Given the relentless march of progress and history itself, businessmen have to always be ready to react to new developments. It is clear at present that the man was right in his tips, delivered long years ago. He said these things to a good number of the most influential persons in the industry a number of years in the past.
The man occupies a top position in Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide. In an interview made a couple of years after his keynote address in 2003, he explained his point in 2003 by talking about his marketing strategy for the popular hotel chain. The trick, according to him, was to focus on selling fun, not a bed or a room.
In this approach, what is being sold is the experience itself. He said that the hotels had to work on selling experiences worth remembering. Marketing in this manner was new back then, and quite an original concept.
In the 2003 speech, he proposed to marketers and media leaders to become more customized and personalized in delivering their services and products, and aim for the empowerment of consumers. This exactly is today’s most observable trend across corporations and industries. This is a theme most strongly supported by digital products and companies nowadays.
The latest developments have also spelled difficulty for people in entertainment. The development of applications capable of ripping sound from CDs, for instance, led to music producers suffering. Suddenly no-one wanted to pay for songs any longer, opting instead to get them free, off the Net.
There was pandemonium in the song-production business, Heyer noted. In his 2003 speech, the CEO turned to music executives and reminded them of the changing ways of producing and reproducing music due to the empowerment of consumers. He also addressed TV executives and warned them to prepare and adapt to “the changing media consumption habits of younger generations”.
Steve Heyer argues that modern marketing efforts should focus on the creation of cultures, not products. In the interview explaining his marketing strategy for Starwood Hotels, he furthered explained that they are now a company engaged in distributing entertainment and unforgettable experiences. This would thus place the onus of drawing in consumers on the entertainment value of the hotels in question, as opposed to their actual ability to "house" people in need of a place to stay temporarily.
The company has called in a rather unorthodox business associate: a famous lingerie brand known all over the world for its couture lingerie fashion shows. To tempt customers, the shows have been marketed as exclusive events. Such shows how cultural marketing may be used.
Heyer has also spoken out against slapping on brands in films. He calls the practice a “contextless” insertion of brand logos into movies or TV programs. Heyer's beliefs here state that he cannot find this a marketing method that would be likely to be effective.
Steve Heyer CEO is someone who knows what he is doing: he even used to be chief of Coca Cola, one of the biggest businesses in the world. Some of his services for that company actually demonstrate what he is trying to say by "contextual" brand placement. He put the brand in view of American Idol's audience by setting Coke glasses before the judges of the series.
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