Marketing Insights Podcast

September 9, 2022

Transcript: 

Shane Hunt:

Hello everyone. This is Shane Hunt, Dean at the College of Business, and Michael C Rutgers, Professor of Marketing. Welcome you to this edition of the Marketing Insights Podcast. I am thrilled today to welcome my guest, who I truly believe is one of the best marketers in America, one of the best marketers I've ever had the privilege to work with and present CEO of the Collide Agency. Please welcome our guest Alan Miller, Alan welcome to the show.

Alan Miller:

Hey, thanks. You so much for having me, Shane.

Shane Hunt:

Well, I'm thrilled to have you here, Alan, and I'm so excited to get to share this with college students across the country, and lots of people from industry that listen to this. I wanted to start by asking you this because I know you and I have talked a little about this. What is the thing about marketing today that you wish people better understood?

Alan Miller:

Yeah, it's a really good question because I think people don't spend enough time really understanding what the role of marketing is. Just in how it plays with everything else in a corporate environment, in a small business environment, a team environment. For marketing to work correctly, everything needs to be firing on all cylinders. And I say that because there is a bit of a fallacy here in the corporate world. We do get to work with a lot of larger companies that when a marketing campaign or something falls flat, they look to blame things and they say, "Oh, well, marketing didn't work." But the reality is that marketing is only as successful as the other departments and verticals working to support it.

Alan Miller:

So a great marketing plan will also have a great PR plan, will also have a great sales strategy. Will have a strong communication element to it and everyone has to buy in for it to work. And if everyone is able to buy in and work, then it works and then it's a great success. And that's the real problem. I think that too many people have about this is that it doesn't work on its own. You have to make sure that the entire team has buy-in and supports the vision.

Shane Hunt:

No, and I see that Alan, with companies of all sizes that struggle with that exact same thing and they're missing out on the way that they should approach that. I wanted to ask you also, Alan, I have been such, as a sports fan, right, marketing professor and sports fan, I have such great admiration for the things that you've done in sports marketing. I would encourage anybody listening if you've never looked up or seen what some of the marketing that the Portland Pickles do, I think it is innovative and brilliant and something that shines a great light on the future of sports marketing. How has that sports marketing field changed and what opportunities do you see for teams and brands as we go forward, post-pandemic?

Alan Miller:

Well, I think that we've sort of opened up the lens in how you can actually see a team and what they actually mean to a community. I see teams as total incomplete expressions of their community. That's what makes sports so phenomenal is that every single team and market and city should have something that feels completely different, and that's the marketing. How you would attack marketing a team in Los Angeles versus Portland, Oregon versus anywhere else in the world, you got to go really figure out what your community is. What's important to them? What's important that you want to showcase to people in an authentic way. Sports is the ultimate authenticity. It's the ultimate reality show and you have to be real. And if you're not real, people see through it very, very quickly. If you're just trying to copy other people, it's not sustainable. But if you really look to what the roots of a community and what a sports group are, and you work to fulfill those in an organic and authentic way, you'll have great success.

Alan Miller:

And so we're starting to see teams have different personalities. It used to be the favorite, the underdog. And now you really start to see these communities and support and customs coming to the forefront. Social media has a lot of impact in how you're able to get that message out to a lot of people in a very, very quick amount of time.

Shane Hunt:

And don't you think that authenticity, Alan and I see this with students, I think if we're talking about marketing in 2022, and especially towards young people, the college students I'm around every day, that authenticity is as important as anything. Because like you said, Alan, they smell when it's not genuine, when it's not the real thing. I think that's only going to increase in the future.

Alan Miller:

That's right. I mean, to me, it's a non-starter for any project we're working on where they're trying to be something they aren't. If it's aspirational, I think you can get there. But if you're trying to say, "Hey, we're this," but you aren't, the first thing is, "Well, prove it to me, show me." And we used to have this exercise with brands all the time, especially in the alcohol space. They would come and they would say, "Hey, we are an outdoor brand. We are all about camping. We are all about fishing on weekends and we're about." And I'm like, "That's great. So when was the last time you guys did a fishing trip?" And they'd be, "Well, we never did that." Like, "Well then it's not real authentic to your brand if you've never done it, is it?"

Alan Miller:

So I think what you're saying is exactly right. I think it's non-starter from a real marketing. If you're listening and you're not authentic, you're just buying media space and people see through that. But for true marketing, you got to be real.

Shane Hunt:

Boy, I hope students that are listening to this, I hope you rewind and listen to that last 30 seconds because I could not agree with anything more. Alan and I were at an event in Texas this summer and my son, who's a marketing major, I introduced him to Alan and I described him as Alan is the kind of person that if I were a college student, I would want to listen to and learn from. We have a lot of students, Alan, who listen to this across schools, across the country that are college students that are wanting and looking forward to a career in marketing. And I guess I want to close by just asking you, what advice would you give to them as somebody who leads a very successful agency that deals with clients in a lot of industries, what would your advice be to them?

Alan Miller:

It's actually really, really simple advice. Especially while you're in school, intern for as many people in the field that you want to go into as possible, over and over and over again. Because basically if you put your soul into working with people, one of two things are going to happen. They're going to hire you immediately or when you're available. Or two, you're going to have the relationships to be able to use them, to get you the next job that you want.

Alan Miller:

I see it all the time where people send us resumes and resumes and by the time they're out of school and they have no intern experience. There's no reason to hire somebody who hasn't gone through it and hasn't seen it. And I will tell you from our properties, if somebody goes to an intern program and is great, we offer them a job immediately and we build and build and want to grow them to be whatever they want to be in our organization. But that's the commitment. I think that we have to see that. I think the more you can do, the more people you can intern with and give your time to learn, the better and the more set you'll be when you're ready for a job.

Shane Hunt:

No, I think that's a hundred percent true. I think that as a professor and as a business school Dean and as a father of a marketing major, Alan. I so appreciate everything you do and I appreciate you spending a few minutes with us today.

Alan Miller:

Anytime.

Shane Hunt:

Thank you my friend and thank you all for listening. I look forward to visiting again soon on the Marketing Insights Podcast. Have a great day.