“The expectations right now is that vendors are bringing us opportunities to break through the clutter,” Doug Zarkin, vice president and chief marketing officer of Pearle Vision, said in this interview with Beet.TV. “We are not going to be a brand that outspends the competition. We are a brand that continually out-thinks the competition.”
He said Pearle Vision is seeking marketing partners that understand its business and how they can add value to its marketing infrastructure.
“Frankly, I don’t care if you have a bunch of ex-Google people that work for you,” Zarkin said. “I don’t care if you worked for Procter & Gamble or Johnson & Johnson, and I certainly don’t care if you worked for one of our competitors. What I’m really interested in is a vendor who comes to us with really strong insights driven from their investigation into our business, and very clear reasons to believe they’re a solution we currently don’t have in the portfolio.”
Zarkin said marketers need to recognize qualities of “human truth” that are enduring, such as the need for relationships with others.
“When you finally decide to go out of your home, and enjoy a meal at a restaurant or shop in your favorite brick-and-mortar outlet, there is a sense of joy and a bit of nostalgia for how great it is when there’s somebody there to care for you,” he said. “Personal relationships are something people are longing for as they look for goods and services.”
Brands also should focus on the fundamentals of consumer needs, rather than current trends, he said.
“Fear of missing out is not a marketing strategy,” Zarkin said. “There are so many things that you could do. There are less things that you should do. There are even less things that you need to do, and a much smaller set of things that you must do…We have to make that sure we’re nailing ‘the must.’”
You are watching “Outcomes-Based Advertising: Connecting Ad Exposure to Business Results,” a Beet.TV leadership video series presented by LoopMe. For more videos, please visit this page.
]]>“Marketing can’t be everything to everybody,” Zarkin told Beet.TV in an interview at the CMO Growth Council. “It forces brands to be rigorous and disciplined in terms of what we stand for. We could talk about a lot of things, but what should we talk about. And more importantly what do we need to talk about.”
By creating a dialogue that targets the right customers with a specific message, Pearle Vision can build KPIs around what the marketing strategy’s purpose is for the brand. That allows the brand to be more effective in measuring results, according to Zarkin.
Those KPIs include topline sales, of course, but it’s also about reputation. “The most important marketing tool that a marketer has in their toolbox is word of mouth,” says Zarkin. “We’re very cognizant of the fact that marketing cannot control the brand narrative, but we can be involved in how we steward it.”
Customer relationships are core to the Pearle Vision model and marketing strategy, as the company may go 12 to 36 months between customer visits. “We take our loyalty program very seriously,” says Zarkin, which helps to create a cycle of exams, frame purchases and points of contact around content like tips and tools for eye health.
Winning the nine-mile war
Pearle Vision’s TV strategy ultimately comes down to striking a balance between national and local messaging. “We want to build a layer-cake approach where we’re using spot TV and national TV to create efficient brand awareness and consideration, but our business is at a local level,” says Zarkin. “We talk about winning the nine-mile war for patient acquisition,” which is where non-linear TV and OTT come in to help the brand build share of voice.
While national TV advertising raises brand awareness, and local TV advertising drives customers to local stores, attribution remains challenging. “Marketers have to be comfortable with a degree of ambiguity,” says Zarkin. “If someone can figure out how to take an ad on TV and prove that it drove sales, I think they’d be elected marketing genius of the year.”
This video is was produced in Orlando at the CMO Growth Council. The series is sponsored by iSpot.tv. For more videos from the event, please visit this page.
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