Giant Leaps

“In 1987, we’d make a 30-second TV spot and run it during Saturday morning kids’ shows. We’d spend $1.2 million, and round it up to $2 million to make retailers think it was more impressive. Today, you’re talking about $75 million to launch a platform. And [the campaign] better be integrated or it becomes irrelevant.”
Peter Main

“Marketing is more critical today. You have to develop a brand in the eyes of the consumer and keep it relevant.”
William Smith

“We’re spending a lot more time and energy on research and analysis. Comparatively, we were hip-shooting back then.”
Bud Frankel

“Visa, Kodak, McDonald’s, and John Hancock [have shown that] sponsorship shouldn’t solely be a branding vehicle, with an emphasis on massive GRPs and feel-good association, but is better used with promotion to drive specific consumer behavior while simultaneously reinforcing brand position.”
Alison Glander

“We’ve gone from co-op allowances to menu merchandising to account-specific marketing to category management to co-marketing. With each step, retailers and manufacturers have gotten more sophisticated.”
Neil Contess

“Most people will probably say the movement of dollars to promotion budgets during this time was big, but I think that’s [misleading] because so much of those budgets contain coupons. And discount money isn’t brand building.”
Roger Winter

“Brands and retailers are still, for the most part, doing their own things. But when they meet, it’s a beautiful thing.”
Tim O’Krongly

“Remember how Internet promotions completely eclipsed 800-number programs in the ‘90’s? Now that seems like comparing compact discs to eight-track tapes.”
Lisa Valentine O’Beirne

“Guerrilla marketing, FSIs, sweepstakes, P-O-S, and other dinosaurs of the old guard are on their way out, ushered to the door by more educated, more savvy, and more critical consumers.”
Kimberly Fraher

“The same basic promotional tactics remain. But new technology allows us to go back and revisit them in a more effective way.”
Max Goldberg

“Marketers have elevated the notion of promotion to a much more strategic perspective. We’ve moved beyond purchase to preference, and hopefully someday to insistence.”
Frank Bifulco

“The Internet is solving problems in the marketing mix — like reaching kids — that can’t be solved elsewhere.”
Mark Hosbein

“In 1987, it was all about shelf-talkers. Now, you have to be on TV, online, in a magazine, and have killer P-O-S.”
Pam Kaufman

“The industry’s been through two eras of agency consolidation. But smaller independents still thrive.”
Bob Zappi

“We’re deeper into the client business than we were then. That’s good news for the relationship, and bad news for profits — because you do more for less.”
Bud Frankel

“We’ve become so much more sophisticated. It’s not five coupons and three FSIs anymore.”
Bob Fallon

“The most significant change is the use of promotion in so many categories other than packaged goods.”
Bob Balzer

“An industry that was long discounted by everyone except the people in it has been legitimized.”
David Tridle

“Smart marketers have — very slowly — come to realize that you not only can, but must, build the brand and volume simultaneously.”
Howard Steinberg

“Event marketers have moved from pipe-and-drape setups and U-hauls to fully customized vehicles and trucks, marking a dramatic shift in the success of those promotions.”
Jeffrey Miller

“The Internet, cable and satellite, mobile commerce, and frequent-shopper programs are all examples of technologies that offer both promise (the ability of marketers to target more effectively) and threat (the loss of personal privacy) for consumers.”
Ken Coogan

“The agency side became a very viable option for many client-side promotion professionals. Who better to call on a client than someone who was one? Plus, the money was better.”
Jim Petzing

“Marketing is much more complex now: more choices, fewer assurances, faster changes, and it’s tougher to measure. This is a function of media prices, consumer changes, Wall Street, competition, deflation, and Wal-Mart.”
Jim Holbrook

“Entertainment properties now get more actively involved in creating a meaningful solution to [tie-in partners’] needs. As a result, the promotional programs today contain a greater level of integration between the property and the brand.”
James Zembruski

“Marketers today promote together with other marketers who share a common customer target. Why? To share costs, and because the offer they can make together is more compelling to the consumer than any offer they could generate on their own.”
Neil Contess

“The defining moment was Super Bowl 1992. Fox Television … counter-programmed the Super Bowl half-time show with a special edition of In Living Color. That event transformed the Super Bowl into the greatest platform for marketing showmanship.”
Beau Phillips

“There is a cachet to entertainment marketing that is hard to beat. Now that more marketers have gotten involved, the challenge is finding innovative ways to use [it.]”
Steve Ross

“There’s one thing I know will never change: I’ll never be able to tell my mother, in 25 words or less, exactly what it is that I do for a living.”
Fran Heller

“What hasn’t changed is that it’s still fun.”
George Schweitzer