Title: Vice President of Marketing, Olympus Imaging America Inc
What He Plans: Lee’s department produces 12 to 15 major events each year, and oversees Olympus’s involvement in 20 trade shows. He also oversees the company’s sponsorships—Olympus is the title sponsor of the twice-annual New York Fashion Week, and is also a major sponsor of the U.S. Open tennis tournament held in Queens each August.
Staff: 40 people in the marketing department, including three full-time event planners.
Budget: Events now constitute 20 to 25 percent of Olympus’s annual marketing budget, up from only 3 percent in 2001. “Our marketing budget is up 400 percent over the last six years,” Lee says.
Career Path: Lee received his undergraduate degree from Washington University and an MBA from Hofstra. He started at Olympus in 1995, but left two years later to develop and market new products at Prudential. He then went to Honeywell, working on the company’s business-to-business initiatives, before returning to Olympus in 1999. He spearheaded the launch of Olympus’s digital camera line, beginning with the Digital Stylus.
Age: 34
Where He Lives: Westchester County, New York
Where He Grew Up: Havana, Illinois
Where He Goes For Ideas: “My car. I have a long drive to work every day, and being in your car means having complete solitude. Everyone should have time like that in which to just dream.”
Biggest Challenge: His ongoing attempt to change Olympus’s image from a camera-maker to a lifestyle-driven, consumer electronics company.
Best Tip: “Branding is very basic. Be very true to what you believe. If you love and believe in the brand, then everything you do for it will be the right thing to do.”
Favorite Fashion Designers: Joseph Abboud, Thomas Pink, Kenneth Cole
Favorite Tennis Star: John McEnroe. “I used to break my rackets as a kid to be like him.”What was the thinking behind stepping in for Mercedes-Benz in 2003 as the title sponsor of Fashion Week? Since then, Olympus has used the event to launch new products for both professional photographers and consumers—the Stylus Verve made a big splash there in February—and has sponsored a number of events and even runway shows. What’s the philosophy behind this hands-on approach?
Our sponsorship philosophy is that we get involved with only a few of them, and we take an ownership presence in the ones we get involved with. And the sponsorship isn’t really about the name recognition; we really believe in developing partnerships and other synergies with other brands at the events. We don’t treat anyone like a vendor. Everyone is a partner to us. And so [Fashion Week producer] IMG and the U.S. Open—we work with collaboratively. We actually looked at Fashion Week six or seven seasons ago, and at that time we weren’t ready to make the commitment to an ownership presence and so didn’t get involved.
We finally chose Fashion Week for two reasons. One is the photographers, and the second is the designers. We really want to associate with great design. We think being in places with other great designers, even if they’re outside of our community in technology, is important.
How do you plan to grow deeper roots into that community? Will you sponsor more events away from the tents? Will you continue to sponsor up-and-comers like Esteban Cortazar and Duckie Brown?
Advertising is a huge part of our five-year strategy to grow our brand, and grow a different brand for Olympus. But we have to associate with other things and have touch points where people can see our product, and you always have one-to-one marketing at the event. And we need to build strong brand partnerships. We partnered with Bloomingdale’s this year. It had the Stylus Verve in its “hot” catalog this year—we replaced the iPod from last year—and Bloomingdale’s is selling the product right now. We will probably keep partnering with the designers, and we may use the tents for other things. We may bring design into the tents, and have design discussions under the tents. So it isn’t just us putting our name on Olympus Fashion Week.
How does that compare with what you do at the U.S. Open?
It’s the same attitude there—we want to take an ownership presence, although it will never be the Olympus U.S. Open. We’re there because there are international photographers there. We run the service center, we do everything we can for the photographers, like we do at Fashion Week. Some of the letters we get from both events rave that they’ve never been treated so well. We don’t put a hard sell on them—we don’t force them to use our products—but we have loaners there, and every year more people are trying out our product. We want them to be able to experience what the brand is like. We have this one-to-one marketing capability with people.
At our booth, we interact with consumers—we introduced the Stylus Verve at the U.S. Open—and we partnered with Wilson and with Lincoln, building different brand partnerships. It’s the same thing we do at Fashion Week—we’re active at the event, we have touch points for consumers, and we partner with other brands.
You mentioned a long-term plan to change the Olympus brand. What would you like that brand to be, and how will these events and others accomplish that?
It’s always been important to Olympus to not be seen as a camera company. We really want to be a consumer electronics brand. We recently introduced a digital music player. That’s something that’s going to be shipping in January, and it will get us into a totally different market category. So we’re actively looking at venues, and it’s important to us, since people don’t know us in this way, to find some touch-and-trial events. Whether that’s at clubs, or at college campuses, we’re looking for creating great events where they can interact with us.
—Greg Lindsay
Photo: Dan Hallman for BiZBash
What He Plans: Lee’s department produces 12 to 15 major events each year, and oversees Olympus’s involvement in 20 trade shows. He also oversees the company’s sponsorships—Olympus is the title sponsor of the twice-annual New York Fashion Week, and is also a major sponsor of the U.S. Open tennis tournament held in Queens each August.
Staff: 40 people in the marketing department, including three full-time event planners.
Budget: Events now constitute 20 to 25 percent of Olympus’s annual marketing budget, up from only 3 percent in 2001. “Our marketing budget is up 400 percent over the last six years,” Lee says.
Career Path: Lee received his undergraduate degree from Washington University and an MBA from Hofstra. He started at Olympus in 1995, but left two years later to develop and market new products at Prudential. He then went to Honeywell, working on the company’s business-to-business initiatives, before returning to Olympus in 1999. He spearheaded the launch of Olympus’s digital camera line, beginning with the Digital Stylus.
Age: 34
Where He Lives: Westchester County, New York
Where He Grew Up: Havana, Illinois
Where He Goes For Ideas: “My car. I have a long drive to work every day, and being in your car means having complete solitude. Everyone should have time like that in which to just dream.”
Biggest Challenge: His ongoing attempt to change Olympus’s image from a camera-maker to a lifestyle-driven, consumer electronics company.
Best Tip: “Branding is very basic. Be very true to what you believe. If you love and believe in the brand, then everything you do for it will be the right thing to do.”
Favorite Fashion Designers: Joseph Abboud, Thomas Pink, Kenneth Cole
Favorite Tennis Star: John McEnroe. “I used to break my rackets as a kid to be like him.”What was the thinking behind stepping in for Mercedes-Benz in 2003 as the title sponsor of Fashion Week? Since then, Olympus has used the event to launch new products for both professional photographers and consumers—the Stylus Verve made a big splash there in February—and has sponsored a number of events and even runway shows. What’s the philosophy behind this hands-on approach?
Our sponsorship philosophy is that we get involved with only a few of them, and we take an ownership presence in the ones we get involved with. And the sponsorship isn’t really about the name recognition; we really believe in developing partnerships and other synergies with other brands at the events. We don’t treat anyone like a vendor. Everyone is a partner to us. And so [Fashion Week producer] IMG and the U.S. Open—we work with collaboratively. We actually looked at Fashion Week six or seven seasons ago, and at that time we weren’t ready to make the commitment to an ownership presence and so didn’t get involved.
We finally chose Fashion Week for two reasons. One is the photographers, and the second is the designers. We really want to associate with great design. We think being in places with other great designers, even if they’re outside of our community in technology, is important.
How do you plan to grow deeper roots into that community? Will you sponsor more events away from the tents? Will you continue to sponsor up-and-comers like Esteban Cortazar and Duckie Brown?
Advertising is a huge part of our five-year strategy to grow our brand, and grow a different brand for Olympus. But we have to associate with other things and have touch points where people can see our product, and you always have one-to-one marketing at the event. And we need to build strong brand partnerships. We partnered with Bloomingdale’s this year. It had the Stylus Verve in its “hot” catalog this year—we replaced the iPod from last year—and Bloomingdale’s is selling the product right now. We will probably keep partnering with the designers, and we may use the tents for other things. We may bring design into the tents, and have design discussions under the tents. So it isn’t just us putting our name on Olympus Fashion Week.
How does that compare with what you do at the U.S. Open?
It’s the same attitude there—we want to take an ownership presence, although it will never be the Olympus U.S. Open. We’re there because there are international photographers there. We run the service center, we do everything we can for the photographers, like we do at Fashion Week. Some of the letters we get from both events rave that they’ve never been treated so well. We don’t put a hard sell on them—we don’t force them to use our products—but we have loaners there, and every year more people are trying out our product. We want them to be able to experience what the brand is like. We have this one-to-one marketing capability with people.
At our booth, we interact with consumers—we introduced the Stylus Verve at the U.S. Open—and we partnered with Wilson and with Lincoln, building different brand partnerships. It’s the same thing we do at Fashion Week—we’re active at the event, we have touch points for consumers, and we partner with other brands.
You mentioned a long-term plan to change the Olympus brand. What would you like that brand to be, and how will these events and others accomplish that?
It’s always been important to Olympus to not be seen as a camera company. We really want to be a consumer electronics brand. We recently introduced a digital music player. That’s something that’s going to be shipping in January, and it will get us into a totally different market category. So we’re actively looking at venues, and it’s important to us, since people don’t know us in this way, to find some touch-and-trial events. Whether that’s at clubs, or at college campuses, we’re looking for creating great events where they can interact with us.
—Greg Lindsay
Photo: Dan Hallman for BiZBash
