The Power of Brand Loyalty & Partnerships: Insights from Brand Experience Summit

In an era where customer expectations are higher than ever, building lasting connections goes beyond just selling a product or service. At the recent IMEX Brand Experience Summit in Las Vegas, InVision CEO Angie Smith sat down with industry leaders Dan Preiss, VP of Experiential Marketing at Dell Technologies, and Lindsay Merkle, VP of Growth Marketing at GoodRx, to explore how brands can deepen relationships with their audiences through meaningful engagement and powerful collaborations.

Key takeaways:

1. The evolving definition of brand loyalty and what it takes to win long-term customer trust.
2. Why strategic partnerships are essential for amplifying reach and impact.
3. How hyper-personalization and human-to-human marketing are shaping the future of brand experiences.
4. The power of content atomization—how to extend the life and value of event-driven content.
5. Real-world examples of brands that are leading the way in loyalty and engagement.

Whether you're a marketer, brand strategist, or event professional, you won’t want to miss this conversation. Tune in now!

Transcript

Laliv Hadar (00:10): 

Hi. Welcome to the InVision Podcast, the Xcast, where we help brands navigate audience engagement in times of change. I'm Laliv Hadar, SVP Marketing here at InVision, and today we're switching things up. A few months ago, InVision brought together senior brand and events marketers for our brand experience summit in Las Vegas. As part of this special gathering, our CEO, Angie Smith, led a dynamic panel featuring Dan Priest, Vice President of Experiential marketing at Dell Technologies and Lindsay Merkel, VP of Growth Marketing at GoodRx. Together, they explored brand loyalty, the power of strategic partnerships, and the pivotal role content plays in all of it. And now without further ado, here's Angie and our esteemed panelists in their dynamic conversation. 

Angie Smith (01:05): 

Welcome again everyone. I am super excited to be moderating this next little panel, so I'm just going to welcome my friends up on stage, Lindsay and Dan. I recently read a quote from a CMO that said that marketing is about finance and revenue. It has nothing to do with the brand. Now, I'm sure we can all argue, but certainly marketing has a lot to do with finance and revenue because the work that we do every day, whether it's an email campaign, a face-to-face meeting, this incredible experience, and here where you're being clients, bringing clients or customers, it is about making money, so I guess that's the truth, but we sort of get the luck of doing different parts of that life cycle. So I'd love to start with you, Lindsay, to talk a little bit about how do you quantify the value of loyalty in the work that you do at GoodRx? 

Lindsay Merkle (02:05): 

Okay, so I have two answers, like everything you'll ask me probably. But the real answer is the intangible brand advocate, the referencing, the recommendation, and the ultimate being able to have someone voice to others what value you provide is when you know you've made it and you've really achieved maximum brand value in real life. There's a whole framework of lifetime customer value that I learned in my business finance course and I hate it, but someone else can do it better than me. The immediate leading and lagging indicators in our business are both equally important to the look at. You know about attendance, you know about registrations, you know about all of the things that are immediate, meetings created following up of a conference or trade show. But you probably, in most of our businesses in B2B, have a longer deal cycle, so you might not know for 6, 18, 24 months if something really worked. 

(03:06): 

So having patience and training our executives on having that same patience to see not just the leading immediate success check marks, but also the lagging indicators of success, including the intangible ROI elements like renewals and advocacy and all of those things, they're equally as important, that's how I look at it, and the hardest part is the patience. 

Angie Smith (03:32): 

Oh, yeah. Sure. Are you getting more money for certain things based on that outcome? 

Lindsay Merkle (03:42): 

Well, let's see. In two ways, my budgets, I've been so lucky with this organization that the budgets have been very generous because they know the value of our audience development and what it leads to from an early hypothesis test they had with B2B. I was meeting patients earlier from Abbott, and it's like in this business, there are only so many big fish pharma companies that are coming to market with a new brand drug or are looking at end of life on something and they really push out marketing. But we shift it depending on where basically the clinical development is going with pharma based on who is most important to our business outcome. So yes, but it's so, it's changing so often that we have to be so nimble with how we plan and have a backup plan to our backup plan. 

Angie Smith (04:36): 

I've heard you talk, Lindsay, about the correlation between cerebral and emotional in the work that you're doing, and I know a lot of drug companies or healthcare companies have really beautiful stories to tell. How does that show up for the work that you do? 

Lindsay Merkle (04:55): 

So we all do this professionally, and I feel like a little bit of a fraud talking about this to the experts that are at this event because they're so good at what they do, but what it comes down to is having a unreasonable amount of curiosity about the people behind the businesses you're working with. And they are human beings and they have interests and they have stressors, and they have unique qualities they might not give you access to right away unless you truly pay attention. And literally, I have a dossier on every one I've ever met that ideally has some information that's really unique to them that you can then bring back in showing that you are listening. And whether that's an interview you're doing at an ad board or if that's over dinner, they share something with you once you've gained trust. And in order to gain trust, you actually have to pay attention. The good news is we can all do that and our teams can do that. The bad news is it's really hard and it takes a lot of work. 

(05:57): 

So we can demonstrate that to people to get access to the information that you need about them as people to then use that in a totally reasonable and aboveboard way to show them you care about them as people as much as you care about helping them with their business objectives. 

Dan Preiss (06:15): 

I think one of the things that really has emerged in the last four or five years is we stopped saying B2B events because guess what? They're all humans. So when they come to your events, you're going to have to relate to them on so many different levels. They may work in a data center, but you know what? They game at night and they actually like going out, having fun and listening to music, and we try to tap into that hyper personalization throughout the event experience. It's like, I'm so glad we've moved on as an industry to start thinking about the whole person, whether it's the wellness program at the front end, how you get people up to speed if they're newcomers to the event. It's really that turn of the crank. 

Angie Smith (06:51): 

I've heard them talk about human to human versus B2B and B2C. That kind of translates. Johnny, you talked about taking inventory of what your employees said about things that they were passionate about, and you sort of just talked about the same thing, Lindsay. Where are you keeping this dossier? Is it in your contacts? Oh, on your little notebook. 

Lindsay Merkle (07:16): 

Let me ask the CloudFlare team what's the right answer. 

Angie Smith (07:19): 

Yeah, CloudFlare, where are we with that? 

Lindsay Merkle (07:20): 

The most security. Scraps of paper notebooks like the notes app in my phone, but it's not shared out, it's just for me so that when we're developing experiences for our clients or prospective clients, it's there to lean back into. I mean, a satellite of places, but I try and then develop all the notes into one place for sanity, but I'm not always good at it. 

Angie Smith (07:48): 

Yeah. We have a founder at InVision, literally has kept every single thing about everyone he's met in his contacts on his phone. He knows when your kid was born, when your dog passed away, what day you started at the company. It's crazy. 

Dan Preiss (08:07): 

So when you have a one-one with Rod, you get on the line with him and he'd bring up some random fact about your life and you're like, "Oh God." And then it makes you really pay attention. You're like, "Oh, you're dialed in." 

Angie Smith (08:18): 

Did you know he does it? 

Dan Preiss (08:20): 

Of course I asked questions. I'm like, "Why do you know that?" And I'm like, "I told you that 10 years ago." 

Angie Smith (08:25): 

But we can do it in events to create the hyper-personalization through technology, but in our personal lives it's a little bit harder to do sometimes. So anyway, just curious. Another thing, we talk a lot about content atomization here at InVision, and we drive a lot of content strategy and a lot of content development, and really, atomization is, you talk about something at an event. Anybody ever heard of this keynote our executives are working on? Yeah, I worked at those companies most of my career. And so you work so hard to get this keynote perfect, and then the next day it kind of disappears. It's like, where are we repurposing and what about those nuggets that were said? And so when we're creating content and whether it's for an email or a keynote or an out-of-home advertising campaign, what are we doing to repurpose all of that amazing work? I really just thought, Lindsay, what does content do... And Dan. What does content do and play in the building of brand advocacy? 

Lindsay Merkle (09:32): 

So in the healthcare space, this is a really heavy topic. It's one of the most personal things you can be talking to someone about. And with our business, it's a little complicated as layers because we have the consumer, the person looking for the medication and the savings, we have the healthcare provider who is treating the patient and needs to know what affordability options they can recommend to their patient, and then we have the provider of those solutions. And so when it comes to connecting all of those dots, we have to really make sure that we're considering all three legs of that stool in the entire ecosystem. And so content that's relevant for that specialty of that cardiologist when we're providing information, they have very little time. It's the seven minutes... I think I mentioned this once before. Doctors are supposed to spend seven minutes with you total from the time they walk in to the time they leave. There's no time for a conversation about affordability. The patient is just like, "What do I do? How can I get solutions? I can't afford that." 

(10:36): 

And then the pharma is up against a competitive environment that's extremely complex and the payers, the insurance, the pharmacy benefit managers, all the coverage levels, they have to work through all of that to provide the service that they want to provide to the patient ultimately. So is all of that considered? To really, really... I haven't heard that term atomization before, but it's essentializing the most important information for a person who just really has an immediate problem to solve with a library of options in the graveyard of our platform when they have time to revisit, but it's the thing they need at the time they need it, in the form that they want to consume it in. 

Dan Preiss (11:22): 

Well, it's clear events are huge content generators, so it's obvious. And so it feels like you spend all these months creating this content and it's one and done, and then it's like, oh, that was fun. And we know in tech content moves quickly, but there's got to be somewhere in between where you can be able to repurpose this content. So about two years ago, I partnered with our campaigns team and we have a huge activation with South by Southwest, being born in Austin, as we are, 

Lindsay Merkle (11:47): 

Which is there recently. 

Dan Preiss (11:50): 

Exactly. Right? So we looked at the content we generate for that program, and it aligned really nicely with what we were trying to do with our campaigns. Again, it's just how do all boats rise? How do you help another team? How do you be thoughtful around the content? And actually, it raised our bar on content for South By because now we had stakeholders within the campaigns team saying, "Hey, have you considered this? Maybe we can bring in this brand ambassador or this party." And it ended up making everything that much better. 

Angie Smith (12:18): 

We know that face-to-face experiences oftentimes become the key that solidifies closing the deal or bringing people to be that loyalist and advocate for the brands that we work for. And so you get to work with a lot of face-to-face experiences. What key elements of the events do you think in Dell foster the most brand loyalty? 

Dan Preiss (12:48): 

I think number one is, and it aligns really nicely with our brand, is authenticity. It's like we are a trusted brand. We are a partner. Our mission being in business is to further human progress. It's just that easy. And so we empower our customers, our partners, to do amazing things with our technology. So when we think about our event experiences, we're always obsessing about that. We're thinking about the content that we're bringing out. Is it making sense? Does it aligned with our core values? Does it really tell the brand story that we're trying to tell? Because we are our brand, the physical representation of the event experiences we create, and our team members on site, they also represent that. So how do you pull those all the way through? So content's key, right? And we've heard that forever, but it's what content makes the most sense for our attendees, for the communities that we serve, whether it's internal, external audiences. 

(13:38): 

We have to be really thoughtful of, does it really align with what the message we're trying to tell, obviously, but also really aligned with what we're trying to do as a business in connecting to our mission. 

Angie Smith (13:49): 

Do you have ongoing focus groups then with your customers about this? 

Dan Preiss (13:53): 

We do. We are really lucky to have a messaging team that thinks through that, huge partners at the table when we think about our whole event strategy, and we come up with a golden thread in the early part of the year. 

Angie Smith (14:05): 

I love that you guys call it the Golden Thread. 

Dan Preiss (14:06): 

Yes. 

Angie Smith (14:08): 

People used to call it the Red Thread. 

Dan Preiss (14:09): 

Well, make it a little gold. And it works really well for us. When you have those competing business units come to you and say, "My baby's the prettiest. We need to do X, Y, and Z," We just gently tap on the golden thread and say, "How does that [inaudible 00:14:24]? Let's tell that right brand story." And maybe there's different ways to tell the stories. If you have a secondary or tertiary type of message you want to get out there, there's ways to do that. It might just not be on the keynote stage with Michael. It just might not be the right place for it, but we can still think about all the experiences we create throughout an event and we can find ways to do it. 

Angie Smith (14:44): 

I have to tell you about FOMO because I missed the closing day brunch, but I did walk by... You guys have to hear the story about... You know how having content on the final day of a conference, everybody's hung over and doesn't go? Well, they have this closing day, fabulous brunch at Dell Tech world that thousands of people were in line to get into, and I'm like, why am I getting on a flight? I'm missing this. I felt FOMO. 

Dan Preiss (15:17): 

Good. We did our job. 

Angie Smith (15:19): 

Tell me about this brush. 

Dan Preiss (15:20): 

So this was something that was born out of the post pandemic event strategy. So our CMO at the time said, "You know what? Do whatever you want to do, it's time to reinvent. It's an opportunity to throw away the things that aren't serving you anymore." So one of the key things that keep my friend Karen happy is our room block's full on our last night. 

Angie Smith (15:38): 

Oh, yeah. 

Dan Preiss (15:40): 

So we had to get really thoughtful on people are, and at the time, if you think back to two and a half years, we worried, oh, people will come, but they'll stay for a day and then they'll leave. There was a lot of stuff we were dealing with as an industry. So we were like, okay, how do we keep heads in beds? Let's create some content Thursday morning that they just can't miss. And so we have many audiences that we serve, as Sean and I were just talking about this. One of them is the Geeks. We love the Geeks, the technologists, and one of their key heroes is Neil deGrasse Tyson. 

Angie Smith (16:10): 

Oh, right. 

Dan Preiss (16:10): 

He is amazing, amazing speaker, he's got a great personal brand, he's got a connection to Dell and Texas. It's great. And so we've done it for three years, and we usually don't repeat speakers quite like this, but my boss finally said to me, "Okay, three and done, right? And I said, "Maybe." And that last day I took a video all the way down from the Venetian ballroom all the way to Hall A. There was a line. And I took a video and I said, "I think we have to do a fourth year." So it is those types of surprising moments. And then we do silly things in the room. So it's all about astrology and in the movies. He does these really great speeches. And so we'll have globes and a space theme and give space food, silly thought. Things like that just keeps people on their toes and surprising, right? 

Angie Smith (17:01): 

Yeah. I know that you have a really special partnership with McLaren and F1, and your whole purpose for going down that track is around the brand loyalty, there's technology involved in this relationship. Talk to us a little bit about that and why you guys went down that track. 

Dan Preiss (17:21): 

So this is the other side of my job, I do a little bit with events, and I also look at our brand sponsorships and those partnerships that we make, and I think McLaren is one that I'm really, really proud of. We've been partners for over five years. If you watched... Anybody watch, on Netflix, Drive to Survive? Okay. See, that's why F1 is doing so well in the United States. It's always been popular outside the US, and now it's got a really rabid fan base. I can tell you they're coming to Austin in seven or eight days. So yeah, we've got Circuit of the Americas ready to go. McLaren has been a great story because it's authentic. Go back to what I said. We can tell an authentic story because our technology powers their winning because as you guys know, F-1 is all about the technology. It's every second matters. And so how do you use technology to optimize your race experience? How do the drivers get the most out of the technology, the machines, the cars? And so this is really fun because then this sort of joins both sides of my gig here. 

(18:17): 

So I'm able to sort of take this great partnership and bring it to life all over the world through different experiences. But think about it, you want to create these custom experiences nobody else can get. So we'll do, they call, hot laps. Does everyone know what a hot lap is? Well, it's when you actually are put in a McLaren car and they drive you around the track before the race day. Talk about going home and not something you can do every day. You get to tell your family and take pictures and do really cool things like that. And we think about all the audiences we serve, all of the personas that we used to say. How do you think about the CXO community and having them meet the technologists that implement the technology with McLaren as a partner and tell that story during the race days, whether it's Vegas or anywhere else, McLaren is using our technology in real time in a data center in the garages. So we'll do tours with our customers in the back, show them the [inaudible 00:19:12], pull out, show them exactly what the technology's doing. 

Angie Smith (19:14): 

Oh, that's so cool. 

Dan Preiss (19:15): 

And they get ideas, so they go home and then they implement something like that for their own technology. 

Angie Smith (19:20): 

You have something similar that you're also doing with UT. 

Dan Preiss (19:23): 

Yeah, so UT game day experience, we are powering the football stadium for the University of Texas from a technology background... 

Angie Smith (19:30): 

We are not fans of Texas and Nebraska, FYI. 

Dan Preiss (19:36): 

I know. I'm not in Texas anymore, so I got to be careful with that. But no, we're very proud. Born in Austin. Michael started Dell in his dorm room 40 years ago this year, and... 

Angie Smith (19:48): 

He looks so good. 40 years ago? Wow. 

Dan Preiss (19:50): 

40 years ago. Yeah. Well, he's a very young man and yeah... 

Angie Smith (19:54): 

He was. 

Dan Preiss (19:54): 

Yeah. So it's been a great experience telling that story because tech is very popular in Austin these days, and it's kind of fun to remind folks we kind of started it. 

Angie Smith (20:04): 

You're welcome. It's not just about country music and barbecue. Anyway. Do you have partnerships at GoodRx that are sort of helping amplify the brand as well? 

Lindsay Merkle (20:19): 

I think that the partnerships piece is complicated in the healthcare space because there are so many layers to how it works. Unfortunately, I've learned way too much about that in the last three and a half years, that partnerships can be... In our world, it's more about connecting with our retail partners in the right ways so that they're always educated about what they can offer a customer at the counter, but then also the specialists. And it's not as much fun as Formula One racing, not even close, but when someone has this moment of getting what they need, when they need it, the look on their face, how it transforms their lives, we like to call our patients, our partners in this way. They are our best advocates. 

Angie Smith (21:03): 

Oh, I love that. 

Lindsay Merkle (21:04): 

We collect these user stories. We always get feedback, unsolicited feedback from patients after they've had that aha moment with a GoodRx savings where they just want to tell you their story. And I usually wear, like you said, all yellow all the time in airports all the time, and I have heard so many... People will be like, "Do you work at GoodRx?" "Yeah, tell me your story." And it makes you want to collect... We collect all of that, and then we do these really cool interviews with those people and then turn that into user generated content so other patients can hear directly from them. And it covers the gamut, from mental health, young people with mental health, conditions that need medications to people who are struggling from a version of cancer to a dog who has seizures. So we collect these stories. There's something there for everyone, so you can see yourself in one of our patient stories. 

(21:57): 

And then sharing those out again and again. The patients are our partners and the providers are our partners, but then also where you get access, those are our partners as well. So it's not the same in terms of marketing, but we create new ways to engage all the time that are small scale compared to these global events, but they matter so much to the people who are there. 

Angie Smith (22:24): 

I love that you brought that up because partnerships mean something different to all of us. We're all in different industries, so thank you for mentioning that. So I'm going to do just one last question for both of you. And this can be your own event or your own thing, but what event have you been to that actually made you a long-term customer or believer? 

Lindsay Merkle (22:53): 

Okay, so for 12 years in a row, right? As a person in the electronics industry, it's now consumer technology instead of consumer electronics, but CES can be overwhelming. To your point about joy of missing out, being there for more than a week, doing these experiences, large scale booths, like over the top customer events at night clubs, having Dr. Dre come and do a surprise interview or meet and greet, these things, they are really fun, but they're really exhausting. And when Spotify was getting into the business, they started doing these listening parties for people and they would ask you, "How do you want to feel?" And then they would play for you what they wanted you to hear based on how you want to feel, right? And in any moment of any day, you could ask yourself that, how do I want to feel right now? How do I need to feel and how do I get there? We fill others' cups so much in our business. We all fill other people's cups all the time by providing these experiences and these transformative moments, but someone who did that for me was Spotify. 

(24:01): 

And there's Apple... I was actually working for Apple at the time. I wasn't on Apple Music. Spotify thought through, for all the people at this event, what would be useful, what would make them feel how they want to feel, and so they gave us these solutions. They had a huge setup. I think it was at the Venetia, where they built out that entire zone, and there was little spaces that you could go to as a person who was there for a meeting to feel how you want to feel. And for me, that was so life-changing because I was like, wow, someone actually thought about me, not the buffet that every room had or the same annoying future trash giveaways. I don't need any of that. I want to feel something. And they did that. So I will Spotify for life. If they ever decide to change... 

Angie Smith (24:51): 

Did they give you Beats? Because I know you worked for Beats. Were you listening to the music through Beats by Dre? 

Lindsay Merkle (24:57): 

Actually, at the time, they were providing audio through integrated home speakers. At the time, it was all about the Interconnected Home... I believe it was a Sonos partnership they had, but it was an immersive sound, and they were trying to show you that too, that the sound is as important as what's on the track to hear it. Anyway, so Spotify for life. 

Angie Smith (25:23): 

Love it. Dan. 

Dan Preiss (25:24): 

I think I'm going to pivot and answer it a little bit differently, but a partnership that's really, really important to me and to my team, my customers, is the partnership we have with Venetian. And this weekend, a few of us have been very fortunate to experience really amazing hyper-personalized experiences, and I think their gifting suite is just one that reminded me of how important it is. 

Angie Smith (25:46): 

I slept in that robe last night. 

Dan Preiss (25:49): 

Good. Was it comfy? 

Angie Smith (25:50): 

Oh, yeah. 

Dan Preiss (25:50): 

Excellent. But thinking about every little piece, making it all about you, personalized, it makes you feel special, and it reminds you of the importance of partnership. And it's not the things, of course, it's the symbol of what those things mean, and I was impressed. So a little shout out to my Venetian friends. 

Angie Smith (26:09): 

Yeah, shout out Kieran Davis over there. Venetian friends. Yeah, I mean, obviously the thing that we all would probably agree and have in common, and it's about how it makes you feel, so that's awesome. Well, listen, we're going to wrap this up. Thank you so much Dan and Lindsay, thank you both so much for being here. 

Lindsay Merkle (26:29): 

Back at you, and thank you for having us. 

Angie Smith (26:31): 

You're welcome. 

Laliv Hadar (26:33): 

And that wraps up today's special episode of the InVision Xcast. We hope this conversation sparked fresh ideas on building brand loyalty, fostering key partnerships, and leveraging the power of content. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you next time as we continue exploring the ever-changing world of audience engagement.