Susan Lavington Vice President of Consumer Marketing Susan Lavington is the Vice President of Consumer Marketing for USA TODAY. She joined the company in 1999 as the Director of Marketing for USA TODAY dot com.

Q: What are some of the various ways that USA TODAY uses multimedia to market the printed product?

A: We haven’t really done a lot of that in the past because much of our video wasn’t made by USA TODAY. But as dot com grew, the need for multimedia grew. So, dot com began working with the print side to come up with its own multimedia efforts and to generate content for the website. The theory has been to attract consumers to the website by having the best content. As website traffic increases, subscription sales will increase. The hope is that a certain percentage of online users will cross over to print. And with the Internet, we don’t have the distribution issues that we have with print.

Q: Is there a risk of losing interest in the printed product by increasing online content?

A: We’ve never seen any evidence of that. They’re complementary products, really. People who read USA TODAY while they’re outside of the office might read USA TODAY dot com inside their offices. So the two complement each other.

Q: How do you see the field changing in the future?

A: It’s going to be less about marketing the paper and more about marketing the brand. The paper is one piece of the brand. We need to get people into the brand no matter what they’re consuming. Then, we can start to cross-promote between products. In the past, we expected people to read the paper and then move to other avenues of the brand. However, the best entranceway to the brand might not be the paper. It could be television; it could be online

Q: What do you enjoy most about your job?

A: I love having a wonderful brand to promote. USA TODAY is a pretty easy sell in that people love it. People really feel like it improves their lives.

Q: What do you like least about your job?

A: The challenge really is deciding what to focus on. There are so many different avenues due to the power of the brand. I get 10 proposals every day that I could choose from. So, the challenge really is to figure out what should be our focus.

Q: How important are education and experience in getting a job in marketing?

A: I think they enhance each other. When I was getting my MBA, it was so useful that I already had outside experience. I could weave that into the classroom, and things just started to click. Now that I’m out in the business world, my education has helped me to find themes in my work. History repeats itself. My education laid a foundation and helped me to realize, ‘This is not the first time this has happened.’ As for whether or not you need an MBA, it’s different for every person. Some people who have had great experiences don’t necessarily need them. I found it very useful to help me analyze and look for themes in my work. I didn’t need it to get my job, but I think it’s made me better at my job.

Q: What is something you wish you had known before starting out in marketing?

A: I always tell people, ‘Marketing is the first line item that’s going to get cut out of a budget.’ Don’t go into it if you’re not willing to prove your worth. You can’t complain about it, you need to work with it. And a lot of times it makes sense. You have to not have such an ego that it’s measured by the size of the budget. You have to have the ego to prove the worth of what you’re doing and be willing to fight for it.