Maverick CMOs Try Going Without TV

Best Buy cut its TV spending by about 40 percent last year. But instead of pocketing the money, CMO Barry Judge opted to spend it on increasing staff in the company’s stores and on improving the company’s Web site.

Realtor Century 21, meanwhile, is planning to funnel all the cash that it used to spend on TV advertising onto the Web. Red Robin Gourmet Burgers also is completely cutting out TV in its 2009 media mix.

As the upfronts loom, many big brands—like General Motors and Citibank, for instance—are slashing their spending on television advertising out of necessity. But another factor to consider is the maverick CMO who is willing to spend a lot less on TV advertising or cut it out entirely.

Partially, it’s a response to market conditions, but some marketers say the economy is prompting them to take a chance on new forms of marketing. Susan Lintonsmith, CMO for Red Robin, said the economy is definitely one impetus for going without TV. “It’s a little of everything,” she said. The brand just started advertising on TV in 2007. Lintonsmith said she thinks brand awareness is where it needs to be. “We’ll be riding the momentum of two years of advertising.”

The economy isn’t always the main reason for cutting back. Judge, for instance, is a big believer in transparency. Not only does he write his own blog, but he regularly posts new Best Buy TV spots weeks before they are set to air. In his thinking, TV advertising is important, but can be undermined by a bad consumer experience.

“Last year our big focus was ‘What’s our big differentiator? Why come to us versus Wal-Mart or Amazon, which continue to be our two top competitors? The big differentiator is our people,” said Judge. “We invested more in labor. We took a pretty significant chunk out of our marketing budget and allocated that toward having more help in the stores.” More money came out of the marketing budget to upgrade the company’s Web site as well. “We look at Bestbuy.com as the first proof point of the brand and if we’re not doing a good job there then we’re not going to get them to come to the stores.”

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