Kevin Doohan likes his kicks. The CMO of DTS, a premier audio solutions provider for high-definition entertainment experiences, has a collection of more than 100 Nikes that he tweets about nearly every day. A former marketing executive with Machinima, Red Bull, and ConAgra Foods, Doohan joined DTS in January with the intention of kicking its drive to become the 21st century’s coolest ingredient brand into high gear. So far, he’s succeeding—in no small part because of his nose for what’s cool (sharpened during his Red Bull tenure and kept sharp with his current social media activity) and the respect for old-school brand marketing principles he developed earlier in his career.
Q: What’s your marketing passion?
A: I would describe it as a combination of digital marketing and old-school brand marketing. The early part of my career—when I worked in online real estate and online banking—was very, very, very digital and therefore highly focused on measurement. I went to ConAgra foods in the mid-2000s with the intention of becoming a student of old-school brand marketing. Later, at Red Bull, I learned a more highly evolved approach to pure brand marketing. Blending these methods makes for a fun day at work, and I think it gives me a unique brand perspective. Classic brand marketers typically don’t have the digital chops and vice versa, although that’s beginning to change.
Q: You got involved in digital marketing very early on. How did that happen?
A: I was a big Dead Head, and I met a kid on a train who told me that there was this online newsgroup where you could go to get any Grateful Dead show. This was back in the days when you would send someone a self-addressed, stamped envelope and they would mail you a tape of the show. All of the show lists were posted on this newsgroup, and that was my first real introduction to the Internet. I thought, “Oh my God, this is amazing; how can I make this my job?” I was just finishing grad school and I remember my father questioning me about my job search. “Is that really a whole job?” he asked. “Shouldn’t that Internet stuff be part of someone’s job?” My response was, “No, Dad, this is going to be big.”
Q: You joined DTS in January. What’s your mission?
A: I’m building the DTS brand. Our real aim is to build the ingredient brand of the 21st century. We’ve seen ingredient brands like Intel and others go to market in the past. I want to define how ingredient brands of today and the future go to market. At DTS we have a slightly different approach. We’re building the DTS brand, but we’re also very much building the DTS brand within our customers’ brands.
Q: How are you going to execute this mission?
A: There are a couple of ways to build brands. One is through paid media. If you want to move more palettes of salad dressing, you can spend more on advertising. This is a well-defined model: If you spend $100 in advertising, you will sell X many bottles of salad dressing; and if you want to sell more, spend more. But there’s also a way to build brands that’s not all about paid media. It’s about creating experiences for your customers that they love so much that they will carry the water for you by spreading the word. I’m trying to do that via our partners. We’re experts in audio at DTS. And while we have people who know speakers very, very well, we have a partner, Polk Audio, whose entire business is about building speakers and headphones. Those guys know Polk speakers better than me, and they know their customers better than me. As an ingredient brand, you have the opportunity to learn from your partners, like Polk and others, and then to bring the expertise regarding what your ingredient offers.
Q: How does your passion for digital and brand marketing work its way into your daily routine?
A: One way is by paying a lot of attention to ads. I have a reading list, so I track different blogs and publications online when I get up in the morning. I look at a fair amount of print and I watch a fair amount of TV, but most of my time is spent online. The more elegant online experiences are the ones that I’m more drawn to. The New York Times’ Snowfall package or Pharrell’s 24-hour “Happy” video are relatively recent examples of innovative online delivery. One of the fun things about marketing is that everyone thinks they can do your job. Not everyone thinks they can be the CFO, but people definitely think they can market. We all have this great experience when we watch the Super Bowl and weigh in on which ads are the best. As a marketer, I take that Super Bowl experience to the extreme. Every day I’m judging ads—what’s good, what’s bad, how does what I see reconcile with my understanding of the brand.
Q: You’re also an active participant in social realm.
A: I tweet a fair amount. You’ll find me tweeting about sneakers as much as you’ll find me tweeting about marketing. I love sneakers. I have more than 100 pairs of Nikes, and I tweet them every day.
I try to keep it marketing-focused but it usually ends up being about Red Sox and sneakers.
Q: How do you balance your digital marketing and traditional brand marketing passions when it comes to measurement?
A: It depends on the project. I always want data, but I don’t always make a decision based entirely on the data. Sometimes you look your team in the eye and say, “We crushed it on this,” even though it may not seem that way based on the raw numbers. Maybe you got a high-profile win, even though the scale wasn’t there. In terms of current metrics, we’re working on identifying the most gainful engagement measures to follow at DTS.
Artist relations are also a big priority for us right now. We want to introduce artists to DTS Headphone:X and get them recording in this new format. So, we’re spending a lot of time tracking how many artists we’ve reached, what genres those artists are in, who the top artists are that we want to meet, and how we’re doing on that score. That’s what I’m looking at right now with our newly established artist-relations team as we work to get the word out.
Q: How do you monitor your progress in getting the word out?
A: One of my general principles is that it’s a good thing if people are talking about our products and solutions. I basically believe that all PR is good PR. If someone doesn’t like our solutions and they’re talking about them, they probably will inspire someone to go try them—and that person may be delighted by our audio experience. But it’s bigger than PR. I also think the purpose of ads and products should be to get people to talk. We want to create early adopters who tell their friends, “Oh my God, you wouldn’t believe this tuning function that I have in my phone; I was able to customize the sound to my own hearing.” You want to create those “wow” moments early on. Those moments don’t immediately deliver scale, but they’re incredibly valuable and they require good gut calls. You can use some consumer insight and data, but at some point you just go for it.
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By 2017 video data will account for 66.5% of mobile bandwidth—more than any other mobile activity, according to a Cisco VNI Mobile Forecast. This figure inspired Doohan and his team to conduct a study on DTS’s Headphone:X audio solution. “We wanted to understand how much of an impact pairing Headphone:X audio with video content has on consumer enjoyment and retention, compared to having video content with standard stereo audio,” Doohan explains. Neuromarketing firm Neuro-Insight, which conducted the study, found that pairing Headphone:X audio with mobile video content increased viewer satisfaction by as much as 66% and viewer memory retention by up to 14% compared to typical stereo sound. Doohan plans to weave this data into future marketing messages.
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How to Market a 21st Century Ingredient Brand
- Translate: “It’s as if DTS found the best minds in audio and called them to Calabasas, California, to create highly complex and effective solutions to deliver a jaw-dropping audio experience,” Doohan says. “My challenge is to understand what the heck they’re talking about, and then translate that into a simple, elegant, compelling message.”
- Partner: Since DTS products are embedded in consumer devices, like headphones, Doohan and his team invest significant time learning about their partners and their partners’ customers while also educating these partners about DTS.
- Wow: Besides working with partners to spread the DTS word, Doohan and his team work closely with their company’s newly formed artist-relations team to help create “wow” moments for influential musicians who hopefully will spread the word about their experiences with DTS Headphone:X and other DTS products.
