Brand Quarterly AUG 2014 by Vesey Creative

IT’S ALL HERE IN BLACK & WHITE

What makes a brand successful? Find out from Lenovo.com, Microsoft, Telefónica and more.

AUG 2014 IN THIS ISSUE

Make Your Business Profitable By The Very Next Deposit Influencer Insights: Ajit Sivadasan, GM/VP Lenovo.com Social Media Networking For Sales Results The Art Of Sustaining A Luxury Brand Global And Local: Getting It Right

Featured This Issue:

4 Global And Local: Getting It Right

10 How Savvy Entrepreneurs Transform A Small Idea Into A Big Brand

Paige Williams

Catherine Kaputa

22 Make Your Business Profitable By The Very Next Deposit

Influencer Insights: Ajit Sivadasan Vice President/General Manager Lenovo.com

26 Organizing Global Brand Management

31 Maximizing The Professional Identity On LinkedIn

Prof. Dieter Georg Herbst

Mike Michalowicz

Alon Alroy

36 So You Want Join The Startup Scene… Joana Picq

The Art Of Sustaining A Luxury Brand

How The World Sees You: Lessons In Personal Branding

Achieve Global Brand Success Through Transcreation

Sally Hogshead

Gráinne Maycock

Sidharth Sreekumar

53 BQ Talks With Amanda Clay-Jones Head of Brand | Telefónica

56 Why Even The Best Sounding Partnerships Can Fail To Deliver Gleyce Oliveira

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60 Social Media Networking For Sales Results Alan See

64 Digital Marketing: Turn Cost Management Into Cost Leadership

Use This Simple Button To Come Back Here Anytime At the top right of page spreads

Bruno Herrmann

From The Editor Wanting to learn what today’s successful brands, executives and entrepreneurs do differently? You’ll find it’s all here in black and white (with bonus bright, sparkly pictures too). This August issue has an exciting line-up instore for you! Inside you’ll find: the launch of the all new feature ‘BQ Talks’ (which we kick off with the award winning, Head of Brand at Telefónica, Amanda Clay-Jones), 3 Best Selling Authors, a top Tech Entrepreneur, highly experienced and successful Executives (from companies such as Microsoft, Sajan and The Nielson Company), the most followed CMO on twitter, and a whole lot more… In other words - 13 world class contributors all sharing their experience and expertise with you, our awesome readers! Then to top this off, it was also my pleasure to interview the driven, yet humble head of Lenovo.com, Ajit Sivadasan. I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank our readers for the feedback we received on the recent ‘Global Marketing’ special edition. We’re thrilled you found so much value in the insights shared and we’ve touched on some of the additionally requested topics in this issue. A number of you have also told us you’d like to be able to jump right to the articles you most want to read. So now, if you click on an article in the contents, you’ll be taken directly there. To return to the contents pages, use the button in the top right corner - simple! Thanks again for your support, and if you’re heading to Brand2Global in London on October 1 & 2, we’ll see you there.

Fiona

Brand Quarterly magazine AUG 2014 www.brandquarterly.com Publisher/Design: Vesey Creative Ltd studio@veseycreative.com

As the publishers of Brand Quarterly, we take every care in the production of each issue. We are however, not liable for any editorial error, omission, mistake or typographical error. The views expressed are those of the contributors and not necessarily those of their respecitve companies or the publisher.

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Copyright: This magazine and the content published within are subject to copyright held by the publisher, with individual articles remaining copyright to the named contributor. Express written permission of the publisher and contributor must be acquired for reproduction.

Global And Local: Getting It Right Paige Williams

As a global company, Microsoft respects and complies with the requirements for language, geography, and culture. The Global Readiness team helps ensure that all of our customers, regardless of their cultures, customs, beliefs, languages, or locations, experience Microsoft devices, services, and communications as globally appropriate, and locally relevant. 4

When I started at Microsoft over 20 years ago, one of my first jobs was to act as a liaison between corporate headquarters and our subsidiaries in Africa, India, and the Middle East. I helped employees in those countries or regions set up Microsoft offices with a distinctly local presence.

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A perk of the job was travelling to the locale of the new office and immersing myself in the culture to ensure an authentic experience for our customers. For example, when Microsoft Hellas was established in 1992, we wanted the office to look, feel, and represent the way business is done in Greece, including the culture, norms, and sensibilities. I remember learning about the importance of greeting visitors to the office; of taking the time to properly welcome someone with a coffee and a chat; and the emphasis on building rapport

and trust, before getting to business. This role was the start of my journey; balancing Microsoft as a global and local company. I carried these experiences into my next job, taking Microsoft.com worldwide. The challenge was to translate our English website into 30 local sites while ensuring accuracy for each market yet retaining the corporate brand. We were learning how to balance global and local - from globalization and translation into localization and marketization.

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These early experiences localizing content and services informed the standards and best practices for how to do this work in a scalable way across the company. Respect for cultural, linguistic and market expectations formed the foundation of our current Global Readiness program.

Here is a look at a few of us on the team back in the day an article about the ‘backstage’ of localizing the Microsoft.com site, translated into Simplified Chinese.

Today’s world of online services and mobile devices requires changes to the traditional localization model, which was created for packaged products. We used to localize specifically for each market where we were offered a product, but the environment has become much more complex. Now, services are borderless and devices travel. It means you need to figure out how to offer an experience that is globally appropriate, while locally relevant, factoring in that this relevancy may include multilingual scenarios, across multi-geographic renderings. A customer might have a country of origin and a different country of current residence, while also traveling for work and for pleasure. Customers take their devices with them, and they consume services from wherever they are, regardless of the language or languages, of preference. Complicated? Herein lies our delicate balancing act -considering the global context, while planning for the flexibility of numerous international user scenarios. My team provides our marketing and engineering groups with tools and information to help them strike a balance of a good global experience, with the right local relevance. Here are some of the topics we consider, both individually and together, to create the best possible customer experience.

A billboard might be stationary, but a cellphone photo of it can travel the world. 6

Global Experience The world is a diverse place. While much of the customer experience is local, we know that people and information can easily cross borders. A billboard might be stationary, but a cellphone photo of it can travel the world. So we try to make sure that content in one market won’t be offensive elsewhere.

Local Relevance In Global Readiness, we bring together standards from inside and outside of

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Microsoft, so that our engineering and marketing teams have the information they need to make good decisions and great products. We try to understand the needs of each market, so that we can customize for each in a consistent way.

systems, time-zones and so forth. And all of this affects the experience of customers in a market.

Getting It Right Names Product naming is an art, but one with research behind it. When a Microsoft team is considering names for a new product or major feature, we do extensive research in English and in target languages and markets to assess whether the name will be good and acceptable, or confusing, misunderstood, and even potentially offensive. Linguists in target markets give us feedback that might include things like, “This acronym may be problematic in Italy,” or “This term would not be well-understood, and in fact has a different meaning in Japanese,” etc. Our Englishlanguage researcher also looks at homonyms, abbreviations, colloquialisms, and so forth. Product marketing teams review the feedback and factor it into their decisions.

Product naming is an art, but one with research behind it.

Language, Locale Language is a fundamental element of the branded experience. In some places there are requirements, but in others it’s simply the market expectation for languages offered. There are also multi-lingual scenarios to consider. Other critical world-readiness requirements include locale-related things like the formatting of dates and times, calendar

Language is a fundamental element of the branded experience.

Offensive Words We have a published policy against use of offensive words, but, they occasionally creep in. It may be a lack of awareness, for example, that there are legal reasons to avoid certain terms in some markets. To prevent prohibited words from going into the public sphere, we have a scanning procedure, in over 100 languages that our engineering teams must use before finalizing releases. This helps minimize a potential negative impact on the Microsoft brand, either globally or locally. Maps Some maps can, quite literally, be wrong— for example the ones that make Britain and Ireland look like a big glob attached to Europe. We do our best to avoid mistakes like that, and we have a cartography expert on staff who reviews maps for Microsoft teams and provides guidance on how to make maps render properly. One of the biggest challenges with mapping is that there is no such thing as a one-world view. In other words, the key to success with maps is to recognize how local expectations in one location may differ from those in another. The naming of a geographic feature, the location of a border, and other cartographic elements need to be carefully considered in both global and local contexts. A customized map may be the best solution for some customers or geographies or regions.

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Images

Bing Canada (English) also used poppies.

Our guidelines for images relate to elements such as photographs, graphics, and symbols. While many images are globally viewable worldwide, in certain cases, local versions make for a more appropriate market experience. Consider the Bing home pages on November 11, 2013. (November 11 is a holiday of remembrance in some locations.) The homepage image was changed to reflect local sensibilities in different markets.

In many locations, the Bing home page featured this image of nature.

Bing UK, where poppies are a symbol of remembrance.

Bing France, where cornflowers (Bleuets de France) are a symbol of remembrance.

Ultimately, to engage our customers, we must take the time to understand and respect the dynamics at play when trying to land both the best global experience and the right local one. This is no small order to fill, and we must acknowledge the challenges and opportunities in front of us, which keep our work vital and exciting. For my team, and our colleagues across the company who work on these challenges daily, the biggest compliment a customer can give, wherever they are in the world, is â&#x20AC;&#x153;Microsoft knows me.â&#x20AC;?

Paige Williams Director, Global Readiness | Microsoft Corporation Paige Williams is Director of Global Readiness for Microsoft Corporation, headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Paige is responsible for managing the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s strategy, policies and standards for geo-political, language and world readiness. With over 20 years of experience in localization, and market readiness, Paige and her team help to ensure that Microsoft is respectful and relevant when launching devices, services and marketing campaigns worldwide. Paige holds a degree in English from Washington State University.

www.microsoft.com/Language

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How Savvy Entrepreneurs Transform A Small Idea Into A Big Brand Catherine Kaputa

Destiny is a dramatic word – but the first step in starting a successful venture is identifying your commercial destiny, determining what specific business you – and only you – were born to create. The best idea for you will involve the perfect convergence of your skills, talents, and passions with the needs in the marketplace. It also takes great branding. Transforming your idea into a brand, though, takes something more, what I call breakthrough branding. Smart entrepreneurs who build brands do things differently starting with the way they begin their businesses. In researching startups that grew big in various global markets for my book, Breakthrough Branding, four branding habits set them apart:

1. They Find A “Small Idea,” A Business Idea That’s Focused, Different & Perfectly Positioned. In branding, it all starts with an idea. Everyone talks of finding a big idea. But I say, “Forget the big idea, go for a small idea.” The reality is big ideas start out small – simple, focused and specific so that they can own a unique niche and dominate the category. That way, you’re building a business on something that’s different and small enough to own and create a brand identity around. Sometimes you can find your “small idea” in unlikely places just by being observant. On a business trip to Thailand, Austrian

“Forget the big idea, go for a small idea.” The reality is big ideas start out small...

entrepreneur Dietrich Mateschitz discovered a local drink called Krating Daeng that miraculously cured his jet lag and gave him a jolt of energy. Mateschitz kept the original Thai formula with one modification; he added carbonisation. He named the drink Red Bull, a close translation of its Thai name (Daeng means “red” and Krating means “water buffalo” in Thai). His real genius was in positioning the brand spot on for teenage boys and young men not as a new carbonated beverage, but as an “energy drink,” an entirely new category at the time that appealed to virile young men.

2. They Realise That The Name You Choose For The Business Can Make Or Break You. Just like with a newborn baby, your first branding act is to come up with a name for your business. This beginning moment in the creative process of branding is full of possibility and fear. How do you get it right? Ideally, you want a name that is different, memorable, conveys meaning, and translates globally. Look at Twitter, a name that has gone from bird talk to one of the most-used words in English and is known globally. The name Twitter was the result of a brainstorming session with a small group of employees led by Jack Dorsey, who was the creative brain behind the new messaging concept. What analogy could they make? The closest thing was getting a text message. Your phone would buzz. It would jitter. It would twitch. So the team explored names like Jitter and Twitch. Searching for words that begin with “tw,” they discover “twitter.” Dorsey looked

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up the meaning of twitter: “ a short burst of inconsequential information” and “chirps for birds.” The name was perfect. If you’re an entrepreneur from China, finding a name that can go global can be hard if you stick to Chinese language words. You have to think laterally. An English teacher in China, Jack Ma came to the United States as a visiting scholar and got interested in the Internet and how it might lead to a startup business idea when he returned home. While in a coffee shop in San Francisco, Ma thought that Alibaba might be a good name for the business e-commerce concept. So he asked his waitress, “Do you know about Alibaba?” And she said, “Forty Thieves.” Then he asked people on the street from Germany, Japan, China, and other countries. They all knew, “Alibaba and the Forty Thieves.” From Ma’s perspective, the name had a lot going for it. It was well known and recognised by people all over the world. It was easy to say and spell unlike many Chinese words. It had the repetition of the “ba” sound, a good linguistic device in naming things. Plus Alibaba had a meaning that related to Ma’s idea for an Internet business-to-business services company. If you know the story, the character Ali Baba is not a thief but a kind, smart businessman who helped the villages. As Ma relates, “Alibaba opens sesame for small-to-medium sized companies.” Today, Alibaba is an e-commerce giant, controlling about 80 percent of China’s online commerce market with a market capitalization estimated at $200 billion.

3. They Use Unconventional Marketing Tactics

even more improvising if you’re still in school, like the four enterprising MBA students at the reputable University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business who launched Warby Parker, a cool yet inexpensive internet prescription eyewear company. The four found that school was the ideal incubator for their startup because their classmates were their target customers. To sell their glasses, they recruited brand ambassadors from their classmates. After they graduated, they enlisted department store buyers, restaurant maîtreds and other people who came into contact with lots of potential customers as brand ambassadors. The deal? They get a

It’s always smart to zig when everyone else is zagging. And, as marketers know, it’s very powerful when you get others to market your brand for you. It can take some improvising if you’re a startup with little money. It takes

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...it’s very powerful when you get others to market your brand for you.

free pair of glasses and a discount code for their friends. The founders have also aligned the brand with a cause. Of course, blending commerce with good works as a marketing strategy has been around for decades, but what’s new today is linking the brand and the philanthropy so closely together that you can’t think of the brand without the charity work and vice versa. To do that, Warby Parker launched “Buy a Pair, Give a Pair.” For every pair of prescription glasses it sells, Warby gives away a pair to someone in need somewhere in the world.

4. They Know How To Spin A Good PR Story Having a great product is key, but don’t neglect the PR power of story-telling, beginning with your creation story. Innocent was launched by three Cambridge graduates. The trio set up a stall at a music festival in the U.K. to test the fruit smoothie drinks they had concocted. They put two bins in front of their stall with a sign that asked customers to vote by casing their empties in the Yes bin if they thought the group should start a business and quit their jobs. Only a few empty containers ending up in the No bin, so the three friends resigned the next day. And its creation story became part of its marketing lore. The small idea behind Innocent is authenticity – healthy fruit drinks made of 100 percent fresh ingredients. The logo is a quirky apple

...don’t neglect the PR power of story-telling, beginning with your creation story.

shape, almost like a child’s drawing, with two eyes and a halo above to underscore the honesty and playfulness of the brand along with its promise of pure ingredients. In its early days, Innocent experimented with labels that listed ingredients such as “banana, orange, and a lawnmower.” When it did a label that listed “plump nuns” among its ingredients they received a reprimand from the U.K.’s Advertising Standards Authority asking them to change their labels or “start putting said items in your drinks.” Nonetheless, all of its playful antics led to fun breakthrough branding and PR that connected with its target audience of young, hip, health-conscious adults. Initially, a U.K. fruit smoothie brand, Innocent sold part of its business to Coca Cola and is rolling out in global markets. The breakthrough branding mindset is both strategic and creative and real that branding ideas can come from anywhere. Traditional approaches often don’t work. There are always creative ways you can tweak and market your brand. There are always new strategies you can explore and tactics you can test in your quest for breakthrough branding.

Catherine Kaputa Author | ‘Breakthrough Branding’ and ‘You Are a Brand’ Catherine Kaputa is a brand strategist, speaker and author. Her latest book is Breakthrough Branding: How Smart Entrepreneurs and Intrapreneurs Transform a Small Idea Into a Big Brand (Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2012), winner of the Silver Medal, Book of the Year Awards, 2012 (Business category) sponsored by Foreword Magazine. She is also the author of You Are a Brand! (Nicholas Brealey Publishing 2012), winner of the Ben Franklin Award for Best Career Book.

www.selfbrand.com

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Ajit Sivadasan Vice President/General Manager Lenovo.com Fiona Vesey

I recently had the pleasure of a ‘virtual sit down’ with Ajit Sivadasan, Lenovo.com’s ‘Chief Web Guy’ and the keynote speaker at Brand2Global 2014. Thanks Ajit for taking the time out of your busy globe-trotting schedule to share your insights with our readers.

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Fiona Ajit, I’ve heard you’re often referred to as ‘The Chief Web Guy’ at Lenovo, rather than by your official title of VP/GM of Lenovo.com. What’s the story behind that? Ajit Well, Lenovo is a channel focused company, which naturally pushes ecommerce to the background. My role is to really try to transform the mind-set in the company to be more focused on web and e-commerce. If not for anything but to ensure our customer expectations online are met appropriately. I’ve got to educate to some degree, to get people to understand the nuances - be the subject matter expert that’s needed. In many ways keep my team motivated and at the same time highlight the exciting things that web, as a channel offers. So that’s why I call myself the chief web evangelist, because in many ways I evangelize the web and related concepts.

down and I’ve actually managed to get down from the 20s into the 13, 14 range which is great for me.

Fiona That’s quite an improvement. Now, back to when you are ‘on the job’ what’s your favourite part about working at Lenovo?

Ajit We have some really, really smart people in the company. I have an incredibly bright team and the fact is, we as a brand have had some incredible success these past several years. It’s exciting to be part of something that is this positive. So I think a combination of working with smart people and working on exciting things.

Fiona I really like that.

Sometimes we experience growing pains, but the overall impact that we’ve been able to make as a company, and as a business unit is exciting. Ultimately you want to make a difference, you want to make an impact and when you have the opportunity to do that, I think it’s very fulfilling.

So in those precious moments when you’re not being the ‘chief web guy’, what do you enjoy doing?

Fiona That’s so true.

Ajit I don’t really know where the personal stuff starts and the company stuff stops, often because I’m on the road, figuring out how to get into new markets and grow the business and needed capabilities. On a personal level, I am an aspiring artist and like to do oils and pencil sketching. I used to paint quite a bit when I was younger and had the time to really focus on it. I’ve been trying to get back into it a little bit more lately. It helps me keep my head together. I’m also trying to improve my golf game, which I’ve never had the time to focus on. I decided to really try and get my handicap

When you’re looking for inspiration in your work, what other brands or companies do you look to?

Ajit You know it really depends on the types of things that you’re seeking inspiration on. When you are looking at companies that are truly great at marketing, I’m continuously impressed by brands like Coke, GoPro and Redbull that have pushed the envelope around social and digital marketing of late that is exciting as a marketer. I also look at some others who have done things on the back of purely consistent

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execution. I really like how Nordstrom manage their processes and their business. In the online space it’s companies like Amazon, who clearly have a great, differentiated business model, but are still very focused on their customers. So it just depends on what you are trying to improve. Even in my team, as we are looking to improve our own operations, we tend not to look at one brand for everything. We tend to look at the best approaches to certain aspects and they come from multiple brands. When we look at our end-to-end experience, we often consider the front end and backend requirements differently. As an example, from a visual design standpoint, we always think of who we should aspire to be? On an operational execution level, who should we benchmark against? Who’s clearly the leader? The same applies for how we approach digital and social marketing concepts

Fiona You touched on the fact that Lenovo has seen some wonderful success over the last few years. What do you feel has been the main factor for Lenovo’s online success?

...we have really embraced what we are calling ‘engagement marketing’, which is social driven marketing. energy looking at our customer journey and our customer experiences and a lot of time really understanding customer profiles and segmentations. We have been very fortunate to have support from the top in looking at the web as a huge asset from a brand building standpoint. We also look at Lenovo.com as one of those places where we have a relationship with our customers in a very intimate and direct manner, which allows us to get feedback more consistently and in a more direct way. Lastly, from a marketing standpoint we have really embraced what we are calling ‘engagement marketing’, which is social driven marketing. That clearly vectors on Lenovo.com as a core asset to reach our customers, to get the message out, to collect their feedback and carry on the two-way dialogue that is so important for brands to grow.

Ajit Well, several factors really. As a brand we have grown from being a $13 billion company that was selling PCs, to a $40 billion company that sells PCs, phones and tablets in 165 countries - We’ve tripled in size. We have gone from being a distant third or fourth player in just the PC space, to being a clear leader there - being number one the last four quarters - and number two/three in the PC Plus space. For Lenovo.com specifically, we have leveraged e-commerce and we are now in about 20 countries - we were only in five about five years ago.

We’re naturally in the right spot. I don’t know how much of this is luck versus our hard work, because I’ve worked in other places where we have worked very hard but have not been able to have the same kind of success. So I’m a little humbled to say that it’s not all hard work - there is an element of luck here.

You know, we’ve transformed the Lenovo. com experience quite dramatically. We used to be much more subtle about how we branded. We’ve spent a lot of time and

Ajit From a web standpoint, when we started we had about 300 million people coming

Fiona During this period of growth, what are the most common challenges that you and your team have been dealing with on a day-to-day basis?

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to Lenovo.com. Now we get over a billion people. So in terms of the metrics that we need to go look at - in terms of scalability, ensuring that the site is available, just at a technical level, the complexity has gone up significantly.

are motivated to drive the brand. When brands get successful, a lot of people are involved in that success and so your biggest challenge becomes trying to retain your best and brightest.

When you are an obscure small brand people generally don’t care that much when you goof up. When you become more and more known, you have a target on your back and everybody has higher expectations. I think the market’s expectations have gone up significantly, which is a good thing because it pushes us to get better and better at what we do. The biggest challenge for us is how to truly be a global organisation. At least personally, for me, I have to insure that whatever we do we are able to scale those things into secondary countries. So there is a cost element involved in that. There is tremendous pressure for localisation. You have to coordinate across a complex organisational landscape. There are personnel issues and you have to keep up with the changing landscape of technology. Technology is evolving quite rapidly and for people who live on the technology end, every decision you make kind of becomes obsolete by the time it’s implemented. So you really have to have a point of view on how you can extend some of these things for a reasonable time period and not be in a constant state of flux. Then on the people side, it’s trying to hire and retain talent and making sure that they

When brands get successful, a lot of people are involved in that success...

It becomes that much more difficult when you are dealing with a global landscape and people in 15 countries. So my job in many ways is to try to figure out how to motivate people and get them together in a way that makes sense for their own long-term career progression and brand aspirations.

Fiona Thinking more about the global nature of Lenovo.com, how do you tailor your web presence to remain engaging while maintaining a consistent brand image and messaging when many of your key markets are so different culturally? Ajit This is a classic problem that most global companies face. It’s always a question of how much to centralise and how much to decentralise. Everybody has a point of view and companies sometimes centralise too much, sometimes they decentralise too much. Each option has its’ pros and cons. Lenovo, as a company, believes in a very regionalised decentralised type of model, where people are driving marketing based on whatever is relevant to that market. We also operate in a highly cost competitive environment and sometimes not finding synergies at the top can lead to cost related

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issues. So it’s a fine balance. You need to figure out the things that you need to control at the top to drive the consistency, so the brand’s key tenants can be accentuated much more effectively.

Fiona It’s pretty easy to identify your main competitors in the marketplace, but what type of companies do you see as Lenovo’s biggest indirect competition?

We are trying to keep the overall brand communication at the top consistent. That means if you are running the Lenovo. com platform you need to make sure your messaging, your overall look and feel, your font, your colour, your designs, your palette are consistent for the media you’re using. Generally you want all of the countries’ pages to look similar, like it’s coming from the same brand. It also helps us drive efficiency because if there’s a version that’s consistent then everybody can use that to drive their regional buyers.

Ajit Well, Lenovo itself is going through a transition. We have been traditionally a PC focused company. In the last few years we have gone from selling just PCs, to now also selling smart phones and tablets. So that in itself has transformed the competitive landscape from the traditional PC players to the non-traditional PC players - what we call PC Plus - basically Apple, Samsung and some others, who sell that set of products.

At the demand generation and the go-tomarket layers, we’ve got a lot more flexibility for the localisation of the cultural nuances, so that when we are speaking in a country we sound relevant to that market. That’s generally what we do, but it obviously comes with a lot of negotiation and discussion.

Fiona It’s an on-going process. Ajit Yes and it gets even more complicated when you have multiple acquisitions that are significant. Then you have to discuss how you’re going to integrate multiple brands, what’s the sub-brand strategy? What is the product line strategy? Who is the brand that leads in that market? How do you position the products in the market? It’s easier said than done. It’s fairly complicated, but at least at a strategic level, we decide the things that we want to drive globally - that everybody is going to follow. Then there are going to be some things that will be at the discretion of the local geographies and countries, so they can be effective in their sales and marketing. 18

I think the bigger competition we see is from people who have different business models. As an example, companies that operate purely on the web or grew up on the web, have a very different type of thinking, a different type of talent, and different ways of doing marketing. Those in many ways, are more challenging to compete with than the traditional businesses because: a) it’s not our core competency, and b) those aren’t things you can just copy, because it takes a cultural transformation to be good at those things and that’s not easy to do.

Fiona So how would you say this affects your marketing strategy? Ajit Well interestingly enough - because we come from a PC based background, we’re very, very low on our marketing spend as you can imagine. Now we’re making this transition from a PC company to a consumer brand, and when you make that transition you come up against companies who spend a lot more money on their marketing. So you get caught in this no-man’s land where you don’t have enough money to market, yet

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in order for you to make progress you really have to start looking more and more like a consumer brand. I think it comes down to a couple of things. One is prioritisation; you really have to prioritise what things you are going to focus on more. In all fairness, Lenovo has done quite well with it’s now patented protect and attack strategy, where we clearly identify which markets and which strategies we will attack on and which parts of the business we’re going to protect. That prioritisation naturally allows us to say ‘hey, we can afford to spend a little bit more money here, but we won’t spend excess money here’. Second is figuring out how to be innovative in our marketing approach. A head-on strategy is something that we may not find successful. We don’t have the dollars over the web today to compete head-on from a marketing standpoint I don’t think. So we have to outthink the market and really start looking at using non-traditional marketing to build a sustainable relationship with our customers.

Fiona Be creative about it.

Ajit Yes, that’s where I think this notion of engagement marketing is powerful. More and more we talk about loyalty and advocacy as a way of measuring customer intimacy rather than the traditional metrics of what we felt were a brand measure. We’re really trying to figure out how to leverage our customer database and how to leverage our potential market as a way of getting feedback - involving them in our product, design process, getting them to be our advocates in the long run. Fiona I like that. Now I have to ask, Big Data – a love-hate relationship, or just a whole lot of love? Ajit It’s a love-hate relationship but not because of my lack of trust, I’m actually a very datacentric person. I use a lot of data in my analysis and in fact because I’m the web guy, I’m actually driving some of the big data centres within Lenovo. The problem I have is with the industry and the marketing and sales. There’s a lot of

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push towards people using Big Data as a panacea for everything. I think there is a lot of misinformation and people think that it is going to fix all their problems when in reality it actually requires you to be very grounded; to be focused on understanding the problems very clearly; to hire people with specific expertise; and it requires fairly large periods of transformation in how your company and your culture actually come together to handle the types of things Big Data enables you to do. I don’t think Big Data in itself is a set of initiatives. It is a very organisationally driven cultural transformation in how you use data to drive your business. I think most people don’t get it or underestimate what it actually takes to be successful with it, mostly fuelled by the hype of companies selling the solutions.

Fiona I completely agree with you on that. Finally - What’s the number one piece of advice that you’d give to a company which was just starting to optimise their web strategy for the global market?

Ajit This is probably a cliché, but you do have to focus on the customer very intimately. If you ever lose sight of who the customer is and

...you have to put the customer in the middle of everything you’re trying to do...

what the customer thinks is value, it’s very difficult to provide the services and relevance that’s going to make you successful. Most companies start out doing this, then they lose their way - but you can’t - you have to put the customer in the middle of everything you’re trying to do and figure out how to make their experience better and better and better. If you are going to start a business that’s web centric or if you have a website, you really have to figure out how to use that presence to drive relevance for your customers. Now, that’s easier said than done. I’ve spent the last 15 years trying to improve it and every time I do, I feel like there’s so much more to do. So clearly it’s not easy to perfect, but having that philosophy shared across the organisation will help position you for success. I could probably rattle off 10 other things. But if you do this one thing well, everything else is likely going to fall in line.

Fiona Vesey Editor-in-Chief | Brand Quarterly Magazine Fiona is Co-Founder of Vesey Creative, the Brand and Graphic Design agency behind Brand Quarterly magazine, for which she serves as Editor-in-Chief. She thrives in partnering with people and companies wanting more than just aesthetically pleasing design, using her natural ability to build relationships, communicate and truly understand clients businesses to create result generating, people focused design and branding - and great magazines... Fiona is passionate about learning from industry thought leaders and enjoys sharing those conversations with others through her ‘Influencer Insights’ features.

www.veseycreative.com 20

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Make Your Business Profitable By The Very Next Deposit Mike Michalowicz

The formula for profitability has been established for ages. Every business owner, CEO, freelancer and entrepreneur knows it. It is even required, in the US by Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), which in turn is enforced by the SEC in the United States and the International Accounting Standards Board internationally. Using GAAP or not, the fundamental profit formula is the same:

Sales – Expenses = Profit There is just one problem… 22

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The formula doesn’t generate profits. There is a reason that 21 million out of 28 million small businesses in the US are surviving check to check. It’s not that 21 million people are smart enough to start and build a business, yet not smart enough to turn a profit – it’s that they are relying on a flawed formula. Sales – Expenses = Profit is a lie. The formula prohibits profit. Logically, of course, the formula is sound. A business must first sell in order to generate inbound cash flow. Then the business deducts the expenses utilized to deliver its product or service and to run its operations. What remains is profit. Profit, effectively, is a leftover.

Sales – Expenses = Profit is a lie. The formula prohibits profit.

While the GAAP formula makes logical sense, it ignores the fact that it is managed by people. We are, first and foremost, emotional beings, prone to ignore (or even defy) logic. Cyril Northcote Parkinson, in his famous bestseller Parkinson’s Law, proposed that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” His theory has been generalized to state “The demand upon a resource tends to expand to match the supply of the resource.” Arguably, money is the ultimate resource. In GAAP’s “Sales – Expenses = Profit” formula, the business owner sees the cumulative deposits (resource) from sales and has a propensity to conclude that all the money is available for expenses (the demand expands to match the supply). The new equipment purchase is justified because the money is there. A new hire starts, because the money is there. Profit? It is an afterthought. Therefore, there rarely is any. 24

Now consider a new formula, where a business takes profit first:

Sales – Profit = Expenses Mathematically the formula is identical to GAAP’s. But from from the perspective of human behavior, the Profit First formula is radically different. In the Profit First formula a preset percentage of deposits generated through sales are first allocated to profit. The remainder is used to pay expenses. In practice, as deposits from sales come in a predetermined percentage, for example 15%, is immediately transferred to a separate profit account. The remainder is available for the business leader to run business as usual. The

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business owner will see his available cash (which has had the profit already deducted) and make decisions accordingly. The new equipment purchase may be delayed, or a more cost effective alternative may be found. A new hire won’t be made because the money is not there, and perhaps the entrepreneur will conclude was unnecessary in the first place. While I have co-founded, built and sold two multi-million dollar technology service firms, admittedly they were never truly profitable. Every increase in revenue seemed to be matched with an even greater increase in expenses. Every day I checked (and still do) my bank balances. As the balances would climb and fall, so would my confidence and my spending. I lavishly incurred new, unnecessary expenses when my bank account was fat. I panicked when it was thin. This behavior, I have found, is not unique to me. In fact, of the hundreds of entrepreneurs and business owners I have asked, the vast majority also do “bank balance accounting.” It was with this realization that I started doing Profit First for myself five years ago. That is when I applied the “pay yourself first” principle to the operations of my businesses. I became my own guinea pig for Profit First. Every quarter since, I have posted a profit. Every business I have invited to flip the GAAP formula, has also posted a profit or, unfortunately in some cases, decided to

...of the hundreds of entrepreneurs and business owners I have asked, the vast majority also do “bank balance accounting.”

give up the system because it put “too much downward pressure on expenses.” GAAP offers so much more in business insights than most entrepreneurs could imagine, but it does fall short on working with an entrepreneurs “bank balance” habit. I have become an advocate for the Profit First approach to cash management, because of the one thing it does do extremely well. It works with the natural habit of business owners. And, it functions as a “plug-in” to all the GAAP accounting systems and processes I have place. It doesn’t change GAAP, it simply sits on top. Profit First has transformed my own businesses for the better (if you consider consistent profits, better). Admittedly, Profit First is not the panacea to all cash flow problems, but it surely makes profit a habit.

Mike Michalowicz Author / CEO | Provendus Group Mike Michalowicz (mi-KAL-o-witz) started his first business at the age of 24, moving his young family to the only safe place he could afford - a retirement complex. With no experience, no contacts and no savings he systematically bootstrapped a multi-million dollar business. Then he did it again. And again. Mike is the CEO of a business growth consulting firm, Provendus Group; is a former small business columnist for The Wall Street Journal; is the “business makeover” specialist on MSNBNC; and is the author of The Pumpkin Plan, the entrepreneur’s cult classic book, The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur and his latest book Profit First.

www.mikemichalowicz.com

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Organizing Global Brand Management Prof. Dieter Georg Herbst

Global brand management (GBM) is, as the name suggests, the analysis, planning, creation and organization of your brand management at a global level. Why is global brand management so important when every country could shape its own local brand management as called for in the particular country? Well, what happens when a country plans something that affects another country or the central strategy, or something occurs that could possibly affect the brand locally? In such an event, the brand management should be marshaled. Content, timing and framework should be set up free of contradictions in order to leverage commonalities and avoid cross talk and unintended messaging.

Global brand management requires coordination among countries so that a clear image of the company and its offerings develop - a big picture. Impact studies show that the vividness of a brand’s imagery is the superdimension of brand management.

Impact studies show that the vividness of a brand’s imagery is the superdimension of brand management.

Consistent brand imagery can only arise when all brand management’s tools are systematically planned and implemented globally. Consistency includes: •• Content: Blobal brand messaging must be consistent and free of contradiction. Consistency doesn’t mean that every country uses the same messaging. Rather that the brand manager possesses the general messaging overview in order to ensure there are no contradictions. •• Form: Which design guidelines are international? This includes extant formal trademarks such as name and logo. •• Timing: Program timing should be coordinated so that one country doesn’t implement a tactic that another country is waiting on for better timing. •• Instrumental: Which programs do countries implement internationally? Do they complement one another?

•• Objective: Are country-specific launches and oneoffs coordinated with one another? •• Partnership: Is GBM coordinated with external business partners like vendors, dealers, retailers, etc? •• Personnel: All stakeholder decisions and behavior stem from a common understanding of GBM. The coordination of global brand management ensures that all stakeholders are able to adequately exchange ideas and communicate – interdisciplinary teams, project management and networks play a major role here. Fitting processes are ones which engender purposeful coordination and measurement and which strengthen overall collaboration.

What Are The Organizational Requirements? Expert global brand management is tied to requirements: they concern the involved personnel, roles, responsibilities, processes, structures, the appointed information technology as well as the culture of the communications.

Brand Managers: Brand managers are crucial because they communicate globally with consumers and other relevant parties. The following considerations are especially noteworthy: Number: Determines GBM’s capacity. A single person plays this role in many mid-sized companies. That individual will not professionally fulfill demands, however, if she does not receive constant external support, for example from a consultant or agency.

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Training: Are the in-country brand managers experienced professionals or newcomers to the field? In the case of the newcomer, how does one make certain that employees work up to trained, professional standards and aren’t overwhelmed?

is responsible for what. That’s why the key roles and qualifications of decision makers should be defined up front, clearly demarcated, communicated internally and solidly established. It’s important that there is a GBM contact person for countries, topics and resources, and that that person is known.

Continuing education: How do brand managers further develop their capabilities, skills and proficiencies? Future expectations include digital brand management knowledge as well as language and culture skills. •• Professional expertise: Foundations in communication, but in addition the adequate business acumen to evaluate the overarching context of communications and their corporate added value. •• Methodological expertise: Interdisciplinary thinking, strategic thinking, task-oriented. •• Social expertise: The ability to communicate in and among the many internal and external communication partners, solid ability in team building. A consultant can provide proficiency in these skills.

Roles And Responsibilities: GBM positions of responsibility must be established and the roles and responsibilities must be clarified. This doesn’t happen carefully enough in most companies which leads to confusion about who at headquarters and who in-country

Structure: GBM helps achieve the goal of internationalization and thereby the goals of the company. The first question is where is GBM’s home? In sales? In marketing? Is a director responsible for GBM? Experience bears out that GBM should be a defined role within the corporate leadership. And consider structurally that national marketing managers are mostly organized in networks (global brand networks). The network structures vary depending on company, situation and sector.

Process: Processes secure cooperation. Processes are chains of action with a defined result. Suitable processes enable targeted communication, coordination and measurement and strengthen the overall collaborative effort. They are needed in order that those responsible in each country can agree on common messaging and execute appropriately. Included are processes of information, communication and approval. Standard operating procedure (SOP) is written precedent of processes which occur again and again, for example, for crisis communication, for production and distribution to Brand Quarterly

the press and for current internet postings. Processes are thusly binding and for everyone to see. Established process is especially essential for crisis communication which, for example, clarifies who informs whom in what order and how approvals are acquired. SOPs establish who is involved, who informs whom and in what order and how long individual team members have to give input on changes.

IT: Suitable IT plays an ever more substantial role. IT supports global brand management via adequate hardware (computer, printer, scanner, etc.) and software (text editing, graphics programs, mail databases, etc.) It networks those involved with GBM internally and as well as with agencies. Team members are able to archive and evaluate campaigns with international relevance in order that they and others always have access. Team members can make use of important information from shared databases. Is a common address book useful? A central task overview? A central project calendar? An idea pool?

Culture: Truly global brand management calls for sacrifice on the part of country-specific offices for the good of a strong, unified

corporate and brand imagery. To push this expectation through is the biggest challenge. No small number of projects fail because of competitive infighting between headquarters and country offices - proficient and coordinated GBM is still mostly lip service. As such, colleagues should establish common ground rules and stick to them.

Truly global brand management calls for sacrifice on the part of country-specific offices...

In Conclusion Global brand management demands buy-in from all the brand managers in concerned countries in order that clear brand imagery can be achieved with consumers. For this to happen, the uses of all the instruments must be systematically planned and precisely executed. A guiding principle: Because of the many differences among countries, global brand management is extremely differentiated. Synergies arise in no small degree from the alignment of such differences along the path to the sought after brand image.

Prof. Dieter Georg Herbst CEO | source1 networks Professor Herbst has been an executive partner in source1 networks GmbH since 1999 and advises companies all over the world. He is Honorary Professor of Strategic Communications Management at the Berlin Academy of Arts (Germany), Senior Lecturer for Corporate Communication and Social Media at the University of St. Gallen (Switzerland), Visiting Professor at Antai College of Economics & Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (China), Lecturer L’Ecole de Design de Nantes Atlantiques @ Srishti School of Art, Design & Technology in Bangalore (India). He is member of the “Internet Sages” and was elected Germanys “Professor of the Year” in 2011.

www.dieter-herbst.de 30

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Maximizing The Professional Identity On LinkedIn Alon Alroy

LinkedIn has become a digital reflection of our professional lives and the LinkedIn audience, now more than 300 million strong, is an especially critical asset for brand managers. The platform allows businesses to establish industry credibility, to more effectively target key audiences, and to sharpen the corporate side of their brand; all of which work to shape a companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s image. Yet, LinkedIn is often overshadowed and overlooked, compared to other social media platforms.

Establishing Industry Credibility

professional-focused network is like going to a conference or a networking event, as opposed to attending a birthday party. At a business conference, attendees are present for reasons that are different than if they were to go to a social event such as a friendâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s birthday gathering. Conversations and motivations will be centered on conducting business, and usually everyone in attendance at a conference is keen on soaking up as much information as possible about current trends in their industry. They also have a higher level of background knowledge of their field; the same with LinkedIn users.

When I explain the advantages of using LinkedIn over other platforms, I like to say that communicating to audiences on this

The business-oriented user on LinkedIn is what makes the platform especially unique. Users log into their LinkedIn account, ready

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to make professional connections and digest business content. When using LinkedIn to engage with key audiences and groups, you are meeting people in a place that has built-in professionalism.

...you are meeting people in a place that has built-in professionalism.

People turn to LinkedIn when they want to channel their professional identity. Many do not want to mix business with their personal lives, and care to pursue interactions using their professional “face” or profile. On the professional network, individuals share news about a recent promotion, timely publications related to their career, and even their own thoughts on various business-related topics. Users acknowledge the unique hat they wear when interacting on LinkedIn and therefore put their best foot forward, knowing there’s the possibility of business partnerships to be garnered. Having a professional identity allows individuals to interface with a wider and more diverse group of people, while keeping networking at a high caliber. On many other social networks, most users maintain an insular network of friends and family, while on LinkedIn, individuals join with the goal of expanding and cultivating their network. Professionals also focus on their LinkedIn account when they are looking to gain specific insights into an industry, find a quick guide on best practices, link with other professionals who may eventually lead to business partnerships or even when hiring a new employee.

Targeting With Precision A large number of LinkedIn users represent the types of senior positions who are capable of executing decisions in their organizations, making them the best audience for achieving certain goals. For example, 39% of professionals on LinkedIn are a Manager, Owner, Director, Chief Officer or at the VP seniority level (LinkedIn Ad Platform, via Amodiovalerio Verde). Brand managers can narrow their searches to various levels of user’s professional interests, and have the opportunity to focus on c-suite executives if they choose; even focusing on people with specific titles within groups that are already defined by interest in a given sector or topic. Further, the accessibility to a potential contact’s resume can be equally important. If you are attempting to engage with an individual, knowing their background can provide much knowledge that can vastly increase the chances of success. Will the individual understand industry jargon? Will they have a product view or be more focused on the bottom line impact? Does their background suggest an appreciation for a specific methodology? The ability to personalize your engagement is a critical advantage that can be uniquely leveraged with LinkedIn. Integrations with LinkedIn can tap the networks’ rich sources of data. Professional profiles are filled with a lot of information about career history and industry intelligence. Profiles are comprehensive and users take special care to fill in their history in ways that are not available on Facebook and Twitter. A great way I have seen companies integrate LinkedIn is by allowing users or organizations to filter through by title to find those they wish to network with or target. Take any business conference for example; if the event has chosen a networking app that all attendees can use (and has integrated with LinkedIn), not only can individual attendees maximize their precious time by effectively

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targeting networking efforts, but the brands can take advantage of LinkedIn’s data rich resource to find and reach out to real leads that are in their target industry, function, or field. Once the data is used effectively, brands and organizations can obtain measurable results, like lists of the types of professionals exposed to the brand’s message or content. If everyone at a conference is using their LinkedIn account through the event app to interface, using LinkedIn will be a very powerful tool for sponsors and attendees alike.

Sharpen Your Corporate Image Content is also key. LinkedIn is the number one avenue for content distribution driving social traffic to blogs and addressing major corporate goals. Content pages on LinkedIn also happen to receive six times the amount of traffic as other components on the site, making it a very effective way to establish thought leadership. By producing quality content and channeling it through LinkedIn, you can directly reach the target audiences you aim for. For B2C companies, the impact can be even greater. If a company is just starting out or budgets are tight, LinkedIn can affordably strengthen the credibility of your brand if you make the time investment. Tending to the company profile and crafting innovative, fresh content that establishes you as a thought leader in your industry will pay off. LinkedIn users will

LinkedIn can affordably strengthen the credibility of your brand...

be paying attention to what you are sharing because they see you establishing leadership in the industry, and you have meaningful insights into how they can move their business forward. For B2C firms – especially those focusing on target markets that require a more personable and relaxed brand identity – the ability to access a channel that focuses on a company’s corporate side is very important. While our users may require a certain type of approach, LinkedIn gives a company the ability to emphasize the business side of their venture, an especially important factor when interacting with investors, potential partners and even employees. We know LinkedIn is a unique platform that should be used in branding plans, but your company will be ahead if it’s implemented and well-maintained from the very beginning. Whether it’s being used in branding strategies for businesses of any size, or integrated with a technology or application – it should be one of the first thoughts, not the third. Currently, many organizations branding campaigns using LinkedIn are thriving, and it’s clear why. This is a place where people mean business.

Alon Alroy Co-Founder / CMO | Bizzabo Alon Alroy is the Co-Founder and CMO of Bizzabo, the world’s leading event networking platform and mobile app, supporting the meetings and events industry with technologies that improve the conference experience for attendees, helps conference organizers worldwide and is often named as one of the most promising startups coming out of Israel. In 2013 Alon was named one of the meetings industry’s “40 under 40 young leaders”, as well as one of the top 10 Israeli CMOs. In 2014 he was selected to the exclusive NYC Venture Fellows Program. Prior to founding Bizzabo, Alon was a senior startups analyst at the Plenum fund and was COO at AYADR Investments.

www.bizzabo.com

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So You Want Join The Startup Sceneâ&#x20AC;Ś Joana Picq

The Naked Truth Of How It Feels To Leave Corporate Life And Build A Startup As the spotlight keeps shining on startups, with even Hollywood making movies about Facebook and Google, more and more people wonder whether they should take the jump and start a tech business. But before you leave your day job to start a tech business, here is a quick but real testimony on the best and the worst parts of having left a successful career in corporate to launch startups.

The Highs 5. Impact: Not only do you see the tangible impact of everything you do for the simple fact that you are starting something from nothing, but in technology you also have the possibility to impact peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lives at scale. I failed to change the way people redecorate their homes in the UK and how they hire nannies in Brazil, but to know now that every month 3M people across the world discover new mobile apps thanks to our startup makes me beam with pride!

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you also get a lot better at what you do, and you learn to really appreciate your wins and respect others’ success.

...in technology you also have the possibility to impact people’s lives at scale.

1. Freedom: The winner will always be the freedom for me. It’s not just about the 9-to-5 freedom (although that is a big one for me seeing as I like to do many types of sports during the daylight), it’s also the freedom to choose where to focus, to be allowed to make your own mistakes and to choose the people you work with every day. That freedom that is driven by passion is also what fuels it - I am passionate about technology and building things from scratch, which is why I got into this startup world, but what now fuels my passion and makes my career so fulfilling are the people I get to work with every day, everything I learn from the mistakes I make along the way, and the lifestyle I chose for myself (with travel and sports deeply entrenched in it). It’s cheesy but it’s true - you do what you love, and you love what you do.

4. It’s A Roller-Coaster: One thing you won’t get is bored. Each day is unique and you hardly ever fall into a routine. Surprises pop up every day, and for every challenge you overcome you feel that victory keenly, no matter how small. Some are sprints against your competitors, and some are marathons where you beat your own limitations, but they all make you feel you have achieved something - must be better than cocaine.

3. Breadth: You know how you have a clear role and responsibilities in your corporate job? Try the opposite of that. When you start a business you need to be the executive, the cleaner, the intern, the CFO, the developer, the marketing manager, the sales rep… Finding complementary partners helps you focus on some aspects more than others, but you still get to learn a bit about everything. Although you might not enjoy every role you must take, it is absolutely fascinating to get to experience all these different jobs and find out which you’re most suited for or enjoy doing the most. All at once!!

The winner will always be the freedom for me.

The Lows 5. Responsibility:

2. Failure:

We often think responsibility is a major plus at work, as we are always looking to gain more of it in a corporate environment - every step up the ladder is a step towards more responsibility. But once you experience full responsibility over not just your business but the life of the people you employ, the ones who invest money in you, and the people who

The older you get the more you appreciate the humbling moments of your life, the ones that truly help shape who you are. Failure is the most common denominator amongst startup founders - you will not find a single one who didn’t fail at some point, and the most famous ones come from a long line of failures. You don’t only grow personally through these,

use your product or service, you see the dark side of responsibility. It can eat you up with anxiety until you learn to manage it - there is nobody else to blame if things go wrong, and there are a lot of people that can suffer if you screw up.

everyone thinks it’s ok to sacrifice your social life for work. My ex used to say he was in a relationship with the back of my phone, and as much as I hate to admit it, he was right. And although I felt anxious trying to split my time between him and work (and everything else) I just kept telling myself: “it’s just this year while we grow the business”.

4. It’s A Roller-Coaster With A Blindfold:

Truth is it’s never just one year, it’s forever, so you eventually need to learn to prioritize. If you’re considering starting a tech company so you have more work-life balance, be aware that the OPPOSITE will happen. You won’t “work from home”, your home will become your office, so you will basically live in it 24/7.

Although the ups are great, the downs can get very low, and there is no way to foresee any of it so you’re pretty much in the dark at 200mph not knowing which way is up. It’s thrilling at parts but overall it can eat up your sleep and your health. If you’re somewhat of a control freak or you struggle to deal with the unexpected or the unknown, I’d highly advise you not to start a business.

...you’re pretty much in the dark at 200mph not knowing which way is up.

3. 24/7 Job: One thing that makes the startup community overall very exciting is that most people, from the intern to the executives, are very engaged in the business. People will work on a weekend or an evening when they have to, and they will most often be happy to do things outside their scope if it helps the business grow and the team be successful. As a startup founder you pretty much eat, breathe and live your startup and it can be life consuming if you don’t learn to balance your drive. I’ve cancelled trips and failed to show up for friends and family a few times, and the danger in our current western society is that nobody is going to call you on it -

2. You’re A Work Orphan: Remember that feeling when you did well at work and your boss told you “good job!”? Well, forget that. You’re on your own, nobody to ask “how do I do this?”, nobody to lead you, nobody to pat you on the back. Your investors will show you what you’re doing wrong, your staff will ask you what they should do and expect you to know all the answers, and although you’ll get to high five your business partners on your wins and theirs, nobody is going to pat you on the back, because everyone is giving their blood for the business and expect nothing less of you. It’s a bit like having your own kids and going from child to parent - your partner may cheer you on when you get things right, but it’ll never be quite like daddy telling you “well done kiddo!”. Your friends and family won’t be as ingrained in your business and won’t really be able to tell what your achievements actually are - you’ll often get congratulated for things you don’t actually consider achievements yourself (people will look up to you for starting a business but you will know you’re not doing that well and you will feel like an impostor most of the time). Be ready to get criticized right, left and center, and make sure you partner with people you admire and whose

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recognition you value - your partners will be the best or the worst aspect of your startup life, pick wisely.

...your partners will be the best or the worst aspect of your startup life, pick wisely.

1. Money, Money, Money: If you like to plan ahead and you are attached to things money can buy, forget becoming a startup founder. 0.01% of tech startup founders end up rich, the rest are lucky if they manage to get by. Don’t get me wrong, the wealth we all gain from simply living the life we want is enough to make up for all of the money anxiety, but it’s a very important aspect that often gets underestimated. Had I known how many years I would be living off restaurant vouchers for chain restaurants I might not have left my GBP100K annual salary… Which would have been a mistake, so I am glad I didn’t know what the future had in store, but it’s important to understand money itself can never be the goal. You’ll most likely not make much of it, at least for a while. If you are passionate about your idea or building your own business, then you will

be willing to go back to your university days counting pennies and not being able to afford the good bars and best hotels anymore, but be prepared as this will be your biggest test in the whole process. If you take the jump, you will undoubtedly go through financial struggles at one point or another, so make sure you’re not attached to material things - focus on doing what you WANT to do, not something you think can make you money (I’ve made that mistake 3 times till eventually I learned from it). Ultimately, founding a startup isn’t for everyone - the press has been painting founders as somewhat superior and their path to success as a straight line full of fun stuff. But that’s all BS that helps sell papers (or get online clicks). Although some of us are happier living the life we want versus people stuck in a job they don’t like, we go through many lows and many of us get depressed at times. The path is anything BUT straight, and for every fun day we have there are 5 sleepless nights of terror and anxiety. So before you make the jump, make sure you are not romanticizing the concept of being a tech entrepreneur. And if you still want to do it, remember one thing: your idea is crap, whatever your idea is. But if your execution is good, you might just change the world anyway.

Joana Picq Head Of International Business Development | Jampp Joana is a civil engineer turned tech entrepreneur. After the successful launch of Zilok.com in the UK, Joana founded 3 startups, from online marketplaces in Brazil to Business Services in Europe. After a stint as Entrepreneur in Residence at xMillion Capital, Joana launched VoyagePrive.com.br before joining her partners at Jampp, the leading technology for mobile app marketing. She was recently ranked number 10 in the NEXT 100, (the Top Influencers of the European Digital Industry), and won TheNextWeb USA Mobile Startup Rally in NYC in 2013. Joana also acts as board advisor to TheNextWomen.com and Astia.org, and is an active mentor to over 10 accelerators globally.

www.jampp.com

Brand Quarterly

How The World Sees You: Lessons In Personal Branding Sally Hogshead

Are you curious to know why you should invest time and energy into your personal branding? I began my career as a copywriter, finding the best words to describe some of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most loved brands. When a brand finds those ideal words, it becomes more profitable and valuable and loved. 40

Building Your Business From The Brand Up

When companies don’t listen to what consumers need, want and value, they can damage their own brand. My experience in advertising taught me how to look at words and ideas through the eyes of others, and identify what others value. I learned how the world sees you.

Great advertising isn’t about what a company wants to say. It’s about what the market wants to hear about, talk about, and buy. When companies don’t listen to what consumers need, want and value, they can damage their own brand.

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Take for example a car manufacturer who creates a massive national advertising campaign around a new feature in its’ cars. They’re now providing “extra uncomfortable seats to keep you from falling asleep at the wheel!” The car manufacturer thinks this is a great new safety feature, but didn’t bother to see how customers perceive the feature. In this case, the campaign would probably fail. Without properly communicating why this is a benefit, people wouldn’t see it as a must have. They’d probably be more inclined to check out the competition. As a result, the company wasted its energy and money on messages that didn’t work. Worse, consumers now have a negative impression.

1. Don’t Focus On How You Are Similar To Others, But How You Are Different. Leading brands stand out by sharpening their points of difference. Different is better than better. If a brand can carve out a very clear spot in people’s minds, the product or service ceases to be a commodity. Like brands, understanding your own personality branding can give you a unique competitive advantage as well.

Different is better than better.

The same is true for you. It matters less how you see the world (the traditional approach based on psychology), and more how the world sees you (just like the brands you know and love). Just because you perceive yourself a certain way doesn’t mean that your team or customers necessarily see you the same way. In a connected workplace, your success relies on understanding the impressions you create. So how do you apply this information to start making your own personal brand stand out? You learn from the pros.

Great Brands Know A Secret: It doesn’t matter how you see the world. What matters is how the world sees you. We live in a busy, distracted and over commoditized world and people need shortcuts. So, here are three communication lessons you can take away from the most fascinating brands:

2. Your Differences Can Be Very Small And Simple. The reality is that most products (and people) are virtually indistinguishable from their competitors at a glance. Yet a leading brand can build a strong competitive edge around very minor differences.

3. Once You “Own” A Difference, You Can Charge More Money. People pay more for products and people who add distinct value in some way. And just as customers pay more for fascinating brands, employers pay higher salaries for employees who stand out with a specific benefit. For example, Forbes magazine reported research findings that indicate that 85% of your financial success is due to skills in “human engineering,” your personality and ability to communicate, negotiate, and lead.

People pay more for products and people who add distinct value in some way. 42

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Sally Hogshead Speaker / Author | How The World Sees You Sally Hogshead rose to the top of the advertising profession writing ads that fascinated millions of consumers. Her latest book is entitled How The World Sees You. Her previous book, Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation, has been translated into over a dozen languages. She frequently appears in national media, including NBC’s Today show and The New York Times. Hogshead was recently inducted into the Speaker Hall of Fame, the industry’s highest award for professional excellence.

www.howtheworldseesyou.com

You too can stand out in a crowded environment, by tapping into your natural personality brand. Once you do, you’ll be able to show others precisely why you matter, in 9 seconds or less.

One way people can realize the key benefits of their personality (and how to tap into those benefits) is by taking the Fascination Advantage assessment. If you’re curious to see for yourself, we’ve arranged for you to take it for free: Visit www.HowTheWorldSeesYou.com/you

... stand out in a crowded environment, by tapping into your natural personality brand.

Enter our reader special code BRAND along with your name and email address Take the 28 question assessment and immediately receive your in-depth and custom report This Brand Quarterly special code is valid through 25 December 2014

Wondering, “how is my personality report important to my branding?” Your assessment will give you the words you can use to center all your communication on. A single rallying cry you can use to impress everywhere from in an email to up on stage. Think of this as the tagline for your personality. Create better relationships, grow your business, and become intensely valuable to those who matter most. So are you ready to take the first step into understanding how your personality brand is different? Use the code BRAND now at www.HowTheWorldSeesYou.com/You

Brand Quarterly

Achieve Global Brand Success Through Transcreation Gráinne Maycock

A marketing campaign doesn’t always go over well in multiple cultures. That’s because marketing tends to be imbued with creative flair in order to elicit an emotional response from audiences. Humor. Word play. Analogies. Each culture is going to naturally have its own standards and expectations as to what’s funny, engaging or memorable. What does this mean for the global marketer? For one thing, it means you shouldn’t expect

to simply translate your marketing verbiage, splash your ads all over creation and wait for international sales to start spiking. So What’s The Answer? Transcreation Think of it as language translation on steroids. Instead of merely translating the words in a tagline, you’re completely recreating them for a new culture. This helps ensure that the essential emotive intent or meaning resonates with the people whose hearts you’re trying to capture.

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...transcreation upholds the very things your company is known and celebrated for.

Copywriter linguists will take this guidance and weave it into the copy, dialogue and imagery to bring it home in other cultures so your brand voice comes through loud and clear. For example, in an advertisement, the phrase “You’ve got a zest for life” next to a picture of a lime might make perfect sense in your home country. But attempting to translate it word for word could be impossible if there is no equivalent word for “zest” in the target language. And if the target country’s inhabitants would view limes as a strange novelty - because maybe they’re not stocked in stores generally - that image would need to change, too. Transcreation strengthens who you are as a global brand because it allows every unique aspect of your company image to shine in all your marketing campaigns and materials. As you might imagine, this is infinitely preferable to blasting one universal message to several audiences. Comparatively, the spray and pray technique is more likely to annoy, baffle or alienate your prospective customers. Literally translating your content for multiple markets without the cultural adaption component may mean missing the mark and hence the market.

Same Song, Different Voice Most important to remember is that transcreation upholds the very things your company is known and celebrated for. Your brand voice, identity, characteristics and traits. It’s just done in such a way that harmonizes with a given culture’s expectations. Start by thinking about how your company wants to be known globally. Is your image quirky, elegant, powerful - or something else?

However, not just any linguist can take up the mantle of transcreation duties. Because the degree of specialization is so high, only certain individuals have the skills to deliver. Be sure that the language services provider you choose understands this crucial fact and has properly qualified teams lined up. The language service partner you select should effectively be your brand champion across languages and locales.

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Gráinne Maycock VP Sales | Sajan Gráinne Maycock is vice president, sales at Sajan, one of the world’s leading technologyenabled language service providers. She has spent 17 years working with many of the world’s largest organizations across the IT, life science, online consumer, telecommunications, manufacturing and marketing verticals. She has helped them create and implement innovative programs to optimize global content release and increase global market share and revenue for their brands through effective multilingual content programs covering websites, social media and corporate marketing content.

www.sajan.com

Look Beyond Your Own Walls Suppose you’ve got a coworker who speaks the target language fluently and knows a thing or two about marketing. Asking this person to help with transcreation might seem like a low-stress, low-cost solution. But it’s far from wise. The importance of deep cultural familiarity is critical for any translation endeavor—and transcreation is certainly no exception. Only a native and current resident of the target country has innate knowledge of that culture. And since culture shifts take place continually in all parts of the world, being in tune with the evolving cultural climate can make all the difference when reinventing an effective slogan, tagline, commercial or ad campaign for a given audience. Choosing to outsource your linguistic copywriting makes sense from a strategic standpoint. But keep in mind that things can get messy very quickly if you plan on searching for these resources, screening them, testing their linguistic skills and managing the quality of their work, all at home base.

Only a native and current resident of the target country has innate knowledge of that culture.

The right language services provider can remove all of those burdens. Look for one with experienced project management teams, translation project workflow technology, a multi-step quality assurance process and regular reporting on the effectiveness of your transcreation efforts. And one with a global footprint across several continents helps. Your provider should offer you total insight into your projects and be a true partner.

Advice For Successful Transcreation The sooner you talk with your language service partner about your anticipated transcreation project needs, the better. Expect to discuss each and every facet of your brand. This knowledge will be instrumental in crafting spot-on marketing content for your international audiences.

Tips At A Glance: •• Familiarize yourself with all of your source content - seek input from your marketing teams to guide you. This will enable you to identify what the core message should be for all audiences. Then you and your language service partner can share this input with the marketing linguist team, who will figure out how to effectively adapt and convey that messaging for each audience.

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•• Be aware that customer-facing materials should always receive priority treatment for transcreation. Your company website in particular should be right up there in terms of priority, if not number one. Along the same lines, the visual representations of your brand - like taglines and logos - are critically important. These may require transcreation as well to ensure they impress your new audiences. •• Remember that all of the content on your website should be given the same attention as well, including videos and other multimedia. •• Plan for a slightly longer timeframe for transcreation compared to the traditional translate-edit-proof process due to its degree of specialization and deeper involvement.

...customer-facing materials should always receive priority treatment for transcreation.

•• Think about how much responsibility you want to give the marketing linguists. Should they perform local market research? Do you want them to review your source content? Firming up these preferences up front really streamlines the way the project flows. Transcreation is all about re-creating a marketing message—and its central purpose is to preserve your core brand identity. That, after all, is what makes you who you are as a brand. With this solution, you can be well on your way to strengthening that all-important global identity.

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The Art Of Sustaining A Luxury Brand Sidharth Sreekumar

After the Great Recession of 2008, many business observers believed the luxury brand to be a figment of retail landscapes past. Many believed it to be a dying art form, particularly in light of once-loftily regarded brands that were now either extinct or on their way to it.

The reality, it appears, is quite different and, in truth, more brand specific. Certainly, there are many brands that have gone by the wayside, but many others have maintained their status (and subsequently their sales). Most interestingly, others have found a way to revive their specific brand, which is a true talent in todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s crowded and competitive luxury landscape.

Building Your Business From The Brand Up

A Global Market Overview In 2012, the global luxury products market was estimated to be worth $1.5 trillion. At $0.8 trillion, luxury cars, travel, hotels, and yachting were its largest sub-segments. Other sub-segments include apparel, leather goods and accessories, watches and jewelry, cosmetics, art, home and furniture, technology, and alcohol and food. Between 2013 and 2015, the industry is expected to grow at a 5â&#x20AC;&#x201C;6% CAGR on account of the prevailing macroeconomic conditions in Europe and sluggish growth in China. The market is expected to be worth $1.6â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1.7 trillion in 2015. The key factors that are expected to propel growth in this market are the rising number of high net worth individuals globally and the increasing adoption of social media by luxury brands. However, decreased spending by tourists in Europe (particularly from China), due to narrowing price gaps at home, are likely to pull down growth in Europe, a key market for luxury products.

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Key Luxury Brands According to the 2013 BrandZ Top 100 - a ranking of the most valuable global brands compiled by MillwardBrown, a market research firm - Louis Vuitton, Hermes, and Gucci were the top three global luxury brands, while Fendi and Coach entered the top 10 list for the first time.

What Constitutes Luxury? Luxury is anything that is desirable, and beyond the necessary and ordinary. For instance, a Louis Vuitton handbag is both highly desirable and extravagantly unnecessary - the true hallmark of a luxury product/brand. Luxury as a concept is, like everything else, relative in nature - a Montblanc pen may represent luxury for a

student but not for a wealthy Saudi prince. Thus, relativity could be regional, temporal, economic, cultural, and situational, and this often becomes a challenge for luxury brands. Part of the answer lies in how companies define their target group. Observations of relativity aside, it is clear that consumers associate luxury brands with several core attributes, some of which are functional, but many of which are not: Quality

Luxury is anything that is desirable, and beyond the necessary and ordinary. 50

The first and most critical notion is of excellent quality, so much so that the relationship between luxury brands and quality is synonymous to a significant extent Building Your Business From The Brand Up

A Case Study: Cadillac The Iconic American Brand Redesigns Itself To Appeal To Younger Consumers. Cadillac, once a revered brand and symbol of American affluence, had been facing waning popularity, especially in the face of stiff competition from brands such as Lincoln and Mercedes. Having been the top-selling automotive brand in the US for decades, it was dethroned by Lincoln in 1998, which sold 186,191 units as compared with Cadillac’s 179,009. It suffered from an image perception of being an archaic brand meant for older people and not able to connect with the younger buyer. The company rebooted itself, shaking off its old-school image by rolling out the Cadillac CTS. The sedan made its debut in a Super Bowl ad in 2002. Its revival, however, had begun in 1999 with the introduction of the Cadillac Escalade - an SUV aimed at urban youth. Although it took time to catch on, it has gained popularity with rap artists in the past decade. Combined with the introduction of the CTS, Cadillac’s sales once again began to rocket. Over 2002–2005, its sales rose from 199,748 to 235,002 units. Even after the disastrous market meltdown in 2008, the company has been able to re-establish itself solidly, compared with Lincoln. In June, 2013, General Motors - Cadillac’s parent company - reported: “Cadillac is growing faster than it has in almost 40 years.” At the time of reporting, its sales grew 38%, the biggest such jump since its heyday in 1976.

Price

Rarity

Similar to quality, even this attribute exhibits a salient association with luxury brands; luxury brands offer products that are extravagantly priced relative to their counterparts in the non-luxury segment.

Luxury brands position themselves as selective and exclusive, and their products are not available at all times or places; this attribute of exclusivity is often closely linked to the excellent quality and high prices associated with luxury goods.

Aesthetics Luxury brands exhibit tremendous visual appeal, exemplified by design, texture, etc.; it is perceived to embody beauty and elegance—de facto pieces of art.

Extraordinariness Luxury brands create products that appeal beyond the ordinary; their products instill a sense of wonder in owners/users and bystanders alike.

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Symbolism These brands (and their users) are seen to represent the crème de la crème; its objective is to make the owner proud of being associated with the brand and members of an ‘elite’.

Conduct An Impartial Assessment Of The Market Market dynamics often change too fast to be fully comprehended; resurrection, at times, involves repositioning the brand to different luxury sub-categories or, in some cases, to a new set of customers.

Successfully Maintaining A Luxury Brand

Emphasize The Emotive Aspects Of The Brand

Every luxury brand has a unique identity that acts as its unique selling point, and also a unique set of problems that, if unchecked, could become the reason for its demise. While there is no universal solution to revive a luxury brand, the following pointers can help an ailing brand to walk before it can sprint:

A brand’s legacy is an important aspect of its appeal and adds intrinsic value; buyers are attracted to brands with which they have an emotional connect, which is easier to create with an established brand than with a newly minted one. Maintain Exclusivity

Focus On Strength Paddling too many boats at the same time could irreparably damage a brand’s image and fortunes; it is important for a luxury brand to remain focused on its core products.

A luxury brand that is found everywhere is not considered ‘luxurious’; it is important for a luxury brand to remain limited in order to maintain its status quo. Develop A Fair Brand Value Assessment

...it is important for a luxury brand to remain focused on its’ core products.

Brand value has less to do with the quality of a product and more with perception - something that is fickle and not easily gauged; as such, it becomes ever more critical for a luxury brand to estimate its true worth and set its targets accordingly.

Sidharth Sreekumar Senior Analyst | The Smart Cube Sidharth Sreekumar is a Senior Analyst at The Smart Cube, and has three years of experience in market research and consulting roles. Over the course of this period he has worked across numerous domains, such as FMCG, footwear and apparel, automotive, and oil & gas, wherein he has conducted a variety of studies including cost structure breakdown, industry landscape study and brand perception analysis. He completed his graduation from Nagpur University, India, with a bachelor’s in engineering (specializing in electronics and telecommunications). He also holds certificates in microeconomics and macroeconomics from the University of California, Irvine.

www.thesmartcube.com 52

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WITH

TALKS

Amanda Clay-Jones Head of Brand | Telefónica

Amanda Clay-Jones leads on all things brand for O2 and Telefónica across Europe. An expert on external and internal rebrand and cultural change projects, she recently led a 30,000 employee project that won four prestigious awards last year including; ‘The Best Change Communication Campaign’ at the European Excellence Awards. Before that, she made history in the Czech Republic. Leading an international team on the biggest brand launch the country has ever seen when Czesky Telecom, Eurotel, Telefónica and O2 merged into one. Amanda has also worked extensively across Europe, North America and Asia. She is now working on the integration of Telefónica, O2 and E-plus in Germany. Brand Quarterly caught up with Amanda and asked her about her experience with internal branding and overseeing brand guardianship. Here’s what she had to say:

BQ - There’s often a lot of discussion on what constitutes a ‘Company Brand’. What’s your opinion? Telefónica is one of the world’s largest telecoms companies with more than 260,000 people working in 25 countries. We’re the parent brand of O2 in Europe, Movistar in Spain and Latin America, and Vivo in Brazil. The outside world will always know us by those brands. But within Telefónica, we wanted our people to feel like one global family, to be united, to have one belief and one strategy. And that meant bringing them all together under one employee brand, (or company brand) Telefónica. In Europe, that meant O2 people became Telefónica people. Put simply, the employee brand is all about uniting your company under one set of beliefs so employees know exactly what is expected of them. Giving them a purpose and an identity to live the brand and enthusiastically deliver the brand promises. The employee brand goes hand in hand with employee engagement, which is all about attracting talent and retaining your best people (Beyond a decent salary or a successful career).

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BQ - What do you believe are the key business benefits of implementing a Brand Guardianship programme? The overall objective of Brand Guardianship for Telefónica is to manage a living and evolving Brand; to allow every communication to flex and be relevant, but still be coherent and clearly O2, Movistar, Vivo or Telefónica. Our process offers helpful advice at the right moments, rather than at the end when creative is almost complete - this allows for greater involvement and ultimately better output. My team act as internal consultants and see everything through guardianship from TV campaigns, to Internal comms to sponsorship activations, even text messages to customers.

The overall objective of Brand Guardianship for Telefónica is to manage a living and evolving Brand..

BQ - As project leader for one of Europe’s largest employee brand engagement programmes, how were you able to measure the programmes success in terms of employee buy-in? Setting clearly definable objectives and targets is essential in any project so you can track success and improve for next time. We had two key measures. The first was based on internal employee feedback and the second was analysing campaign success. Internal surveys and online forums We run a six monthly and an annual survey called ‘Reflect’ which captures how employees are feeling about their job, their manager and the company. We added some questions from which we found out 100% were aware of the programme and could communicate the messages. And 77% were very positive about the effect of the programme and how they now felt about Telefónica in only six months. Campaign measures •• Hits to our microsite - 22,000 in two weeks.

The key benefits are; •• Protect the brand locally and internationally to retain brand value •• Grow the brand value for our shareholders, by offering great advice to every area of the business so we’re all doing effective communications

•• How many pages read - 47,000 •• Average length of time spent on the site - 2 minutes •• Percentage of people opening and reading daily emails - 76% read daily emails.

•• Save money across the markets by reusing proven best practice

•• Number of people entering for the daily competitions 10,000 people entered

•• Mitigate risk by ensuring that we do not infringe other brands’ trademarks and assets. And ensuring we effectively use our own in a way that helps protect them

•• Online training, the number of downloads - 97% managers downloaded

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A key part of the engagement campaign was the creation of a Europe-wide network of project champions called Sharers (recruited from every corner of the business) to convey from the ground up all the practicalities and key messaging the internal re-brand entailed. Once recruited and briefed by the HR and Brand Teams, we armed them with all the knowledge and tools they needed in the form of a Sharerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s programme and a briefing. They had instant and senior formal feedback channels so we knew good and bad what was happening so could address it immediately.

BQ - What differences have you found in developing an employee brand compared to a consumer brand? I often hear getting CEO buy in for employee engagement projects is difficult. Employee engagement is one of the most strategic moves a company can make. And getting your employees to buy into your vision and values will directly impact how they will deal with your customers. Highly engaged companies outperform competitors by 27% (Bersin, Josh). Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s more customers are twice as loyal to brands with higher engagement scores (Gallup). And most tellingly, 86% of customers would pay for a better customer experience. Which means investing in the employee brand is in my view essential for the external heath of the consumer brand and the loyalty and satisfaction of your customers.

Developing an employee brand successfully in my experience needs a cross functional team mainly from HR, Internal comms, and brand. Whereas a consumer brand will often engage different teams from brand, marketing and comms. Both need the same rigorous research, but the methods will vary. Launching an employee brand internally you need to create drama, surprise and excitement, in the same way you would externally. Storytelling and tone of voice play a key role in bringing the vision and values to life in way that employees not only understand, but buy into emotionally and then act on. The messages and campaigns need to be clear and be communicated in innovative ways. Get as personal as possible, we micro targeted teams and individuals to be as relevant as possible.

BQ - For a company in the initial stages of building their employee brand, what is the #1 piece of advice you would give them? Get buy in from the top. The CEO and board need to back it. There must be a board level project sponsor and it must be a regular item on the agenda. To win hearts and minds and truly change a business culturally takes strong leadership, a dedicated budget, and a passionate cross functional team. The pace of which you can drive change depends on your people. They need to understand the role they play in that change and get taken on that journey.

Employee engagement is one of the most strategic moves a company can make.

Brand Quarterly

Why Even The Best Sounding Partnerships Can Fail To Deliver Gleyce Oliveira

Sometimes a company needs an extra push to achieve goals that are beyond its reach. Managers then are more than happy to engage in partnerships to enable the organisation - and hopefully the partner alike - to tap into additional resources and go further. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s what

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partnerships are about, right? Two or more parties taking advantage of synergies and/or complementary resources, so that both can gain from it. Sounds great in theory, but in practice we know it is often not the case. When people talk about partnerships, the focus is normally on what comes before the handshake - how to identify and approach potential partners, how to create a framework for the proposal, how to put it in terms of the other side’s interests and so on. Closing the deal, however, is only the tip of the iceberg, since making it actually work is the real, longterm challenge. There are several reasons why partnerships may become dead in water even when they look so promising on paper; below are some of the most common - and some tips on how to avoid them.

Poor Due Diligence For whatever reason, the people responsible for the partnership may fail to do their homework, not study the deal properly, and only later find out that a big issue was neglected. Selective perceptions may play tricks on us and reinforce the dreams while hiding the warning signs, leading people to wear their ‘rose coloured glasses’ and relax, assuming that all is going to be fine. Some helpful questions to ask ourselves: •• Is there a tangible and roughly balanced benefit for both sides? •• Do both sides have the competence and, more importantly, the resources to actually deliver their part of the deal? •• Are there easier ways for one side to solve its problem?

•• What are the assumptions made by each side about the execution of the agreement, that need to be double-checked?

Informality People forget details, change their minds, switch priorities and suddenly what you thought was the agreement becomes two different agreements, one for each side. It is important to get everything in writing and signed, not only to make sure expectations are met but to specifically define those expectations in the first place. Once ideas are organised and documented, it is a lot easier to spot inconsistencies, areas not covered, gaps and so forth. Whenever possible, craft a contract defining players, scope, duration, resources, responsibilities, goals and metrics (What does success looks like? How can it be quantified?) and, obviously, an “out” clause.

Success Is A Far, Far Away Idea Sealing a partnership that is supposed to produce the first results too far out in the future is not a good idea. People need to see traction to allocate their attention - if no real benefit comes out of it for a while, the partnership will lose momentum and fade. The best way is to start with baby projects that can be delivered quickly, so people can buy into the plan. These can be quite simple and even somewhat unrelated to the final goal; they will still enable the two teams to know each other, create a positive association and an overall collaborative attitude. The

•• Are the company cultures conflicting in any way? •• How solid is the other business?

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Sealing a partnership that is supposed to produce the first results too far out in the future is not a good idea. 57

partnership then stops being “another thing we have been told to do” and becomes “something useful we are doing”.

No Structure For Collaboration And Learning If the right structures and processes are not set in place to support the collaboration, it will be very difficult to bridge the two organisations and achieve real value. Businesses are not static, so mechanisms must be in place to support the partners collaborating as they operate. These can be as simple as standardised operating procedures and cross-team sessions, or as complex as specific training and ad hoc tools.

the plan, or the expected benefits are not aligned with the results they are accountable for, setting what may have been a good idea up for a slow death. Ideally, the people who will be responsible for the execution will sit at the negotiating table from the start, so they participate in shaping the plan and ‘own it’ when it goes live. Also important is to tie in the success of the partnership with their performance metrics, so they don’t have conflicting goals.

Also important is to tie in the success of the partnership with their performance metrics...

Vision Gets Lost There are a several reasons why a partnership may fall off the radar: nobody is made responsible for it; the person in charge doesn’t have the right authority; the sponsor on either side is not strong enough; the goals and metrics are unclear and get people demotivated; the interactions are not frequent enough or lack structure, and so forth. The most common though is lack of proper ownership. Someone up the food chain decides the partnership is a good idea and assigns the mission to someone else. Often this person did not participate in the initial negotiations, is not properly on boarded on

Cultural Differences If the parties have very different styles of authority allocation and decision-making it will be necessary to balance and structure the workflow on each side so they can work together without major frictions. Once we are aware of the main reasons why partnerships fail, we can start negotiations with the end state in mind and get our partnership off to a good start!

Gleyce Oliveira Media Manager | PetLove Trained as an engineer and an experienced online marketing professional, Gleyce combines strong analytical skills with online business savvy to help companies improve their online presence. Her past experiences include management of online marketing channels (SEM, SEO, Social Media, Affiliate Programs, Retargeting etc), user evangelization and engagement, partnership development and process optimization.

www.petlove.com.br

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Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Connect.

Building Your Business From The Brand Up

Social Media Networking For Sales Results Alan See

Social media is driving a wave of human interaction around the world and its’ use in the workplace has become an important topic of discussion among companies. No one questions the rapid growth of social media and its potential impact on the customer experience, but many organizations still struggle with allowing employees to engage on social platforms due to risk and regulatory compliance concerns. The customer experience includes all touch point’s people have from the moment they are aware of a need until they have fulfilled that need. Social media has the potential to influence the customer experience when employees are able to initiate conversations on social platforms and begin building trust-based relationships throughout the customer lifecycle. So what’s the problem? Just empower your employee’s to use social media, and then sit back and wait for customer loyalty and revenue to soar. It would be great if it were that simple. But, to make the social-ready transformation most organizations will need to adopt a new mindset. Transformations involve strategy, technology and processes and a social media transformation is no different in that respect.

Strategy Does your company have policies and procedures regarding social media, blogging or posting information on the Internet? If so, when was the last time it was updated? Social media is constantly changing, so social media policies need to be reviewed every few months. Do you have a formal social media marketing strategy? Does your social media marketing strategy integrate and support your strategic marketing plan? How well does your social media strategy support your corporate goals and objectives? Do I still need to ask you more consulting questions?! Let’s be honest, many of your employees have smart phones which means they are already using social media while they’re at work. That means if you block corporate access to these sites, you’re eliminating a direct engagement link to your customers. If you have the right strategy in place, engaging employees in social media marketing provides an excellent opportunity to reach your customers and build your brand.

...engaging employees in social media marketing provides an excellent opportunity to reach your customers...

Employee profiles are their own. They respect the fact that employees’ online activities are a self-expression. At the same time they realize that employees who choose to identify themselves as a member of the company may be viewed as a spokesperson for their brand. To mitigate risk, they take steps like providing disclaimer statements on Twitter headers such as “Opinions expressed here are my own.”

Technology Do you have the technology to support your social media goals and objectives? There may be mandated compliance restrictions that are unique to your industry. Technology, in the form of social content distribution platforms, also called social employee advocacy software, can help solve that problem. These platforms house a content library where users have access to a full inventory of posts that have already been preapproved by the company. An automated corporate approval review process within the online portal can also be in place to ensure compliance of field generated content.

Results

Processes Do you have the processes in place to support your social media goals and objectives? To foster a social-ready mindset, organizations that are performing well have the following processes: Leadership from the front office. They are identifying company executives who are already doing a good job on social media and highlighting their activity. They use their success with social media as leverage to get others in the company involved. 62

Setting realistic expectations. They are recruiting interested employees, but still recognize that not every employee will want to participate.

Engaging employees in social media marketing provides an excellent opportunity to reach your customers and build your brand. All company departments should be involved and executive leadership should be able to articulate “What’s in it for me?” to nonmarketing employees and set an example for engaging in social media. Providing useful and clear social media policies and procedures for everyone in the company to follow will help mitigate risk. It will take time to materialize, but it’s worth it to expand your

Building Your Business From The Brand Up

Alan See Principal, Chief Marketing Officer | CMO Temps, LLC Alan See is a senior marketing executive and currently ranked as the most followed CMO on Twitter by Social Media Marketing Magazine and a Top 1% Influencer by Kred. His rare ability to speak Web 2.0 and Sales 101 in the same sentence makes him a popular blogger and conference speaker. Alan has over 25 years of industry experience and has performed in senior marketing, senior analyst, management consulting, and sales management roles at MindLeaders, AT&T, Seapine Software, AberdeenGroup, Teradata, SAS Institute, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, and NCR Corporation. He has also served as an associate faculty member at the University of Phoenix facilitating courses in Marketing & Management Theory.

www.cmotemps.biz

company’s social network by empowering your employees to become brand advocates. It will foster high engagement with your customers and followers in addition to building a close-knit company culture. And the results are worth noting – check out some I have witnessed:

•• Box Office Sales: Up 1,818% even with box office ticket price increase •• Group Sales: 20% increase •• Promotional Ticket Product Sales: 100% increase •• Home Opener Merchandise Sales: 166% increase •• Sponsorship: 20% increase from returning advertisers

... expand your company’s social network by empowering your employees to become brand advocates.

An eLearning Company •• Created over 3,000 sales leads in 3 months at a cost per lead of less than $40.

A Software Company •• Increased monthly online leads by 275%

•• Increased corporate Twitter followers over 500%

•• Increased corporate Twitter followers over 650%

•• Increased Klout score over 54% •• Increased LinkedIn Group members over 220%

•• Increased Twitter followers of key executives from 300 to over 30K •• Increased Klout score over 70%

A Marketing Agency •• Increased sales leads 1,000%

A Professional Sports Team •• Increased Twitter followers 700% (2X the number of pervious year’s champion) •• Increased Facebook “Likes” 5,800

•• Increased corporate Twitter followers over 500% •• Increased Klout score over 100%

•• Increased Klout score 25% •• Season Ticket Sales: Up 38% even with season ticket price increase

Brand Quarterly

Digital Marketing: Turn Cost Management Into Cost Leadership Bruno Herrmann

The time when costs could just be incremental or contained is over. Now itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s about doing more with flat budgets - or more often than not - with less. Sensible cost management is now a requirement, and it may be translated into two crucial mantras.

Money should be invested in an agile way, i.e. more/less in some areas and activities, more/less at certain times. A linear cost cutting approach may lead to many missed opportunities and eventually not allow you to hit all your expected targets. All that glitters is not goldâ&#x20AC;Ś

Building Your Business From The Brand Up

There is a cost to doing the right thing, doing things differently and doing nothing.

So, here are some observations â&#x20AC;&#x153;from the trenchesâ&#x20AC;? about how, where and when marketing leaders and practitioners may consider using their money to make the most of their digital budgets, mostly within a globalization framework but also from a local perspective.

Know Your Audience(s)

There is a cost to doing the right thing, doing things differently and doing nothing. Investing efficiently is always an important decision but avoiding some investments may have consequences that are not visible immediately and not by the people making such decisions.

Meeting expectations and requirements from international audiences is vital. Knowing them, understanding what they are looking for and therefore speaking their language will guide you through your funding journey and help you make customer-centric decisions from content design to final product delivery. By investing in the creation of profiles (aka personas), driving content creation and localization, and setting up focus groups allowing you to ensure and measure customer experience, you will enhance it and save on costs coming from numerous corrections and unnecessary iterations. It will make you aware of what speaking the language of customers means. Beyond linguistic standards, it will imply grasping their cultural sensitivity and legal dependencies, how they live and breathe at work or during leisure time and behavioural patterns making or breaking satisfaction. This approach will be of interest to both global teams looking to create value in multiple markets as well as to local teams having to execute on global plans.

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Look At The Big Picture From The Outset While the devil is in the details, you should have the big picture of product management and information life cycle in mind from the day one. It will help you anticipate challenges and avoid issues, in other words address all “details” that will ultimately create a great customer experience. You will see more clearly where and when costs will come up and how they may be reduced, by addressing what must be done each step of the way. Putting such a cost analysis in perspective will highlight where funding will be needed first and foremost to create value and drive growth. Global leaders will focus on making sure content is created for “most of the world” and localization is planned in a timely fashion, while local leaders will ensure that engagement with global teams is secured and local tasks are resourced and funded as appropriate.

Invest In Content Creation In short, money well spent at the early stages of product and information life cycles will enable you to make savings at later stages. Great customer experience starts with great content design, authoring and development with targeted audiences in mind. This is very relevant of course for global marketers who must ensure that translation, localization, validation and deployment is cost and time efficient. Creating content that will be ready for such subsequent activities will help make that happen. Another cost leadership driver is the creation of content that may be reused or re-purposed in multiple markets or

Great customer experience starts with great content design, authoring and development with targeted audiences in mind. 66

for multiple customers. It will be a source of savings as you will not have to pay for similar or identical content several times, and customers will benefit from the same levels of quality and consistency. These savings generate even more savings and benefits during localization and product deliveries. These points should be raised to the attention of local marketers in global organizations to work effectively with global teams to internationalize content as much as possible, as they may have to use this content for local campaigns or deployment and may have to fund it.

Leverage Internal Business Expertise And Tap Into External Experience When resourcing your content supply chain, it may be tempting to outsource all activities or to keep everything in house, assuming it will cut or avoid human capital costs in any case. There is no silver bullet here and the most cost efficient approach will often be based on a right balance between both options. One the one end, there should be much expertise on your business within your organization and it should be valued by assigning project, program or marketing leaders who can make the most of their knowledge. On the other end, a number of suppliers offer services (design, localization, globalization, analytics, experience management, etc.) your business leaders can tap into in addition to other benefits, such as competitive and discount rates for tasks that are not in your core business, flexibility and capacity for agile management or experience with other clients and other projects which may be relevant for your business. Finally, considering external suppliers as partners by “embedding” them in your business processes at some point will also generate savings in terms of internal productivity and accelerated cycle times coming from optimized engagement and workflows.

Building Your Business From The Brand Up

Think About Competition! Whether you are involved in globalization leadership or in local execution, you have to face and keep up with competition. This often means actually differentiating your company, products and brands from competition. For global or local markets, localizing products and information is a great source of competitive advantage (or threat) and increased value for customers. According to international experience standards, avoiding localization would be a mistake and investing in poor localization would be a waste. People don’t buy what they don’t understand or don’t consider as ‘done for them’. Therefore, planning localization and defining the appropriate funding model with regional or local organizations upfront will save quite a lot later on, by addressing competition proactively rather than reactively.

Measure Content Effectiveness! Testing, validation and certification have been part of product and information management for a long time. As you must select your investments in current and future content

...avoiding localization would be a mistake and investing in poor localization would be a waste.

and as customer requirements evolve faster than ever, going beyond the usual metrics will take cost efficiency to the next level. Measuring the actual impact of content on your audiences globally and locally will enable you to adjust your processes and spend according to performance indicators. Methodologies and tools are available to detail what drives satisfaction and may be combined to increase accuracy and efficiency, including usability (eye-tracking and mousetracking tests, etc.) and neurosciences (cognitive and affective tests, etc.). When it is applied to online campaigns or e-commerce properties for example, it clearly shows that content effectiveness leads to brand effectiveness. All these words of advice relate to potential changes in business processes and mindsets. These may be new challenges but they help adapt cost management to evolving global imperatives and new paradigms. Supporters of cost leadership like marketing and brand leaders question obvious thoughts, by defining more options between investing and not spending as well a looking at the full picture, including indirectly related operations and most importantly - any impact on customer experience. It sometimes leads to breaking or bridging silos indeed, but that is a fairly common challenge in globalization management anyway.

Bruno Herrmann Director of Globalization | The Nielsen Company As Director of Globalization, Bruno Herrmann is responsible for global content operations across 6 regions at The Nielsen Company, focusing on global content design and management as well as international customer experience. He joined The Nielsen Company in 2003 to manage international content and digital marketing programs in EMEA prior to leading digital content deployment globally. Previously, he managed online globalization programs at HP and content management initiatives in addition to Web localization at Compaq. Prior to joining Compaq, he worked in the marketing communications and localization industries, taking part in major international projects for high-profile clients.

www.nielsen.com

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