Tech-EM Chats With Broder Brothers' VP-Marketing

Name: Girisha Chandraraj
Age: 32
Lives in: Yardley, PA
Office based in: Trevose, PA
Years at company: One
Size of marketing team: About 14

Q: How is your department’s role changing?
A: Our role as a marketing department is evolving from its historical role. Instead of just marketing communications, we have far broader responsibility: strategy, analytics, developing deeper customer insights—in addition to creating compelling communications. We are going from small “m” marketing to capital “M” Marketing .
Before, we had a much finer set of tactics to execute on. That’s still essential but it’s about bolting on new ideas through experimentation and testing.

Q: Is your marketing portfolio changing as well?
A: Our marketing portfolio is a series of levers. It seems like we’re always adding and never removing levers. However, we do adjust the levers based on how thing are evolving. We are constantly prioritizing based on how customers respond. These levers include events, our website, e-mail, our sales channel, direct marketing, and advertising. They are all part of the growing mix.

Q: How do you make those decisions?
A: Controlled tests are a good way to get insights. We compare one strategy versus another.
Currently for us, the lever that’s on full throttle is the web. Web growth has been phenomenal. Forty percent of our business comes from the web—and that’s pretty significant. We use it as a way to acquire and retain customers. It’s effective—both as a transactional and communication medium. We’ve made a big investment, and it’s paid off. We can see the response.

Q: Do you apply your testing methodology to events?
A: Yes we do. We look at the population that attends various types of events versus those that don’t. We’ve tested internal versus external events and learned that [internally created] events tend to perform better (as measured by customer growth) than external events that others organize (e.g., tradeshows).

Q: So how do events fit in?
A: Events are an important piece of our marketing mix and it is growing. Our current focus is on creating our own events. We’ve deemphasized our role in national trade shows to create events that are more intimate and focused around the set of tools and services we want to focus on.

Q: Can you share an example of the types of internal events that are working for you?
A: Events for us tend to fall into a spectrum. On one end, we do an open house in a particular market where customers can visit and engage with our brands and services. By asking them to come in and spend a few hours they get a level of appreciation for our business that they wouldn’t get otherwise and we get a view into their needs.
On the other end of the spectrum we create highly tailored events. For example, we’re doing one in California aboard the Queen Mary. It’s a T-Party (t-shirt party)for customers who are primarily t-shirt screen printers. We want to engage with clients in a very informal setting and thank them for their business and encourage them to think about our brands in 2008. The goal is to find creative ideas that [achieve] the correct focus. The response to these events has been great. We get strong registration and strong attendance. We will continue to invest based on the success we’ve had.

Q: How do you measure the events?
A: We monitor who attends, the size of the account and what changes in their business we experience after the event.

Q: Why do you think the events you create yourself pan out better than trade shows and industry events?
A: It’s about controlling the format. Attending someone else’s event is giving up control. They tend to be homogenous and make the [various exhibitors] look more similar. They do continue to be effective for a certain set of our customer base. But the really big customers don’t attend these events as often—and if they are—they aren’t walking the floor. So we have to adapt by finding ways to make them come spend a few hours [with us].

Q: Pop quiz: Event marketing is:
A: Marketing where you engage the customer using all five senses. No other marketing vehicle accomplishes this.

Q: How do you maintain integration across all of your marketing vehicles?
A: We have multiple brands, so we try to look at it from the customer’s perspective. We put all of the elements in front of us and say, “Here are all the messages. What are we saying and how will the customer interpret these messages?” Approaching it this way helps us root out inconsistencies.

Q: So what do you do in your free time?
A: I spend time with my family, golf and am an avid reader. I’m a big non-fiction fan—business literature consumes my book shelf.

Q: Any recommendations?
A: [Thomas L.] Friedman, “The World is Flat.” It’s a truly fantastic book that had a tremendous impact on how I think about globalization.