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Insider Secrets for Digitial Marketing Success
00:02 - 00:08
Intro: This is Performance Delivered, insider secrets for digital marketing success with Stefan Horst.
00:09 - 00:47
Steffen Horst: In today's episode, we're going to talk about scaling global marketing programs. Here to speak with me is Colin Clark, the Global CMO at Dunlop Protective Footwear. Colin is a marketing executive with experience driving growth through brand storytelling. He has been a CMO at Dunlop Protective Footwear since 2016. Before that, he was the VP of Sales and marketing at Ripken baseball, brand manager at Under Armour, and sponsorship sales for the Chicago Cubs. Colin has launched products globally through global marketing campaigns and growing the business through action and innovation at every company. Colin, welcome to the show.
00:47 - 00:49
Colin Clark: Thank you very much for having me, Stephen.
00:49 - 00:53
Steffen Horst: That must have been interesting working at the Chicago Cubs. Are you a big Cubs fan?
00:53 - 01:09
Colin Clark: It was actually my dream job as a kid. So when I was 8 years old, my dad asked me, what do you want to do when you grow up? And I said, I want to work in marketing for the Chicago Cubs. And I grew up in Minnesota. I'm originally from Canada and, you know, made that dream become a reality through hard work and just kept showing up at Wrigley Field.
01:10 - 01:21
Steffen Horst: That must have been awesome experience. Now, before we start talking about today's topic, tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you get started in career and what led you to becoming the CMO at Dunlop Productive Footwear?
01:22 - 01:46
Colin Clark: Yeah. So for me, I'd always wanted to work in marketing. I always had that dream job with the Cubs. I went to school with the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. I started up a club baseball team when I was there. I raised $67, 000 in 5 years for this club team, which was in the 90s, which was a lot of money back then. We had a bigger budget than all but 3 varsity sports for a couple of years on a row. And for me, that was the unbelievable education was an advertising major. Then when I graduated college,
01:46 - 02:07
Colin Clark: packed up my car and moved to Chicago and told my family I was going to go work for the Cubs. So I had no idea how to do it. No idea how I was going to get in. And I knew 0 people at the Cubs before I left. But what I did is I read a book called Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. I've done neither of those, but it really helped me kind of build a plan to get a job at the Cubs. So I ended up working a year in security, just to get
02:07 - 02:36
Colin Clark: my name in the building. I was an intern where I made $450 a month pre-tax working about 29 of those 31 days a week or a month. And then I was fortunate enough to actually the internship, I got a full-time job at sponsorship sales. And for me, it was unbelievable. It was a really cool and exciting place led by a really great team, John McDonough, J Blunk, and they let us really kind of empowered us to build partnerships and do a lot of marketing. So we got to create sweepstakes, we got to create promotions, and we
02:36 - 03:03
Colin Clark: really got to bring everything that Cubs and their audience had to offer and match that up with our sponsors and partners and how do we tell their message through our channels to our audience. And I just really fell in love with that. So from the Cubs, I moved over to Under Armour. I did a big partnership with the Under Armour on the outfield wall doors at Ridley Field and then helped them launch baseball. So when I got there, it was about a $3 million business. We had a Major League return his check due to the cleats
03:03 - 03:31
Colin Clark: and that sort of stuff. So we said, Hey, keep it. Thank you so much. And we completely rebuilt baseball, rebuilt the baseball cleats, the entire baseball line and our entire go-to-market strategy, really focusing on youth so that we could build the next generation of baseball players through those 8 through 12 year old kids, which worked really, really well. We were the business to 5 from 3 million to 54 million in a couple of years. We built it all around this positioning statement of instinct fast. We asked over a thousand baseball players, they wanted to be faster,
03:31 - 03:56
Colin Clark: powerful and what makes baseball different. And they always talked about instinct and how much, how important that was to the game. And for us, it was very important to be authentic as possible. And I think that's 1 of the things from a marketing standpoint, you always have to be authentic as possible to the audience. And that, so that positioning and that really, really played really well. And at Under Armour, I did a bunch of other things. I watched men, I did men's apparel, I did hockey, did digital and social globally and all that sort of stuff.
03:56 - 04:24
Colin Clark: But then for me, my next move, I went over to Cal Ripken baseball. I really wanted to learn how to manage people and I wanted to learn that in a place where I at least somewhat knew what was going out of the front end of the business. And so we helped relaunch Ripken baseball, rewrote the mission statement, rewrote the vision statement and created this mantra and sign that called the right thing is the right way, the Ripken way. And that really kind of helped us guide the organization and all the decisions that we made going forward.
04:24 - 04:50
Colin Clark: So we helped grow that business quite a bit. And then about 5 years after that, or 3 and a half years after, I've been in sports for a long time. And for me, it was time for a different challenge. And I had worked internationally. I had lived in Bucharest, Romania for an internship. I'd lived in London, just north of London in Grantham for school. And so I really wanted to work internationally. And so that's when I found the opportunity with Dunlap Boots. We have an office in Habit of Grace Maryland, but then another 1 in the
04:50 - 05:00
Colin Clark: Netherlands in Rautha and 1 in Portugal. So the opportunity to take marketing programs global and working at that global scale was something I couldn't turn down. So I jumped over here.
05:00 - 05:17
Steffen Horst: That makes a lot of sense. Now, you have a rather small marketing team that has to cover 75 countries and hundreds of customers in different segments from B2C to B2B. How do you approach developing your marketing plan and How do you do that with a rather small team?
05:17 - 05:46
Colin Clark: Yeah, it's a good question. So we sell boots through 2 different main channels. 1 in the B2C or retail channel where we're going directly through a retailer to an end user and in the B2B we're going into a distributor and then into a company to sell those boots into those end users that are wearing them. So 2 very distinct channels. So what we like to do is we like to test out a bunch of different programs and then the ones that work then we scale them globally. And since we don't convert any sales on our website
05:46 - 06:15
Colin Clark: or directly we have to work with all of our partners globally. So we will take a program like we did 1 for selling out our retail, just called Performance Marketing, where we invested in Google search and shopping campaigns in the UK. We grew web sales, I want to say from 500 euros or 500 pounds a month to 40, 000 in the first piece. And so then we took that program, we scaled it globally. Now we're running that in 35 countries around the world. I was partners from New Zealand to Chile, to Canada and everything in between.
06:15 - 06:35
Colin Clark: That's our key thing is we test it out. We work very, very closely with our retailers. We work very, very closely with our distributors. We leverage their marketing apartments as well, because our whole goal from a marketing team is how do we create programs that help drive sell out at our retailers and distributors. And when we can do that, we become a very, very valuable partner to them.
06:35 - 06:46
Steffen Horst: So you already talked about it. You launch it country by country, and then you scale it. Do you take the same country to launch these activities in, so to test them out, Or do you kind of mix it up?
06:46 - 07:16
Colin Clark: I'll answer it kind of 2 ways. We used to go to market where we would go talk to every single country and kind of build out custom plans and packages, but we just couldn't find to get enough scale. And then trying to build something custom for 75 different countries, It just didn't work and drive that much. And so when then we switched to, Hey, let's create 4 major global programs that meet, meet our needs. And then we find the right partner. So your question, we really work with a partner first and it depends. It doesn't matter
07:16 - 07:36
Colin Clark: what country they're in. But if we have the right partner on construction, like we worked in Vienna, we worked with a partner called Habicorn. They're the perfect right partner to launch construction boots with. And so then we worked with them, customized the program, created the program with them, took a lot of the best practices that they already had in place. And then now we're starting to scale that program globally.
07:36 - 08:11
Steffen Horst: From a marketing perspective, I've worked for global media agencies in the past and then hence worked across countries with those companies to run marketing campaigns. And what I always see is like clients wanted to just go kind of the easy way. Let's do everything in English because it's a, you know, it's a global language and it just takes you so far beside the language. So for example, German market, my home market, so to speak, they speak English, but they are rather wanted in German. And you see when you run campaigns in German, they perform, outperform the
08:11 - 08:35
Steffen Horst: English campaigns by a lot. But there's also the other elements of differences in the market. So the German market is French market, the French market is different than the Indian market, the Indian market is different than the New Zealand market. How do you approach those things? How do you adjust your kind of, we test something I said earlier in the UK and works here, and How do you then bring it into local market and then adjust it for the local market differences? What's your approach?
08:36 - 08:59
Colin Clark: So the approach for all of our major programs is how do we solve the end user's pain point, right? And it's the person putting it on the boots. There's an issue or a problem that we have to solve. So I'll use the example in construction because this is a great question. So in construction, Laura, we put this whole thing on winning the rainy day. So in most markets in construction, when it rains, they put on rain apparel. They do all this other stuff, but they still wear their leather boots. So we went to the distributor and
08:59 - 09:20
Colin Clark: said, Hey, I don't want to replace your leather boot sales. I want to add to your boot sales. I want you to sell them a pair of leather boots when it's sunny and when it's rainy. I want you to sell them a pair of download boots to grow your business. And then we're going to sell the pain point for this end user by he's going to have the right footwear or they are going to have the right footwear in the elements to keep them safe and empower them to get the job done safer and get home.
09:20 - 09:45
Colin Clark: Right? So that end user pain point is consistent across all of those different countries. But then to your point, we have to work with that local distributor to authenticate it to that market because there's a different route to market. In some areas in construction, the end user buys their products negative voucher. Sometimes it's bought by a health and safety or procurement manager for the people, right? So we have to authenticate the route to market. We have to authenticate the materials. Local language is a big part of it as well. We do our campaigns in 8 different
09:45 - 10:08
Colin Clark: languages at all times, exprect, Ellen Bayt, and Netherlands, I speak a little Dutch now, to make it authentic as possible, because you're 100% right. Global campaigns without that local authentication will only get you so far. And then taking these, I would say these global programs all have very successful metrics, but then that's 80% of it. The other 20% is customizing it and localizing it to be authentic.
10:08 - 10:21
Steffen Horst: Let's talk about what elements you localize. Are we talking about just making sure that that kind of language wise things are hitting home or website messaging. How far does that localization on UN go?
10:21 - 10:55
Colin Clark: Yeah, that's a good question. So it's funny in the UK market, the US market and the New Zealand market. Right. They all speak English and then UK market, our boots are called Wellingtons. In the New Zealand market, our boots are called Gumboots. And in the US market, they're called Workboots. And same leg would save everything else almost, but that local authentication. So what we do is we work with the partners to localize and authenticate the content, make it specific for those industries, but also the bright channels, because they know their customers and consumers the best. I
10:55 - 11:25
Colin Clark: know the end-users paying points, I know those problems, but they know the best way to reach them. So when we bring those 2 things together as a group, that's where we create a really winning proposition. And it drives it all back to their website or their in-store or their sales team. And for that, we've provided A plus content on the website, we've provided product videos, sell sheets, these micro catalogs so that they can go into a room, presented AR, boots, all these different pieces and tools that they have that builds a very winning proposition. But again,
11:25 - 11:40
Colin Clark: you know, it's all about all the content that we create. We needed the right distribution channels, which is our distributors or retailers, to actually get it to those end users. That was a piece that we were missing for my first 5 or 6 years here at DEDLOP, that we finally solved in the last couple. Interesting.
11:41 - 11:53
Steffen Horst: Now, you keep talking about partners a lot, and it's a real major part of being successful in those markets, obviously. How do you identify the partners that are able to deliver you the information that you need?
11:53 - 12:24
Colin Clark: What we do is we work very closely with our sales team. And what's great about Dettlop's brand experience in Europe is we have a lot of very long term successful partners. Like part of our vision is to be a cornerstone partner for our suppliers, distributors and partners. And so we have some very long standing relationships there so that we really target those guys first so that we can kind of build this out and really continue and grow that relationship going forward. Right? We know that boots on a shelf is not a strategy that's going to work
12:24 - 12:35
Colin Clark: like it did in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s. So really working with those guys that we've been with for a long time, we really really know their market and their end user. That's where we start and then we build and grow from there.
12:35 - 12:47
Steffen Horst: Now, let's move on to looking at the B2B and the B2C side of the inactivity. How do you separate the messaging and also the user journey as it relates to B2B and B2C?
12:47 - 13:17
Colin Clark: Yeah, so in the B2B, there's a whole other step, right? So well, there's a couple different steps. We have to convince the distributor that this is the right product for the right segment. Then we have to convince the health and safety manager and the procurement manager or something along those that team. And then we have to convince the people wearing the product, the end users that this is the right product for them. So we built out the Dunlop difference because we're always the most expensive product on the shelf. And so what this Dunlop difference allows us
13:17 - 13:49
Colin Clark: to do is kind of explain the benefits for everybody along the way. And I'll walk you through that a little bit here, which would be great. So 1 is we talk a lot about our sustainability initiative. We're an EcoVitis Gold rated company where we are 1 of the top 5 sustainable companies in the world. Top 5%. And not just in footwear, but globally. And so what that does is that really helps the end user company, they all have sustainability initiatives. So we can be part of their sustainable procurement chain. So above and beyond the safety and
13:49 - 14:14
Colin Clark: the features and benefits of the products, we can help them with another 1 of their targets. And what you'll see in sustainability is a lot of people have done the green energy, they've done the renewals, they've done all the recycling and that sort of stuff. And so that supply chain is that next big focus. And so we can be a part of that. We bring our 130 years history of innovation, which just shows that we're battle tested, improving out in this space. We have our own proprietary materials that we talk about. We have a snug boot
14:14 - 14:43
Colin Clark: that's the most comfortable product ever invented from a work boot standpoint. It's our Ferrari, or I guess I'm supposed to say Red Bull racing car for the My Dutch team, but then we take a lot of innovation down. We have our PureFort material, which is proprietary. There's a lot of machines in the world that can make PureFort beyond 11. It outlasts our perform extremely lightweight, extremely comfortable, extremely durable, and then our Assa Ford Fiber Duty Chemical Protection and PVC. Like those are our product ranges showing that we have a good, better, best collection that we also
14:43 - 15:08
Colin Clark: have 42 different outsole designs. So we design it specifically for the industry. So that's, they're starting to realize, all right, these guys are very safe. They have a product specifically for my end use. It's not just a different color or anything like that. And then we get to the 2 big ones where when the procurement manager or person is in the room, we can talk about how we can lower your total cost of your ownership of your boot program by up to 12 and a half percent while investing in our boots are usually more expensive than
15:08 - 15:39
Colin Clark: competition but we help lower our boots outlast the competition so you're buying less pairs per year there's less waste We did a great study with a very big processing partner and we helped lower turnover by 450% and getting people into factories and working in that space right now is very complicated and very expensive. So we can show that it's great. Then also we can help reduce slips, trips, and falls. There's a lot of a cost associated with slips, trips, and falls. So that's how we can take all these costs out of the building. And then for
15:39 - 16:05
Colin Clark: the health and safety manager, the team, we know that switching to DELOP, we can help reduce slips, trips, and falls by up to 25 percent. And if we can take 1 out of every 4 slip accidents out of a facility, we've really done our job and really helped them out. Then lastly, we have 2 different types of fits of products. So what you'll find in this industry is there are very small people And there are very large people and the health and safety manager have to find products for everybody. And so we have 2 different types
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Colin Clark: of fit, a classic fit and a new sneaker fit. That's kind of the next generation of how work boots will fit. It's just like a sneaker. It's like a leather boot without the laces. And we're finding that those value props really help us win, right? So sustainability, lower total cost of ownership, reducing slip trips and falls and industry specific proprietary materials that fit their end user workforce. That's the story we have to tell. It's a lot, but that's how we win.
16:29 - 16:40
Steffen Horst: Those different messages obviously need to be tailored to the right audience. Right. I assume that's, do you start with the audience and then tailor the message to them? Or do you start with the message and then find the audience that fits the message?
16:41 - 17:08
Colin Clark: Yeah. So for us, it's really kind of, we started with the audience and we wanted to tell the story of what is the innovation beyond the boot, right? And what are the benefits of Dunlop beyond the boot? And so, you know, we did a lot of due diligence on working with them directly and like seeing that their top costs of going down, seeing how can we do slips and falls, We have an innovation lab that we do nothing but maniacally focus on how do we do slip trips. And those were always the key points and the
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Colin Clark: key things that were coming from the audience. So for us, these are all kind of proof points and I would say outcomes of switching to Dunmont Boots. And so we needed to tell that story earlier to help convince people from a pricing's value because we are a value brand. And so we found a lot of really great success with that so far.
17:27 - 17:40
Steffen Horst: Now, what we talked about just now is more B2B, right? How does that approach work on the B2C side? How do you kind of identify the different audience segments that you want to address? And then the messaging that resonates with them. Yeah,
17:41 - 18:12
Colin Clark: no, good question. So it's the same approach, right? We take what are the end user's pain points, and then we create the materials and work with the partners that A, where they shop and B, create materials that are authentic to them. So we do photo shoots all around the world, content captures all around the world, agriculture and construction mainly is the B2C 2 ranges. And 1 of the innovations that we did was came from the End User Pain Point of Snegrofit, where we would talk to farmers in the classic work boot where you know you can
18:12 - 18:37
Colin Clark: kick them off at the back door, you don't have to touch them or anything like that. But what we found was there was almost always a story where an animal or a calf or a cow or whatever got loose. They had to chase it through the mud. Their boot got stuck in the mud and they were in 1 boot and 1 shoe or 1 sock running around in there. And so we started to really kind of investigate and think about, Hey, what if we changed the fit of a work boot? And that's where the sneaker fit
18:37 - 19:07
Colin Clark: came from. And then we've introduced that into it. And as this new generation comes in and all the leisure continues to seep into PPE, that sneaker fit has been widely accepted. And so now where we used to have 1 boot on a shelf, now we have 2. And we really tell the story, difference between sneaker fit to a little heel slippage, a classic fit for easy on off. When we tell those messages, They understand it completely. We show images that they resonate with and through channels that they trust, which are their local retailers, their local partners,
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Colin Clark: and places where they've been shopping for a long time.
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Steffen Horst: Now, as it relates to the marketing file, where do you start your journey to kind of Fit what you're trying to communicate into that and then adjust the base on where people are in the discovery of them up footwear
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Colin Clark: Yeah, so great question So what we did is we looked at the funnel upside down or from the bottom up When we kind of were relaunching and rebuilding all of our story messaging. So we just relaunched our whole new brand position statement around make every step count, which speaks to the end user when they put on their boots and go to work. You know, that is a metaphor that's, you know, lasted the time And we really want to help them do that. And so we started at the purchase level. So getting all the right POS done,
19:52 - 20:20
Colin Clark: getting all the right A plus content on the website done, getting all the right sell sheets to our distributors, partners, and all the messaging about the Dunlop difference in those pieces. We put those all in those places. And then we moved 1 step up and started just working on Google Search and Shopping. And that drove a ton, you know, kind of that intent phase. And that drove a ton of growth and a ton of opportunity. We've been kind of slowly working our way up the funnel into POS this year to tell the story at retail as
20:20 - 20:37
Colin Clark: we've kind of honed and crafted in online and then more and more in social and working on that and kind of some more user generated content coming next year and engagement programs more along the awareness programs. Cause now that we've built the conversion engine at the bottom of the funnel, now we're working at going up the funnel to really kind of fill it up even more and more.
20:37 - 20:51
Steffen Horst: So you're now going more into awareness stage to kind of grow the knowledge for people about that the brand exists and what the brand does, what products are available, to kind of keep people coming in and basically ending up at some point buying the product.
20:51 - 21:19
Colin Clark: Yeah. Cause when we launched sneaker fit, we needed to kind of tell that to our core audience, kind of what the features of benefits were of that. And so we really targeted that audience to say that, hey, there's another opportunity, another Dunlop option here, which has grown the business. And so now that we've kind of honed that in and sharpened it and all that sort of stuff, now we feel really comfortable about going up the funnel, introducing the brand, introducing a proprietary material and then a different fit. Now that's a lot of storytelling that that takes.
21:19 - 21:24
Colin Clark: And so we wanted to hone in some of those pieces before we kind of moved up the funnel.
21:24 - 21:33
Steffen Horst: How does content fit into that process and to kind of moving up the funnel and engaging with probably a wider audience that is not necessarily part of the core audience.
21:34 - 22:05
Colin Clark: Yeah, good question. So how we looked at it is at the bottom of the funnel, it was very specific A plus Amazon, a webpage, a plus content, all the right product imagery, some product videos, features and benefits. We completely built an iconography library to help tell the story of the product, the brand, and our value props through visuals as well. And then now we have to get up into and start introducing who Dunlop is to these people, why we're authentic. That is what will always be the key. And so you'll see us telling a lot of
22:05 - 22:36
Colin Clark: stories around how we can solve the end user's pain points in farming and construction in the B2C world. And then we'll do some engagement programs that drive a lot of user generated content. Because what's really great about farms today is they've all become their own brands, right? And they've all really like they're running their own micro businesses and micro their massive type places. And so like we think it's a really great time to kind of tell their story, empower them and kind of create a family farmer of the year program or family farm of the year
22:36 - 22:41
Colin Clark: to really engage with that entire family so that we can build the next generation of Dunlop Foodwares.
22:42 - 22:51
Steffen Horst: How important is video in your overall plans? Is it core? Is it more the written word when it comes to content or venturing off into other formats as well?
22:51 - 23:23
Colin Clark: Yeah, so video is key for us. Like we get an 8 hour photo shoot and food processing and it was a video first shoot with some stills happening around the video. So that kind of point and the written word for us is, especially in so many languages, is how do you say the most impactful thing in the fewest words possible? I think that's been the biggest challenge and then how do you also pair that with visual storytelling that almost everything is not an infographic, but almost everything is delivered from a visual messaging standpoint. And video for
23:23 - 23:57
Colin Clark: us, it will be key. We're going to build out an entire product library on product videos per the B2C side. We're building an entire library of like the classic cell tell videos in the B2B side with built out YR materials and certain industries and spaces and then the next part That will really tackle in 2025 is a user generated content piece, right? So coming from the brand it's lots text and specs and whatever but getting that user generated content piece really authenticates us in the space to their audiences. And so that's the next key growth for
23:57 - 23:58
Colin Clark: us.
23:58 - 24:13
Steffen Horst: Well, Colin, unfortunately, we come to the end of today's podcast episode. Thank you so much for joining me on the performance of our podcast and sharing your knowledge on scaling global marketing programs. Now if people want to find out more about you and more about Dunlop Protective Footwear, how can they get in
24:13 - 24:24
Colin Clark: touch? Definitely dunlopboots.com is our website. There's a bunch of different customer application forms in there that in touch forms there, and then I'm on LinkedIn as well. Call, I think it's conchcorp.to on LinkedIn. I'm very old. So perfect.
24:25 - 24:45
Steffen Horst: Well, as always, we leave those information in the show notes. Thanks everyone for listening. If you like the Problems of the World podcast, please subscribe and leave us a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast application. If you want to find out more about Symphonic Digital, you can visit us at symphonicdigital.com or follow us on X at Symphonic HQ. Thanks again and see you next time.