2:30 — Kurt Vanderah introduces PEMCO’s Chief Marketing Officer, Rod Brooks.
2:11 — Rod starts his talk on how PEMCO has deployed the use of social media tools.
2:12 — Rod shows PEMCO’s “Helpful guide to the people in the NW”. He says, “In order to be local, we need to demonstrate that we know the people in our community, in our market.”
2:13 — Rod presents PEMCO’s Getting Socialized: A vision. A commitment. A plan.
2:14 — Rod talks about a book they created and gave to all their employees where they presented the dream: “Our customer would be such huge believers in the PEMCO brand that they couldn’t stand the thought of their friends and families doing business with anyone else”. This is in line with PEMCO’s Company vision: “PEMCO gets it.” World-class customer experience.
2:15 — Rod share Social Vision PEMCO: “Success depends on the positive opinion of people like me” they listen, they participate, they encourage and they make it easy for me to share my experiences with the brand.
2:17 — Rod talks about the evolution of communication strategy in 2007 to today.
2:18 — Phase 1 (2007) Building from a strong Foundation.
Objective: Awareness. Talks about the importance of offline presence to engage directly with the community. For example, offline activities included PEMCO’s Brand Ambassadors visiting communities and taking profile pictures for consumers.
2:20 — Rod: “Try something; you are not going to break it.”
2:21 — Phase 2 (2009 -10) Establish a credible presence.
Objective: Talk and energize. They started connecting offline and online engagement.
2:23 — Rod shares another empowering activity in which they had customers create their own for PEMCO’s “We’re a lot like you. A little different” campaign.
2:25 — Phase 3 (2010+) Objective: Embrace and Engage.
It is about adopting the voice of the customer. Customers can share their testimonials and reviews online.
2:26 — Rod: Listening is understanding who customers are and what they need.
2:27 — Rod: We don’t want to be the biggest company; we want to be the company that offers the best service in the Northwest.
Q&A
Q: Is there any activity to encourage people in your company to continue getting involved in community activities in the Washington community?
A: Rod: We need to understand our objective, the strategies that support it and the tools. The ones you are mentioning can help us connect with the people we want to reach.
Q: How does your team look like?
A: Rod: We are a small team: 9 full-time marketing staff. You have to find the people you feel more confident in. We also work wih external firms; we choose firms that have similar values and ambitions.
Q: So many things in the space, how do you promote your social media tools in your dotcom? When do you do that?
A: Activity and engagement with your consumer at any moment is most important. Engagement with your brand will lead the consumer to get a quote. You should do it in the way that is easier for consumer.
Q: Scott Meldrum from TiVo: Your mission was to never have to buy an ad to get a lead. How are you doing towards accomplishing your mission?
A: Rod: Geico is going to invest more than Coca Cola in advertising, so we decided to move to the conversation hill, to build advocacy and confidence. I really hope that we continue to build progress on this on the next 5 years.
Q: A lot of companies take a lot of time to listen. With all of the listening that PEMCO has done have you been able to integrate changes from what you learn by listening?
A: Rod: We have learned about the different touchpoints, interactions that takes place between our company and the customer in each touchpoint. We want to have the customer’s voice at the center of everything we do.
