ROI: Measuring Return on Innovation

Char Beales, president and CEO of CTAM, led a lively discussion
on “Measuring Innovative Efforts for Reaching Customers and Clients” with executives
from Media Storm, Discovery Education and Edelman detailing innovative marketing
plans that yielded solid returns.

Judy Vogel, director of insights and analysis at Media Storm, said that after The Oprah
Winfrey Show
wrapped on May 25, 2011, there were new opportunities in daytime TV for
client Sony Pictures Television’s The Dr. Oz Show. To build
awareness for the syndicated show, MediaStorm developed
what it deemed to be an equally disruptive campaign for
viewers, who were long accustomed to witnessing Winfrey.

Centering on a taxi takeover in Manhattan, MediaStorm
not only secured advertising atop the vehicles, but offered free
rides within New York’s five boroughs. MediaStorm also established
staging centers in high-traffic areas, where ambassadors
dressed in scrubs dispensed advice and blood pressure screenings, while Oz himself
rode in some of the wrapped cabs. The stunt drove some impressive numbers, Vogel said:
85 million impressions that day and over the ensuing weeks of the taxi-top campaign; increased
tweeting about Dr. Oz and and many more friends on Facebook.

Discovery Education isn’t relying solely on traditional media- and marketingdriven
efforts to build its business. The group’s mission — to transform traditional
education techniques into digital learning for grades K-12 — is being built at the
district level across the nation, Tanya Van Court, senior vice president of partner marketing
at Discovery Education, said.

Discovery Education enrolls educators employing its
curriculum to serve as customer champions on its behalf.
Van Court said this evangelical undertaking, involving
some 150,000 teachers, has a proven track record
of success: the correlation leading to a causation of a 95%
renewal rate for the program.