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The leaders at Coke saw this phenomenon as a crisis that threatened to make their product appear unsafe and derail their carefully constructed brand image. But Tim Kopp, the brand marketer in charge of handling the company’s response, saw it as an opportunity.
“I reached out to the guys who created these crazy fountains. Then I went and worked with my team, and we helped create the biggest, best Diet Coke and Mentos experiment ever.” Kopp said.
The result? Coke saved face and was able to help shape a narrative that breathed new life into their brand. And the Internet was treated to a synchronized Diet Coke geyser extravaganza the likes of which had never been seen.
That position at Coke was neither Kopp’s first nor last role in as an influential marketing innovator. He also spent time as one of the very first digital marketers at P&G and as CMO of ExactTarget, the Indianapolis-based marketing tech startup that sold to Salesforce for $2.5 billion in 2015. Throughout his 20-year career in marketing, Kopp was a champion of leveraging technology in all aspects of marketing and reforming the stodgy world of B2B SaaS marketing.
Today, Kopp serves as a startup advisor and early-stage investor with Hyde Park Venture Partners. In this new role, he’s teaching tech entrepreneurs the cross-disciplinary, open-minded approach that has made him such a successful marketer—and which isn’t necessarily emphasized in traditional educations.
“I think a lot of what schools are teaching about marketing has nothing to do with how to be a marketer today,” Kopp said.
I recently had the opportunity to interview Tim Kopp about his new role in venture capital, and I came away with a few of the innovative, high-level strategies that he’s passing on to the next generation of marketers.
Lock Down Your Positioning and Messaging
According to Kopp, the creation of a clear brand identity needs to be tackled before any other marketing initiatives. He uses the iceberg metaphor to describe the relationship between a brand’s core positioning and it’s public image:
“The messaging and positioning is all the work that sits under the water level. It’s what you don’t see. The branding and visualization pops out on top. If you don’t have that foundation, it’s really hard to have a clear visual identity,” Kopp said.
Determining who you are as a company, what problems you solve and how you do so differently than your competitors isn’t easy. However, knowing the answers to these questions allows marketers to form a consistent visual identity for their brand, which is an essential part of appearing authentic to their customers.
Strive for Continual Innovation
For Kopp, a marketer’s job is to always drive change through newer, better marketing practices. The first half of accomplishing that goal is keeping up to date with the latest technology, tactics and trends in marketing.
“A lot of what’s happening is just not assuming you know the answer, but observing, listening, asking a lot of the right questions and taking a lot of what you think might work but not copying it exactly,” Kopp said.
Thorough industry research teaches marketers core principles they can apply in their roles, as well as exposes them to current shortcomings in marketing tech and tactics. Knowing those shortcomings allows them to work on solutions and develop innovative marketing strategies.
Turn Crises into Opportunities
This last strategy comes straight from Kopp’s “Diet Coke and Mentos” story. The message is simple: companies can’t control what people do with their products, but they can control how they respond.
“The reality is the world’s changed. The Internet came about, and consumers will do whatever they want,” Kopp said. “That’s either an opportunity or a crisis, and it depends on how you look at it.”
Instead of trying to shut down creative uses of their product, marketers should find ways to leverage them for their brand’s benefit. Doing so can help them regain control of the brand narrative and maybe even steer it in a new and exciting direction.
