For Emerson, Innovation Is the Solution

Find out on Thursday, Feb. 4, when Kathy Button Bell keynotes BMA’s next MarketingMasters Luncheon Seminar at The Standard Club. Emerson’s veteran chief marketing officer will chronicle how Emerson was able to better leverage itself and endure a 10-year metamorphosis from an obscure, product-oriented manufacturer into a respected solutions-based technology leader.

 

Emerson had acquired billions of dollars’ worth of companies during its 110-year history before Button Bell came on board in 1999. All of Emerson’s divisions were pretty much allowed to operate and market themselves as independent companies, much as they had before Emerson bought them. As a result, Button Bell was faced with an organization composed of more than 60 autonomous divisions that were making a lot of products under their own brands. In effect, Emerson was using a “hardware store” communications approach, as she puts it, selling products under a variety of brands, with little to tie them back to the Emerson name.

 

Button Bell’s answer to this challenge was to develop an overbrand architecture approach in 2000 and support it with internal and external communications launched in tandem. Under this new vision, the Emerson logo would now represent technology and engineering coming together, with the company’s divisions working passionately together to create better solutions for their customers. The result was a transformation that ultimately saw Emerson’s 60-plus divisions better consolidated into a more relevant industrial powerhouse. The company simplified itself by pouring its brands into eight customer “buckets” and actively promoting the b-to-b company as having a more solutions-centric approach.

 

At the February luncheon, Button Bell will discuss Emerson’s approach to shifting the culture’s focus more toward solutions development and sales execution, as well as the award-winning global campaign that promotes this critical new orientation.

 

The “It’s Never Been Done Before” campaign, launched in 2009, was created by DDB Chicago. It focuses on unique and innovative solutions that Emerson delivers to customers—from helping Colorado-based Range Fuels develop a commercially viable process for creating alternative fuels from non-edible biomass to enabling the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District to convert more ground-up home food waste to electricity.

 

Button Bell said one of the things that prompted the campaign extension was an internal finding that much of Emerson’s new-product development was going into product revisions aimed at cutting costs rather on innovation. The company responded to this by redirecting an increased percentage of R&D toward developing things that are “new to the market, new to the world.” While this credo caught winds in its sail internally, Emerson found it resonated externally as well.

 

Emerson has spent more than $15 million on the campaign to date, with a third global flight launching this March.

 

“A recession is an opportune time for companies like ours to more tightly partner with customers to better help them prepare for the turnaround,” Button Bell said. “We want to proudly demonstrate to multinational audiences how Emerson’s innovation is helping to unlock new growth opportunities and create dramatic industry changes.”

 

The first flight of the campaign, which ran through May 2009, included newspaper, magazine, TV, radio, Internet, and airport digital boards and dioramas.

 

In addition to showcasing case studies involving leading biofuels company Range Fuels and the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District, the new ads also highlighted first-of-its-kind heat pump technology Emerson developed for deployment in China’s northern provinces so residents there can heat their homes without relying on coal-fired heating plants, and Emerson’s first-in-its-industry approach to maximizing data center energy efficiency.

 

“‘It’s Never Been Done Before’ delivers on the promise that Emerson is a powerful force for innovation,” Button Bell said. “It shows the results of Emerson’s fantastic work across a multitude of industries to create new-to-the-business and new-to-the-world solutions. And in a world of uncertainty, it reinforces the message that Emerson has the answers to not only sustain customers but help grow their businesses in surprising new ways.”

 

Button Bell added that the TV commercials include unexpected music from fresh, new alternative bands, which “supports our innovative theme and really adds energy and some fun to the new TV spots. It should also help break through the financial news clutter on television.”

 

BMA’s February luncheon seminar is expected to reach capacity early, so please sign up soon. To register, go HERE.

 

 

As vice president and chief marketing officer at Emerson, Kathy Button Bell is responsible for global marketing and corporate branding at the $20.9 billion diversified global technology and engineering leader. She joined Emerson in 1999.

 

In 2000 Button Bell led the development and launch of Emerson’s corporate branding program, which put in place an entirely new brand architecture and brand strategy across the company’s more than 60 divisions, as well as the first corporate logo change in more than 30 years. In 2002 she initiated the company’s first-ever global advertising campaign, an ongoing program that was expanded to include the company’s first television commercials in targeted media outlets in 2006. In early 2009 she launched an extension of the Emerson campaign with an execution under the “It’s Never Been Done Before” banner.

 

Button Bell serves on Emerson’s corporate growth team, where she and other senior managers identify and develop focused growth initiatives for the company. Along with being responsible for the global marketing strategy, she oversees external corporate communications, development of customer-focused interactive tools, market research programs and professional development programs for the company’s marketing teams worldwide. She is also a co-leader of the company’s global Web-Steering Board.

 

In recognition of her leadership and accomplishments, Button Bell was named one of the “Best Marketers of 2009” by BtoB magazine, an honor she also received in 2005 and 2006. She was also recognized as one of the world’s top 10 marketers and strategists in the publication’s “Who’s Who Special Report” in 2003. She is frequently invited to speak at national and international conferences on marketing and innovation. Button Bell also serves as a mentor in the National Math + Science Young Leaders Program, a partnership forged by Fortune magazine, ExxonMobil and the National Math + Science Initiative.

 

Before joining Emerson, Button Bell was president of her own marketing consulting firm specializing in market planning, brand building and marketing training for Fortune 500 manufacturers. Prior to that she was executive director of worldwide marketing communications for Converse Inc., and previously was director of advertising and public relations for Wilson Sporting Goods.

 

Button Bell holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Princeton University. A resident of St. Louis, she is married and has one child.