Deborah Wahl, the Chief Marketing Officer of Cadillac and McDonald’s former CMO, believes that category growth is the holy grail of marketing, writes Knowledge@Wharton.

During her talk at the recent Wharton Customer Analytics Initiative conference, Wahl gave examples of how companies can deploy their marketing dollars more effectively and discussed the challenges of promoting a legacy brand.

Wahl said that companies can grow in three ways: increase their market share, mergers and acquisitions, and category growth.

Wahl describes category growth as the white space nobody is in. Through this, a company can either create a new product category or find a completely new customer segment.

For example, the All Day Breakfast she implemented during her time at McDonald’s became a key piece of the chain’s turnaround strategy.

She also developed the subscription car service “Book by Cadillac,” which allows drivers to switch out their vehicles up to 18 times a year, for around $1,500 to $1,800 a month.

Since then, other car manufacturers have experimented with similar subscription models, but Wahl does not see this as a diminishment of the strategy’s success.

“As long as I am leading the growth,” it is a success, she said.

Read more about Deborah Wahl’s marketing strategy from Knowledge@Wharton here.

________
Top photo credit: GmanViz Well they tempt you, man, with silver via photopin (license)