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Wendy Marlett

Company: KB Home
Company Description: KB Home is among the largest homebuilders in the US and France. Focusing on first-time buyers, KB Home delivered 25,565 homes in fiscal 2002. KB Home operates a mortgage company for its buyers. Founded in 1957, KB Home is a Fortune 500 company with 3,500 employees and more than $5 billion in annual revenues. It was the first homebuilder to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
Nomination Category: Individual Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Best Marketing Executive

Nomination Title: Wendy Marlett, KB Home SVP Marketing

  1. Tell the story about what this nominee achieved in 2002 (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

    SVP of Marketing for KB Home, Wendy Marlett has reached thousands of potential customers and turned them into homebuyers through innovative marketing, targeted advertising and widespread public relations outreach. Indeed, Marlett’s marketing savvy helped keep KB Home on top in a rocky economy as the company achieved record revenues of $5 billion and deliveries of 25,565 homes in 2002.

    Marlett helms kb|agency – the in-house advertising and marketing agency she built two years ago – reducing expenditures while turning around campaigns overnight and producing between 60-95 print ads each week. Additionally, kb|agency handles direct mail, radio, television, promotions and signage across the company’s 18 U.S. divisions. With two divisions added in 2002, Marlett directed programs that quickly and comprehensively established the KB Home brand using a 30-60-90 day phase-in. As described by Fortune magazine in September 2002, KB Home’s marketing has gone from “anemic” to “turbocharged.”

    Rather than following traditional new home advertising formats, Marlett’s team pushes the envelope developing innovative and effective creative. One popular 2002 campaign, “Special Delivery,” used mailboxes to demonstrate “Everyone is different. Just like every one of our homes.” Ads featured a family with triplets and three mini mailboxes, an artist’s mailbox on an easel and newlyweds kissing over their mailbox with tin cans trailing.

    In 2002, Marlett secured an enviable partnership with TV’s popular Live! With Regis and Kelly to create the company’s first national television promotion and company- wide house giveaway, strategically scheduled for May Sweeps 2003.

    KB Home teamed with Clifford the Big Red Dog™ for one of the company’s most successful national promotions. Reorders met demand for the 30,000 books and 5,000 videos distributed to KB Home visitors as traffic jumped 20 percent at events featuring appearances by the crimson canine whose family moved to a house when Clifford outgrew their apartment. The promotion particularly appealed to KB Home’s target demographic of first-time and first-move up homebuyers.

    Marlett launched KB Home’s first-ever national online promotion in 2002. 66,000 entries were received for “Home Free” via a Yahoo! advertising link offering a chance to win rent or mortgage payments for one year. Marlett used the sweepstakes to bring people to kbhome.com while creating a vast database of potential homebuyers.

    Marlett also focused on the fast-growing Spanish-speaking population of potential homebuyers. Building on the success of KB Home’s industry-first English language infomercial (which Marlett spearheaded in 1999), the company created a Spanish language infomercial. Outreach to this exploding demographic also included bi-lingual advertising, bi-lingual homebuying seminars, and a Spanish language call center, 888-KB CASAS.

    One of the most promising innovative campaigns developed during 2002 for the Hispanic market are newspaper inserts based on Mexico’s popular “fotonovellas.” The campaign is a series of advertisements describing one family buying their first home. Readers follow their story, while seeing how easy it can be to achieve homeownership with KB Home.

    Marlett’s tremendous public relations success included regular appearances for executives on major television networks and feature stories in national publications including The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, BusinessWeek, Time, and more.

  2. List hyperlinks to any online news stories, press releases, or other documents that support the claims made above.
    To include a URL you must begin and end the URL with a square-bracket and include http://
    Example: [http://www.yourdomain.com]

    http://www.kbhome.com/corporate/pressroom.jsp
    http://www.corporate-ir.net/ireye/ir_site.zhtml?
    ticker=KBH&script=410&layout=7&item_id=371323

    http://www.kbhome.com/corporate/pressreleases/m-20021104.jsp
    http://www.kbhome.com/corporate/pressreleases/m-20020819.jsp
    http://www.kbhome.com/corporate/pressreleases/m-20020624-surveysays.jsp
    www.kbhome.com

  3. Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about this nominee:

    As SVP of Marketing, Wendy Marlett directs KB Home’s national marketing, advertising, public relations, and marketing research. Under her leadership, the company has become known for groundbreaking partnerships with such brands as Pokémon, IN-N-OUT Burger, Krispy Kreme and Target. She led the Simpsons House promotion in 1997, which generated a company-wide 50% increase in traffic and 25% in net sales, as well as $10 million in free publicity. Marlett also launched KB Home’s in-house advertising agency, customer call center, and website. Previously with Rockwell International, Marlett has received numerous marketing and communications awards throughout her career.