It is wise to adopt a mutable concept of marketing, according to Steve Heyer CEO, to answer the shifting demands of consumers. Heyer's notes on this were given long ago, yet they prove true now. He said these things to a good number of the most influential persons in the industry a number of years in the past.
Steve J. Heyer is chief executive officer of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, the world’s third-largest hotel chain. In an interview made a couple of years after his keynote address in 2003, he explained his point in 2003 by talking about his marketing strategy for the popular hotel chain. Heyer's stated goal was the marketing of amusement, as opposed to the marketing of lodgings in the hotels.
In this approach, what is being sold is the experience itself. He said that the hotels had to work on selling experiences worth remembering. Heyer's innovation was in the lens through which he approached the subject.
Another of the points he made was that businesses had to face a powerful trend towards customization in goods and services. This is precisely what one now observes in businesses: customization. This is a theme most strongly supported by digital products and companies nowadays.
The entertainment industry is also suffering from certain digital innovations impinging on their channels. When Napster.com, the first music downloading service website, burst into the scene, the music industry lost millions in potential revenue. Millions of music lovers began switching to MP3s on the Web for their music fix.
There was pandemonium in the song-production business, Heyer noted. The circumstances had changed, Heyer said, and so should the methods of distribution as well as reproduction. It was necessary for other media producers, according to Heyer, to take note of this imperative for change.
Steve Heyer argues that modern marketing efforts should focus on the creation of cultures, not products. In the interview explaining his marketing strategy for Starwood Hotels, he furthered explained that they are now a company engaged in distributing entertainment and unforgettable experiences. This marketing tactic would lead to emphasis being placed on the entertainment possibilities of each hotel.
Hence, the company has actually struck up a partnership with the Victoria's Secret brand in an effort to market the experience of being in a Starwood hotel (and watching a Victoria's Secret runway show, in this case). Along with online bidders, only preferred guest members of Starwood can buy tickets to the elite fashion event. Such shows how cultural marketing may be used.
The proliferation of brand names in films has also drawn attention from Heyer, who dislikes it. He calls the practice a “contextless” insertion of brand logos into movies or TV programs. He doubted that such appearances would actually bring up sales in any way.
In the past, Steve Heyer CEO was a chief executive for the company that makes Coke. Some of his services for that company actually demonstrate what he is trying to say by "contextual" brand placement. What he did was to put a glass of Coke in front of each judge in American Idol, a popular TV series.
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