Director of Account Management
Katy is a Director of Account Management at Cheskin and has 15 years of marketing, advertising and research experience in the US, Asia and Europe. She began her career in advertising at Leo Burnett, and subsequently worked in international business development at Bozell Worldwide. She went on to hold key marketing positions with several international divisions of Warner Bros., including Director of Marketing for International Television Distribution in Europe.
Prior to joining Cheskin, Katy worked as Vice President, Account Management for Lieberman Research Worldwide where she developed and managed major accounts including Viacom, AOL/Time Warner, Weight Watchers and Sony Electronics.
Katy has lived and worked in Europe and Japan, and speaks fluent French and Japanese. She holds an BA in Political Science from the University of California at San Diego, and an MBA with a concentration in Marketing from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
10 August 2007
A Stanford University study of 3 – 5 year old kids in San Mateo, CA generated loads of press for its findings that the children preferred the taste of just about any food when it was wrapped in McDonald’s packaging compared to the same item with no packaging (you can read about the study here). This should come as no surprise to most marketers. It certainly doesn’t surprise those of us who work here at Cheskin. Our founder, Louis Cheskin, long ago developed the concept of “sensation transference” - the notion that sensorial cues in the packaging and environment in which a product or service is delivered (imagery, sounds, textures, etc) impact the impression they have of the offering – regardless of intent or accuracy. While the old adage “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig” may be true, Louis found that for consumers, it’s often the lipstick that matters.
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by Katy Haberkern-Mogal, 2 comments
4 May 2006
It’s no secret that delivering a meaningful shopping experience that resonates with the target audience is a surefire way for retailers to create competitive advantage. So how do retailers create meaningful shopping experiences for fickle, been-there-done-that teens?
Toronto’s So Hip It Hurts (http://www.sohipithurts.ca/), located in that town’s trendy Queen Street West – think cleaner, couther Haight-Ashbury - extends the edgy, individualistic essence of boarding culture outside of the skateparks and into the shop. The store is situated at the top of a narrow staircase that leads to a rabbit warren of rooms that emanate a very Dogtown-Z-Boys vibe. Rooms feature groovy décor elements such as skeletons suspended from the ceiling (on the day I visited, several of them were coupled up in compromising positions – apparently the positions change on a regular basis), a thatched-roof tiki hut, and an Oscar fish whose gory 5 pm daily feedings attract crowds of teens who cheer as the fish devours a handful of goldfish in a swirl of blood and fins (that splatter spectators upon occasion). Shoppers who spend more than $80 CDN get a free beer or shot of liquor.
As a thirty-something (at least I like to think of myself that way) the place didn’t appeal to me at all, but then, I’m sure that’s the point. The juxtaposition of cool boarding brands, edgy (and for sensitive types, somewhat offensive) atmosphere, and a few elements of revulsion serve to keep away adults. So Hip It Hurts isn’t just a shop, it’s a retail experience whose designers know how to tap into the need that teens have to establish an identity separate from their parents and families, while still belonging to a tribe that shares common interests and values. Much like Harley-Davidson, So Hip It Hurts has created a sense of community for iconoclasts, delivering a meaningful (to the target audience, anyway) shopping experience that should be a recipe for success.
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Meaningful Experience
by Katy Haberkern-Mogal
13 April 2006
Conventional wisdom has held that kid and tween focus groups are often of limited value (for any number of reasons including kids’ tendencies to say what they think the moderator wants to hear, group dynamics, concrete thinking that makes abstraction or projection near impossible, etc.). I recently had a chance to test this theory at the IIR Youth Marketing Mega-Event in Huntington Beach. (http://www.iirusa.com/youth/)
Every year, this conference offers attendees the opportunity to observe a live focus group among their choice of teens, tweens or kids under 10. We were asked to step in on relatively short notice to take over one of the focus groups when the kids’ group moderator became unexpectedly unavailable. It was a great opportunity to be a presenter at a prestigious conference so I gamely signed up, despite some trepidation over the format of the presentation.
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Methods & Techniques
by Katy Haberkern-Mogal, 0 comments
