BrandKnew August 2016

Branding matters. Because branding matters.

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Dear Friends: With BrandKnew, you are always in August company.

Welcome to yet another content rich edition of the magazine that you have now begun to relish, rever and refer. Thank you for your continued loyalty. It inspires us to do better. In this issue, we look at the King of The Ring Late Mohammad Ali and his approach to branding. One has always been at a loss to understand why certain content goes Whyral sorry viral- here we examine the science and how of it. When it comes to Social Media, there is no better policy than honesty.

For all those budding entrepreneurs and marketers the feature on how to build a brand from nothing should be inspiring. In a pull and engage world, advertisers need to entice not interrupt customers - read more on that here. Celebrity branding comes with it’s own legacy issues. Understand how it works(or doesn’t) when the wrong headlines are created. Also, look at some mouth watering tips on Start Up Marketing. The emphasis on brands and story telling has never been any greater.

Do a deep dive on that in this edition. There is a whole lot to binge on, so go ahead and make your month!

Until next...

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suresh@groupisd.com Managing Editor: Suresh Dinakaran Creative Head/Director Operations: Pravin Ahir Magazine Concept & Design/ New Media Specialist: Mufaddal Joher Country Head, Australia: Norbert D’Souza Country Head, UK: Sagar Patil Regional Director: Krishna Chugh Regional Director: Vinit Chugh Country Head, India: Sanjay Kothandaraman Digital/Social Media Marketing: Khaleef Mayowa Junaid Web Specialist: Prasanta Kumar Sahu Online Support: Mahendra Kumar Behera

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CONTENTS

The Muhammad Ali approach to branding The Only 3 Things to Do (Over and Over) to Make Your Brand Stand Out Advertisers look to entice, not interrupt, consumers What Marketers Need to Know About Chat Apps Why Every Artist Should be a Great Storyteller Brandspeak: Building Brand Affinity Through Intent-Based Marketing How Fashion Brands Are Starting To Design Like Tech Companies How should brands respond when an ambassador makes headlines?

How brands are getting serious about dads 10 Highly Practical Startup Marketing Tips The science of viral content: Why certain emotions ignite social engagement How to Build a Brand from Nothing Why brands should be honest on Social Media Book, Line & Sinker

The Muhammad Ali approach to branding

By Cindy Dalecki

Not only did Muhammad Ali know a thing or two about boxing, he was a champion of his brand, too. I instructed a class this month on “Making the Most Out of LinkedIn for Your Personal Brand.” If LinkedIn were around when Muhammad Ali was in his prime, his description might read something like: ‘Self-proclaimed greatest boxer of all time. Entertaining audiences globally for over a decade.’ Well, you get the idea.

My LinkedIn branding class not only encouraged students to maximize all the categories LinkedIn offers to describe yourself, but also to provide a detailed, engaging, and yes, in some ways, entertaining description of you and your career. I reminded attendees that your online brand is the “first digital impression” of you before someone meets you in person (or IRL=In Real Life) -- and haven’t we all done an internet search on someone before we meet them, do business with them, or even accept their connection request on LinkedIn?

“Float Like a Butterfly…”

Ali’s personal tag line is so well branded that I bet you can finish it without my help. Think about applying Ali’s branding techniques to your personal brand. Are you the best in your business? How can you convey, maybe in a more subtle way than Ali did, why someone should believe in you and your brand, want to get to know you better, or want to do business with you? Here are five things to think about to make the most out of your personal brand: 1. Think: Take a moment to think about what you want to be known for…. Got it? Now own it. If it’s not boxing (or maybe it is), what do you want people to think or say about you when you leave the room? For example: “He’s the most entertaining boxer I’ve ever seen and I would pay to see him again anytime!” Think about what you want people to say about you when you’re not there.

2. Craft: Now that you’ve thought about what you want to be known for, take time to create an authentic, descriptive, and again, maybe even entertaining, summary of yourself. Does it lead someone to want to read more about you? Does it summarize your successes? For example: “Olympic gold medal winner known for putting boxing on the map and dominating the sport for over two decades.” I immediately think, ‘Wow, how did he do that?’ I want to continue reading to find out!

3. Be the champ: Now that you have a winning summary of yourself, figure out what makes you different. What makes you the best at what you do? For example: “First man to win a heavyweight boxing title three times.

Career-ending 56-5 record, with 37 knockouts, and lifetime earnings of $57 million.” Well,you don’t have to

include your career earnings, but it sure sounded good in this example. Take the proverbial bull by the horns and own the title of best in your industry. Be prepared to prove it. Customer testimonials are a great way to help prove how good you are and they sound much better than you saying how fab you are -- unless of course you are Muhammad Ali. 4. Trailblaze: Now that you’ve figured out what makes you a champ, you need to share your forward-thinking ideas with others. Ali was known for speaking his mind (even if he was a bit controversial at times), but I would encourage you to be a thought leader in your industry.

Take time each week to think about how you can help others -- your customers and future customers -- where your industry is headed, etc., and put it in writing. Start a blog, post it on your social networks, and even launch a podcast (consider reading “The Rising Popularity of Podcasting, and Why Your Business Should Care”).

5. Make a difference: Lastly, highlight what are you doing to make the world a better place (ever heard of good karma?). Some of the students graduating from high school and college are so smart -- some with over 4.0 GPAs. (Don’t ask me how you earn over a 4.0 GPA; I preferred to socialize a bit more than study too hard).

What is going to be the tipping point of an employer when they are looking at two resumes with identical grades? Their social consciousness (and they have it -- a 2014 millennial impact report showed 92% of millennials are contributing their creative skills to companies they feel are making a difference in the world). Find out what you are passionate about and donate your time, talents and/or treasures. Ali was an inspiration to the young, recognized for his race relations, humanitarianism, and standing up for what he believed in, even when the consequences were great. He fought for truth and justice.

What will you fight for?

Cindy Dalecki has over 20 years of marketing, advertising, sales, public relations and social media experience. She is the owner of Marketing 2 Go, a marketing, social media and branding firm based in Palm Coast, Florida.

The Only 3 Things to Do (Over and Over) to Make Your Brand Stand Out

By Chris Campbell

Customers want more than an experience. They want emotion.

Customers want a brand that they feel they need in their lives, according to the “The Brand Gap” by Marty Neumeier.

The definition of a “brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service or company,” Neumeier writes.

According to Neumeier’s definition, all that digital marketers have to do is connect to customers on an emotional level and brand presence will grow -- or continue to grow.

Easy, right? Well, not so fast.

First, consumers’ needs and wants are constantly changing, so businesses must keep up with change to keep up with the competition. You have to stand out.

Building your brand -- into a business that customers will feel emotional toward -- starts with being more present and engaging online.

Why is building your brand online important? ‘They expect businesses to earn their dollars’ Consumers will interact with your brand online and offline.

Make sure your brand message is clear and that you are exceeding customer experience expectations in both the online and offline world.

To create a brand message, combine your business’s values with what your customers want, and where you want to position yourself in the marketplace.

“Buying just about anything, whether it’s a $20 shirt or a $20,000 car, is more of an emotional act for them, [consumers], than ever before. They expect businesses to earn their dollars; they won’t just hand them over.” That’s according to the June 2014 State of the American Consumer Report by research and consulting company Gallup.

When a business does exceed customer’s expectations, 23 percent of the customers who are fully engaged “represent an average 23 percent premium in terms of share of wallet, profitability, revenue, and relationship growth over the average customer,” according to Gallup.

A large part of customer engagement comes with defining a strong brand promise and delivering on that promise.

You define the brand promise based on the customer: the customer defines your brand. Without customer feedback, you can’t define a brand promise.

“A brand promise tells the world what a company stands for, what makes its products or services different from the competition’s, and why it is worthy of being chosen by customers,” according to Gallup.

1. Connect to your customers.

An online review is content for your brand. This means they play a role in how Google ranks search results. Customers have a better chance of finding your business when there are information-filled online reviews to read.

And that information is full of customer insights. There’s a method you should use to understand how customers feel about your business: sentiment analysis. What are the trends you see? What are customers saying about your brand? These questions can be answered with a sentiment analysis tool.

Increase your presence on online review sites and social media.

2. Be consistent.

Your organization should be consistent in everything including brand voice. Consistency in your brand voice will turn purchasers into loyal, committed customers, while inconsistent messages will just confuse your customers.

One of the methods you should use to help you create your brand voice is sentiment analysis. This tool will help you understand how customers feel toward your business, which will help you hone in your brand messaging, and in which direction you should take your brand’s voice.

Let’s take a look at Coca-Cola as an example of a successful brand. Yes, there have already been authors of blog articles who reference Coca-Cola -- as they should -- it’s one of the greatest brands of all time. The beverage company is a good example of consistency across its entire organization: emotional appeal, social responsibility, products and services, its performance financially, workplace environment, and vision and leadership, according to Rich Duprey at the Motley Fool. That consistency is one of the reasons the historic company has been successful.

Another reason? “By forever investing in its brand in ways that matter to consumers,” Duprey writes.

3. Create content for a blog.

A blog is a great way to establish your business as a thought leader in your industry. Write a blog for your website and get customers to find your business with meaningful and useful content.

Don’t know what to write? Ask yourself what questions your customers ask and answer them in a public-facing blog post, or conduct keyword research and create content based on the most popular search keywords related to your business.

Make sure your business has a strategy to connect with customers on an emotional level, consistently.

Advertisers look to entice, not interrupt, consumers ADVERTISERS TRY NEW TACTICS TO BREAK THROUGH TO CONSUMERS

By Suzanne Vranica

Harry Li, a 26-year-old Atlanta native, has been bingewatching all 10 seasons of “Friends” on commercial-free Netflix over the past few months. He doesn’t pay for cable TV, but watches his favorite TV shows such as the CW’s superhero series “Arrow” by streaming pirated copies online.

in New York to produce a wide range of branded content from reality programs to online films. Earlier this year, it got big play in the plotline of Fox’s drama “Empire,” when a character on the program was offered an endorsement contract with Pepsi.

Even then, he is out of advertisers’ reach. The ad-blocking software on his laptop strips out many of the commercials.

The idea is to not look and feel like advertising in the hope that consumers won’t skip.

“I just like to watch a 40-minute show in one go rather than watch the commercials,” said Mr. Li. “The 18 minutes of ads is unappealing.”

“Over time, advertising has gained the reputation of pollution content,” said Brad Jakeman, president of PepsiCo’s global beverage group. “We have to now create content that consumers want” to watch, he said.

As the global marketing industry gathers on the French Riviera for the Cannes advertising festival this week, there is an awareness that grabbing consumers’ attention is getting harder and more frustrating across nearly all types of media.

People are avoiding print ads, skipping through TV ads and cutting cable subscriptions. Reaching them online is getting tougher, too, between the rising use of ad blockers and the many scams in which fake, computer-generated web traffic lures in ad dollars.

As a result, companies are rewriting their marketing playbooks. Some are blurring the line between advertising and content, in the hopes of passing through the filter of what consumers actually see and read. Others are diving deeper into data and location targeting on the theory that consumers will embrace ads that they find relevant.

PepsiCo Inc. recently opened a 4,000-square-foot studio

Almost half the 24,000 U.S. consumers surveyed last year by market research firm GfK MRI agreed that “much of advertising is way too annoying.” In the online realm, digitalad interruptions are too frequent, according to 84% of people Accenture surveyed this year in 28 countries. Some 10% of desktop web users in the U.S. have ad blockers installed, and the practice is now ramping up on mobile.

Consumers can “skip ads, block ads and avoid ads in their entirety,” said Laura Henderson, Mondelez International Inc.’s global head of content and media monetization. The company is currently co-producing “Heaven Sent,” a onehour skydiving special that will promote its Stride chewing gum and air live on network TV this summer. “We’re shifting from media buyer to more of a content producer,” Ms. Henderson said.

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The snack giant’s mobile app game “Twist, Lick, Dunk,” which lets users dunk Oreo cookies, has been downloaded seven million times and people have spent an average of 40 minutes on the app, Mondelez said.

Marketers have been drawn to digital advertising because of the promise of targeting consumers with more precision.

But the backlash over the quantity and intrusiveness of digital marketing, and the adoption of ad blockers, is forcing them to figure out other ways to capture users’ attention.

Advertisers like Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC are embracing so-called native ads, which seamlessly blend into a user’s feed and are harder to distinguish from editorial content.

“Native ads have 50% higher click-through rates than any of our [display] banner inventory,” said Sean Blankenship, chief marketing officer of Coldwell, which shifted ad dollars out of display advertising this year and into native ads.

The company said native ads are also an effective way to reach people on mobile devices, where traditional banners fall flat.

In television, almost half of U.S. homes have a DVR, fueling ad-skipping. And consumer frustration with lengthening commercial breaks has grown to the point where some media companies are now scaling back ad time and trying to put a new spin on the 30-second spot.

On Feb. 29, Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal sliced the ad load on some of its shows such as “The Voice” and replaced ad breaks with content sponsored by American Express.

At the beginning of “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” for example, the talk show host showed a video spoof of the movie “Mad Max: Fury Road.” At the end of the clip, a voiceover plugged Amex’s Blue Cash Everyday card.

AmEx said the campaign, which also included regular TV ads, drove a 50% increase in searches for the card and a 45% increase in card applications compared with the precampaign launch.

Some marketers are experimenting with virtual-reality

technology to tell more immersive stories, while others are using precision targeting offered by socialmedia giants such as Facebook to zero in on specific audiences.

‘Native ads have 50% higher clickthrough rates than any of our [display] banner inventory.’

Belkin International, the maker of Linksys Wi-Fi —Sean Blankenship, chief marketing home-routers and WeMo officer of Coldwell Banker Real Estate smart home devices, has been showing video ads about its products to people whose social-media profiles indicate they work at retail stores.

Belkin’s objective: influence and inform retail workers, whom it relies on to recommend products to shoppers.

Johnson & Johnson is using data and analytics to figure out when a person might be most receptive to an ad and figure out what people need or want from the company. For years, it would target new moms with ads for baby toiletries, but after mining what consumers were saying on BabyCenter—a popular J&J-owned website that doles out pregnancy tips— J&J discovered that most moms actually shop for baby toiletries in the 26th week of their pregnancy.

For its Neutrogena sunscreen campaign last year, J&J automatically pushed out mobile banner ads when UV levels were high. The ads, which were served to people who were close to beaches or pools, would appear in the middle of beauty and fashion stories on a range of websites. Nearly 60% of consumers J&J surveyed said they would be more likely to try the sunscreen.

Alison Lewis, chief marketing officer of J&J’s consumer business, said that for decades, the company would create two 30-second TV spots, two billboard ads and five print ads every year. That is “not how the world works today,” she said.

Suzanne Vranica is the Advertising Editor for the Wall Street Journal, which is published by Dow Jones & Company. She has 15 years’ experience at the Journal covering marketing and the inner workings of Madison Avenue.

What Marketers Need to Know About Chat Apps

By Mark W. Schaefer

The rise of social media changed marketing. Now, before some marketers have even fully adapted to that world, the social web is transforming again. The rise of private social networks and messaging apps will challenge the strategies that marketers developed for public social networks.

If your company is still trying to figure out how to make the most of Facebook and Twitter, consider: • WhatsApp has rapidly become the biggest messaging service in the world with more than a billion users.

• Snapchat is a juggernaut with the 18-24 age group, now earning more daily check-ins than Facebook. The company founder insists it is “not a social network.”

• Facebook is the social network for most of the world, yet their major investment is in the development of private Facebook Messenger, including bots that would help companies scale “human” interaction through the service. More than 900 million people use Messenger now. Other private messaging services like Viber and Kik have attracted millions of users.

• Of the Fortune 100 companies, 77 use Slack. The average Slack user keeps the app running 10 hours a day, and is actively using it for over 2 hours a day.

• Instagram started private DM in 2014 that focuses on the sharing of content with up to 15 people in a threaded approach.

• Twitter has experimented with Snapchat-style doodles

and photo editing and in 2015 expanded the character limit via private direct messaging.

The movement of consumers from public social media to private messaging has been so rapid that Business Insider reported that the combined usage of the top four messaging apps now exceeds the combined usage of the top four social media apps. Falling data prices, cheaper devices, and improved features are helping propel this growth.

Why the hunger for private messaging apps? Perhaps people are becoming more interested in actually communicating, rather than broadcasting. Maybe we don’t want personal and private lives merging any more and we want control over our different social circles within these messaging apps. As my 16-year-old nephew put it, “My friend posted on Facebook and we made fun of him. We only use Snapchat now because who wants to put everything in public all the time? This just connects me with my real friends.”

Social media won’t go away, but traditional social networks may become less important to certain groups. The rise of more intimate channels presents new opportunities, and perhaps perils, for marketers. Two of the tensions marketers will have to wrestle with:

Discoverability vs. interactivity — The challenge of a more private app is getting people to find you and interact with you. In an app people are primarily using to communicate with friends and family, what role does a brand have to play?

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Although discoverability may present a challenge, private messaging could offer even more engagement for the brands that can figure it out. Consider that without the boost of ad support on Facebook, your organic reach for your content probably averages less than 1 percent (although this varies widely by business). The typical open rate for email is much better, but still not very high, at about 20 percent. The open rate for a private message? 98 percent. Smartphone users are also more likely to have push notifications turned on for a messaging app than for email, a branded app, or even for Facebook. But that means the expectations are high. How do we insert ads and brand messages in conversations in a way that isn’t disappointing… or creepy?

Content orientation vs. person orientation — Today a brand goal on social media is mass relevance. In this current “mass relevance” model, content is at the center of the experience. We want that cat photo (or white paper) to get as many likes, clicks, and shares as we can muster.

But in this new world, the goal is engagement through private, meaningful, conversational moments. In the future, content will still be important, but the individual will be the focus of the experience. Brand communications will have to be more immediate, expressive, and intimate.

How do you scale those interactions? Somewhat ironically, the answer may be algorithms and bots. Big Data will help us craft personalized, timely, location-based content and offers, and Facebook is working on smart bots that can hold humanlike conversations and a system to analyze the conversations.

Brand communications will be more immediate, expressive, and intimate.

Though my nephew may mock it, Facebook is an especially important player in this transition; this is the platform most brands have been married to, and this is where most of the marketing investment is still occurring. There is a comfort there. How will that relationship change moving forward?

Facebook Messenger will now support scannable codes, user names and links. This update allows the creation of a unique Messenger URL that will allow for greater discovery of users and businesses within the private sphere. Facebook is already positioning pages and ad units with a “message the brand” option and analysts believe Facebook is positioning Messenger as its primary commerce hub of the future.

But there is some good news in all of this. For most brands, 80 percent to 90 percent of all online fans communicate through “dark social media,” meaning text messaging, email, and other channels we can’t see or measure. These private communications are migrating to the private networks owned

by Facebook, Snapchat and others. Will these companies eventually provide us insights from the greatest untapped source of consumer data on the planet? Businesses will no doubt try to navigate, and one day may possibly benefit from, these massive private networks.

Mark W. Schaefer is the Executive Director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions and author of five marketing books including The Content Code.

Why Every Artist Should be a Great Storyteller EXPERTLY TELLING YOUR STORY IS THE BEST KIND OF ORGANIC MARKETING YOU CAN DO TO PROMOTE YOUR ART BECAUSE PEOPLE CARE ALMOST AS DEEPLY ABOUT HOW YOU CREATE, AS THEY DO ABOUT THE END PRODUCT.

By Jacqueline Lara

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So you’re a visual artist and you rely on the visual element of your work to sell it and captivate viewers in a single glance.

But while art does indeed speak for itself, it only tells part of your story. The other, often-overlooked part is “Who is the person behind the signature scribbled on this amazing piece?”

be compelling and full of details, so you can build the rest of your story around it by answering how that moment led you to what you create today. Finish the bio by highlighting your biggest career accomplishments. Need an example to get you started? Here is one from French-American artist Gwenn Seemel that we like as a muse.

While it’s impossible to pinpoint a tangible career-elevating payoff to telling your story, there are clear benefits. In today’s competitive marketplace a good story can say things about your character that your art can’t, which can help give you an edge over similar artists being considered for a project.

It also allows you to make connections with new audiences who might not understand art the way critics do, but who appreciate your work based on how you make it.

2. Invite People into Your Process

Storytelling might seem like an additional “to-do” that you don’t have time or resources for, however, it simply requires using your words and talking about yourself (and likely something you love). As Simon Sinek says, “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.” And it should provide some kind of return on your time investment, as the best kind of storytelling serves as marketing that doesn’t feel like traditional marketing at all.

When you communicate your inspiration and efforts behind your pieces, you allow viewers to see your art through your eyes. This gives the viewer something tangible to share with others in conversation – something that a two-dimensional piece rarely can do on its own terms. Like any craft, there is a certain rhythm and structure that leads to a successful story.

Follow these four guidelines to artfully tell your narrative and ultimately expand your audience reach.

1. Learn the Storytelling Basics You likely have an “About” profile on your website, but if it’s missing an arc it’s time to inject it with some life. Stories have a three-part structure with a beginning, middle, and end. The first part opens with an intriguing introduction, the middle develops that detail into the crux of the piece (the main driver of the narrative) and the end leads to how the main character accomplished their objective. Along the way, elements of surprise and eclectic characters keep things interesting. Think about your artistic journey and how you can divide it into three parts.

“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.”

Start by catching the reader’s attention with a strong hook – a few lines that focus on what is the most unique thing about you and your artistic evolution. Maybe as a child your grandmother took you to her painting class and that time fostered a love of painting? Maybe there is a moment when someone challenged your dream to become a sculptor and you used that as fuel for your career? Or maybe you have lived all over the world and the different cultures have greatly impacted your design style? The introductory anecdote should

Now that you’ve firmed up your bio – which you can use anywhere from your website to your pitch deck to your gallery exhibitions – consider other ways to share your story, like through your creative process.

Artists have a rep for being territorial about people entering their sacred studios. When their supporters only see the final masterpieces, though, they can’t fathom the marathon hours, painstaking process, and level of detail that goes into the artwork. So pull back the curtain and invite the public in by using video clips, photo, and text together. It’s easier than it sounds – there is probably already a photographer or videographer in your tribe, so commission them to capture various shots of your studio and key stages of creation.

The best kind of storytelling serves as marketing that doesn’t feel like traditional marketing at all.

To do this, write out an “objective sheet” detailing the overarching story you want to tell, and the shots that will bring this to life. This could include a shot of your workspace, any production machinery or workspace décor, or action shots, which capture you at the beginning, middle, and end of your process. If you’re more comfortable on camera, you could produce a video short.

Just look at what street artist Don Rimx has done with his process shots. He regularly invites the public into his process and recently his video “Friction” caught the attention of corporate audiences who now commission his work. In the time-lapse video, Rimx shows all of the movements it takes him to paint a mural, as well as incorporates outside voices who comment on the work-in-progress. Rimx’s act of artistic vulnerability widens the reach of those who can experience his work, and it’s paying off.

3. Share Your Creative Routine Do you always find that people are asking you if you have any creative rituals? As mundane as this question might seem to you, an entire book has been written about the daily rituals of artists, and translated into multiple languages! Rituals are fascinating because they’re not limited to specific fields or artistic disciplines, so people are inspired to apply what works for artists to their own work. And, frankly, people love hearing the war stories about people making something – that makes you real and relatable and it’s human nature to respect someone who works hard.

For this, examine how you create. What do you do that’s different? Maybe you balance your artistic side with a fulltime career elsewhere, so you can only work late at night?

Or maybe you go off into the desert to create in a space that is completely free of distraction? Like your bio, be specific on the details. Your objective here is to give your fans something to grasp onto. People likely can’t get behind someone who says “I only paint when I feel inspired.” But they can applaud someone who says they go into the studio every morning at 7 a.m. and often has to work for several hours before they find the groove of a project.

been there for me during times in which I couldn’t go to my birth mother or ‘biological’ family. I also wanted to celebrate Sylvia Rivera’s role as a mother to many struggling queers and trans folks back when she was alive. Her work is still very relevant today and the legacy she left behind remains alive through the lives she has touched. I really wanted to celebrate this in my card.”

People can’t get behind someone who says “I only paint when I feel inspired.”

UK-based multi-media artist Kirsty Elson crafts miniature homes, boats, and lighthouses out of driftwood, and draws inspiration from her seaside surroundings. When she collects driftwood at the beach, she either knows immediately what she’ll create or the wood sits in her shed for years until she does. ­­In this video, Elson discusses the full cycle of creating her art including how she gets it in the hands of customers around the world.

4. Tell your story in different ways on multiple mediums

To tell the story behind her Strong Families image, Chucha Marquez shared the following anecdote: “Chosen family has been a crucial aspect of my existence and survival as a queer person of color in this world. My chosen family has been there for me during times in which I couldn’t go to my birth mother or ‘biological’ family. I also wanted to celebrate Sylvia Rivera’s role as a mother to many struggling queers and trans* folks back when she was alive. Her work is still very relevant today and the legacy she left behind remains alive through the lives she has touched. I really wanted to

The idea of a “story” has been with us since the beginning of time, but today what that looks like can range from the traditional body of text to a one-sentence Instagram post.

That gives you many channels to explore. If you have a weekly newsletter or blog, those are natural places to begin sharing your processes and routines. If you’re still building out your reader list, you can test out the various social media channels to see what drums up interest and feels most natural. You might find that it’s easier to share your process shots on a medium like Instagram due to its visual nature, while you can better articulate the finer points of your creative routine through blogging.

celebrate this in my card.”

If writing is not your forte or you’re pressed for time, another way to tell your story is to include brief captions below artwork on your website describing the inspiration/idea behind each piece. A few years ago, my firm was charged with publicizing Strong Families “Mama’s Day Our Way” campaign—a national initiative led by Forward Together where more than 20 artists were commissioned to create e-cards for mothers who are often overlooked in the mainstream celebration of Mother’s Day. Strong Families wanted to reach both sites that focus on parenting and LGBTQ issues and the mainstream press. To make the campaign about more than the image on the cards, we asked the artists to share why they wanted to be involved in the campaign and what was their inspiration behind their card image.

At its core, storytelling is about making an authentic, human connection. When people feel like they’re part of your artistic process, and you’re willing to share a glimpse into your journey, they’ll root for you and support your work. Seemel said it best, “Trying to be an artist helps you to appreciate the tenacity it takes to market yourself successfully as an artist.

This might lead you to support the efforts of artists in your life by promoting their art or buying it.”

To tell the story behind his Strong Families image, Chucha Marquez shared the following anecdote: “Chosen family has been a crucial aspect of my existence and survival as a queer person of color in this world. My chosen family has

By having our artists discuss their works from different perspectives, we were able to capture the attention of a range of publications, including Salon.com, the New York Daily News, Buzzfeed Advocate.com, Jezebel, and PolicyMic, who ran pieces on the campaign and included the artists’ quotes in them. During the pitch process, the approach to capture the artists’ voices and stories allowed my small, scrappy firm to edge out larger agencies to lead this campaign and resulted in us getting work on future national campaigns. ***

Storytelling, when done right, will increase your influence and have existing and new audiences talking about your work in a digestible fashion that feels natural, and produce a ripple effect of supporters who want to invest in your art – and you.

Jacqueline Lara is president of Mpact PR, LLC. She specializes in helping entrepreneurs and artists share their stories and art with the media and new audiences.

She is also creative architect of The ArtFullness Project, which explores the intersection of art and business through creative projects and visual content.

Brandspeak: Building Brand Affinity Through Intent-Based Marketing

By Mike Grehan,

Marketers are laser-focused on connecting with potential customers at critical decision-making moments. The trouble is, you’re always duking it out with your competitors trying to get your message seen and heard before theirs.

But what if you didn’t have to make all of that attentiongrabbing noise in the last-minute marketing melee? What if you had already made an impression on the potential new customer? And what if that connection had been made long before the competition got into the game?

Welcome to intent-based digital marketing: mapping customer intent to relevant (and useful) content experiences.

Notice I didn’t use the word “funnel”? The fact is, the sales funnel doesn’t really exist anymore. Most industry analysis of modern consumer behavior points to something much closer to a totally non-linear “path-to-purchase.” And it turns out that it’s a very fragmented process.

Interestingly, search engines such as Google have been aware of this for a long time, given that they have so much end user data. So they know perfectly well that nobody wakes up in the morning with a credit card in hand and says, “Hey I’m Jane and I want to buy something.” The early discovery of intent behind a user query was based around three distinct phases known as the taxonomy of search. They’re described as informational, navigational and transactional. No, that’s not three different types of searchers—it’s one person going through a complex cognitive process.

More recently, with the explosion in the use of mobile devices, Google has recognized the evolution of this pattern of intent in what it refers to as micro-moments.

These occur at any given time on the path-to-purchase and are typified as I-want-to-know, I-want-to-go, I-want-to-do and I-want-buy moments. We’ve all done ourselves without realizing it. Perhaps you’re standing in line at the bank, or to pay for your sandwich at lunchtime and suddenly remember that you promised your wife a romantic weekend away. That’s when you reach for your mobile device and start the I-wantto-know, I-want-to-go stage of the cognitive process. Maybe you’ll follow up on your desktop computer when you get back to the office and maybe eventually reach the checkout later that evening on your tablet device at home.

Micro-moments help shape how we should be thinking about consumer intent. That’s because each of the different moments reflects different flavors of intent and calls for a specific content response, frequently across multiple devices.

Too many brands are stuck in the I-want-to-buy-moment.

This is not to say that transactions are not the ultimate goal.

It is to say that you need to reach people much earlier, ideally in the I-want-to-know stage. Not only is this where you will find your largest addressable target audience, it’s the best way to build brand affinity. You can position yourself as the authority in the field so customers will have you in mind when

they are ready to buy.

Here are two real-life examples for creating content that satisfies moments of intent.

• A leading provider of lawn improvement products decided to stake out the I-want-to-know turf. So it imagined a guy who wants to invite his friends over for an amazing barbecue at his new house. He buys a new grill, apron and a hat. Then he goes to the backyard…and the lawn looks terrible. The one thing he hadn’t thought about was how to keep his lawn healthy. The company saw an opportunity to connect with this new homeowner by creating the world’s greatest barbecue playbook—and yes, lawn care was part of it. In short, this particular brand helped someone anticipate and solve a problem— way before the I-want-to-buy stage.

• A woman’s fashion retailer had concentrated its paid search efforts on I-want-to-buy moments with a narrow focus on the checkout. But it was missing, among other things, an opportunity to position its clothing for things like what-to-wear-for-interviews moments, a potentially large segment for the company’s business daywear. Preparing for job interviews is a time when consumers are seeking help and thus receptive to useful content. This particular company created a video on interview etiquette because those are perfect times to talk about what to wear and what not to wear to job interviews.

Again, both companies got ahead of their competitors by looking in advance of the I-want-to-buy junction.

With all of this in mind, here are some takeaways for implementing intent-based marketing and making sure you have relevant content.

• Conduct a content-mapping exercise that groups search keywords based on similar intents.

• Do a content gap analysis by combing through your website to look at every landing page and see if customers are getting the appropriate experience for a particular keyword or phrase.

• Realize that you don’t have to be there at every moment.

Learn what’s most important for each of your brands and prioritize the moments where decisions are being made and preferences established. This will inform your messaging and content choices.

In summary, begin a customer dialogue that can shape a preference for your product well in advance of when someone is ready to purchase. It’s all about intent and then content.

Mike Grehan, CMO and managing director of digital marketing firm Acronym Media, is a search marketing pioneer, author and frequent keynote speaker. He is also chairman of SEMPO, the global trade association for search marketers.

How Fashion Brands Are Starting To Design Like Tech Companies A FOCUS ON R&D HAS A NEW WAVE OF FASHION COMPANIES TESTING DESIGNS THE WAY DEVELOPERS TEST SOFTWARE.

By Meg Miller

Inside Lululemon Labs, the cultish activewear brand’s 11th New York City location that opened in March, there’s not a single $100 yoga pant in sight. Instead, slimming pencil skirts, crisp blazers, and creased trousers—all in a distinctly N.Y.C. palette of black, white, navy, and gray—line the walls.

Catering to New Yorkers, the store sells clothing designed for professionals but constructed out of the brand’s highperformance materials. Behind the sales floor, the design team toils away in an office in the back.

It’s the second store to come out of Lululemon’s Labs concept (the first opened in Vancouver in 2009), a division within the company that produces small batch pieces designed specifically for a city’s consumers, based on things such as weather, local style, and commuting patterns. Internally, Labs also functions as a kind of test run for the company’s

experimental designs as Lululemon continues to expand its offerings beyond performance wear. Pieces sold at these stores are like beta versions of Lululemon mainstays: The products that sell particularly well, like their popular mesh leggings, make it into the company’s main line to be sold nationwide.

For a performance brand like Lululemon, which has large R&D department for testing new fabric and textile technology, selling their prototypes and analyzing the sell-through data makes sense. And as the technology of activewear seeps its way into everyday clothing, other brands have developed similar models. Instead of putting together case studies, these companies are making their customers the lab rats— essentially, letting the market play a hand in the design of their products.

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TESTING LIKE A TECH COMPANY For web developers and product designers, this type of iterative process is nothing new. App developers, for instance, will beta test a digital product on a select group of users and ask for feedback before it officially hits the market. Once it’s out, they look to user data to inform incremental improvements that ultimately lead to a better product. Iterations are rapid and constant; just think of all the times your smartphone alerts you to an app update.

In the fashion industry, it’s not as easy for the design process to be so customer-centric. Fashion is dictated by a rigid seasonal schedule and quick product turnover, leaving little room for iteration. And if a brand works through a retailer, that’s just another layer between designer and customer. It’s difficult to get direct and timely customer feedback.

That’s where the “labs” concept comes in. “Labs is where we test our future concept,” says Gihan Amarasiriwardena, the cofounder of Ministry of Supply, a company that makes highend menswear out of performance material. Like Lululemon, MoS also has a Labs initiative where they sell small batches of experimental products. The company has a Facebook group of around 100 customers to whom they send products still in development and request feedback. Amarasiriwardena, who has an engineering background and worked a stint at the design consultancy Ideo, compares Labs to a Formula One concept car that gets tested on the raceway before a consumer version hits the market.

But when a product hits the MoS stores, that isn’t the end of the design process. MoS watches how it sells, continues to solicit customer feedback, and then releases new, updated versions based on that feedback. Their new Seamless Jacket, for example, is an updated version of the Aviator II blazer, which was a redesign of the very first jacket MoS launched as a company.

From the very beginning, MoS knew that it wanted a blazer that would look professional but wouldn’t restrict movement.

Their first Aviator jacket was designed for movement and breathability, with the moisture-wicking quality of sportswear but with the lining of the traditional sports jacket. It sold out in four days. Yet when asked to give feedback, customers suggested that the jacket still needed a fuller range of motion.

For the Aviator II, MoS removed the lining and built a special four-way stretch knit fabric.

The Seamless jacket takes the concept one step further: It is designed in CAD, then 3-D printed for seamless construction.

It has a built-in ventilation system under the armpits and a specific knit that stretches around the elbows. While the first Aviator is no longer available, the Aviator II is still part of the line alongside its successor.

CUTTING OUT THE MIDDLEMAN Key to getting feedback is having a direct-to-consumer business model. Both MoS and Lululemon require their customer service reps and retail workers to ask customers for feedback on designs. The men’s athletic wear e-retailer

Ten Thousand does it by selling prototypes online for a $9 discount through a program called—you guessed it—Labs.

For Ten Thousand CEO Keith Nowak, integrating customer feedback early on in the design process was always part of its business model. Larger companies that make highperformance sports gear—Nike, Adidas, Lululemon—have big R&D divisions that test the material. As a small company, Ten Thousand doesn’t have that, so they went straight to their consumer with a discount option. After selling 150 of its first design—the Endurance Shorts—in a few hours, Nowak personally followed up with the people who bought them for their feedback.

Based on that feedback, the redesigned shorts, now called Foundation Shorts, have a zippered side pocket to hold keys or an iPhone. It also offers options for fit based on personal preference: Customers can decide whether or not to have a built-in liner and can choose between a seven-inch seam or a nine-inch seam.

Nowak says this kind of mass customization is only possible if you have a direct line of contact with your customers. “You have this chance to work directly with the people you’re designing products for,” he says.

MARKET-LED DESIGN Lululemon, of course, has a huge R&D division, somewhat

ominously called the White Space, located at its headquarters in Vancouver. That’s where the company does extensive testing to produce the high-tech materials that make up its athletic line. After the company had to recall some of their yoga pants in 2013 for being see-through (and the subsequent ousting of CEO Chip Wilson following some controversial comments), Lululemon has bounced back largely due to its new CEO Laurent Potdevin’s dedication to design and development. He appointed Tom Waller, a veteran consultant for performance brands like Nike and a PhD in sports technology, to head the White Space and dive deeper into fabric development and construction.

But as the company known for helping along the rise of “athleisure” continues to move into more traditional wardrobe territory, Lululemon Labs is helping mitigate the risks.

Both the Vancouver Labs and the N.Y.C. store have their own design teams that are focus solely on designing for their city.

Marcus LeBlanc, head designer of Lululemon Labs in New York says they meet with the core Lululemon design team once a month but for the most part have autonomy. After looking through the archives, consulting with R&D on fabric, and designing for about six months with his team, the first line sold through the store was tailored to commuters. A pencil skirt, for example, also has a zipper in the back around the knees to allow for more movement when biking or running for the train. In another example, a fitted blazer is made from

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the same waterproof fabric the company uses for parkas but looks sharp enough to wear into the office.

The Lululemon Labs store in New York just opened in March, but eventually the best-selling designs could make their way into the main line. This has happened a few different times with the Vancouver store, says Lee Holman, Lululemon’s creative director (and another of Potdevin’s hires). That’s where the brand’s mesh leggings originated, for example, as well as a water-resistant merino wool that is now used as insulation in a few new pieces. The water-repellant Trek Trouser, now carried through the main line, is an iteration of the Labs’ Trouser Crop, made from the company’s nylon/ lycra luon fabric.

FUNDRAISING LIKE A TECH COMPANY In recent years, social media and the rise of direct-toconsumer models has shifted a historically “insider” industry to one that would do well to interact directly with its consumers.

For forward-thinking brands, an iterative, customer-centric approach to design is intended to give them a competitive advantage over stodgier industry stalwarts. Putting the time and effort involved in soliciting feedback and prototyping designs will pay off, the thinking goes, when you have a product that you know you’re customers will want—because you asked them.

It stands to reason that this new model is being led by

performance (or performance-inspired) brands, as testing and prototyping has always been part of that model. And although a small company like Ten Thousand has a lot more to lose than say, Lululemon, newer, smaller brands do have the agility to think like a startup and iterate without having to restructure a business model already in place. The risk comes when smaller companies have to scale up, and find their slower, feedback-driven design and production process might not work for producing large quantities.

Even at Lululemon, Labs can only produce small batches.

There, at least, it has the support of a huge corporation (the company declined to comment on whether it has profited directly from Labs, only saying that it’s had “a positive impact on our business and the industry”). For smaller brands, sticking to this model requires finding investors. Ministry of Supply started out as a Kickstarter project before raising $1.1 million in seed funding in 2013. Ten Thousand is in the process of closing a round of financing with angel investors.

It seems that designing like a tech company also means fundraising like a tech company. Fashion industry, meet Silicon Valley.

Meg Miller is an assistant editor at Co.Design covering art, technology, and design.

How should brands respond when an ambassador makes headlines?

By Jen King

Christian Dior, Tag Heuer and Lancôme have all recently found themselves involved with celebrities that have been in the news for reasons other than the products they endorse.

When working with a celebrity there are inherent risks, as the ambassador is invited into the brand’s inner workings and serves as a real-life representation of the company’s positioning. Despite being the face of a brand, celebrity ambassadors also have personal lives, careers and opinions that may occasionally outshine or undermine the message the brand is hoping to portray via its selected spokesmodels.

“As far as luxury positioning goes, and the luxury brand standards are, in the world — people say don’t use celebrities, period. Celebrities can overshadow your brand and of course, there’s always the risks involved with using a celebrity,” said Gabrielle Rein, creative director of Viceroy Creative. “But, if you’re looking to use a celebrity, and give your brand a boost, you have to beware because not only do you have the risk of something happening, and there’s a big scandal, but your brand does not have the power to be as big as the celebrity.

“A lot of times, brands can be overpowered by celebrities. If you’re a huge established brand, such as Dior, for example, you can do it,” she said. “Your brand isn’t going to be overshadowed, but you have to hire the celebrity as a model in advertising, so that your brand can still sort of look bigger than that person is.

“I think brands are taking a big risk with celebrity endorsements because what they’re doing is inviting a person into their brand DNA and heritage, and telling the public that this person is a real life representation of who they are as a brand.

“When they do this they need to be super selective, any hint of an issue or unprofessionalism should be taken seriously, and there should always be a contingency plan in place for when an issue arises. There should always be a PR plan for when things go sideways and a strategy to act quickly.”

Ambassadors behaving badly In March, professional tennis player Maria Sharapova announced that she had tested positive for banned substance meldonium, a legally prescribed heart medication that has been tied to increasing endurance levels.

At the time of her announcement, Ms. Sharapova was an

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ambassador for LVMH-owned watchmaker Tag Heuer, German automaker Porsche and athletic brand Nike. All three brand severed ties with the Russian tennis pro within 24-hours of her announcement.

Regarding its relationship with Ms. Sharapova, Tag Heuer released an official statement saying, “Maria Sharapova was under contract with Tag Heuer until December 31, 2015.

We had been in talks to extend our collaboration. In view of the current situation, the Swiss watch brand has suspended negotiations.”

The distance put between Tag Heuer, Porsche, Nike and Ms. Sharapova was established long before the International Tennis Federation decided to suspend her from professional competitions for two years on June 8.

While Tag Heuer and Porsche, as brands outside the sports industry, likely saw very little effect from Ms. Sharapova’s doping scandal, it is unlikely that the tennis player’s endorsement deals with these particular brands will be revisited after the two-year ban is lifted.

Maria Sharapova at a Porsche event

If Ms. Sharapova does not return to tennis or her career suffers due to the ban, she may not see future endorsement offers as the association and determining factor for her selection no longer applies.

While Tag Heuer and Porsche acted quickly to avoid negative press in the case of Ms. Sharapova, French fashion house Dior has not responded in the same fashion.

Dior fragrance ambassador Johnny Depp stands accused of domestic violence. The actor’s wife, Amber Heard, has filed a restraining order, and divorce papers are pending as the estranged couple heads to court.

Last September, Mr. Depp was selected as the face of Dior’s Sauvage cologne, the house’s first men’s scent in a decade.

The appointment with Dior also marked the accomplished actor’s first time as a celebrity ambassador (see story).

Despite the negative press surrounding Mr. Depp’s personal life, Dior has not discontinued the relationship.

Many consumers and a number of women’s charities and organizations feel that Dior should drop the actor and take allegations of domestic abuse more seriously. As the case against Mr. Depp evolves and press coverage escalates, Dior will be faced with an ethical dilemma that, if not properly

addressed, will harm its relationship with its predominantly female clientele.

As for Dior’s creative surrounding the Sauvage fragrance, Ms. Rein feels the brand can easily recast for another person because Mr. Depp’s role is that of a male model. If he is replaced with someone else, the overall messaging for the fragrance remains, but without the negative connotations currently in question.

With celebrity involvement there is always the chance of offending consumers, as L’Oreal-owned beauty brand Lancôme recently found out.

In early June, Lancôme organized a concert event with Denise Ho, a pop star and activist who was arrested as part of a demonstration in support of free elections in Hong Kong in 2014. Responding to pressure from Mainland China, Lancôme decided to cancel the concert, a move that only served to create a new layer of dissent.

Even though Ms. Ho was not an official Lancôme spokesmodel or ambassador, the resulting backlash harmed Lancôme’s business in Hong Kong.

On Wednesday, June 8, the beauty brand closed its shops in Hong Kong due to protesters who had gathered. The protesters felt that Lancôme gave in to the pressures of Mainland China by canceling Ms. Ho’s performance.

scandal could not have come at a more opportune time.

On June 15, satire film “L’Idéal” hit theaters in France with a plot that underscores the risks involved with celebrity ambassadors.

In the film, L’Idéal, a parodied beauty marketer based on L’Oreal, finds itself in a PR crisis after a sex tape with Nazi iconography, starring its ambassador, leaks. The film then revolves around the clean up and how the scandal improved mentions on social media.

Risky ROI Scandals aside, are the days of celebrity-fronted campaigns reaching the end? Research suggests the opposite if the right ambassador is selected.

L’Oreal and Lancôme protesters in Hong Kong

“I think when it comes to government interjecting into people’s freedoms, speech and what not — that’s a totally separate issue,” Ms. Rein said. “How that relates to branding, when the government of China comes to you and says, ‘Look, you’ve got to cancel this event, because this is not something we support,’ and who knows what other threats or fines [the government] was telling Lancôme would happen. The brand has to.

“As far as consumers being upset, brands cannot fight for consumers’ political views,” she said. “It’s really unfortunate that brands can get mixed up in those things at times, and wouldn’t it be lovely if brands could step in and have discourse with China on the freedoms of its citizens.

Research conducted by the NPD Group, for instance, found that songstress Rihanna is the most marketable celebrity. The singer has worked with Dior and Balmain, is the creative director of Kering-owned Puma and is currently in talks to develop a beauty line with LVMH, after a successful EsteeLauder-owned M.A.C collaboration and a number of branded scents.

For celebrity endorsements to read as authentic, the selected ambassador must reflect the ethos of the brand. When the endorsement partnership is strong, fans of the celebrity are at least 50 percent more likely to make a purchase from the brand.

But, regardless of a celebrity’s supposed marketability, when scandals do occur brands must be able to respond quickly and efficiently to dispel negativity.

“It’s interesting to me that this doesn’t happen more often,” Ms. Rein said. “I think a lot of brands have been very lucky in the sense that they have never had to deal with this kind of adversity.

“I think what [brands] should do is create distance from the person immediately, especially if it’s something serious and charges have been filed. I think the brand needs to pull whatever creative they’re currently using that features that celebrity,” she said.

Lancôme promotional image for its Juicy Shaker lip gloss

“That’s not what brands are there for. The unfortunate thing is that the brands will have the fallout from the people that may not understand the depth and the seriousness in which this is all contingent on.

“They might not understand the political aspect of it, and the risk. So the brand is going to suffer in that case.”

For Lancôme’s parent company L’Oreal the Hong Kong

“But, if it’s something fun-loving and not offensive, because those sort of press spikes can draw attention to the campaign and the brand. It’s a question of ethics and behavior, and really the severity should action be taken.”

Jen King is a lead reporter on Luxury Daily. Her beats are consumer electronics, consumer packaged goods, food and beverage, fragrance and personal care, jewelry, media/publishing, software and technology and telecommunications.

How brands are getting serious about dads #DadsAre Different: Have Brands Caught On?

By Sarah Mahoney

Rolling up on Father’s Day weekend, there’s no denying that marketers have done a much better job of mirroring how serious Millennial men are about the Dad thing.

Dove Men+Care, for example, has just launched a new 60-second ad called “My Dad, My Hero,” that shows amazing ways fathers make a difference. (It’s almost as good as the spot they did last year.) Courtyard Hotels drafts the kids of National Football League stars like Drew Brees and Vince Wilfork for a video about the importance of daddying.

Even Zumba Fitness is building on fatherhood’s feel-good moments, with an ad celebrating dads who dance like no one’s watching. (It’s part of their #RealMenDance campaign.)

But some brands are trying to push past that initial impact to help men be better fathers. “It’s about more than a great spot that can air on the Super Bowl,” says Chris McKee, CEO of Flint & Steel, an ad agency that is working to turn PopCulture, a documentary about fatherhood, into a content platform sponsored by brands. “We think fathers want information and tools about how to be better dads. They want advice about finances. They want ideas about fitness, and ways to

be more active with their kids.”

McKee says the idea grew out of pro bono work it did several years ago for the National Fatherhood Initiative, an organization that—among other things—hopes to raise awareness of the damage caused by absent fathers. (About a third of the kids in the U.S. don’t have a father actively involved in their lives.)

So the agency, which produced the award-winning The Black List, a documentary about leading African Americans, several years ago, produced PopCulture. (It airs on Father’s Day on the Pivot Network, with the broadcast sponsored by Glenfiddich.) And the agency is in talks with some CPG and automotive brands, which it hopes to involve in channels like events at military bases and YMCAs, as well as pop-up events and town halls.

“Brands should be paying more attention to dads,” he tells Marketing Daily. “In some ways, they are the new gatekeepers. We should be acknowledging them, counseling them, communicating with them. We hope PopCulture is going to be a way for brands to have a meaningful dialog.”

Some brands have already won a place in dads’ hearts.

Amazon, Band-Aid and Craftsman are dads’ best perceived brands, according to YouGov BrandIndex, unchanged from last year. Netflix (No. 6), Heinz (No. 9) and Samsung (No. 10) all made it into the top 10 for the first time, while the Home Depot , Cheerios and M&Ms all slipped. (The index tracks men with kids 18 and younger.)

But perhaps the bigger insight than men interacting with brands differently once they are dads is that fathers are interacting with kids differently than they used to, according to a new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics.

It’s the organization’s first clinical report on fatherhood in over a decade, and cites numerous recent studies showing dads have considerable influence over kids’ health. (It’s encouraging its members to post social media about that impact using the #DadsAre hashtag.)

It points to speedy social changes, especially the 2008 recession, leading to more hands-on dads. In 2014, it says about 2 million single parents, or 17%, were men, and that dads now account for 3.4% of stay-at-home parents. And they’re more diverse: The report says some 10% of the 378,000 gay male couples are raising families, for example.

Men are more apt to play in ways that are a little rough, which helps kids explore and take safe risks. They’re also more likely to introduce new words, helping language development. And teens with involved dads are less prone to depression, and are less inclined to experiment with high-risk behavior.

Sarah Mahoney covers the retail industry for MediaPost’s “Marketing Daily.” She also is a contributing editor for “Parents” and “Prevention.” Her work appears regularly in such publications as “AARP The Magazine,” “Family Circle” and “Good Housekeeping”.

10 HIGHLY PRACTICAL STARTUP MARKETING TIPS

By Andrus

Sounds like clickbait, right? A “listicle”, questionable facts loosely stitched together only to get you to visit. But what this really is is ten solid, if I say so myself, marketing tips based on almost a decade of technology marketing.

I wrote them down because each of them has proven valuable in conversations with people that are marketing startups in one way or another. Here they are, in no particular order.

#1. Talk to lots of customers in a short period of time.

#2. Build a referral program* And make it double-sided, so that both the inviter and person invited get something out of the transaction. In the case of Pipedrive’s referral program, the person referred gets an extra month of trial and if the invited user subscribes, the inviter gets Pipedrive credits as a reward. Nothing hugely attractive but adds a predictable number of new customers every month without requiring almost any management.

More on referral programs here. * once you’re past your 1000 users or customers.

“Talk to customers” is the piece of advice that has probably the lowest ratio of awareness to real usage ie. everyone knows it and no-one seems to do enough of it. Let me one-up this: speak to a couple of dozen of customers in a short time at least once when you start working with a new company or customer group.

I spoke to nearly 40 customers in 3 weeks for an hour each about 1,5 years ago as part of a customer persona exercise and while the result was useful, the process of having gone through this was even more useful. This dramatically increased my ability to create connections between Pipedrive’s offering and our customers. I can now relate new features we announce to specific places in the day-to-day of customers.

When I look at product usage stats or market research slides, particular pieces of these conversations spring to mind and help to bring data to life. (There was also the practical added benefit of finding three really insightful case studies for our blog.)

And here’s a practical tip. The answer to the question how many customers should I talk to is: keep talking to more customers until the stories you hear back start to resemble each other. If you have a homogenous user base the right number may be 10, but in most cases it’s safe to aim for 25 or so.

Illustration from the tell-a-friend page of Pipedrive.

#3. Don’t count on press releases.

Press releases in early stage tech media relations are not necessarily bad; they’re just not an effective way to get coverage. Instead, find the relevant journalists and bloggers in your field and reach out to them directly with a pitch that is concise, personal and focused on helping them to write a good story (vs helping you to get all the details about your product or service out).

Press releases are useful for two things though. Writing one helps to fine tune what you want to say and generates an

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artificial deadline that adds a sense of exclusivity and urgency to your communication with your shortlist of bloggers. (“We’re announcing our funding round next Wednesday, but happy to send you all the details this week already”).

There’s much more to getting media coverage, and there are good posts about it out there, but not relying on press releases is a good way to start.

#4. Build an email list as early as you can.

Email is the best marketing channel, period. It’s efficient, highly trackable and 99% under your control. When you’re at a very early stage, building an email list of interested people makes it easier to launch with a bang. And a later stage it’s perfect for scaling content marketing.

At Pipedrive, we invest quite a bit of time and money into distributing the content we’ve created. With social algorithms changing more frequently than Donald Trump’s views, email is by far the most predictable and efficient channel for getting people to read and share our blog posts.

#5. Define value proposition early.

This one is a bit of a “I wish I’d done this earlier” for me.

During the early days of Pipedrive, we tried to lock down the key messages of the product and didn’t get to a good place with it. We had too many potential ways to talk about Pipedrive, and not enough validations to pick one. So we (read: I) kind of let it drift. It’s not like we had nothing: there were a couple of not half bad descriptions and we did numerous AB tests on the website to find the best-converting one. Also, we had a modest media budget and the number of people in the company was only a couple of dozen, so information tended to spread organically. All in all, this didn’t appear like the most pressing thing to work on.

And then Pipedrive raised its A-round and the team as well as marketing budget started to grow rapidly, and we were in desperate need of a crisp value proposition. We got it done and have gotten it socialized internally, but we really should have taken the time for this a year or two earlier.

ongoing process that answers the following questions: • What content to produce to hit specific business goals • What language to use overall and on specific landing pages • Where to focus link building efforts Not a bad list of questions to have answered, right?

Time and time again I’ve seen that content produced without a solid keyword base is a bit like building a gas station away from roads. Unless your model works with content that goes “viral” it’s a wise thing to invest in keyword research.

#8. Start paid marketing early.

At Pipedrive, we started experimenting with a$1000 monthly advertising budget as soon as we had that much spare money in the bank. While the effect at the time was almost invisible early on, this helped to start learning. And later, when we had money to invest into ads, we knew which channels drove new business and what was life-time-value (LTV) of different channels and keywords.

#9. Find ways to get qualified traffic where CPA/CPC is notably lower than major platforms like Adwords.

Related to the previous tip, Adwords is very often the logical place to start for existing product categories because the buying intent is there along with a decent volume of searches.

The challenge for many startups is that if you pay $10 or more for a click, it’s difficult to make economics work if your funnel hasn’t been optimized yet, you don’t have real churn and LTV data and you’re not funded in a similar fashion to that geese are fed in Normandy. (This might be a bit of a niche analogy but a man has to take risk every now and then.

Even useless risk.)

The good news is almost always there are channels that have equally qualified traffic but that charge a much more reasonable CPC because they’re in growth mode and/or are getting their traffic for cheap thanks to good SEO. Just search for keywords relevant to you and see which sites pop up on the first page of Google.

#10. Talk to others in your field. #6. Customize your site with geo-specific elements.

As documented here, here and here, Pipedrive geo targets elements of the site based on country and larger US states.

Web visitors from Miami see different testimonials than those from California or Germany.

We’ve changed our website in several ways since we released this but back in the day this “hack” had a double-digit conversion uplift.

#7. Do keyword research.

Keyword research is a bit of an exercise and a bit of an

The best tips and precise stats are seldom shared in public blog posts like this. And sometimes the person that knows exactly the thing you need just is not a blogger/speaker type.

So I’ve developed a habit of reaching out to marketers in my field and scheduling 40-60 min calls to compare notes.

Sometimes I’ve done this via intros, but even cold Twitter or LinkedIn outreach works with a 50+% hit rate in my experience. Speaking to active practitioners has a 1:10 ratio of usefulness compared to time spent with books, blogs and podcasts, so this thing which never seems urgent to justify taking the time for, is a very wise thing to allocate time for.

These were the ten tips I felt were relevant enough to share.

I’m failing my New Year’s Resolution to write one decent post per month but I’m already past the number of posts of last year, so I might consider this fail a success in the end.

The science of viral content: Why certain emotions ignite social engagement COLUMNIST KERRY JONES DIGS INTO NEW RESEARCH ON THE ROLE OF AROUSAL AND DOMINANCE IN VIRAL SHARING.

By Kerry Jones

If you’re looking to attract high engagement through content marketing, it’s essential to understand why people choose to share and interact with content.

New research suggests that it’s not just individual emotions, such as surprise or anger, that spur high levels of engagement needed to make something “go viral.” It turns out some emotions are extremely effective at driving people to share due to the levels of arousal and dominance they ignite.

The right levels of emotional sentiment and arousal have long been known to be key elements in effective marketing messages. But this research has found that a third emotional factor, called dominance, may play a key role in getting people to talk about your content.

The role of valence, arousal and dominance in viral content What’s unique about viral content is that it stimulates emotions that fall within certain configurations on the Valence-ArousalDominance model, an emotional categorization scale made up of three factors that measure how people react to different stimuli. These factors are called valence, arousal and dominance:

•

Valence is the positivity or negativity of an emotion.

•

Arousal describes the level of excitement different emotions elicit. Anger and joy tend to be high arousal, while sadness and reflection have low arousal levels.

•

Dominance relates to feeling in or out of control. Fear has low dominance, while anger is considered high dominance.

The researchers looked at 65,000 articles on two sites that allow readers to give emotional scores to content. They found that the articles with high numbers of social sharing often elicited feelings of being in control, or high dominance.

This finding explains why people tend to share a lot of “feelgood content” that’s inspiring or joyful.

When it came to the articles with a lot of comments, the researchers found high-arousal emotions, such as anger, paired with low-dominance (or “out of control”) emotions, such as fear, drove discussion around the articles. Consider how many angry comments you’ll see on the average politically charged article, and this finding isn’t too surprising.

TL;DR: High arousal is crucial for spurring discussion, while high dominance is a key driver for social sharing behavior.

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The emotional combinations behind viral content So how can marketers apply this knowledge? Our team at Fractl dug deeper to better understand what dominance and arousal mean for content creators. In our latest study on viral emotions, we examined the additional emotional factors that explain why people are driven to share content.

always included an element of surprise.

What does this mean for marketers? 3 takeaways for increasing engagement Content creators looking to increase social engagement should incorporate specific emotional combinations into their content in order to stimulate the right levels of arousal and dominance to spur action.

As part of our research, we asked 400 people to rate their emotional responses to a collection of the 100 most shared images on the Reddit subgroup r/pics. We then charted the responses to each image on the PAD model, similar to the Valence-Arousal-Dominance model, to see the levels of dominance and arousal ignited by each emotion.

Happiness and surprise are a winning combination for social sharing

Looking at the top 10 emotional responses from our survey, you can see that positive emotions were extremely common.

The top three emotions elicited were happiness, surprise and admiration. The only emotion without a positive connotation is concentration, which is considered a neutral emotion.

You need to look no further than the recent phenomenon of Chewbacca Mom to know that light-hearted but compelling content rules when it comes to social sharing.

Content that pairs happiness and surprise makes people feel good, while showing them something they didn’t expect or have never seen before. This uplifting emotional experience is what makes people share positive content.

Want people to comment? Play up high-arousal emotions Even if your content isn’t surprising, it can still drive a ton of engagement if it hits the right emotional hot buttons. Higharousal emotions elicit commenting behavior, so if you want people talking about your content, incorporate arousing emotions like anger and excitement.

On the surface, you might believe that all it takes to go viral is a feel-good message. But when you consider the relationship between arousal, dominance and emotional sentiment, you can see that there’s much more to it.

A few combinations of arousal and dominance occurred most frequently in the emotional responses in our survey, as illustrated in the chart(2).

Don’t be a total downer; pair sadness with surprise and admiration

When both arousal and dominance were high, the emotional responses were either all positive or a mix of positive emotions and surprise. This tells us that lighthearted content doesn’t need to be emotionally complex to perform well.

Content that doesn’t ignite high arousal tends to do well when it includes an unexpected twist or an element of admiration.

Even sad content can perform well socially; the key is to include some form of a silver lining to avoid making your content downright depressing.

When arousal was high but dominance was low, the emotional responses were more complex. In other words, content that makes people feel a lack of control needs to take them on an emotional rollercoaster for it to be engaging.

When both arousal and dominance were low, the content

Kerry Jones is the Associate Marketing Director at Frac. tl, a content marketing agency that specializes in the science behind viral marketing campaigns.

How to Build a Brand from Nothing

By Hiten Shah

In Leo Widrich’s first few months as co-founder of Buffer, he wrote two to three guest blog posts every day. He joined the company in January 2011, and by April, he’d gotten their brand featured in over 100 blogs. Within nine months, they’d signed up over 100,000 users.

People call what Leo did “content marketing”, “customer acquisition” and “doing things that don’t scale”, but that misses the bigger picture.

In nine short months, Leo built Buffer into a meaningful brand!

The Importance of Brand

You build a brand when you’ve carved out a piece of peoples’ brains.

Think about why Amazon is so addictive—they have a piece of our brain. Whenever we think about buying nearly any product, our first thought is to go on Amazon and get it for the lowest price. I know that I can open the app, tap twice, and have it at my house in two days.

In the early days building a brand means that you start getting direct, unattributed visitors coming to your site. These are people who are visiting your site for no reason, other than that you’ve carved out a little piece of their brains. They

had a thought, and that triggered them to make a beeline to your site.

In the long term, this means that your brand spreads. Because you have space in peoples’ heads, people are thinking about you, and that means they’ll talk about you and tell your friends.

That’s why building your brand is so important. It’s what gets you off the treadmill of “doing things that don’t scale” and gets you toward real growth.

To build your brand from nothing, you need two things: novelty and repetition.

Novelty

Novelty: the quality of being new, original or unusual.

Since 1999, 37signals has been blogging about what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, and how they think about building their business. Back when they started, that was incredibly unusual. No one else was sharing how they balanced building products with consulting, or how they did A/B testing for their SaaS business.

They’re the poster child in SaaS for creating novelty around

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brand by sharing, educating, and helping other people learn.

Here’s how we defined novelty for our brand early at KISSmetrics:

We would share anyone and everyone’s marketing analytics content, as long as it was high-quality and genuinely useful.

We defined our brand by being helpful, and that made our Twitter account the go-to place for marketers to learn more about analytics. Over time, we grew our Twitter following to 200,000+ people, all 100% organic, without spending a dime.

Here’s how Leo defined novelty for Buffer’s brand:

How to do well on Twitter, with or without Buffer.

Over time, they injected more novelty into the brand with their scientific approach to happiness and productivity and their radical approach to company transparency. They were able to keep that novelty fresh and make it last, because it came from an authentic and genuine place.

In order to build a brand, you can’t just talk about novelty.

You have to actually put it into practice and create a novel experience for people.

Repetition To carve out space in someone’s brain, you need to get in their head over and over until you’re there to stay. You need repetition.

The “content” in “content marketing” is key here:

Content can be a tweet, a Facebook post, a blog post, or anything that can be repeatedly produced and distributed.

The power of content is that it can scale, both in terms of the infinite number of people who can consume an individual piece of content and the innumerable ways content can be packaged and produced. That scale is what creates the repetition that makes the brand.

When Leo talks about his guest blogging strategy, he emphasizes the importance of “pick[ing] quantity over quality.” Put differently: People often overvalue brand substance and undervalue brand repetition.

Leo kept the substance narrow and centered entirely around how to do well on Twitter. He put his focus on repetition and cranked out over 150 guest posts, and that’s what made Buffer an authority on the best ways to use Twitter.

At Quick Sprout, we built a brand through my co-founder Neil Patel. We put nearly identical shots of his face on the front page, on the sidebar of the blog, on his Twitter, on his personal site and more. All that repetition adds up into making a memorable impression and carving out space in peoples’ heads.

More examples of repetition that builds the brand

The Best Way to Build a Brand Starts with You

At AdEspresso, every team member is drinking espresso in his or her team shot. They also use the same photos across their Facebook and Twitter profiles.

When you’re starting from nothing, you’re the best brand that you can build for your business. This is the playbook that’s led people like Jason Fried, Neil Patel, and Leo Widrich to build both personal brands and their company brands from scratch.

In co-founder Armando Biondi’s words, it’s the “low-intensity frequency that builds brand and confidence” and he credits it for getting them from 0 to $1M+ in annual recurring revenue.

At ReadMe, they put their owl startup mascot everywhere on their site, they use it in all of their social media and communications with customers and they have it all over their office. They also make it fun.

To founder Greg Koberger, the repetition means that “our customers know Owlbert now, but more importantly, they know that our company is a little different.”

• The novelty is based in what inspired you to start your business.

• Early on, repetition is easy because you can do it against you yourself and your story. People like stories and they always want to hear about why you started your business.

When you do that, you’ll gather your collective tribe around you, and you’ll start to sit in peoples’ heads. Through repetition and maintaining novelty, you can carve out more and more space.

Before you know it, people are thinking behaviorally about you and your business. Because they’re thinking about you, they’re talking about you and sharing your product with their friends.

Building a brand is about more than giving out free swag with your logo on it. It’s about creating stories. Your product and your company exist to do jobs for your customers and help them succeed.

There are more tools and products in SaaS today than ever before. For every job that needs doing, there are a multitude of tools that fill the space. Ultimately, your brand is what differentiates your company and your product in the minds of your customers. Brand is what you need to focus on in order to compete in today’s crowded markets.

Why brands should be honest on Social Media HONESTY ON SOCIAL MEDIA JUST MAY BE THE BEST POLICY

By Malcolm Cox

It’s remarkable how much brands and consumers are alike in terms of their approaches to social media. They both are prone to self-exaggeration insofar as their lives and businesses shine in ways that may not actually tell the truth or at least the whole story. It is a form of self-protection to put one’s best face forward especially in the often rough-n-tumble world of Facebook and Twitter where trolls often are on the lookout for weakness and are quick to shame or humiliate.

Just ask Leslie Jones, the African-American actress and one of the stars of the new “Ghostbusters’ cinema reboot, who has been the target of some hateful racist abuse on Twitter of late, resulting in her deleting her account the same week her movie was released.

[Editor note: Jones’s Twitter account has since been reactivated.]

Despite the potential to be on the unwelcome receiving end of such undeserved vitriol, brands and people alike are better served if they commit themselves to portraying themselves in a more authentic light. Honesty is the ladder to trust, and in the case of advertisers, trust is arguably the most valuable commodity a brand can have with its consumer base. Consumers know that brands aren’t perfect in the same way that they recognize flaws in their loved ones and friends as well as themselves. They are more apt to develop affinity for a brand that isn’t afraid to present themselves in an honest manner, warts and all. By admitting to mistakes or even frailties, brands humanize themselves and consumers will respond in kind with warmth and honesty. This is what leads to engagement and ultimately transactions.

Allow me to give an example from my own company’s experiences that reflect this idea. Recently, in our London office, we interviewed a management candidate, who we will call “Lizzie,” a young lady with impressive agency experience, superior academic qualifications and glowing client references.

While she looked great on paper and was quite endearing in person, we got the sense that she was hiding her true essence. She claimed to lead a boring, quiet life in the suburbs. So we investigated and her Twitter feed revealed something different. On weekends, Lizzie

transformed herself with the help of face paint into an alter ego, “Catface,” a feline rave denizen.

Did this revelation diminish our strong assessment of Lizzie’s worth as a potential Grapeshot manager? Hardly. We offered her a job on the spot, and she is off to a roaring start, no pun intended.

It’s quite understandable why Lizzie held back this colorful part of her personality. Many companies aren’t as openminded and might count it as a strike against her. Those entities are likely the same ones who sanitize every single facet of their online personas across FB, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, et. al. to create these gleaming, flawless, and wholly unbelievable versions of themselves.

By the way, there is a big difference between authenticity and stupidity. Certainly, everyone on social media would be badly served by being a total open book. Life and the marketplace are too complex for everyone to allow himself or herself full transparency and that goes for social media.

There are certainly aspects of ourselves that we all should keep private while at the same time, on the whole, being a straightforward, honest person who people like and trust.

So untag those pics of you bleary-eyed with a traffic cone on your head during that college bender. Whereas, Catface on the nightclub podium indicates an authentic, interesting individuality that suggests a creative, broad thinker.

With thoughtful care and attention, any brand can convey significant meaning to its customers. Honing in on a dynamic and authentic brand signature will ultimately guide you well.

In so doing, like Catface, brands will likely solidify and broaden their appeal to those folks who will truly appreciate their products or services. By trying to be all things to all people through a sheen of phoniness, advertisers will only serve to alienate consumers and minimize the success of their brands.

Malcolm Cox, Grapeshot, Marketing Director

Book,

&

Line

Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing

Sinker

By Jamie Holmes

Content Chemistry: An Illustrated Handbook for Content Marketing 2nd Edition

As Jamie Holmes shows in Nonsense, being confused is unpleasant, so we tend to shutter our minds as we grasp for meaning and stability, especially in stressful circumstances. We’re hard-wired to resolve contradictions quickly and extinguish anomalies. This can be useful, of course. When a tiger is chasing you, you can’t be indecisive. But as Nonsense reveals, our need for closure has its own dangers. It makes us stick to our first answer...

By Andy Crestodina The result of thousands of conversations about web marketing with hundreds of companies, this handbook is a compilation of the most important and effective lessons and advice about the power of search engine optimization, social media, and email marketing. The first and only comprehensive guide to content marketing, this book explains the social, analytical, and creative...

Think and Grow Rich: The Landmark Bestseller - Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century

The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period!

By Napoleon Hill, Arthur R. Pell Think and Grow Rich has been called the “Granddaddy of All Motivational Literature.” It was the first book to boldly ask, “What makes a winner?” The man who asked and listened for the answer, Napoleon Hill, is now counted in the top ranks of the world’s winners himself.

Driving Demand: Transforming B2B Marketing to Meet the Needs of the Modern Buyer

By Carlos Hidalgo Carlos Hidalgo provides a clear roadmap and framework on how B2B organizations can implement change management and transform their Demand Generation. Case studies and excerpts from B2B marketing practitioners and ANNUITAS clients who have transformed their organizations and how they accomplished this change are incorporated throughout the book.

Linked to Influence: 7 Powerful Rules for Becoming a Top Influencer in Your Market and Attracting Your Ideal Clients on LinkedIn

By Stephanie Sammons In Linked to Influence, Stephanie combines her high-trust marketing and sales experience with her in-depth LinkedIn knowledge to give you an actionable strategy for success. She shares a comprehensive, step-by-step process that can help you develop a more influential LinkedIn presence and client attraction process.

By Stoney deGeyter So you want to build a website, or make your current site better? Where do you start? The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period! answers that question and more. It is a comprehensive digital marketing guide that will help any company build or improve their website so that it performs optimally for both search engines and visitors.

These web marketing strategies will not only increase your website traffic but improve your entire web presence as well...

X: The Experience When Business Meets Design

By Brian Solis In his new book X: The Experience When Business Meets Design bestselling author Brian Solis shares why great products are no longer good enough to win with customers and why creative marketing and delightful customer service too are not enough to succeed. In X, he shares why the future of business is experiential and how to create and cultivate meaningful experiences.

Meaningful: The Story of Ideas That Fly

By Bernadette Jiwa One of Inc Magazine’s Top Business Books of 2015. Our new digital landscape has spawned an entrepreneurial culture and the belief that anyone with a laptop and an Internet connection has the power to change the world—to create an idea that flies. But for every groundbreaking business that started this way, a thousand others have stalled or failed. Why? What’s the secret to success? What do Khan Academy, the GoPro camera, the Dyson vacuum cleaner and Kickstarter have in common?

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Shareology: How Sharing is Powering the Human Economy

By Bryan J Kramer

Stand Out: How to Find Your Breakthrough Idea and Build a Following Around It

Sharelogy explores the history, art and science of sharing, and illustrates why sharing is what gives us a unique competitive advantage as individuals and brands. It is meant for entrepreneurs and marketers who want to make their content more valuable, shareable, and for individuals who want to understand the power of sharing to grow their personal brand.

By D. B. Holt

Who Do You Want Your Customers to Become Audible – Unabridged

Subscription Marketing Audible – Unabridged

By Michael Schrage, Erik Synnestvedt (Narrator), LLC Gildan Media (Publisher)

A guide to becoming a recognized expert in your field. Too many people believe that if they keep their heads down and work hard, they’ll be recognized as experts on the merits of their work. But that’s simply not true anymore. Dorie Clark explains how to identify the ideas that set you apart and promote them successfully. The key is to recognize your own value, cultivate your expertise, and put yourself out there.

By Anne H. Janzer (Author, Narrator), Cuesta Park Consulting (Publisher)

In this latest HBR Single, Schrage provides a powerful new lens for getting more value out of innovation investment. He argues that asking customers to do something different doesn’t go far enough - serious marketers and innovators must ask them to become something different instead.

Subscription Marketing offers creative marketing strategies for nurturing subscription customers long after the initial sale, using marketing campaigns and programs to increase customer retention, reduce churn, and support customer advocacy. The book describes marketing practices that nurture the ongoing solution value to the customer.

The Membership Economy: Find Your Super Users, Master the Forever Transaction, and Build Recurring Revenue Audible – Unabridged

The Science of Growth: How Facebook Beat Friendster - and How Nine Other Startups Left the Rest in the Dust Audible – Unabridged

By Robbie Kellman Baxte, Tom Pile (Narrator), Audible Studios (Publisher)

By Sean Ammirati, Richard Florida, Fajer AlKaisi (Narrator), Audible Studios (Publisher)

Find Your Super Users, Master the Forever Transaction, and Build Recurring Revenue.

The Membership Economy argues that we are now moving away from ownership, but we still want the benefits that come with access.

With intriguing examples as LinkedIn vs. Spoke, Facebook vs. Friendster, and McDonald’s vs.

White Castle, Ammirati shows the secret of “the science of growth” and how to cultivate it in any organization.

The Third Wave: An Entrepreneur’s Vision of the Future Audible – Unabridged

Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike Audible – Unabridged

By Steve Case (Author, Narrator), Simon & Schuster Audio (Publisher)

By Phil Knight, Norbert Leo Butz (Narrator), Phil Knight (introduction) (Narrator), Simon & Schuster Audio (Publisher)

In The Third Wave, Case uses his insights garnered from nearly four decades of working as an innovator, investor, and businessperson to chart a path for future visionaries. From his position as an investor in start-ups like Zipcar and LivingSocial, Case predicts the future of the economy and describes what he calls the “Third Wave of the Internet”.

In this candid and riveting memoir, for the first time ever, Nike founder and CEO Phil Knight shares the inside story of the company’s early days as an intrepid start-up and its evolution into one of the world’s most iconic, game-changing, and profitable brands.