Deven Nongbri
B2B tech marketer with B2C mindset. Penchant for family, travel, photography, live music and pro sports. Fan of the unique for marketing and branding.
- Deven on LinkedIn
- CMO Thinking on Tumblr
- Tweet Deven
- Flickr Photos from Deven
- YouTube Picks from Deven
-
Info
- VP, Marketing. CMO. Strategic Consulting.Management Consulting | Houston, Texas Area, USSummary
Business-to-business global marketing professional with a consumer marketing mindset, focused on strategy and message development. Broad experience in technology, entertainment and business product and service offerings, with a background in brand, product, corporate and investor communications.
Currently looking for new professional opportunities.
Specialties: Strategic planning, team leadership, budgeting and forecasting, developing integrated marketing strategies, copy writing, brand development, database and direct marketing, corporate communications, event marketing and agency management.
Experience- 2011 - PresentVP, Marketing / Extremetix, Inc.
- 2010 - 2011Global Marketing / Dell
- 2004 - 2011Guest Lecturer / Trinity University
- 2007 - 2009Sr. Director, New Media and Interactive Marketing / Spurs Sports & Entertainment
- 2000 - 2007Director, Consumer Marketing / AT&T
- 1999 - 2000Communications Specialist, ICOM Group / Johnson & Johnson
Education- Northwestern University
- Trinity University
-
Posts
- Spring Reading: Customer CEO by Chuck Wall - Get This Book Tomorrow!
Photo courtesy of Customer CEO
Originally posted on April 22, 2013
It seems simple, but so many organizations don’t know how to treat their own customers. It’s more than customer service or even customer experience – organizations need to recognize the power of the modern customer.
Customer CEO does just that and is a useful guide for thinking differently about how your company interacts with its customers, the real decision-makers in your organization. Having made my own career of applying a “voice-of-the-customer” (VOC) mindset professionally at companies like Johnson & Johnson, the NBA and Dell, it’s refreshing to see author Chuck Wall provide dozens of examples of other smart companies treating customers with dignity, empathy and respect – and winning in the marketplace as a result.
This is a great read, perfect for a west-to-east coast commute and back. You’ll feel invigorated about re-assessing your own relationship with your customers and you’ll have some common sense guidelines to share with the rest of your team. The book goes on sale April 30th on amazon.com and at other retailers.
- What's Old Is New Again
Photo courtesy of Macklemore and Ryan Lewis
Originally posted February 25, 2013
Had a wonderful experience at our garage sale this past weekend. In addition to providing a way to remove unused items from the house, the annual garage sale is a way to give back to folks who find these items useful. We like to recycle.
I cleaned out my closet of old dress shirts, jackets and suits and put out some really old suits from one of my wife’s uncles who died last year. His wife dry-cleaned the suits and we put them on the racks for $5 each. We’re talking Vintage suits from Lavin, Hickey Freeman, Sakowitz and a number of bespoke suits from Hong Kong.
We advertised we had some clothing for sale but much of the vintage items didn’t go until later in the morning. Semi-hipsters, DIYers and makers descended upon the vintage racks and bought pretty much everything, sometimes without even looking at it and none of them tried anything on.
After the crush, a Latin American family came by and the father and son, a boy of about 12 or 13, looked at a rack of mostly hangers and a few shirts. The young man said he was looking for a suit and before I could say we were sold out, I remembered a single black suit from my wife’s uncle that I had put aside to look more closely at the seams – I noticed how well-made the suit was and I wanted to compare it to what I wear today. I went into the house and brought it out.
His eyes lit up as he explained he was looking for a black suit, his first one, he told me confidently. He immediately tried on the jacket and it fit, real well actually. And I opened up the jacket as he was wearing it and there was no branding on the inside other than a generic stitched patch indicating it was a custom tailoring job from Hong Kong, probably from the early 1960s. Not a stitch was out of place and wool fabric was still stunning 50 years later.
The father held the pants up to his son and his mother came over and whispered they’d need alterations. But this kid was beaming ear to ear. He whispered something back to his parents then turned to me and said, “I’ll take this one” and shook my hand vigorously. I told him five dollars and he couldn’t hand over a fistful of ones fast enough.
It felt great seeing him walk away, proudly, with his first suit that he bought with his own money. And he was getting an impeccably tailored suit that he wouldn’t find anywhere else. He was partly skipping down the street as he headed back into his family’s pick-up truck. I wish I could bottle up his feeling of pride, confidence and excitement at the possibilities his purchase will provide. I didn’t go into the garage sale looking to make anyone’s day, but now that it happened, I want to do it again (and again and again). I want this excitement to propel me into a new week, new month and open up new possibilities to help others. I want to spread the joy. Life’s too short not to help.
- How do you start blogging? (Or, My Customers Got 99 Problems...)
Photo courtesy of lolbot
Originally posted February 18, 2013
You’re a new marketing or communications manager and your boss, the head of sales, ask you to start the company blog. Reasons for why a blog is an important part of the marketing and communications cycle are numerous: branding touch point, SEO, back links, customer service, human element online, and etc.
But how do you actually get the blog started? Are you on the hook to pen boring fluff pieces week after week? Let’s hope not (for all of our sakes).
The absolute best piece of advice I’ve received on coming up with blog content, week after week, and in just about every role I’ve held, came via Twitter from fellow travel aficionado Sheila Scarborough (and I think she was paraphrasing her business partner and friend, Becky McCray): write what your customers ask you. Simple as that.
Ask your current customers what their top three headaches are about your industry, trade or service in general. Those responses will become a major part of your editorial calendar for the foreseeable future.
Why? Because you’ll now have a blueprint for providing thought leadership on topics that your customers (and prospects) find important - what a golden opportunity to shine! Find ways to be helpful and share your professional opinion on the topics, and you’ll have created a win-win situation with your company’s brand (and your boss) and your soon-to-be-legion of interested blog readers. Good luck!
What If Peter Stults
Movies re-imagined for another time & place.
Perfect for a movie night kind of night.
- Think Groupon is Good for Business? Think Again...
Kitteh courtesy of Groupon
Originally posted February 11, 2013
As winter rolls into spring, many consumers are sifting through email pitches from daily deal sites enticing them to try massage parlors, salons and restaurants of every stripe, often for pennies on the dollar. As cheap as these deals seem to buyers, are they very effective for the retailers or event organizers? Let’s take a look…
Often times, daily deals purveyors require at least a 50% discount from standard fees or ticket prices to even do a deal; $20 face value at a restaurant, for example, would cost the buyer only $10. Of that $10, the daily deal site typically gets 60% of that, leaving you, the retailer/restaurateur/event organizer, just $4 of that $20 value at your own establishment. Was it worth $16 to bring that customer into your restaurant? Will that buyer ever come back to your business and willingly pay more than $10? Research shows they probably won’t and that’s why small businesses, restaurants and event planning professionals need to tread cautiously when even thinking about using any daily deal site.
Research from faculty at Cornell and MIT indicates that daily deal customers who provide public reviews of the merchants they’ve used as part of daily deals, typically give ratings 10% lower than those of their peers. Is that part of your brand strategy? Discounting is a double-edged sword and when it cuts, it cuts deep. Is your business ready to potentially lose money and let the brand take the hit?
Additional anecdotal research from NPR indicates daily deal customers tend not to spend as much as retailers had hoped. And now there’s news that Groupon is bullying and threatening lawsuits against small businesses that try to get out of their contracts. Proceed with caution if your business is thinking about going down the path of daily deals. Once you discount a product, dish or event ticket, you’ve trained a certain group of customers to ONLY buy at that price, and effectively re-priced the VALUE of that product, dish or event ticket to that discounted price going forward.
The moral of the story is to look at how much each marketing channel contributes and costs for your business or event, and determine what makes the most sense for your business at that point in time. I only post this because I’ve supported thousands of events and small businesses over the years and there’s been little conversation about the downside of partnering up with a daily deals provider. Mutually beneficial agreements are possible, but know what to expect before going into those conversations. Good luck! Dead at 81, George Jones
(the DUI on a lawn mower story is true)Sad to see him go. Certainly was talented and lived a country music life.
Flora Borsi | http://behance.net/yayuniversal
“What Photoshop Would Look Like in Real Life? I would like it!”
My name is Flóra Borsi. I’m 19 years old and I live in Hungary. I’ve interested in photo-manipulating since 2004. I’ve been taking photos since 2007. I won a half-professional camera on a photo contest in 2008 and I’ve been working with that since then.
I usually do (self) portraits, concept arts, photo-manipulations, fashion editorials. The essence of my photos is to visualize the physically impossible in a form of photo manipulation. At portraits I’m trying to mediate the models. I haven’t mentioned my style, because I think it hasn’t been emerged, and it’s still developing and forming
Often wondered this myself given the fact that you can manipulate your images as soon as you take them on a smart phone or tablet. Not much longer before the images are manipulated in real time…
- Best of 2013 Super Bowl Ads from the Perspectives of Kids
Screen capture by dnongbri
Originally posted February 3, 2013
And so goes another NFL season and Super Bowl. Congrats to the Baltimore Ravens for hanging on for the win. And now on to the important stuff…the ads.
Super Bowl ads are a bit of an American marketing institution these days, but as I mentioned earlier, the truly great ads are the ones that engage beyond the game and really generate awareness and delight about your brands. But we’re not delving into that for this post. No, we’re going to the harshest of critics, my three-year old son and his six-year old sister.
They were allowed to stay up and watch all four quarters of the game, but by mid-fourth quarter both of them were ready for bed. So before bed, I asked them both which ads they remembered and which of those were their favorites. Here’s how the conversation went:
M&Ms - Love BalladThree-year old: “M&Ms were good…and they played pianos. Yum!”
Six-year old: “Yeah, but the commercial was fake. M&Ms aren’t that big and can’t talk.” As you might be able to tell, our six-year old won’t have any of this animated nonsense.Six-year old: “Why would anyone race to a sign?” and “Oh, you can vote for the winner. I hope the glitter ladies win.” Guess what, kiddo? The “glitter ladies” did win.
Three-year old: “He’s a bear wrestler!”
Six-year old: “Cool!”Three-year old: “It’s a happy car, daddy!” and “It looks like he’s smiling, like he likes driving.” If I were a VW marketing manager, that’s a darn fine response to a TV spot. Our six-year old LOVED the Darth Vaderand Star Wars Dogs spots from 2011 and 2012. I think the “Dogs” may have been a teaser.
Three-year old: “It’s his hind quarters, daddy.” We’re not allowed to say “butt” or “ass” in our house. And so hat tip to Larry the Cable Guy for use of “hind quarters” as an acceptable substitute around the house.
Six-year old: “That’s impossible. No shoes make you run as fast as a cheetah.” and, “Is that what advertising does? Makes you think you can do things you really can’t?” GREAT conversation around this spot and what people SHOULD and SHOULD NOT do to sell products. Truth in advertising, honesty and computer animation all came up and I’m very happy to have another ad skeptic in the home. Sorry, Sketchers, this one came off as too implausible for even a six-year old.
Three-year old: “Pet goats are a mess.” and “Chips will make him fat.”
Six-year old: “Why does he keep it in the house?” and “Why does it only eat Doritos? I thought goats eat everything.”Six-year old: “Ha ha ha. Daddies look funny with dresses. And, no, you can’t grow a beard like that!”
And so, which ad of this esteemed group swayed the kids to the point they had a favorite? Our three-year old son is into cars; really, really into cars and thinks rear ends (aka “hind quarters”) are hilarious, so he obviously went with the Hyundai “Stuck” spot. Any product recall? Nope, but the ad, “sure was funny.” Fair enough.
Our daughter, older and tad more nuanced than the boy, liked both Doritos spots. Both gave her a good chuckle and she recalled the product by name, which is a little concerning to me - I’ll be in the dog house next time mom goes shopping and the daughter asks for Doritos by name. Anyway, she decided “Fashionista Daddys” was her favorite spot because she likes “…snacks and seeing Daddys in dresses!” Very funny and not going to happen here. At least I hope not.
Special shout out to Oreos for the BEST, MOST MASTERFUL social media play of the night: lights unexpectedly go out in the second half and the game is delayed for over 15 minutes. Oreos is an advertiser and they may have actually had an ad on TV while the lights were out, and they tweeted this, which was picked up all over my Twitter feed, Google+ and Facebook pages: Oreo: Power out? No problem. … Absolutely brilliant. Well played, Oreos. Well played. Asana.
Source : Mad over Marketing.
Love it. Right on point. Just hope the target market uses disposable straws…
- Time to Move
Man on bike, Fengdu, China by dnongbri
You may notice a new look to the CMO Thinking blog and it’s simply because we found a new home. Online, that is.
The walled garden that is Quora is simply not a good blogging platform for us. Despite having a very engaged community of experts who are great at answering questions, the platform itself doesn’t have the tools to publish, share, comment and truly engage others in conversation. It leaves a lot to be desired.
So we’re taking our talents to Tumblr, where we’ve seen excellent engagement and an incredibly creative class of users and readers. Looking forward to sharing more and engaging in the conversation in our new home! We’ll port the old blog posts here in the coming weeks.
-
Tweets
- Gr8 awards last night! #marketing RT @HouserJg Mayor Parker, CMO of Houston! #crystalawards #houston #amahouston https://t.co/XZWV77vHViMay 24, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- Congrats! RT @chaione1 Chaione won best mobile marketing program at @amahouston crystal awards! For our invesco app! http://t.co/Iue2PRmrK8May 24, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- May 24, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- Nike's Phil Knight: still a believer in #advertising (and forgiving #athletes): http://t.co/42T22dWsFJ #marketing #sportsbiz #branding
- Yeah, #socialmedia has changed EVERY #sport, not just #baseball: http://t.co/uSuU8HZK2P #sportsbiz #culture
- Jeff Katzenberg shares some good advice & predictions on where #tech & #entertainment are headed: http://t.co/Z5OW4bf5e1 #culture #animation
- Good read on #socialmedia RT @SocialMedia411: Community Management & Hiring Talent For Social: The General Mills Way: http://t.co/WVBAOF83tv
- Check out minor league ball teams with #StarWars #promos this summer: http://t.co/UTGtoweAMp #MiLB #marketing #TravelTuesday #culture
- Sponsored #content in print mimics similar content on TV, web: http://t.co/WmKAcVN69d #advertising #marketing #sportsbiz #espn
- Chris Hadfield adapts to life back on Earth http://t.co/tiBvcDbDer #space @NASA_Johnson #Houston #Htown
- Nice profile of @anniseparker & #diversity of #Houston on @wsj today, just in time for #hackhou: http://t.co/beKDtBBvqh #Htown #cultureMay 18, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- Gr8 crowd at #Houston #Hackathon listening to @brucehaupt talk city plans for #opendata. #hackhou #hackforchange http://t.co/NQ9cZZQbK9May 17, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- Houston doing big things for #opendata with #Hackathon this weekend. #hackhou #hackforchange #Htown http://t.co/tmX8HVXdlTMay 17, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- Well, I know where I'm eating next time I'm in #NYC! #foodie RT @questlove Ladies & Gentleman! #Hybird! @hybirdnyc! https://t.co/FJ6RvLhRM4May 17, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- Interesting...lobbyists buying up airtime on @ESPN to influence White House: http://t.co/AHrFlRB6UK #politics #sportsbiz #marketing
- Well, yeah! RT #marketing #HigherEd @MedillTalentQ: #Medill #IMC is the best program in the country- @JeffDavidoff @MedillSchool @VitaminIMCMay 16, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- Good read on Al Jazeera's plans for their #American #brand fm @MedillSchool: http://t.co/nm7HXjZr8E (via @NorthwesternU) #media #journalismMay 16, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- You guys know I love me some @flipboard! Neat #infographic on what people read on the engaging platform: http://t.co/6aseHayMDn #content
- Good stuff in my #Flipboard magazine, #CMO Daily: http://t.co/XPRh4PSLqc #marketing #design #culture
-
Photos
-
Uploads
