When ad agency Rapp Collins Worldwide was rebranded in 2008 as RAPP, its namesake co-founder Stan Rapp hadn’t been with the company for 20 years. Even so, the agency’s leadership must have recognized the immense value that his name still brought to their brand. The decision of the Naveen Jindal School of Management at UT Dallas to recognize Rapp with its 2016 Marketing Legends Award demonstrates the same type of reasoning: Honoring the direct-marketing pioneer, always one step ahead of his time, was a no-brainer.
“Very ahead of his time,” said Dr. Hasan Pirkul, Jindal School dean and Caruth Chair of Management, while introducing the honoree. “He predicted the change from mass marketing to individualized, one-on-one marketing in his global best-seller, MaxiMarketing: The New Direction in Advertising, Promotion, and Marketing Strategy (New York: McGraw Hill, 1988).”
Presented by the Jindal School and sponsored by ResearchNow, the Marketing Legends Scholarship Banquet and Awards Ceremony was held Oct. 27 at the Canyon Creek Country Club in Richardson. The event raised $6,000 for Jindal School student scholarships.
Alex Edsel, director of the Jindal School’s MS in Marketing program, greeted an audience of approximately 100 students, faculty, staff and marketing professionals. Dean Pirkul then gave guests a brief overview of Rapp’s distinguished career before presenting him the award.
Being a thought leader is often a defining characteristic of a legend. Rapp explained to the audience that he has a “pretty good” record of predicting the future of the marketing industry.
What is happening now is “fundamentally different” from anything seen before, Rapp said. There is so much to know that is new and so much changing so fast in the advertising and marketing world today, that it is “difficult to see the forest from the trees,” he said. “There are so many trees that you have to pay attention to.”
Rapp went on to describe what he believes is at the heart of marketing in the internet era. It is the theme of his new book, Release the Power of ENTANGLED MARKETING™: Moving Beyond Engagement (New York: The Internationalist Press, 2016), which he co-authored with Sebastian Jespersen.
“What’s most important is to move beyond mere engagement,” Rapp said. He said he uses the term “mere engagement” because simply engaging your prospect or your customer doesn’t result in anything like an ongoing relationship.
“I’ve got news for you,” he said. “You can get engaged — and you can [easily] get disengaged, too.”
Rapp described the multitude of distractions available to us on the internet and reducing our attention spans — Facebook, LinkedIn, Netflix — and called for an approach that creates value by entangling the brand and the consumer or business client.
“The new ecosystem for creating real value with an enduring and mutually rewarding customer relationship is what entangled marketing is about,” Rapp said.
Rapp pointed out that “customer-centric” is no longer news and suggested that what is needed now for marketing success is to focus on adding value to what your customer truly values.
For example, bedding manufacturer Casper turned the industry on its head by offering what Rapp described as one perfect mattress for a perfect night’s sleep.
That is not all Casper sells, he said. The company went on to create the perfect pillow — and the perfect sheet — and just announced the perfect dog mattress. “They’re going to totally take over” eight hours a night of your life, according to Rapp, “and your pet’s sleep time, too.”
Rapp provided Amazon as an ideal example of an internet titan dominating your life during the other 16 hours of your day.
“Amazon’s goal is to entangle the brand in your every waking moment,” he said. “We’ve had mass marketing and one-to-one marketing. Entangled marketing is the next big thing.”
He described how Amazon is winning the battle for “share of life” with products and services including Kindle e-books, Fire TV, Prime Video, the Dash button that reorders household products at the press of a button, and Echo with Alexa, Amazon’s virtual assistant.
“You talk to her and she talks back.…makes your plane reservations, makes your dinner reservations, saves you time and money.…Alexa is never far away.…She’s part of your home,” he said.
