"To champion the power of marketing is to be an advocate and a voice for marketing," says Bob Liodice, president and CEO of The Association of National Advertisers.

"That," he says, "is a matter of standing up and being counted."

Anyone who is a regular reader of the business and marketing press could scarcely have helped but notice Bob standing up for marketing in the months since he assumed the top job at the Association of National Advertisers (ANA). He's weighed in on the effects of SPAM on e-commerce, the relative wisdom of the upfront media-buying season, and the implications of the Nike free-speech case, for instance.

No mistake about it: Bob Liodice is using his well-honed points-of-view to bring a distinctly higher public profile to the ANA, which, with its 340 member companies, representing 8,000 brands, is arguably at the center of marketing's universe. He sees such public advocacy, plainly and simply, as yet another service the ANA provides its members -- that is, as he puts it, " to advance, promote, and protect marketing."

Projecting industry leadership actually is just one aspect of what Bob sees as the ANA's mission, which he says is "to be the center of excellence for marketing." The other two things the ANA does for its members, says Bob, are "to help them build their brands and improve their productivity." He elaborates: "We are here to help our members strengthen their brand management and strategic management capabilities, help them optimize their media management, and help them streamline their processes and control their costs."

Bob's focus certainly is shared by many in marketing these days -- that is, the idea that accountability in marketing is not yet all that it ought to be. It is a perspective that flows naturally out of Bob's background, which began in finance and strategy at what was then General Foods and is now Kraft Foods. That path was a natural one for Bob, having graduated from New York University with a bachelor's in accounting and management, and a master's in finance.

Well, after seven successful years in finance, he was invited to move over to a marketing position with the Jell-O brand, which at the time was in need of a new perspective. The move was not made without some trepidation on his part. "Moving into marketing was one of the strangest feelings," says Bob, "because I was going from an environment I knew extremely well to an environment where I absolutely had no understanding. I had no idea what to do on day one."

His mentor at the time, Peter Dolan, who is now chairman and CEO of Bristol-Meyers Squibb, gave him some straightforward advice: "Bob," he said, "marketing is about two words: Common Sense. If it looks right, do it. If it doesn't look right, don't do it. You're the best judge of that."

Sometimes we're going to get it right and sometimes we're going to get it wrong. But at least we're going to be heard.

It turned out to be pretty good advice. Bob spent the next eight years of his career managing the Jell-O business, including a two-year detour as a missionary for Total Quality Management, about which he comments: "That was truly a changing experience because it gave me a greater appreciation of what sound business management principles are about, and the importance of bringing together the finance, marketing and quality disciplines."

After wrapping up his career at General Foods with a jaunt into the so-called "alternate channels market" (club stores, mass merchandisers, convenience stores, etc.) Bob joined Grupo Televisa, an international broadcasting company that was headquartered in Mexico but had its international operations in New York City. The dominant broadcaster in Mexico, Grupo Televisa at the time was best known for producing "tele novellas," or "soap operas." But they also were forming regional media packages, and Bob signed on as vice president of global sales and marketing. The timing wasn't the best, though, as the Mexican economy was faltering and within two years Bob found himself talking to headhunters about finding a new line of work.

The opportunity that caught his eye was one that combined finance and marketing -- the title actually was vice president of member services for the Association of National Advertisers. He got the job, and over the next nine years, Bob basically managed just about every area within the ANA, with a special focus on bringing membership back to levels it hadn't seen for about ten years.

Then, in late 2002, the ANA's president and CEO, John Sarsen, decided that it was time to go fishing, and retired. Recognizing what Bob had done, his relationships with members and knowledge of the industry, the board named him president and CEO on an interim basis. As Bob explains it: "Rather then go through a protracted search, they basically said, 'Look, give the kid a shot. If he does well, we'll make him permanent. If not, okay, then we could go back to square one again.'"

Fortunately, it's all worked out and, after a few months, the board made Bob's appointment official.



How is your vision of the ANA different than it was before you took charge?

Well, it's not necessarily a new vision. What we are trying to do is bring more structure to it. Our previous mission was to help our members build their businesses by building their brands. Our new mission is very much the same -- essentially to help drive our members' business results by helping them build their brands and improve their overall marketing productivity, as well as to leverage that and link that with industry leadership.

What was getting "lost in the sauce" was that the ANA has tremendous equities in helping members truly improve their marketing productivity through cost control capabilities, process improvements, and media optimization, better management of their overall media and the media strategies surrounding that. However, that was not articulated as well as we might have liked.

So, from a long-term standpoint, we've brought a greater degree of direction to that goal, and that's going to allow us to have tighter strategies and tactics against each of our key goals to talk to our members and act upon in a very responsible and directed kind of way.

Can you give some examples of what those tactics would be?

Sure, absolutely. There are three primary channels of distribution that we have. First, there are our various programs and forums and meetings. We try to get people together, because there's a wonderful energy and interchange that takes place at these particular meetings.

The second arena is that we have outstanding individual member support functions and capabilities. As part of our member services, we have a resource group that does nothing but respond to member requests and challenges. Our people are not only marketers in their own right, but they are also library scientists and outstanding researchers. We respond to more than 2,500 requests per year and growing. This is one of the new things we've developed in recent years and have continued to make a wonderful service for our members.

The third channel of distribution is through our industry leadership functions -- whether it's legislatively in Washington, or through "specialized" approaches, such as our Family Friendly Programming Forum, which is an organization of ANA member companies that champion and influence family-oriented programming during the prime- time hour.

And then on a legislative basis, we challenge commercial-free speech incursions and things such as advertising taxes. We have saved our members millions and millions and millions of dollars, as well as protected their rights against incursions to commercial-free speech privileges. So, when the right opportunities come along, we certainly get involved in the industry. And, importantly, we're starting to take a much more public stance and profile on key issues.

Let's talk about a few of those issues. You have been an outspoken critic of one of advertising's most cherished traditions -- the upfront media-buying season. Why?

My frustration with the upfront concerns whether the advertisers truly know what they're buying. In many cases, they are buying a potential promise. Sometimes the spots that they're buying aren't necessarily going to be available when the time comes to use the spot.

An association is about taking on the challenges that no one individual company can take on by itself.

Why is it that we can't just buy the media the same way we buy any other product? I'm not sure that there are many other industries that have to have this congregation and almost get into a bidding process, which has led to CPM increases of 15-17 percent.

If, in fact, marketers are saying, 'I've got to be on network TV,' then I understand why those cost increases take place. But I don't think there is that true level of demand. So, I'm not absolutely sure what the upfront truly accomplishes right now.

Is there a solution?

That's the 64,000-dollar question. I can't tell you right now that I have the answer. I don't. But I do expect to have the people who are members of the ANA engage in a dialogue and a debate as to what in fact we should be doing.

For example, we have a whole array of marketing and media committees. One of those is our television committee, and that is one of the things that the television committee needs to wrestle with -- that is, identifying what can and should be done about the upfront.

That is also how we are developing our upcoming release of our e-marketing, or SPAM, guidelines. We've worked with our new technologies committee and with others in the industry to come up with a collaborative, best-practices position for matters such as the upfront or any other issue that needs to be tackled and challenged. We are going to approach it in an intellectual and collaborative kind of way that represents the best interests of everyone.

Has SPAM, in your opinion, inflicted permanent damage on e-mail as a legitimate marketing tool?

Wow -- I certainly hope not -- but there's no question that it has. Everybody is just disgusted with it -- as well as with pop-up ads. Pop-up ads and SPAM are the two most annoying approaches, or intrusions, into consumers' lives. There is no doubt that there's been damage. But is it irrevocable? No. E-mail is one of the greatest tools that we have in front of us.

What we have heard from all parties -- and I'm talking about the technologists, the legislators, and the marketers -- is that we all have a vested interest in restoring this because it truly is the greatest opportunity to establish what we as marketers have been craving for all along. That is, the opportunity to address our customer base on a one-to-one basis. E-mail is the most addressable of media -- and we would hope that media would continue to become more addressable. But here is the greatest opportunity to become as addressable as we can possibly be and it has slipped away because of those who seek to exploit it.

If you look at it as a triumvirate of approaches -- between marketers, technologists, and legislators -- we can certainly enhance the capability and over the long term get e-mail to come back as a viable approach to business-to-business and business-to-consumer marketers.

What is your view of the proper role of technology in marketing?

Technology is playing a fabulous role in enhancing the productivity of marketers by providing incredible opportunities to weed out inefficiencies both in time and process. Those who are grasping at it, and truly integrating it into their marketplaces, are finding enormous gains. The digital age is a fabulous vehicle for just cutting out redundancies of endless processes -- or just poor communications. There is an opportunity to connect the media with the agencies with the marketers in such a way as to almost make them one.

But technology also has its downside as well, from a marketing standpoint, as we're seeing with personal video recorders, which are a wonderful consumer vehicle, but anathema to marketers because they basically shift control to the consumer. And that's fine. I have absolutely no problem with that, because it forces marketers to find new ways to effectively reach their consumers.

So, technology in marketing represents an opportunity to streamline processes, make us more efficient and more effective. And importantly, it can make the media more addressable. When I was doing general marketing on a day-to-day basis, the frustration was reaching only a tiny percentage of my core constituency. The more addressable the media can become, the greater the opportunity to truly reach those who have the highest probability of being influenced by your marketing message.

Where does your "Ad-ID" initiative with the American Association of Advertising Agencies fit into that picture?

Let's put our opinion out there and let people react to it.

The Ad-ID process is simply an opportunity to bring a uniform standard to the coding of any advertisement or any marketing property that's out there. That includes packaging, sales promotion material, or anything else. It's a basis on which marketers can become more productive by having an identifier attached to each particular asset. That's the essence of what Ad-ID is about -- you can now have a uniform system that can link into whatever digital asset management system that you are using.

It has the potential of giving marketers an increasing level of productivity, because now everything will have its own particular unique code. So, if you're looking to create your own digital asset management system, you will have the system by which you can essentially file it and reference it and bring it and transfer it to the agencies and to the media partners -- or transfer it around the world.

There's also been a lot of press lately about the role of marketing in America's growing battle with obesity. Should marketers change the way they market food to Americans?

It's a great question. I wouldn't even begin to say what they should or shouldn't be doing, because I'm certainly not going to be the conscience for the industry. But, I am clearly an advocate and champion of "responsible marketing." The question becomes one of where does the line get appropriately drawn? And that is a very, very tough challenge.

All of the products are legal products; we're not going to argue about that. Now, 15 years ago -- maybe less than that -- America was crazy about health and nutrition and working out and being fit and trim. And America's waistline was going down. I don't know where that went, but it's just gone the other way. I read the other day that about 60 percent of Americans are either overweight or obese.

Hey, I, myself, believe I'm fifteen pounds overweight. Do I have the ability to lose that? Sure. I've done it and I've let myself go and I've done it and I've let myself go. But that becomes my choice. It's not because I've consistently run out and bought huge volumes of ice cream because of a Breyer's commercial or run to buy 42 Big Macs because of a McDonald's ad. I do believe there is a sense of responsibility that Americans have to take ownership of. Marketers also need to exercise a level of responsibility where appropriate. But to blame an obesity issue on advertising is misdirected.

Should marketers of global brands change the way they do business today, given the somewhat volatile political landscape globally?

American brands are still icons around the world and still have a lot of strength. I do think they have the kind of power to command the kind of interest by the local consumers that they have for years. Let's look at the long term. All brands go through cycles -- whether they are recessionary cycles, product characteristic cycles, and so forth.

But if you truly believe in your long-term strategy, if you believe that what you are doing and your respective mission with respect to that particular brand, you hold true to your fundamental beliefs and you change your various marketing tactics of the short term to address whatever conditions you're facing.

The same thing has to happen, and is happening, in this situation. If you look at major global brands like Coca Cola and Marlboro -- yes, there have been pockets where they've been affected. But, for the most part those brands are doing fine on a gross global basis. So, I think the reality is that those global brands have to stay consistent with their worldwide strategy, but adjust their tactics locally.

Does the rise of Wal-Mart, Target, and the other very powerful retail chains, change the way brands are built in this country today and moving forward into the future?

When I was dealing with Wal-Mart, back when I was part of the General Foods organization, we tried to understand what it is that their respective consumers wanted. We tried to see if there was a way that we could either tailor our packaging or product innovation to best meet the needs of their shoppers. So, if Wal-Mart is representative of a cost-conscience consumer, then we needed to be thinking about a marketing strategy that best typifies the needs of a cost-conscious consumer. That might be a sub-brand or line extension or something along that line.

But the more important question is -- how well do American companies understand their respective consumer audiences? Regardless of the distribution of that product or service, they've got to be able to produce the products that meet their respective needs, and they'll find the outlet by which to be able to do it. So, as influential as the Wal-Marts and the Targets may be, they're not going to overshadow the ultimate decision maker, the consumer.

What would you like your legacy to be?

Wow! (laughs). It would be that the members of the ANA look to our organization as truly the center of excellence for marketing -- to be a resource and a center of marketing knowledge and marketing intellectual capital, that they can turn to regularly and reliably to support their marketing initiatives.

But is it is not just my legacy. This is a wonderful place and wonderful organization. I look at the work done by a relatively small set of individuals and the amount of influence that they can have on marketers' lives and I'm in awe.

And I know that we can be bigger, stronger, represent the industry better. We have a ways to go. Strategically, our objective is to continue to push on all of those fronts, and in a most aggressive kind of way, to become champions for the industry and to be the marketing resource for our members.