Compete, Inc. Reports Conclusions From Marketing Thought Leaders

World Class Brands Explore How to Market to the New Digital Consumer

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. October 14, 2008

BOSTON, MA, July 26, 2005. Compete, Inc., the leading predictive analytics firm, today announced the conclusions from its second annual Customer Day. Leaders from companies including Carlson Hotels Worldwide, DaimlerChrysler, E-LOAN(R), Kia Motor Americas, Lycos Inc., Nextel, Racepoint Group, Sprint, Subaru of America, Inc., Teva Neuroscience, T-Mobile USA, Upromise(R), Verizon Wireless, Virgin Mobile USA, W2 Group, Yahoo! and Yahoo! Search Marketing shared their experiences in the marketing roundtable discussions. The event, held at the Downtown Harvard Club of Boston on June 16, addressed how the Internet is enabling marketers to better see, reach and deepen relationships with the new digital consumer.

"The Internet has unleashed a new digital consumer who is market savvy, self informed and armed with personalization tools such as blogs, TiVo and satellite radio," said Don McLagan, CEO of Compete. "Difficult to target with a single message or medium, this catalytic consumer is changing marketing. However, by treating this new consumer as an equal, leading marketers are engaging in a personal and relevant dialogue that builds both customer trust and brand loyalty."

Conclusions from the day:

Consumers are in control: The morning's keynote speaker, author and W2 Group Chairman and CEO, Larry Weber, described a new marketing category, "Consumer-to-business (C2B) marketing happens when consumers control the way marketers talk to them. In this new landscape, traditional means of marketing will move to the peripheral area of communicating with customers, and marketers will turn to the digital environment to foster dialogue."

Marketing is being disrupted: Because marketing is changing, Bonita Coleman Stewart, Director of Interactive Communications at DaimlerChrysler, believes it is time to add another "P" to the traditional marketing mix of product, price, promotion and place. "The marketing functions are still organized in separate silos, inhibiting marketing technologies from working for us. The opportunity for marketers today, is the whole notion of Process. We need to become skilled at the process of integrating our marketing messages. The Internet is the integrator of this Process and the foundation of this 'Fifth P.'"

New marketing solutions are required: Vice President of Upromise, David Coppins, has made some changes, "Our marketing needed to change so we started developing predictive models, which have provided us great opportunities in personalization. Now, we are working with Compete to develop a real-time, interactive tool that works to get the right offer to the right person at the right time."

It's time to redefine the customer relationship: Wenda Harris Millard, Chief Sales Officer of Yahoo!, delivered the afternoon keynote, "The marketers' great challenge today is not about reaching people, but about connecting with them. We need to think about consumer behavior in an always-on world where sound bites are no longer enough. Now we need the whole story to develop these connections."

A summary observation by Larry Weber:

"Today's consumers are in more control than ever, as they move from medium to medium, determining how, when and where brands communicate with them," observed Larry Weber. "The best companies are practicing constituency management deep within digital channels such as micro sites, blogs and social networks. For companies that understand how to foster stronger dialogue in these channels, at the micro segmented level, the outcome is a stronger brand and more loyal customers."