The Nutrabolt-owned C4 Smart Energy drink rebranded this week, armed with six new flavors, revamped packaging and an updated formula with new ingredients—including a plant-based caffeine source and citicoline, a supplement that promotes focus and attention—all to support its move into the “functional” energy drink category and brand repositioning as the “fuel” to achieve greatness.

The launch kicked off with a brand experience for attendees and Austin residents at SXSW 2023 last month, which highlighted its “4 Moments Of” campaign and drove a sampling effort across the city. The latter was, and continues to be, an important part of the campaign, according to Robert Zajac, Chief Marketing Officer at Nutrabolt. And with SXSW being an engine for creative minds, it made sense to start there.

We talked through the launch strategy with Zajic, who joined the company in late 2022, as well as his overall growth strategy for Nutrabolt’s brands; the importance of establishing “clarity of proposition” within that process; lessons learned from previous roles at Abercrombie & Fitch, ESPN and Nike; how experiential factors into his growth strategy; and his approach to working with influencers and talent.

CM: How are you getting the message of the C4 Energy rebrand out there to consumers?

Robert Zajac, Chief Marketing Officer at Nutrabolt: It all kicked off at South By. We have a multi-year partnership to be the official energy drink partner of the festival, and we thought there’s no better place than South By to launch this. It’s the home of this consumer, this mindset. South By exists to help creatives accomplish their goals.

We sampled over a hundred thousand cans around Austin and created an experience that brought all of that creative energy of South By together into one place, and then we fueled it with the product. A lot of the UGC that was created as part of the Smart House experience is going to become an out-of-home takeover in Austin. It’s just people—the faces of consumers that came by [the activation].

CM: What’s entailed in the broader campaign?

RZ: In the next couple months, there’ll be a broader campaign push that’s focused on a new messaging platform that we created with Wilco Agency that’s about staying focused on the moments that matter most—the idea of fueling your good to make you great. It gets unlocked through these smaller moments. We have short films featuring real people: a cutting-edge chef, a young designer, an Austin-based band about to break through, a powerhouse working mother.

And then we’ll have product-focused communications on the benefits. We have some exciting talent partners that are coming on board. It’ll go across retail and new platforms, and we also have a new LinkedIn strategy. If you’re going to fuel the next generation of creators, entrepreneurs, dreamers, doers and achievers, that’s a great place to do it.

CM: What is your overall strategy for growth for the brands that you oversee, which also includes Cellucor and Xtend?

RZ: The first part is clarity of proposition. So, clarity of message, clarity of brand, and evolving our overall mindset to be brand-driven and consumer-led. That sounds very basic, but we have gone through a bit of a reset, from our industry segmentation to in-depth interviews and qualitative studies to resetting how we track our brands, our KPIs and the return on those investments, to implementing a commercial mix modeling system. We’ve reset the table when it comes to how we want to approach data, insights and inputs, and how we separate out the different products and make sure that they’re targeted all the way through from the internal decks through consumer communications and execution.

CM: And this will be applied to all the brands?

RZ: Smart Energy is the first example of that. Some of the first work we did when I got here was asking, what is this product really about? Who is this product for? Why are we doing what we’re doing? And all of that led to South by Southwest as the perfect place to do it.

We’re doing that across all the brands in the portfolio. At the end of the day, we’re still a company in hyper-growth mode. We just need scale. We need people to understand what our products are, what our propositions are.

The other big piece is building out the right infrastructure, teams and processes, and then creating a more commercially-minded brand and marketing organization. You’re pushing the big ideas and you’re creating energy with one hand, and you’re measuring those ideas and sitting on the side of the commercial team with the other hand, in a way where they’re both working together.

CM: Previously, you worked at Abercrombie & Fitch, ESPN and Nike. What marketing lessons did you take from those roles?

RZ: They’re very different companies, but one thing that holds them together is that winning is a team sport. That’s obviously rooted in a sports mentality, but even at Abercrombie, teaming up was port-of-call in almost every meeting. If everybody wants to win, and everybody knows what winning looks like, it does so many amazing things. It checks your egos at the door, and it genuinely opens up discussion and collaboration. There’s a lot of simplicity in that. It builds stronger teams.

The other piece that’s followed me through is the notion that at the end of the day, ideas win. When we’re trying to drive a business, a channel, a retail partner or a new marketplace… there’s a genuine desire to embrace them and take calculated risks, and then watch them pay off and learn from them.

CM: How important is experiential marketing to your growth strategy for Nutrabolt brands?

RZ: Getting those products out into the hands of the right consumers in the right places at the right time is a huge part our strategy. It’s bringing together our activation team, experiential team and our field marketing team. We sampled over a hundred thousand cans at South by Southwest, and we immediately saw the business impact just within the city of Austin. Once people had it and experienced it—not just the brand, but the product and the flavor and the benefit—they started to buy it. Part of our strategy moving forward… is finding partners and then activating in the right way and scaling it.

CM: You have some upcoming partnerships with talent, and you worked with dozens of artists at SXSW. Do you have a specific approach to working with influencers and talent?

RZ: A lot of our strategies on the marketing side, but also on the sales/products/operational side, stem from our corporate culture. We have an entrepreneurial spirit; we have a CEO founder, and we’ve been around for 20 years, which is not a lot of time in the grand scheme of things. There’s an internal push that says, “Hey, this was us 15-20 years ago.” So how do we, as an organization, support the next generation of people who are trying to create the next great product, band or restaurant?

That goes into our talent strategy as well. First, we want to work with people who genuinely like the product, and that goes from very big [talent] all the way to what’s next—the next talent, the next athlete, the next artist, the next musician. We want to get to a place where we can help them and they can help us. That’s how you build longstanding relationships versus just transactional. We’ve found more genuine connections when it starts before there’s a transaction, and then goes beyond that.

The post Marketers on Fire: Nutrabolt CMO on C4 Energy Rebrand, Growth Strategy and Working With Talent appeared first on Chief Marketer.

TurboTax is perceived by most consumers as a do-it-yourself tax service, while its live full-service product, which enlists experts to assist users with doing their taxes, is less familiar to the public. Associating TurboTax with the latter is the brand’s primary marketing focus this year, and it’s amplifying that message through campaigns timed to tentpole events during tax season, including the Super Bowl and, most recently, the NCAA March Madness tournaments.

For new filers who are also student athletes—some of whom profited off of the NCAA’s updated “Name, Image and Likeness” policy—the brand has a new pitch. “This is the first full year that student athletes can make money off of their name, image and likeness,” Cathleen Ryan, SVP of Marketing at Intuit TurboTax, told Chief Marketer this week. “It’s a new reality for them. It just didn’t exist before.”

“Some of them are making a whole lot of money, and some of them are making a few hundred dollars here and there,” she added. “But either way, those NIL deals create tax implications. And it’s not just for the students. In many cases, the parents need to rethink their tax strategy as well.” Following is our conversation with Ryan about TurboTax’s March Madness campaign, how the brand is reaching Gen Z audiences on colleges campuses and through social media, new market opportunities, and more.

Chief Marketer: How is the messaging of the NCAA campaign different from previous years?

Cathleen Ryan, SVP of Marketing, Intuit TurboTax: We’ve been an advertiser in and around March Madness for years, but this is the first time we’re taking a collective approach to college athletes and students, inclusive of the NCAA partnership. But much beyond that, we’re going bigger with activating in new spaces, specifically where Gen Z and college students are natively, both physically and digitally.

Our entire program is rooted in education and empowering young adults who are just figuring out how to do life on their own, and providing them with the tools and resources they need to file their taxes with confidence, and know that they’re getting every possible dollar they deserve on their return. The NCAA sponsorship is a part of that, but we have college ambassador programs, a really big activation, and working with Influencer the platform that supports young student athletes.

CM: How are you incorporating the NCAA’s Name, Image, Likeness policy? That’s new for you, right?

CR: This is the first full year that student athletes can make money off of their name, image and likeness. Some of them are making a whole lot of money, and some of them are making a few hundred dollars here and there. But either way, those NIL deals create tax implications. And not just for the students, but for the parents. The big reason we’re so active in this space is that they need to be educated on what it means for their taxes and where to get help. And in many cases the parents need to rethink their tax strategy as well.

Student athletes are especially busy, given classes, practices and games. The last thing they want to talk or think about is doing their taxes. For us, it’s all about bringing help and resources directly to them, whether that’s on campus, working in partnership with the NCAA or with influencers. And then we have five or so individual university relationships where we’re reaching out through athletic departments, through student groups, et cetera, to ensure that the help and support is there. NIL is a new reality for student athletes. It just didn’t exist before. We want to make sure that they have the education and tools available to them so they’re not surprised at tax time.

 

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CM: Beyond the messaging of this campaign, what are the strategic marketing goals?

CR: We are looking to market full funnel through this effort, so everything from awareness, consideration, trial and purchase, ideally. We’ve experimented with a number of on-campus activations where students and student athletes can engage with our tax experts, ask questions and get expert answers. We’re providing a ton of content and resources for NIL athletes who need to do things like estimate their expenses, learn how to track expenses, things like that. It’s both awareness and consideration, but also engagement and education.

CM: Beyond this campaign, what are the other ways are you marketing to Gen Z?

CR: In addition to the NIL and influencer campaigns, we’re very active in the media channels and spaces with high Gen Z concentration. So, lots of TikTok, Twitter and social media in general. Media consumption has changed, so there’s streaming, OTT, Netflix. We were one of the first partners to sign on with Netflix ad-supported. We’re thinking about all the places and spaces where Gen Z spends their time, and where we can have a conversation, engage and hopefully entertain, too.

CM: In your research, have you noticed anything different about how younger consumers approach finance and taxes today?

CR: We have done some unique research around Gen Z—and they’re even less likely to want to talk about money and finances than previous generations. Unfortunately, it’s just a part of our culture. But where we can really make a difference is allowing people access to experts and tools, where they can find answers that they’re maybe not comfortable getting from friends or family.

One of the interesting things that we’ve seen with Gen Z in particular is a new way of working and living your life that is different than previous generations. You see a lot of side hustles or side jobs, and an entrepreneurial spirit. And that has tax implications. So it’s important for us, as TurboTax, to ensure that this generation understands the opportunities in and the implications of how they’re making a living, which does look materially different than previous generations.

CM: Where are you looking for growth and new markets this year?

CR: Ultimately, we want people to understand that TurboTax has a full suite of offerings. We have calcified brand perceptions of TurboTax as a DIY software product. But the reality is we are so much more than that. We have a growing full service business, where in a few easy clicks you can share your documents with a tax expert and they will prepare and file your return for you. We have an assisted product where you prepare your taxes with the help of an expert and it even includes a final review of your return, if you want that extra level of confidence before you hit the file button.

When you think about who that applies to, it applies to everyone. There is a huge opportunity, certainly for new-to-the-category filers such as student athletes, but also people that are overpaying a legacy tax pro who maybe doesn’t have the breadth of experience that TurboTax has. As an example, we prepare hundreds of thousands of returns with crypto expenses, gains and losses in them every year. Your local person down the street maybe has seen one of those. We’ve seen it all, and the expertise that comes with that ensures you get your best outcome. That’s the piece that we’re trying to get out in market this year: Come to TurboTax and don’t do your taxes. Let one of our experts do them for you. We are so much more than DIY and have been for years, but we need to get that message out there.

The post Brands on Fire: TurboTax Marketing SVP on Courting Student Athletes During March Madness appeared first on Chief Marketer.

An ad campaign from insurance company Aflac earlier this month illustrated how a recent shift in its marketing plans is taking shape: To conserve the additional media dollars that are required to target consumers in a fragmented digital media space, the brand has moved creative budgets in-house. AdExchanger explores how Aflac now uses its internal content studio to supplement creative and produce campaigns more efficiently.

The post How Aflac’s March Madness Campaign Leveraged In-House Creative and Channel Diversification appeared first on Chief Marketer.

The post 2023 Market Like a Mother Honorees Revealed appeared first on Chief Marketer.

The editors of Chief Marketer have unveiled the winners of the 2022 PRO Awards, the world’s largest awards program recognizing excellence in promotion marketing.

Among this year’s 40 gold-winning programs: Paramount’s “Finding Yellowstone” for Best Social Media Campaign; adidas’ “Liquid Billboard” for Best New Product Launch; Spotify’s “Sponsored Highways” in the Best OOH category; and Stella Artois’ “Open For Good Aluminum Bottle” for Best Package Design. State Farm’s “#TeamStateFarm Football Find” took away the event’s biggest award when they were named the Platinum PRO winner.

The winners were revealed during a Zoom event on November 15, where we enjoyed an inspired conversation led by two PRO Awards judges, Visible CMO Cheryl Gresham and Angela Burgin Logan, Senior Manager, Multicultural Marketing at Disney Parks, Experiences and Products. Check back to chiefmarketer.com this week to watch the event on demand.

Click here to see the winners. And here is a replay of the event.

The post 2022 PRO Awards Winners Revealed – Announced at Nov. 15 Event appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Chief Marketer sister pub Event Marketer has released its 2022 IT List, the top 100 event agencies curated annually by EM editors across 20 core competencies—from B2B conferences to festivals to influencer programs to virtual events. Check out the most buzz-worthy event marketing companies in the experiential marketing industry.

The post Event Marketer Releases 2022 IT List Event Agency Roundup appeared first on Chief Marketer.

For New York City-based consumers familiar with the FreshDirect brand, its orange and green delivery trucks may come to mind first. But the 20-year-old company wants to be known as a high-quality food and grocery retailer first—and a delivery service second. “We’re intimately knowledgeable about fresh food, curated experiences and culinary experiences,” CMO John MacDonald told Chief Marketer. “We just happen to think that the best way for that food to get to you is for us to deliver it.”

So to help tell that story, and to overcome the perception that “all food delivery is equal,” the company created a video series, dubbed “Sourced,” that highlights the stories, passions and motivations of the farmers and producers with whom FreshDirectpartners. We spoke with MacDonald about marketing the video campaign, brand awareness goals, the unique challenges of direct-to-consumer marketing and the company’s omnichannel approach.

Chief Marketer: Why did you decide to leverage vendor partners for this marketing campaign?

John MacDonald, CMO of FreshDirect: Spotlighting partners is something that many companies, specifically in food and grocery, do a lot. They showcase the relationships that process the quality of product. What I wanted to do with this one was turn the prism a little bit and show a different side as to why partnerships matter, especially for us. We show the quality of the food and we talk about the direct producer-to-table ecosystem we’ve built, but more importantly, the passion and reasons why these suppliers do what they do.

CM: How are you getting this message out to people? What’s your target audience?

JM: We created these as evergreens. These are partners who we’ve used for several years in many cases, so we’re promoting them on paid and organic social. We’re putting them on YouTube. We’re promoting them in pre-roll when people watch YouTube. We also have the ability to cut them down and do other things with them. We’ve taken this footage and given it back to them, to the farms and our suppliers as well. We’re hoping that they go back and start using it. They can use the still photography. We’re trying to get this in front of as many people as possible, but we’re also keeping it out there for a long time, so that if people happen to come to our site or our YouTube page they can see it.

CM: What are the campaign’s strategic marketing goals? And the KPIs you’re trying to meet?

JM: Very standard things, like engagement on my social channels and getting likes and views, but I wanted to go back and start telling the story of FreshDirect a little bit more than we have in the past, not just the fact that we’re out there and we’re packing groceries and fresh food and giving it to people. I’d love to start making headway on some brand breakthrough. I want some top-of-mind awareness and top-of-mind consideration. I want this to help people have a better perception of the kind of quality that we engage in, and engage with the brand not in just a functional way, but in an emotional way, and understanding what we do [beyond] delivering groceries.

CM: What are some of the marketing challenges of the grocery delivery landscape?

JM: The first thing I’d say is that FreshDirect isn’t a delivery service. We’re a high-quality food and grocery retailer first. We’re intimately knowledgeable about fresh food and curated and culinary experiences. We just happen to think that the best way for that food to get to you is for us to deliver it. We have temperature-controlled facilities and trucks that deliver the food in the best possible condition. I think the biggest challenge for me as a marketer for FreshDirect is to get customers to understand that, and to understand that not all food delivery is equal. And the relationship on how your food is stored and transported and how long it lasts at your home matters.

CM: What’s your social media strategy for this?

JM: We’ve done some research and we know that there are some awareness problems outside of Manhattan, specifically in the outer boroughs and the suburbs. So we’re using not only the social channels, but other mass media channels to reeducate people and broaden our reach. Social channels are going to be a mix of re-introductions to the customer and telling those great stories about our suppliers through the Sourced videos.

CM: Beyond this campaign, what channels and tactics have proven successful for your brand?

JM: I think anybody who is in our space understands that it’s a mix of the channels. Even though we’re an online, pure-play grocer, you still need to make sure that you’re reaching the customers where they are. And so that means a mix of digital and traditional. Things that work well for us digitally are paid search affiliate programs and very targeted, personalized, communications with our existing customers. But we broadly reach people, too. We still engage in very traditional methods, like direct mail, and this fall, we actually are doing our first broadcast TV [spot] for the New York Metro market. We’re doing a very wide media buy and going out there to try to tell that story and engage with the customer.

CM: Can you talk about your direct mail approach? Being New York City-based, I’ve noticed that your discount coupons have been around for years. How is that working for you?

JM: We use direct mail for a whole bunch of different reasons, and some of them are pure acquisition. We’ll go out there and say, this a group of people in the New York Metro market that we’ve never talked to before and we can target them. Sometimes we know customers who have shopped with us in the past, and some haven’t shopped with us before. So we’ll do some win-backs through those offers.

Acquisition is actually a success story for us through direct mail, because it introduces the brand and gives something people tangible to hold on to. And it also gives them a really good incentive to come into the brand and to shop with us. We still see value out of direct mail. But I think it’s in tandem with the other touchpoints. I’m encouraged to see that people still respond to that because you get bombarded every day with emails and texts. And sometimes it’s nice just to come home, have that piece of mail and sit with it for a little bit, or put it off to the side and then come back to it later, whereas an email or a text is deleted immediately. We see a longer-tail value to some of that direct mail.

But I think that’s the value of a fuller, broader type of funnel approach, where you may be sitting with a direct mail piece and maybe put it off to the side. But then you see our commercial and might go back to it. We want to continue to build that relationship, more than just, “Hey, I’m going to give you $50 off,” and it’s a performance marketing piece. We’re trying to find those areas of life where we can intersect with the customer.

CM: What are the challenges and opportunities of the direct-to-consumer market?

JM: Consumers in this world want us to solve their problem. [We have to] meet their expectations, meet them where they are, and consistently get them what they need–and then surprise them and give them quality. In a direct-to-consumer business, you have to deliver what you promise. We have to get the food to them on time, when they want it, in the condition that they want it in. That’s the bare basics of it.

The second thing is they want to know that you’re a brand that they can associate with this. There’s an aspirational element with brands like us, so we have to fulfill that. So if they’re looking for “grocery treasures”–these are finds that people can’t get too many places–we can get them those things. The challenge is making sure that we’re top of mind and that we are in their consideration set. I’ve got to be relevant to their life. I’ve got to solve their problems. And I’ve got to surprise them.

The post Brands on Fire: FreshDirect appeared first on Chief Marketer.

On the heels of IBM’s spinoff of its managed infrastructure services business, Kyndryl, the 110-year-old tech company has launched its first significant brand campaign in more than a decade. Dubbed “Let’s Create,”  the multi-phased initiative highlights a new focus on hybrid cloud and AI. We spoke with Joe Rivas, Vice President of Marketing at IBM, about the motivation behind the campaign, the brand’s new direction and how it’s harnessing creative technologists to help convey that message.

Chief Marketer: What’s the inspiration behind IBM’s “Let’s Create” campaign? Why did you decide to do a significant brand campaign after more than a decade?

Joe Rivas, Vice President of Marketing, IBM: Creativity has always been part of IBM’s DNA—every day we find ways to reimagine what is possible for our clients. “Let’s create” was a way to reinforce and reintroduce our mission and who we are, but also emphasize creativity. We wanted to introduce the world to the fresh, modern IBM, that IBMers and clients and partners experience every day. Today’s environment requires speed and nimbleness to encourage and execute innovation. We believe “Let’s create” embraces these challenges and invites our clients and partners to co-create with IBM toward first-of-a-kind solutions.

The “Let’s create” campaign spotlights the importance of creativity, often seen as the currency of business today. Creativity has been cited as a critical component in developing solutions to address the increasingly complex and interconnected challenges facing our business, our clients and the world.  According to a Forrester survey, companies that have creative leaders grow 2.6 times faster than their peers, while three in four employees at firms operating under a hybrid model say creativity is now a requirement in their day jobs.

And as companies of all shapes and sizes look to digitally transform everything from their business models to their customer experience, creativity is essential in imagining how technology can be applied to business in new, more innovative ways.

CM: Who is the target audience for this?

JR: Our target audience is made up of business and technology decision makers, globally. And not just the decision makers of today, but the decision makers of tomorrow, who are growing into these leadership roles within their organizations.

CM: How is this a departure from previous brand iterations?

JR: At its core, IBM has always been about one thing: applying new technologies to help our clients solve their biggest and most important problems. “Let’s create” underscores our strategy and commitment to lead in innovation, development and application of advanced technologies on behalf of clients, partners and the world, driven by creativity.

Creativity isn’t a new idea for IBM. This campaign reiterates how IBM strives to lead in discovering, designing and developing the most advanced information technology. We don’t see it as a change to our mission or thinking, just expanding existing strategies and core values.

CM: How are you marketing it to customers?

JR: In the last two years, the pandemic has driven a dramatic shift in content and media consumption behaviors. In response to that, we’ll be putting more focus on creating rich content that both entertains and educates our target audiences about IBM and our work. We are also exploring other formats and channels for content such as podcasts and other audio platforms.

CM: IBM recently spun off its managed infrastructure services business. How is the campaign related to that?

JR: Following the Kyndryl spinoff, we doubled down on hybrid cloud, AI and our consulting expertise. IBM today is more strategically focused, technologically capable and financially sound, and this new campaign highlights and brings these core capabilities to life.

CM: Who are the “new creators” you will focus on for part three of the campaign, and in what way will you deliver that?

JR: The new creators are individuals and teams leveraging technology to create everything from new business models and ways of working, to new solutions and customer experiences. They are CIOs, CTO’s, developers, data architects and business leaders—people who apply a combination of technology and creativity to solve business problems and transform their organizations. Our goal is to highlight and celebrate these “creators” and the work they are doing every day.

CM: Speaking of the industry generally, what are the top trends on your radar in B2B marketing?

JR: Increased personalization and hyper-targeting. Brand personalization enables B2B brands to stand out. Smart marketing intersects who and where our partners and clients are, what they need and how we (IBM) can uniquely fulfill that need. Increasingly personalized marketing lands consistency, clarity and precision to the audiences that we understand acutely, and cuts out the noise.

And cross-platform engagement strategies. A cross-channel, client-centric strategy taps classic platforms like Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn, in addition to the “newer” creative platforms like Reddit, Discord, TikTok and others, when appropriate. B2B brands today have more opportunity than ever to meet their audiences where they are with relevant content and experiences custom-designed for the behaviors of each respective platform while also keeping an eye toward integrating these channels together into a consistent brand experience.

CM: Discuss the importance of brand for a B2B company today. How do you measure it?

JR: In the highly complex and increasingly competitive market of technology infrastructure, software and services, one could argue that brand is more important than ever. Brand is the sum total of the perceptions and beliefs that exist of your company and capabilities. As industries like technology increase in importance and investment, your reputation, perceptions of trust and expertise and the knowledge of your offering must all be strong enough to be included in the initial consideration set of both potential clients and partners.

Moreover, most B2B companies operate in industries where the battle for talent has become a top corporate priority and more competitive than ever before, and brand perception plays a central and irreplaceable role in both talent attraction and retention over time.

The post IBM’s Marketing VP Dishes on Its First Major Brand Campaign in a Decade appeared first on Chief Marketer.

In this third year of the pandemic, virtual events remain a valuable resource for marketers to engage with customers and prospects, introduce new products, gather critical feedback and more, all while accommodating for attendees’ varying comfort levels. Read about 12 different programs that successfully conquered Zoom fatigue, according to coverage in Event Marketer, with gamification tactics, attendee curation, extended reality and more.

The post How 12 Brands Engaged Target Audiences With Virtual Events appeared first on Chief Marketer.

To kick off the year, Lexus is supporting the launch of its new 2022 NX crossover vehicle with a digital and streaming-focused marketing campaign centered around redefining the concept of success. Featuring seven unique spots each with a different target audience, the “Hustle for What Matters” initiative highlights the new Lexus Interface multimedia system and 14-inch touchscreen, revamped design touches and electrification capabilities.

Coupled with the creative is an integrated media campaign brought to life through several gaming and tech partnerships. On Twitch, Lexus is taking aspiring creators on a ride in the NX to hear pitches about unique streaming ideas and is allowing fans to decide which idea will become a reality. For 100 Thieves, the brand is developing a car wrap featuring a custom graphic representation of the team’s League of Legends Championship victory. Consumers can also experience the NX’s redesign through a Google Cloud-streamed AR experience.

We caught up with Vinay Shahani, Vice President of Lexus Marketing, to chat about the new campaign, its diverse target audience and the brand’s push to make Lexus a tech-forward automotive brand that’s appealing to younger luxury consumers.

Chief Marketer: Talk about the strategic marketing goals of the NX crossover campaign.

Vinay Shahani, Vice President, Lexus Marketing: The NX is emblematic of the future of the brand in terms of some of the key strategic elements that Lexus wants to focus on as far as product and services for the future. [It highlights the] intuitive technology, with the new Lexus interface infotainment system, and its cool design, by virtue of the strong character lines on the vehicle. One of the other things we’ve talked about frequently in recent months is the notion of the Lexus Driving Signature, which is our unique approach to driving dynamics giving the driver confidence.

And then part and parcel to that is the electrification and the new powertrains we have to offer. As an example, for the first time ever, we have a plug-in hybrid in the Lexus lineup. We’ll also have a hybrid vehicle. We’ll have a turbocharged gas version. The bottom line is, we know that there’s a lot of luxury car buyers out there. They have a lot of choices. We see that the Lexus customer base historically has been a little bit older. So, strategically, we know we need to get a little bit younger. And we think that the NX is the perfect platform for us to go out there and confidently say who we are, what we stand for, and try to court younger buyers and younger luxury customers to consider us.

Chief Marketer: In what specific ways does the NX represent the future of the Lexus brand?

VS: I’ll use infotainment as an example. Infotainment is really high on the list for younger buyers, and if I’m being honest, Lexus has not done so well in recent years with the infotainment systems that we’ve had in our vehicles. The reason why we’re so confident in the all-new Lexus interface: We have a group of engineers here in the U.S., under the Toyota connected technology department, that basically went to Japan and said, look, we know what consumers here in the United States want, especially younger luxury buyers. So, let us take a crack at designing the system in terms of the usability, the interface itself, the touch screen, the voice interaction, and what functions that we want to have that are easily accessed through simple voice commands.

The connected technologies team came up with a phenomenal new system. When you put new users in front of it, they tell you that it’s very intuitive. [When] you compare it against other systems that are in the marketplace, we’re feeling really good about what this team has developed. This is something different for Lexus… and in the executions within the campaign, we try to bring that to life, whether it’s showing a young driver figuring out how to navigate from one place to the other, or the remote park, another cool technological feature where you can actually get out of the vehicle and use your smartphone interface to park the vehicle in a tight spot. These are examples of a tech-forward approach that is new for Lexus.

Chief Marketer: Do you have specific KPIs for this campaign?

VS: I’ll start with the creative approach. We call it our twist on the “hustle culture.” One of the spots is called “Hustle,” and it depicts a new take on traditional rules for getting ahead. We’re telling these stories to try to convince people who we know are ambitious and driven. They’re not striving for success just for success’s sake. We want to show them that Lexus has a new compact luxury SUV that caters to their unique individual needs and their emotional desires. And knowing a little bit about who these people are and where they consume media, we’re taking a digital media-forward approach and leaning into things like streaming to try to connect with this busy audience where they’re most likely to engage.

If you look at the campaign and watch some of these executions, the tone of the ads is very different than what you’ve seen from Lexus in the past and the reflection of this diverse market that we serve. We have a spot which is dedicated to Black-targeted media. We have one which is focused on the Hispanic audience. We have one focused on Asian Indian and East Asian.

Chief Marketer: The last time we spoke, we discussed your first Twitch collaboration. I’m wondering if that informed the current campaign. Obviously, this one involves an actual vehicle rather than a concept car, but did learnings from that make their way into this one?

VS: With the first Twitch activation…[about] crowdsourcing the ultimate gamers’ IS, we learned a few things. It gave us the confidence to say, okay, what more can we do with this platform? And working even closer with Twitch and its parent company, Amazon, was a lesson learned and a build on what we’ve done in the past. There’s going to be more where that came from. It’s been pretty exciting for the team to delve in and try new things. We’ll learn a lot from it, and that’s something that’s foundational to Lexus, this notion of “Kaizen:” never being satisfied and trying to say, okay, how can we do better than the last time?

Chief Marketer: You’re collaborating with Roku to tap into its first-party data. What’s new about this particular partnership?

VS: It’s about leveraging the data that we get from a partner like Roku and knowing where to find some of these consumers that we feel would be center of the bullseye from a targeting perspective. The cool thing about Roku this year is that we’ll have these ad pods, which allow the users to engage with the NX content in whatever show they’re streaming. It’ll feature a QR code. The cool thing about that is actually being able to look and see who is scanning the QR code, who is diving in and trying to learn more. That helps us refine where we go in terms of targeting for the future. That feedback loop is something new and unique.

Chief Marketer: You talked a bit about standing out from competitors. Other brands are also tapping into gaming audiences on Twitch, so what’s your strategy to set yourself apart?

VS: Certain things that have been associated with the brand we don’t want to lose track of. For example, being known as a brand that stands behind the product in terms of quality, reliability and durability. We have some ground to gain in terms of expressing the focus that we put on the infotainment and Lexus interface, and being able to show that, through partnerships like what we’re doing with 100 Thieves. The partnership with Twitch is another way to do it.

The integration on Fire TV is another way to tell a story about the NX where we invite guests to learn a little bit more about Lexus NX through an Alexa mini-skill. Some of these are going to work really well and some of them aren’t. We’ll have to look at the data. That’s part of the fun of this approach: We know that there’s going to be some winners and losers in terms of having partners that are going help us. Ultimately, we’ll look at the data and decide, are we going do it again—and how are we going to “Kaizen” and improve it the next time around?

Chief Marketer: There is a broad, diverse range of audiences that you’re targeting here. Is this going to continue for Lexus moving forward with other campaigns, or is it specific to this one?

VS: This is probably one of the broadest ones we’ll ever have. The reason for that is that the appeal of a compact luxury crossover is pretty widespread across many different demographics. The common denominator across all of these spots is the psychographic, which is this notion of “hustle culture” that we talked about earlier. When you combine that with what this product represents, it’s got pretty broad reach. Whereas when you go to a model like the new LX, which is a full-size luxury SUV, with a price point that’s approaching six figures, I don’t see us taking a similar approach in marketing that vehicle. You’ve got be pretty tailored and focused on who the target is and finding that customer.

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