ADT’s CMO On the Brand’s Digital Transformation and Evolution Story

ADT, the 145-year young company launched a full brand transformationOpens a new window campaign on Aug. 23, 2019, to drive customer interactions, and internal employee engagement. ADT’s chief marketing officer, Jochen Koedijk, led the campaign for the smart home security provider, which serves residential and business customers across the United States and Canada.

To mark the launch of the campaign, ADT’s unique brand message was: “What Do You Want to Protect?” In this exclusive with MarTech Advisor, Jochen shares details about the campaign’s major milestones, efforts to integrate it across all consumer touchpoints, the role of content marketingOpens a new window , and more.

Jochen leads ADT’s marketing efforts and is responsible for its digital brand marketing strategies and initiatives that drive profitable business growth.

Jochen Koedijk, Chief Marketing Officer at ADT

Here are the edited excerpts from the exclusive conversation with MarTech Advisor:

MarTech Advisor: You recently rebranded ADT with a new website, improved customer service experienceOpens a new window and overall revamped approach. We’d love to know what your aims and major milestones were in this digital transformation journey. How did the process unfold?

Jochen: Our brand transformation starts with a uniquely personal question, “What do you want to protect?”, to create a dialog with our customers. Whether people, pets, possessions or passions that people want to keep safe, all answers are unique, meaningful and ever-changing. By starting all communications with this important question, we can showcase our unique ability to customize solutions for our customers. We are excited by the personalization this transformation will highlight.

We acknowledge that what we want to protect differs for everyone and what we want to protect today is different than yesterday and tomorrow. Therefore, ADT’s offerings have grown and evolved over time and will continue to do so, just like life does. You’ll see the efforts of the brand transformation at every touchpoint, from our visual evolution in our paid mediaOpens a new window efforts to our internal branding to how our employees communicate with customers; everything will be impacted.

MarTech Advisor: The rebrand is supported by a full omnichannel awareness campaign. How did ADT integrate the ‘online-offline-mobile’ aspects of its business?

Jochen: Exactly, our brand relaunch was supported by an omnichannel advertising campaign. This is the first major campaign that our new media-buying team fully managed. We now do all our media planning, buying, and analytics in-house. It allows us much greater control and closeness to the data, which also allows us to move a lot faster.

Our marketing reaches across offline, online, and mobile. Integrating these aspects of the business is important when it comes to maximizing the effectiveness of our messaging and customer experience.  This is not an easy effort and it is one on which we will continue to work. We connect our customer segmentation to our inhouse executed media buys, that reach across offline and online. The nature of online marketing channels allows us to be more granular with targeting, so we determine the granularity of our customer segments by media type, but they are all connected so that our media buying approach is consistent between online and offline.

Learn More: Why Customer Experience Matters Even More in 2019: Q&A with Matt Zilli of Marketo, An Adobe CompanyOpens a new window

MarTech Advisor: Content has played a central role in your marketing strategy. What is the cornerstone of your content marketing approach, and how do you build content experiences that lead to conversions?

Jochen: Leading with the profound question “what do you want to protect?” allows us to not only create new authentic content, but also to collect content from our customers, such as the people whose lives we have helped save. We have a LifeSaver story section that we have worked on for years and which will continue to be a key content component and we have reconnected with several families to discuss with them what it is they want to continue to protect.

We are leveraging this transformation to gather not only stories from our customers but also with our employees and it allows us to create a cohesive internal and external content strategy.

 ADT’s New Commercial About Their Digital Transformation Journey

MarTech Advisor: Post the brand transformation, what are the next big digital marketing and customer experience (CX) initiatives for ADT?

Jochen: During the month of September, we are bringing our new brand transformation to life in a “station domination” out-of-home ad campaign taking over the subway station at Grand Central Terminal. To drum up more excitement and broaden awareness of the campaign, on Friday, September 13, we took over Vanderbilt Hall, offering people the opportunity to experience and explore an exclusive collection of never-before-assembled artifacts and valuables in the “Gallery of Valuables by ADT.”

The unique event allowed consumers to get up close and personal with items of great importance and value, both monetary and sentimental, from incredible art to iconic fashion and pop-culture items to sports memorabilia and everyday treasures of personal significance, all made possible by ADT, because we are what we protect. Some of the items we featured included:

• An actual spacesuit from astronaut Scott Kelly
• Muhammad Ali’s original boxing robe
• The limited-edition zine from Jay-Z‘s Magna Carta album launch
• A Pixar statue of Woody, the original iconic character from Pixar’s first movie Toy Story
• Childhood items shared by HGTV’s Property Brothers, Jonathan and Drew Scott  
•  A Tiffany Speaking Trumpet and Lantern from the New York Fire Museum – for us it was important to have representation from first responders who work tirelessly on behalf of the communities we serve.
• Memorabilia from the Klassen family. They are ADT customers in Minnesota who recently were saved from carbon monoxide poisoning. Their story has touched many of us, and we thought it would be a good way to bring to life the millions of customers we work to help protect every single day.

   

The event at Grand Central was inspired by an internal activation we did to launch our brand transformation with our employees. We invited employees across all disciplines to help us create a “Gallery of Valuables” at several our offices, and we were moved by the cherished items that our colleagues brought to be showcased. We knew that by engaging with icons of sports, pop culture and our own customers we would be able to drive an emotional connection and engagement that speaks to our mission and purpose at ADT helping protect what matters most.

Learn More: The Essential & Evolving Role of the Experiential Marketer: Q&A With Splash’s Amy BaroneOpens a new window

About ADTOpens a new window :

ADT is a leading security and automation provider serving residential and business customers across the United States and Canada. Ranked as the #1 Smart Home Security Provider; ADT delivers advanced technology-based security and automation solutions for home, work, and beyond, and provides peace-of-mind to its customers, who know they are covered by ADT’s reliable and efficient customer service. ADT offers many ways to help protect customers by delivering lifestyle-driven solutions via professionally installed, do-it-yourself, mobile, and digital-based offerings for residential, small business, and larger commercial customers.

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