Six years before Ed Gala graduated from Syracuse University, Xerox Corporation advertised one of its first copiers during the 1977 Super Bowl. 

Now the vice president of marketing for Xerox, Gala compared that advertisement to different campaigns Xerox uses today, among other topics, at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

Gala, a 1983 graduate from Newhouse, spoke about ‘The Power of Customization in a Cluttered World’ on Monday. He was invited back to campus to speak as part of the Advertising Leadership Speaker Series. His speech concentrated on new innovations in mass communications for advertising and public relations but also stressed the significance of the overlapping of every communications field.

‘The things you’re learning now will look very different only a few years after you graduate,’ Gala said. ‘We are moving from mass communications to mass customization.’

He started the event describing his time at Newhouse with tough professors, such as one who would drop students’ papers by whole letter grades every time a grammatical error occurred.

‘Ds and Fs weren’t uncommon. I think I got an ‘N’ once,’ Gala said.

Gala’s lecture was divided into a three-prong message on integrated marketing, personalization and marketing activity tailored to customers.

Gala stressed the importance of brands and how they determine what people say and think about an individual or product. Xerox uses more than 50 million customer touchpoints that brand Xerox, Gala said. He said touchpoints allow trust and strong customer relations with a company.

Xerox uses the Internet, social media, mobile and direct marketing, and other kinds of mass media to reach customers. 

‘I thought it was really interesting to see the changes in commercials by Xerox,’ said Alex Solimanto, a freshman broadcast journalism and political science major. ‘What stuck out to me was how much Xerox changed from the first commercial he showed to the last one. The ads are changing as quickly as the industry.’

Gala’s next topic was the power of personalization. He used products, such as M&Ms, Heinz Ketchup and online photo albums, as examples of companies reaching clients through personalization.

‘Personalization is a great technique for catching someone’s attention. With personalization, less is more,’ said Andrew Steinbach, a freshman advertising major.

A new advertising technique Xerox uses is advertising for products on personal invoices, Gala said. In connection with Xerox, a bank in Japan called Mitsui Sumitomo now prints advertisements catering to its customers on their credit card statements, he said. After processing customers’ transactions, he said, Mitsui Sumitomo can tailor advertisements to their spending patterns.

‘This kind of marketing activity is still in its early stages but is maturing quickly,’ Gala said.

Gala also discussed marketing activity by highlighting the scanning code available for smartphones. Now on boarding passes, fliers and business cards, this barcode allows print media to be physically embedded in digital media, he said.

‘Welcome to the new world of advertising,’ Gala said. ‘Is it above the line? Is it below the line? Who cares? Customers demand it. They want to be treated as individuals.’

empompel@syr.edu

Published on February 21, 2011 at 12:00 pm