GoPro, the high-definition camera manufacturer, was voted Marketer of the Year by the Fisher Association of Marketing Professionals, the graduate student marketing association at OSU. Credit: Courtesy of TNS
High-octane videos produced by everyday people used to be rare, but today it’s not surprising to see students with small cameras strapped to their foreheads as they skateboard down the street.
GoPro, the high-definition camera manufacturer, was voted Marketer of the Year by the Fisher Association of Marketing Professionals, the graduate student marketing association at Ohio State. The award will be presented to GoPro’s senior vice president of marketing Paul Crandell on Friday during the Columbus Advertising and Marketing Powwow.
“The Marketer of the Year award is given to a brand that has shown excellence in creating, communicating or delivering value to consumers,” said Lindsey Lorenz, Fisher AMP’s co-president and an MBA candidate.
As another way to celebrate GoPro’s receiving of the award, Fisher AMP will be giving away a GoPro camera to an audience member at CAMP, Lorenz said.
“A few years ago, people didn’t know what that product (GoPro) was. Today, it’s an exciting new product that has been super successful,” said Shashi Matta, a clinical associate professor of marketing and adviser of Fisher AMP. “To learn about how a new product like this broke through conventional technology giants and has become a success is relevant to … anybody who’s in any major and any background.”
A small team within Fisher AMP nominated four brands, and their nominations were voted on by the rest of the association, Lorenz said.
The brands nominated included Chipotle, Nike, Taco Bell and GoPro, said Avinash Gupta, MBA candidate and member of the Fisher AMP planning committee.
Of the four nominated this year, GoPro won “by a landslide,” Lorenz said.
“GoPro is one of those brands that’s capitalizing on not only their really strong consumer base and giving them what they want, but they’re enabling their consumers to create their own experiences rather than pushing out their experiences to them,” Lorenz said.
The shift toward co-creation of content between consumers and producers speaks to a big change in marketing brought on by technology, fitting in with this year’s theme for CAMP, which is “the future of marketing in an increasingly digital and data-driven world,” Lorenz said.
The digital revolution has empowered consumers and placed more importance in the experience of products rather than simply owning products, Matta said.
This year will be the second year for the Marketer of the Year award given by Fisher AMP. The first recipient of the award was Beats Electronics, a company that creates audio equipment that has since been bought by Apple.
CAMP is Fisher’s spring flagship event for marketing that is meant to “use Ohio State as a platform to bring a global perspective on marketing trends and strategies to the local level,” Lorenz said.
One of the keynote speakers is John Gerzema, the CEO for BAV Consulting and an OSU alumnus. BAV Consulting is a global strategic consultancy that helps corporations build their brand.
“To hear from him (Gerzema) about brands and what’s happening today as he works on dozens of brands in the industry and values them and consults with them; that’s firsthand experience for our students to hear from John and interact with him,” Matta said.
The other keynote speaker is Kevin Richardson, the senior vice president of consulting services at Nielsen Marketing Analytics. Nielsen is a company that measures information about consumers to mark trends and help businesses, according to its website.
“A lot of the marketing students are invested in brand management, and students that are not marketing majors will work with Nielsen with a lot of data because Nielsen is the one that manages a lot of data,” Gupta said.
There will also be a panel of marketing professionals from local companies such as Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, Piada and Homage, according to the Fisher AMP website.
“We are bringing keynote speakers from corporations to come and talk about these (marketing) trends on more of a large scale, and then we also have companies from the Columbus area that are growing and thriving in Columbus and beyond to ground it,” Lorenz said.
CAMP will start at noon on Friday at the Fawcett Event Center, and tickets can be purchased for $25 online before the event.
