energy into building a brand, in addition to the general marketing and advertising efforts?
Our efforts are broken into brand marketing which are the foundation to our efforts which are always on campaigns and advertising efforts supporting product, new launches, and our DTC business focusing on specific efforts on a yearly basis. Back to my earlier points, brand advertising must sustain the brand in the marketplace long term while flagpole ad campaigns, DTC support and often product specific support point of sale and tend to focus on product features and benefits.
Can you share 5 strategies that a company should be doing to build a trusted and believable brand? Please tell us a story or example for each.
- First Party Data Strategy: Allowing you to own a direct relationship with your customers. This equates to a direct brand connection and brings the brand to life. By using this strategy, you can serve your consumers with personalized experiences that deliver exactly what the customer wants and needs. You can also use data feedback to further refine content delivery.
- Marketing Automation Strategy: This strategy supports speed to market compressing the develop phases to capture online sales both DTC and retailer digital shelves in a shorter efficient and more economical system. It also, preserves marketing content and controls brand owned assets.
- Content Development Strategy: Bringing the brand to life through both images and storytelling, expanding consumer information to impact purchase decisions and covert the sale by further educating the consumer.
- DTC Strategy: The cost of added financial support retailers expect and now that most of the major retailers have launched their own media platforms, brands need to control their own destiny and the entire consumer experience from point of contact to sale to after-market support and preserving first party data.
- Customer Journey Strategy: This is one of the more complex strategies as it requires a complete understanding of the consumer decision making and journey using primary research and mapping the many way consumers discover brands. It is becoming ever more important as shopping channels expand into areas such as social media, DTC and shop online pick up in store.
In your opinion, what is an example of a company that has done a fantastic job building a believable and beloved brand. What specifically impresses you? What can one do to replicate that?
There are so many amazing brands that have surfaced over the last ten years. But two examples that have stayed true to their tenants are Apple and Peloton. Both are delivering an experience that goes far beyond the product. Peloton delivers a community via a lifestyle choice. Apple delivers access in the palm of your hand. Both have also found ways of making pricing highly attainable. Both are not easy to do but are also not easy to replicate amongst competitors.
The key is to deliver an emotional experience that engrains itself in consumer behavior, which is not easy to do. You must completely understand your consumers’ emotional state, how you can serve them and then what insight can you drill down to that you can key into to deliver a product that is the conduit to that emotional need. All very complex but doable. This is especially important for brands to go through this process to refresh and recalibrate over time.
In advertising, one generally measures success by the number of sales. How does one measure the success of a brand building campaign? Is it similar, is it different?
Brand KPIs for us are awareness, sentiment, engagement, and loyalty. For advertising we focus on conversion which equates to sales.
What role does social media play in your branding efforts?
The great thing about social media is the ability to curate based upon the platform and the consumers’ needs all while bringing the brand to life every day and not just when the consumer is in the purchase consideration set. This offers the ability to develop loyalty and long-term relationships directly with your followers.
What advice would you give to other marketers or business leaders to thrive and avoid burnout?
Don’t push your habits or expectations onto your teams. Unfortunately, in the always on business world the expectation is availability. You need to be self-aware, stay on time of your mindfulness, exercise, get out in nature and disconnect. All things I constantly am trying to work on. And lastly, be cognizant of your teams’ body language and behavior, in many cases I can visually see when team members are at their limits, and it is our responsibility to make sure that we mitigate against burn out.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
If I could make an impact a large group of people, it would be working women. 52% of the work force consists of women but 52% of management and executive level positions are not held by women. Even more so in the durable goods industry, where not only are women under-represented in power positions, but the highest-level ranks women are non-existent. Especially ironic when women are a key consumer group in our industry. Working women not only have the responsibility of their work loads, but those with partners and children are a heavy load to bare. In the last year we’ve seen women leave the work force in droves due to not only these points but layering on all the responsibilities of working from home and supporting their children’s education.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Lifelong Learning = Complacency is not an option.
One thing I’ve learned over time is that if you want something badly enough you will find the time to make it happen. When I decided to get my MBA, I was well into my career which gave me plenty of experience to reflect on but also it was extremely hard to pursue an advanced degree when I was already a director of a department. But I found slots of time to study and get my assignments done, while on the train or plane, early in the morning and on the weekend.
We are blessed that very prominent leaders in business and entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world with whom you would like to have a lunch or breakfast with? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
The list is long, but I will keep it to the top three:
Sarah Blakely, Founder of Spanx
Scott Galloway, Professor of Marketing (I took his section 4 class on brand strategy)
Erica James, Dean of Wharton
How can our readers follow you on social media?
If interested in following me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marymrodgers/
If you want to see what I am cooking up, follow me on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/maryrodgers/
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.
Cuisinart’s Mary Rodgers: Five Things You Need To Build A Trusted And Beloved Brand was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
