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Dear Readers: Hope the New Year has begun well for you & yours. Just as we look forward to lots this year, there is quite a bit in store in this issue of Brand Knew. You can get to know the mystery behind Apple’s Apple. Or, what the creative forecast is for the year 2015. Building a personal brand has never been more significant and we examine that in this issue. Instagram has been gaining in strength over time and we evaluate and share how brands can maximize the use of the fast growing social media platform. Also of interest to you would be the feature on how to build a killer brand identity and what goes behind the creation of one. Vikram Chadha’s Show, Don’t Tell is an interesting twist to what brands need to do on the ground to get attention. We do some crystal ball gazing and share what the best brands will do in this year while also looking back at the Best and Worst of what brands did in 2014. Lots more and a power packed issue is here for you to savor. Happy reading! Best always
Suresh Dinakaran
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@sureshdinakaran linkd.in/1dsjYaW bit.ly/1h95tgO suresh@groupisd.com
Managing Editor: Suresh Dinakaran Creative Head/Director Operations: Pravin Ahir Magazine Concept & Design/ New Media Specialist: Mufaddal Joher Country Head, UK: Sagar Patil Country Head, India: Rohit Unni Digital/Social Media Marketing: Loknath Swain, Vishnu Nath Associate: Brand Success: Andre Van Helsdingen Web Specialist: Prasanta Kumar Sahu Online Support: Mahendra Kumar Behera
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CONTENTS
The Best And Worst Branding Of 2014 What The Best Brands Will Do In 2015 How Marketing Will Change In 2015: The Creative Forecast The Myths and Mysteries of Apple’s Apple Branding 101: The Small-Business Guide to Building a Killer Brand Identity Show, Don’t Tell Why brands should spend longer writing their promoted trends 26 Universal Questions for Positioning Your Brand (and Creating Your Brand Story) New year: New personal brand and 15 reasons why you need one Why Social Media Marketers and Brand Managers Should Care About Employee Advocacy 7 ways that brands can get the most out of Instagram Top Brand Marketers Share What They’re Gearing Up for in 2015 Book, Line & Sinker
The Best And Worst Branding Of 2014 Mark Wilson
Great branding is more than a logo. It’s more than a list of acceptable fonts, too, or even some 100-page PDF containing everything from measurements on proper margins to deep verb-subject-adjective explorations on writing the proper “voice.” Great branding is really the DNA of product or company, manifested through various media in ways that the public can recognize and understand. With that in mind, above is a collection of our biggest branding stories of 2014. It’s not just a highlight reel of great branding. You’ll see some of that, of course, but you’ll also see some of the worst branding of 2014, too, along with essays on branding from some of the best names in the business.
BEST: Remaking The MIT Media Lab From shapeshifting displays to technology that could 3-D print selflacing McFlys, the MIT Media Lab reinvents the way we think about the future every single day. Now the Media Lab reinvented its visual identity with the help of Pentagram partner Michael Bierut, who created an abstract logotypeface hybrid in a 49-pixel grid.
WORST: The World Trade Center’s New, Confusing Logo The new World Trade Center logo manages to squeeze in so many references, juggling a landmark, a Twin Tower tribute, and an ad in one, that it feels like it’s pandering. But given the wildly competing interests that have informed the redevelopment of the site, this logo just might be the perfect embodiment of a space still in search of its identity.
BEST: The Security Bug Heartbleed Has A Catchy Logo Heartbleed might be the first security bug to get its own name, registered domain (Heartbleed.com), sleekly designed FAQs explaining the bug, and a designer logo. It isn’t the world’s most sophisticated logo—a bleeding heart to convey a bleeding heart—but as a way to communicate the perils of a security hole that reportedly afflicted half a million websites, it got the job done with blunt efficiency.
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BEST: The New York Times Play Button To launch the Times’ new video hub, branding consultancy Work-Order slyly toned down the gothic elements, changing the “T” in the Times Old English font to incorporate a digital play button.
WORST: Airbnb’s New Logo Looks Awfully Familiar There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the design of Airbnb’s new branding. The logo, which resembles a paperclip bent into the shape of a heart, actually has a compelling logic. The problem: it looks an awful lot like another logo, that of the IT company Automation Anywhere. Read more.
WORST: Pizza Hut’s Saucy Rebranding BEST: The Badass Postal Service Branding That Could Have Been The USPS has been going through some tough times. So imagine if every time you mailed a box, that box was really an eagle swooping down to rip the limbs off of FedEx and UPS? Pretty great, right?
You probably don’t think about a Pizza Hut Meat Lover’s pizza and think “fine dining,” but when launching their new menu this year, the company channeled the visual language of haute cuisine to elevate their product. Too bad it’s the equivalent of a middle-aged guy buying a bright red sports car in the quest to rekindle his glory days.
WORST: Netflix’s Boring New Logo Netflix quietly introduced a new logo that gave up its boldness in the interest of flatness. Here’s why that was a bad move.
WORST: 100 Years Of Depressing Olympic Logos Lousy Olympics logos are a tradition almost as longlived as the Olympics themselves!
BEST: This Logo Is Just A Bunch Of Squiggly Lines, And It’s Perfect Designed for the U.K.’s Melbourn Squash Club, the logo was created to show squash’s frantic motion—a welcome departure from traditional athletic clubs logos that uncreatively portray players or sporting equipment.
WORST: Oscar Meyer Rebrands Lunchables For Adults Remember the Lunchables you used to pack as your lunch? They’re now called P3s to woo you as a grownup—that stands for “Portable Protein Pack.” Gag.
WORST: Olive Garden’s New Logo Is The Pits “The gray evokes the ashen complexion of someone who has just discovered that he will be having dinner at an Olive Garden, while the green resembles the complexion of that same patron as he nauseously walks out of the restaurant, his meal completed.” But the breadsticks are still alright.
WORST: An Apology To Hershey’s And Emoji Poo Fun with Photoshop and the new Hershey’s logo , but hey, don’t make a brown Hershey’s Kiss part of your logo in the era of emoji poo.
Mark Wilson is a writer who started Philanthroper.com, a simple way to give back every day. His work has also appeared at Gizmodo, Kotaku, PopMech, PopSci, Esquire, American Photo and Lucky Peach.
What The Best Brands Will Do In 2015 Andreas von der Heydt
2014 is over and smart marketers know that they need to get ahead of the trends and anticipate relevant new products and services. If not, they will be devoured by their competitors. Some of my marketing and brand forecasts heading into 2014, such as the sharp growth of the shared economy, came true sooner than expected: Airbnb is now valued more than $13 billion (vs Hyatt Hotels $9 billion) and Uber more than $18 billion. Other predictions, such as top brands’ push for being best in retail or the digital transformation, are under way and gain momentum by the day.
works and what doesn’t, re-prioritize and be smart about resource allocation and investment.
Being Best in Shifting Marketing Investments into Mobile and Digital
Now, let´s jointly look at what I think can be some of the most important focus areas of top brands in 2015:
In its most recent ad spending report, Zenith Optimedia reduced their 2015 marketing spend forecast by 0.4 points to a +5.3% growth; anticipating weaker growth for traditional media and for Europe and Japan. Strong digital media growth will be mostly fueld by mobile advertising which is expected to grow by an average of 51% a year between 2013 and 2016.
Being Best in Focusing
Being Best at Justifying Marketing ROI
Whenever I speak with chief marketing officers and marketing directors it becomes quickly obvious that many struggle with how to tackle digital marketing, how to develop a holistic content marketing strategy, and how to implement the tons of new ideas. As a consequence, in 2015 the best marketers will clean up the house and focus on selected big bets. Major projects and concepts which fit best with their brand´s DNA and core values. Going “Back to Basics” will be a key trend in 2015: To re-evaluate the target audience, determine what
Also in 2015 brands will have to challenge themselves on how to measure marketing ROI, how to maximize marketing impact in consumer and business-to-business settings, how to adopt best practices for customer lifecycle management, and how to implement state-of-the-art segmentation techniques. More than ever the challenge will be to measure the ROI of their investment in content marketing. Yesterday it was about fans and likes. Today it’s about social reach and page views. And in 2015 it will be about attention, engagement, desire,
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and how these affect the company’s sales and reputation. Leading brands will have the right software tools in place to plan and to track. You might want to check out e.g. Wingify´s A/B testing platform – called Visual Website Optimizer which is for people even if they don’t have HTML or coding experience (like me).
Being Best at Meeting The Audience Top brands constantly analyze the communities and geographies where their audience is. In most Western countries you would need to be in Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Depending on your business also in LinkedIN (a must channel for B2B marketing), Pinterest, and Youtube. In other countries, e.g. in China, sites and services like Sina Weibo, RenRen, or Pengyou should be covered. And yes, don´t worry too much about Google+ in 2015. In summary, don´t rush into every new social network. Instead find the right ones for you, i.e. evaluate carefully where your current and potential customers are and might go to. Therefore smart marketers will make sure to be in all relevant interest-based networks (as opposed to Facebookstyle people-based networks). Depending on your product consider sites for cat lovers, for cooks and food lovers, or sites like Fitocrazy for fitness junkies. You could even build your own social network (possibly in cooperation with other companies), e.g. by using Tint which is a self-service platform that allows organizations to create social hubs in minutes. Tint aggregates, curates, and displays any social media feeds anywhere. According to Mary Meeker and her famous Internet Trend Reports the 4 Ps have been supplemented by the 3Cs: Content, community, commerce. The following rising social media sites and apps every top marketer should watch: Ello (the hippster social network which promised to never sell user data, currently still in Beta and invite-only), Yik Yak (exchanges fully anonymous posts with people who are physically nearby), Whisper, Bubbly, Heard, and WeChat. To find out more on how to grow your brand and your business via social media go ahead and read the social media industry report.
Being Best at Saving Customers´ Time and Responding ASAP Top brands and companies will offer more “order ahead“ functionalities and superefficient services allowing their customers to save time. In hotels e.g. many guests want to skip the front desk. Therefore an increasing number of hotels will introduce a digital check in allowing their guests to use their smartphone as the room key. Hyatt, Hilton, and Starwood hotels are already testing some of these services. Another example is Starbucks which announced that it will introduce for the first time Mobile Order and Pay in stores in 2015. This will enable customers to place orders in advance of their visit and pick them up at their selected Starbucks location. Imagine not having to wait any longer in-line for 15 minutes for your Caramel Machiatto! Social media created a consumer with short-term thinking. And best marketers – with lots of data at their hands – are capable of faster adaption, shorter lead times, and realtime communication. Marketing champions will answer
within an hour and not within a week or a day. In Edelman’s Brandshare study of 15,000 people worldwide the number one most important behaviour indicated was a brand’s ability to respond quickly to concerns and complaints; with 78% of consumers saying it’s important but only 17% feeling brands do this well. The gap is particularly pronounced in the areas people value most – responsiveness, involvement and conviction.
Being Best at Addressing New Consumers Entering the Marketplace The Millennial generation - aka Generation Y and with most researchers using birth years ranging from the early 1980s to the mid 1990s – according to a 2014 report by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) chooses brands that are better aligned with their own morals and values. And because Millennials are social media and mobile users, the impact of their brand choices and feedback is greatly amplified and accelerated. Then there is Gen Z. A name used for the cohort of people born after the Millennial Generation, i.e. born roughly between 1995 and 2010. They carry a large influence and buying power. Gen Z demands complete personalization, expects instantaneous validation, and looks for affirmation from their peers. For example national retailer Claire’s Inc. developed their Best Friends Forever (BFF) jewelry offerings, grew their social media databases, and engaged their “tween” girl target by appealing to Gen Z´s sense of creativity and individuality. Read the whole case study here.
Being Best at Generating Engagement and Creating Emotional Bonding An excellent example is Nike´s Find Your Greatness campaign which touches all of us because it’s such a positive inclusive message. One of the campaign´s best commercials is The Jogger featuring 12-year-old Nathan from London, Ohio. Telling us that greatness is not beyond his reach, nor is it for any of us. It´s a memorable ad which reasonates with consumers as it delivers a personally meaningful message. It both links back to the brand´s values and at the same time it represents beliefs which go beyond the brand and its products. Top brands will use tools like Digital Platform GPS which can optimize placements and resolve issues related to native advertising and shorter consumer attention spans. Metrics will move away from counting the number of views, sharing, and likes, toward real engagement. Brand consultancies like Brandkeys have developed specialized systems that provide brands with predictive and strategic findings that can increase ROI, sales and profitability. Also the ability to craft visual stories that inspire emotion and spark the movement will help companies get noticed and amplify their message. For example via Visual Storytelling. If you’re looking for a book that will give you inspiration for creating a visually based marketing campaign using a wide variety of social media platforms, then I recommend you the book The Power of Visual Storytelling by E. Walter and J. Gioglio.
Being Best at Practicing a Human and Transparent Communication Style Leading brands will interact with their audience with respect and not just post and think that´s it. They exchange with their customers in a consistent and regular manner, answer quickly and clearly their questions. These brands will give an accurate and real time picture of what they are doing in the interest of the consumer, at any given time. They define e.g. content marketing as not being advertising. They focus on building relationships in a simple and straightforward manner. Taking the Classroom to the Streets is an excellent example for such a campaign, even executed with a small budget. I also see more and more companies applying human and humorous elements. A good laugh or the vulnerability of silliness is a convincing way to earn trust and loyalty. Wren, a small L.A. clothing label , with “First Kiss” did a three-and-ahave-minute video showing strangers being asked to kiss on camera. Showing deep emotions and human vulnerability it was – and even if you did not like it – affecting, fascinating, and touching. And by the way, it got 5 million views in its first day, and has close to 100 million to date. Another good example: In honor of Earth Day on April 22, NASA has invited everyone to take part in a Global Selfie and submit a photo via Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, and Google+. Finally an image was built using 36,422 individual photos.
Being Best at Caring in a Sincere Manner Most of today´s consumers do not express their protests in the streets anymore. They´re voting for or against a brand at the check-out of both offline and online stores. In other words: Top brands will supplement their big and often anonymous Corporate Social Responsibility projects with more localized, individualized, and personalized initiatives. Marketers will need to keep adding “purpose” to their brands and products. In 2015 consumers want to balance more than ever consumption with ethical concerns. Initiatives like Small Business Saturday or Giving Tuesday as a natural corrective to Black Friday and Cyber Monday will gain further momentum. Top brands will need to find a way to get involved now and not to be left out. They will need to support people to find their individual strengths, skills, and ways to improve their behaviour and way of life. Either by offering special services and trainings which go beyond the pure product or by granting personalized incentives or rewards that motivate customers to continue with their efforts. A good example is the Headspace meditation app. As a user you can map your journey, track your progress, and get rewards as you go. You can even buddy up with friends and motivate each other along the way. Foodtweeks is another superb example for combining business with supporting relevant causes. Every calorie you trim with Foodtweek will be donated to a local food bank and becomes a nutritious calorie for a hungry family.
Being Best at Applying New Marketing Technologies Too many companies think in terms of digital marketing.
Instead, they should be thinking in terms of marketing in a digital world. The best marketers in 2015 will consider themselves also as marketing technologists. As someone with heavy digital acumen and a passion for technology, data, and analytics. Without doubt, 2015 will be the year digital measurement finally comes of age. Smart brands have already formalized their efforts across organizations as well as marketing and IT departments. You might want to check out the following course about strategic data-driven marketing. For additional good courses to acquire e.g. data science degrees for a fraction of cost of business schools have a look at these excellent MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) courses. Another very useful source of information can be found here. Companies like Google are also offering some helpful seminars and tools with its Analytics Academy or its Analytics Premium tool. The very best brands, however, will go beyond analytics in 2015 as they´ve understood that analyzing is only a descriptive exercise. Benchmarking is fundamental to understanding what’s happening today. But to outperform your competitors you need something that will help you produce the right content moving forward. These brands will use social media analytics and competitive intelligence platforms like Unmetric which are able to compile data in minutes, analyze marketing efforts and compare them against the competitors that matter. Armed with this information and specific datadriven creativity tools such marketers will be able to plan and create content that will set their brands apart. As a topnotch marketer you should also know Kenshoo which offers one of the most advanced predictive marketing softwares encompassing campaign creation, audience targeting, bidding and budgeting, measurement, training and support.
Being Best at Marketing New Consumer Technology Visual communication will be a main trend in 2015. Just think Instagram or YouTube for videos. However, and what a surprise, YouTube is not the only traffic-generating place where you can upload your videos. I recommend also the following ones to upload and distribute your video content: Vimeo (fast growing!), Flickr (not only for still images), Break, Dailymotion, and Vine. Another trend is the further rise of messaging apps. The most popular ones are: WhatsApp (still the dominant leader), Slack (very popular among young businesses), Snapchat (alhough there were privacy concerns), Kik (popular among teens), and Japanese Line (popular among celebs, allowing voice calls over the internet, etc.). Video blogs and videos will continue to gain significant more share versus print and text blogs. Already today more than 5,000 companies use e.g. Brightcove to publish and distribute online videos to websites, social networks, smartphones and tablets. Simple, clean, and single-purpose apps which are easy and fast to use will be another major trend to watch in 2015. Even Facebook looks to further unbundle its experience into single-use applications like messaging, photography, contact management, location services, etc. Foursquare has already
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broken itself up by having launched Swarm some months ago. Other multi-brand and multi-product companies should seriously think about how best to develop unique apps for each of them. Saying that, marketers must carefully review their core user base, analyze their behaviors, needs, and wants. And only then define their (mobile) app and content strategy: single-use app, multi-purpose apps, and/or hybrid apps. Artificial Intelligence (AI), virtual reality, and wearables represent another three key technologies in 2015 for top brands to follow and possibly to shape. In regards of AI many leading brands – and not only the usual suspects like Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc. - will take their first serious steps with machine learning and will invest in robotics. With giant eyes and a childlike face Softbank´s Pepper humanoid robot that can read and react to human emotions will help to sell Nescafe coffee in Japan. Also other companies e.g. in the hospitality industry will use cutting-edge technology to create unique guest experiences by offering drone delivery service like at the Casa Madrona hotel in Sausalito or the robot A.L.O. as a concierge at the Aloft Hotel in Cupertino, California. Even if in 2015 AI might be embraced only by the very elite of the top brands, progressive marketers should already now think about using tools which are powered by AI such as e.g. Conversica which is one of the very few automated software solutions that can contact, engage, nurture, qualify and follow-up with leads without the need for human interaction. With developments such as a cardboard DIY headset from Google and the Samsung Gear VR coming soon, I expect that also virtual reality will get closer to the mainstream in 2015 than ever before. Finally, wearables like fitness trackers (e.g. those from Jawbone and Fitbit), fitness-tracker and smartwatch hybrids like the Gear Fit and Microsoft Band, smartwatches like Samsung Gear S, Motorola Moto 360, Pebble, or the soon to come iWatch of Apple collect data and zapping it off wirelessly to the Internet and all major social networks. Regardless if it´s agood thing or not, it will happen and as a marketer you better know what to do about it.
Being Best at Offering Easy Mobile Payment Solutions With Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and many more working on it the mobile wallet will get significant traction in 2015. In addition, there are other powerful new kids on the block which top marketers need to have on their radar; like Venmo, SinglePoint, Square or Level Up. Although at this
stage the endgame isn’t exactly clear, for sure we will also see major social networks trying more aggressively to handle financial transactions in 2015. Click here to get the latest mobile payment influencer study.
Being Best at Embracing the Sharing Economy All leading and ambitious brands will need to be part of it. Full stop. Even, if it´s only to try it and to learn from their experiences to further develop their main products and offerings. The sharing economy has arrived in a big way and is here to stay. The internet of things will also become the internet of sharing things. Although in some countries some old-fashioned and backward looking politicians and lobbyists try to stop some Peer-to-Peer sites with sometimes obscure legal means, by now most of us have taken an Uber ride or stayed at an Airbnb place. In 2015 the sharing economy will enter the next level. First, existing players will diversify their offers. Ride-sharing service Lyft e.g. launched Lyft Line mid of 2014. Currently available in three US cities, users can share a ride with others going the same way, and pay up to 60% less. There will be a national roll out during 2015. Second, third party companies like Breeze – only founded in 2014 and backed by Marc Cuban – will build an ecosystem around existing sharing economy companies. Breeze e.g. offers customers flexible access to vehicles they can use to support jobs as drivers for Uber, Lyft, etc. Denver-based Evolve is doing something similar by offering marketing and booking services for homeowners and offering travelers a simple booking experience. Third, the sharing economy will spread into all areas of life. Think of companies like Simplist which helps you find experts across all of your networks. And fourth, it is expected that membership and subscription models will continue to grow in 2015 such as book subscription services like Kindle Unlimited, Scribd, Oyster or video streaming services like
Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, Google Play, etc. To get more info, data, case studies, etc. on the pulse of Mesh and the sharing economy click here.
Being Best at Data Security Remember Target, Home Depot, eBay, Sony... All of them – and many more companies – were hacked. Customer data is a key asset for both companies and for their customers. Unfortunately, still too many companies are treating customer data with woefully inadequate protections. As “The Internet of All Things” matures, consumers will expect greater security. The time is now to apply a strict security strategy and to to have contingency plans in place. Moreover there is a severe need to cooperate e.g. with specialized companies like Security Scorecard which provide insights into the security posture and key risks of a company and its business partners to proactively tackle cybercriminals. Being Best at Setting up own in-house Incubator and Accelerator Programs Already in 2010 Pepsi launched PepsiCo10 an incubator program that matches technology, media and communications entrepreneurs with PepsiCo brands for pilot programs. Other leading brands like CocaCola, Disney, Siemens, etc. followed. In the majority of cases, however, these models use the traditional principle that the sponsoring company provides expertise and guidance and allow the emerging new venture to create and develop its own brands and products. In 2015, however, top brands will start to run in-house incubators of “start-ups“ to assist with the development of new products and services which are at the core of their businesses; instead of just considering a “start-up“ as an opportunity to develop new technologies or improved processes. Also small companies which are tied down by a shoestring budget can use sophisticated software programs and services like HubSpot´s Jumpstart to build or expand their online business in an incubator-style. Jumpstart gives you 30+ marketing tools starting at 64 Euro per month.
Being Best at Internal Communications In 2015 top brands and companies will focus more than ever on internal communications as a marketing asset. They will communicate frequently and broadly with all key stakeholders to explain the brand´s vision, ambitions, and strategy. The more innovative, dynamic, and disruptive they are, the more they need to get employees, suppliers, and partners involved and engaged. The very best brands will create brand ambassador programs centered around their own employees or customers. By assessing a company’s core values and cultivating a workforce that lives up to those values, these brands create a culture that promotes loyalty, strong customer service, and fun. One of my favorite examples is Zappos which is magnificent at giving its employees freedom to develop and to act as an ambassador e.g. by talking on behalf of Zappos in front of customers, key vendors or industry events.
Being Best at Building A Brand Ecosystem In the age of mobile content consumption people no longer simply “listen“ and “read.” They “monitor” and “scan.” They make a decision in the blink of a moment as to how valuable a piece of content is, how much time they should give to it, and ultimately whether they buy a product or not. As a result, an organization must craft user experiences that befit
the environment in which readers will discover, read, and share. Best brands will continue to create a common brand experience across the digital experience on- and offline. Building a meaningful community, i.e. an ecosystem around the brand. Crafting the right pathway to the product or service that a specific user needs and wants. A good example is the MINI - Chase The Paceman campaign which ran in the UK this year.
Being Best at Morphing Departments The markets are turning more complex. Top companies and brands will push hard to continue overcoming functional borders within their organizations. They will break up traditional silos and insist on bringing people together from various departments. They will morphe the marketing and sales function into one as both are the critical customerfacing departments. The CMO will have to apply a holistic and integrating mindset and to convince her teams, peers, and CEO for support such an approach. All in order to improve and exceed at serving the customers. As expressed by Doug Warner from the opposite perspective: “In the world of Internet Customer Service, it´s important to remember your competitor is only one mouse click away.“
Being Best at Keeping and Recruiting Top Talents Big corporations will face more trouble than ever retaining and finding top marketing talents. Increasingly those will reject corporate treadmill careers and instead prefer becoming their own and independent boss via feelancing, partnering with creative boutique agencies, or working for crowdsource brand-building platforms like Colossal Spark or eyeka.
Final Thoughts In the end it’s still the brand that matters. Also in 2015, and facing a more competitive environment than ever with highly demanding and sophisticated consumers, brands will need to continue to differentiate themselves and to clearly stand for something relevant, emotional, and meaningful to consumers. There is no reason to wait only for top brands to make this happen. Neither now nor in 2015. Every marketer can take over ownership, pay attention to what looms ahead, plan early her moves, put herself into the driver seat, and make it happen. Andreas von der Heydt is the Head and Director of Kindle Content at Amazon in Germany. Before that he hold various senior management positions at Amazon and L’Oréal. He’s a leadership expert and management coach. Andreas worked and lived in Europe, Australia, the U.S. and Asia.
How Marketing Will Change In 2015: The Creative Forecast Jeff Beer
It’s a new year and time for prediction and anticipation. How much mobile-first, e-commercedriving engagement will you be programmatically integrating into your 2015 360 strategy? Marketing has made real, beyond-buzzword shifts over the past year in terms of recognition of the mobile, multidevice consumer, and the importance of creating compelling content, of all lengths, and across all platforms. But how will those shifts manifest themselves, and what new forces will shape marketing this year? Whether it’s via long form content, social platforms, or apps, the challenge of telling a brand’s story in an engaging way is ever present. The pace of culture is something both consumers and marketers struggle to keep up with, and yet the wheels keep turning, with new technologies, platforms and ideas continually challenging, enraging and inspiring us in seemingly equal measure. We spoke to leaders in brand creativity about their insights, predictions, and prognostications—what they’re looking forward to, the direction they’d like to see their work go, how they plan to make next year more creative and more.
WHAT ARE THE THINGS (TECHNOLOGICAL, SOCIETAL, MEDIA-RELATED, ECONOMIC, OR OTHERWISE) THAT WILL MOST IMPACT THE WORK YOU’LL BE DOING NEXT YEAR? Tor Myhren, worldwide chief creative officer, Grey: Our industry’s obsession with celebrities became massive this year, and I see this as an even bigger trend next year. Leader brands are using them to flex their dominance, challenger brands are using them as a shortcut to quick buzz, and everyone is using their social media tentacles as a cheaper media channel. I have never seen our industry lean more on celebrity, both as “the idea” and as a media outlet, than we did in 2014. Of course this simply mimics what’s happening in society as a whole. We are and forever will be a culture that cannot take our eyes off the stars. Micro-celebrities (like YouTube celebs) will continue to grow and become a more central part of media and partnership strategies. Brent Choi, chief creative and integration officer,
JWT Canada/JWT Toronto: There’s a lot of talk about unplugging, but it really is talk vs. the tsunami of more tech, more often, to spark our growing need for more excitement, more fulfillment and in turn, more social currency. The result for our business is to create new and innovative ideas around the convergence of digital and experiential, that also has the ability to be documented socially. In other words, find a brand’s place to allow consumers to experience things they never dreamed of, and allow them to show their friends they did it. Ben Priest, founding partner and executive creative director, adam&eveDDB London: The only real challenge facing us every year is finding great people. That never changes. 2015 will be no different. Great talent is a rare thing but when you find it your business hits fast forward. Allie Kline, chief marketing officer, AOL Advertising: Video and automation. Automation is taking hold and as this continues, it is freeing up brands and publishers to be more creative. Video will be the recipient of this creative explosion, and new ways of approaching and thinking about video will transform marketing and media the way programmatic and automation have these last 18 months. Adrian Belina, partner and creative director, Jam3: As people’s interest in Facebook continues to fade we will see fewer requests from brands to do campaigns and apps that reside within Facebook. In the last year, we’ve definitely seen a return to the microsite format, especially for digital campaigns, and I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of it as brands continue to use Facebook as a conversation tool rather than as their main platform. Gareth Kay, founding partner, Zeus Jones San Francisco: I think we will finally see privacy going public. There’s been lots of talk about privacy (particularly after Snowden) but all the evidence I’ve seen suggests that there is a greater public desire for greater transparency (and
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symmetry) around privacy than we maybe give credit for. Perhaps more importantly we are seeing companies finally try to give people back control of privacy. From established tech brands like Google and Apple moving to a default of private, to new offerings like BitTorrent’s forthcoming peer to peer browser Project Maelstrom or the launch this year of Blackphone (author’s disclosure: we work with Blackphone), there are signs that people are going to be increasingly able to vote for privacy without making trade offs for functionality. This is clearly going to impact our work. I hope there will be fewer attempts to try and show “we know you” through the breadcrumbs of your data, fewer business models based on selling access to people’s information and more attempts to do things for people, not things that use people.
Jon Jackson, global creative director, Huge: People don’t have as much room for bullshit in their lives anymore. With social and political issues top-of-mind for so many right now, we’ll need to employ a greater sense of empathy and understanding in everything we do. Companies that are honest with people and really trying to make their users’ lives a bit better are the ones that will do best. The work we execute next year will be focused on braver ideas, honesty, and empowering people with a little more control over their lives. John Patroulis, chief creative officer, BBH NY: How a company behaves in the world is becoming increasingly important, which is a wonderful thing. Wonderful for the kinds of ideas we can create and the kinds of behavior we can inspire. In a world of perfect information, the activities, values, and stances you take really matter, and affect the health of your business whether you like it or not. A nice side benefit just happens to be happier, more inspired employees, customers, and planet. Using our strategic and creative muscle to help a company find its soul, its authentic space of good, and creatively express that in actions as well as communications (or, when done right, actions that are themselves communications) will be an important focus, along with everything else we do with them. Linda Boff, global executive director of brand marketing, General Electric: Virtual reality! We’re fascinated by the limitlessness of it and began creating content for Oculus Rift this year. It’s a great storytelling platform, particularly for GE, because it gives us another incredible way to show how our big machines perform in extreme conditions. We can take someone on a journey to the sea floor or into the human brain.
things, where there isn’t even a screen to focus on. It begs the questions of how we’ll navigate the fact that it’s in our nature to create clutter. Everyone needs more focus and less clutter of content. That’s going to have a huge effect on Big Spaceship’s business. My goal will be to start breaking down the artificial barriers between products, services, marketing and social connectivity and begin thinking about them holistically. My philosophy is that every interaction matters, and it’s really hard for a brand to live up to that when the interactions are artificially siloed. The more you can get over your own infrastructures in business, the more success and value you can provide.
WHAT ARE YOU HOPING TO DO MORE AND LESS OF? Belina: My passion in the digital industry has always been about creative exploration and innovation. So, hopefully we’ll continue to find clients and that want to push the limitations of what can currently be done in digital. We’ve had a lot of fun with WebGL this past year and I think brands will continue to grow—slowly, though—to be more comfortable with using WebGL, in order to create sites that are more innovative, experiential, and narrative based. Which leads me to what I’d like to do less of: I’d love to spend less time and energy tailoring website experiences to very specific users that fall into very small percentages. A great example of this is to look at the proportion of spend—in creating the overall campaign site—and the effort it takes to make that site also work for IE users. In most of our digital advertising campaigns—not the brand sites—the penetration for IE 8 users is less than 1% but we’re still spending over 20% of our overall development budget degrading a website that was made for modern browsers. It’s time to focus our efforts and spend the budget on where the users are, and not where the brands’ old computers and operating systems are.
Kay: Same as the last year: less stuff that feels like a new, clever way to spam people and more stuff that genuinely is useful and helpful to people. We’re obsessed by trying to make things that delight people, that they find valuable and offer some gift for the time they spend with them. More things that reduce friction and increase delight, less things that interrupt, agitate and frustrate. More things that close the gap between a better experience for people and the real, root commercial challenges.
Data is also going to have an impact on what we do next year. With data, you enable things, and there’s an opportunity for GE to tell stories with smart light bulbs or thermostats as media.
Jackson: People are busy. Their lives are complicated. There’s so much choice that there’s not a lot of point in creating something that’s not intended to be the best in its class. A lot of people will tell you that that’s what they want but they don’t always mean it. We only want to work with people who are serious about shaking things up and making things that have a positive impact on people’s lives. Whether that’s a product that gives people easier, faster access to healthcare or financial services, or a campaign that makes something easier to understand. Everything we do needs to be truly ambitious.
Michael Lebowitz, CEO/founder, Big Spaceship: Over the course of this year, a lot of interesting developments have started to emerge like connected devices and the internet of
Kline: I want us to take even more risk. We are amidst the most disruptive time in media’s history and we want to be the company and brand that makes room for unprecedented
We’re also paying a lot of attention to connected TVs and thinking about how brands can play with original content. We love that media is becoming more ephemeral through platforms like SnapChat, Yo and Yik Yak, and at the same time, more long form with platforms like Medium.
transformation in both culture and code.
learning for our clients.
Patroulis: More soul, more instinct, more humanity. More human truths, less advertising truths. More innovative solutions instead of good versions of expected solutions. More taking all the information we have, all the data and feedback and activity, and using it as another tool of creativity, instead of a tool of paralysis. Less pretty much anything that isn’t the above.
Jackson: In order to grow creatively, you need to have new experiences—and a lot of the experiences that produce the most growth come from traveling and interacting outside of your comfort zone. I’m a big believer in doing at least one thing each year that you’ve never done before. We’re also making an effort to find and hire people from around the world with very different creative backgrounds in order to push our creativity through a broader collective experience. Our goal is to be able to braid together, for example, five very different creative perspectives on any one problem and get five very different, amazing ideas.
Boff: As an industry, we need to do a better job of putting the user/viewer/consumer in the middle. I worry that with all the shiny new media toys we all have access to, it’s going to become easier to forget that the User is King. As marketers, we always must remember that someone is on the other end of the experiences we are creating. We have to assume they have no patience and don’t know anything about our brand, so that we make things “stupid simple” and delightfully pleasing every single time. Lebowitz: I want to be thinking more about the full scope of how people actually experience a brand or product and less about a single tactic that a client is fixated on. While that’s always been my mantra and approach to attacking clients’ business problems, I’m noticing marketers asking more and more for a specific tactic like viral video or a cool app just because everybody else is doing it and because they gain a lot of eyeballs across the Internet. I want to be doing more projects that start at the heart of consumer behavior—social— and pull in other tactics that make sense for the brand and the people who interact with it.
YOUR CREATIVE YEAR: WHAT WILL YOU DO IN 2015 TO BE MORE CREATIVE OR GROW CREATIVELY? Choi: Encourage and celebrate bravery. Taking risks, albeit calculated ones, is the best thing to break through in today’s world. It also attracts and retains the right talent, as well as the right clients. Belina: I’ll be looking to get inspired from entirely different industries and areas completely outside of advertising, design and technology. Another thing I’m going to do is give myself more time. This industry is fast and tough, and it’s important to remember to take time, to step away, to turn off push notifications and to just sit, think and imagine. Kay: I think it’s all about increasing diversity and difference: different, diverse inputs; spending time in different places; working with people with different worldviews and skillsets. I’m a firm believer that the simplest way to get to different ideas is to work with different people in different ways. The other thing we are trying to do as a company is to be very deliberate about the diversity of projects we work on. It’s very easy to build a company that does one type of thing but this ‘deepening in expertise” tends to lead to over-developed muscle memory and a habit of seeing the world being full of similar sized holes. We are deliberately going to choose to work on problems we haven’t worked on before and often, at first, have no idea how to solve. It keeps us interested and, we think, it provides greater value of perspective and new
Kline: Immerse myself in culture. Looking at media through the eyes of my two young daughters is the purest way to think about where we head strategically. There’s nothing more inspiring than seeing life through the eyes of fresh generations. That’s where creativity is born. Patroulis: Hunting down fear and killing it wherever it hides. In conversations. In ideas. In briefs. In executions. In how we’re shaping our own business. Fear is the enemy of creativity, and we’re on too much of a roll right now to give it any air. We owe that to our clients, our partners, and anyone who might interact with anything we make. Chaos often creates fear, but chaos is also where all the opportunity lies. And we’re living in a wonderfully, fantastically, excitingly chaotic world. Creatively. Technologically. Behaviorally. And that’s something to enjoy instead of fear. Boff: Brand as Network. Increasingly, brands are becoming the new programmers. GE’s owned/social audience is nearly four million people, larger than many cable networks! We get extra credit for being unexpected. After 122 years, we need to continue to surprise and delight people. Everyone is familiar with our brand. That’s a great canvas on which to paint new, modern pictures. Own, not rent. In a world where we are now programmers, owning is better. As owners, we control the narrative (and can rent out space to others!) Publish the most remarkable content—it will find an audience. Every piece of content we publish needs to be remarkable. This is true from a short Vine video to a longer-form TV ad or a tweet. It all matters. Our goal is to be remembered, shared and to drive brand value. We need to ensure every 6-second video a tweet or a film is as great as it could be.
Lebowitz: I want to read more books. Whole books—not just skimming them. I also want to give myself more room to breathe by being more intentional with the resources I have—reducing clutter and getting to the things that matter. I think that advice applies to everyone at every scale. I want to really think about what the best way is for me to spend the resources that I have—and it’s not just a constant processing of stuff.
WHAT WILL BE YOUR BIGGEST CREATIVE CHALLENGE NEXT YEAR? Myrhen: Producing work at the speed of pop culture so that our brands are fast enough to draft off the fleeting conversations and fascinations driven by mass media,
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celebrity gossip, tech trends and memes—that’s our biggest challenge of next year. Brands that are nimble enough to react in real time are winning. This is of course true in the digital space, but even with film and video you must now be able to ideate and execute faster and cheaper than ever in order to keep up with culture. This is a trend that will never reverse, so we better get used to it. Speed kills.
Choi: Our business model doesn’t allow for constant beta. It doesn’t allow for over-resourcing to invest in R&D. Yet, considering the new competitive set for our business, this is the exact behavior agencies need, to not only lead, but to survive. So the challenge as a creative leader is to more than ever, be brave, and place your bets really well. We only get to act on a few opportunities. They better hit and hit big. Priest: Finding great people and having fun while keeping the standards up. Belina: We’re going to see a lot of growth in 2015 and that means that I’ll be shifting my role from being the creative lead within projects to leading creative teams who are leading their own projects. As a creative, you always want to be involved in every aspect of a production, but I’m really looking forward to helping my team grow creatively and professionally, and to celebrate their success and achievements. Kay: Saying no. It’s too easy to say yes to everything. Jackson: Being honest. Being honest with our clients and being honest with ourselves, about everything. Being prepared to throw everything away and start again if it’s not good enough is the only way to get to work that is truly exceptional. Kline: Finding the balance between taking big risks and investing the anchors that have served us well historically. Patroulis: Speed. At our best, we lead our clients’ business with ideas that lead culture rather than follow it. That includes helping our clients and partners change with us just as we change around them. Asking those we work with to adapt their process as well so we can get to the best ideas together and get to them quickly. Because the speed at which you can execute well really depends on what the idea demands. So there’s only so much you can do there before hurting the outcome. But how we work, how our clients and partners work, clearing things out on both sides to get to great thinking quickly, that’s the biggest challenge, and of course, the biggest opportunity. Boff: GE does business in 170 countries. We are a branded house so we need to show up consistently everywhere. But we need to be locally relevant. If we don’t start with local insights, we’ll miss by a mile. But if we don’t play into our brand’s overall strength, we risk being too diffuse. I think that’s the challenge of multinational brands. Anyone can be great on their home turf. It’s the away games that are the hardest to win. Lebowitz: User interfaces are starting to dissipate—the best products are the ones you don’t really feel like you’re using. That doesn’t really bode well for advertising, so it’s obviously going to pose a huge creative challenge to everyone in the industry. We have to create more value than ever before, and
we’re being forced to ask ourselves, how do we get out of the way without disappearing? Another hurdle is that we’ve gone through a period of time where our clients’ brands have turned over a lot of their presence to other people’s platforms, but I think we’ll see a move back towards creating some owned properties in marketing. I think in a very different way than before, the microsite is going to have to come back. You can’t turn everything over to someone else’s platform, and you can’t just commit to something that you can’t ultimately control and measure in full. That shift is going to open up a new space for us creatively.
PREDICTIONS FOR 2015’S MOST OVERUSED BUZZWORDS Myrhen: “Innovation.” This is always a strong contender for buzzword of the year, and seems to have held the crown since, like, 2010. But don’t count it out for next year, mainly because it means everything and nothing all at once and therefore is a nearly perfect word for any business situation. Then maybe some corny mashup words like “demotainment” or “solvertising.” Choi: “Narrative.” It’s already overused. But I think it’s about to explode! I get why. It sounds a lot fancier than “storytelling.” And with the proliferation of touch points, it’s our job to find that—wait for it—narrative that connects it all. Priest: “Buzzwords.”
Belina: “Stunt.” “Organic.” “Authentic.” “Product innovation.” And of course, “buzzword” itself. All that being said, “viral” will probably continue to dominate brand boardrooms across our many lands. Unfortunately many people still think it’s a strategy. Kay: “Omnichannel.” “Holistic.” “Integrated.” “Digital transformation.” Overused now and I fear even more overused next year. Jackson: “Wearables.” “Latent.” “Native.” Kline: “Big data”—it’s not about the size, it’s what you do with it that matters. “SoLoMo”—come on, Social Local Mobile, give me a break. Everything should be inclusive and these silos have got to come down. “ROI”—it’s an unnecessary qualified. Everything is and will forever be measurable. Boff: Where do I start?! Anything that sounds like “native content,” “branded content,” or “content marketing” would top my list. Great content is great content. “Mobile first” would be up there. It’s so obvious—do we need to keep saying it?! Lebowitz: Any word that has less meaning than it needs to have. I would love to see the plain language movement infiltrate our industry. Let’s just keep it simple, because everything else is already so complex.
Jeff Beer is a senior writer with Co.Create. He’s a former staffer at Advertising Age, Creativity and Canadian Business magazine. He lives in Toronto.
The Myths and Mysteries of Apple’s Apple How a piece of fruit with a bite mark became the world’s most famous logo Robert Klara
Earlier in December, conservative commentator Glenn Beck raised eyebrows when he managed to link Apple’s famous logo to, among other things, Nazis, homosexuality and Benedict Cumberbatch. Beck had been sent a review copy of the film The Imitation Game, which prompted him to disclose a secret that “nobody knows”—specifically, that Apple’s
carnal bite (never mind).
apple was actually a furtive nod to Enigma code breaker Alan Turing, a brilliant and closeted mathematician who, uncovered by Britain’s moral police in 1954, killed himself by biting into an apple he’d laced with cyanide.
hired Palo Alto, Calif., designer Rob Janoff. The brief (if that’s even the term) was four words: “Don’t make it cute.”
The truth is that Apple’s famous apple is not a complex talisman freighted with hidden meaning, but a clear, uncomplicated design that’s been carefully tweaked over time, though never at the expense of its intuitive simplicity. “Apple has been really smart about the way they have evolved the logo,” said Peter Madden, founder and president of Philadelphia-based brand consultants AgileCat. “It’s simple, but it’s very hard to get to simple. Simple is brilliant, and that can scare people.”A farfetched idea? Sure, and one with plenty of company. Apple boasts one of the most recognizable logos of our time, so it’s no surprise that it’s been sliced and diced, examined and interpreted—usually in error. There’s the story about Turing (false); there’s the rumor that the logo’s rainbow color bands were a nod to gay liberation (false); and there’s the theory that the apple represents the sin of knowledge ravished by a
Fortunately, simple didn’t scare Steve Jobs. Apple’s apple was born when Jobs decided that the company’s original logo (a woodcut by co-founder Ronald Wayne depicting Sir Isaac Newton) was far too complex to be memorable. So he
For Apple, Janoff settled on ... an apple. “It was a no-brainer,” he said in a 2009 interview. “You would miss the mark if you didn’t show some kind of apple.” Janoff presented Jobs with two versions of his logo—with bite and without. Worried that people might mistake the apple for a cherry, Jobs opted for the bite. And that was it. No biblical influence, no far-flung allegory, no hidden meaning. While the apple has undergone various updates (notably, going from a rainbow pattern to the simpler, monochromatic apples of the last 15 years), the silhouette has remained intact. In the memorable “Stickers” spot last year, the pure white apple was a prop for hundreds of decals slapped on a MacBook Air laptop—”a canvas for people to express invention,” Madden said. “They’ve taken it to a form that begets the function.” Name another logo that does all that.
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Branding 101:
The Small-Business Guide to Building a Killer Brand Identity Lou Imbriano
Discovering and implementing your company’s brand identity isn’t as complicated as it may appear. Here are our play-by-play tips that can help you nail your brand identity. Branding is not a difficult thing to do if you know who you are and how you want to be perceived by others. Yet quite often you might not be focused on your brand, instead putting your attention on your products or services to lead you to customers and revenue. That’s fine if you’re the only small business selling a particular product or service, but that’s a rarity. This is why branding is imperative not just for big corporations, but also for small businesses. In fact, it may be even more important the smaller your business is. Many get caught up with the word “brand” and believe it’s this colossal term reserved for corporate powerhouses. The reality is that every company—and in this day of social media, most individuals—should establish what their brand equals. To get started, go to your whiteboard or a piece of blank paper and write the name of your company and, to the right of it, a big equals sign. That will start you off in the right direction. My roots are in sports, so I sometimes use sports references to help me get my business points across. When it comes to Branding 101, it’s like getting hits in baseball. If you hit the ball well and cover all the bases, you can score with a winning brand and excel in the game of growing your consumers. Think of it as “The Baseball of Branding.”
Know What Your Brand Means The first step if you want to hit a single in building your brand is to actually know what your brand equals or what you want it to equal. Write down all the characteristics to the right of that equals sign that describe what you are and how you would like to be perceived. Once you compile that list, you should fine-tune it and make sure you have full command of your brand in order to reach your customers and, more importantly, your potential customers. The adjectives and characteristics that make up your brand should differentiate you from your competitors and provide a clear understanding of what your business is not only capable of doing, but also what it is known for. It should also assist you in how you positively move consumers to favor your products and services. These three swings below will lead you to getting a Brand Single.
Three Swings to Hit a Single 1. Understand the business niche you are in and how you differ from competitors. 2. Know your target audience to the core. 3. Fully grasp how your product and services hit the sweet spot of your audience’s needs.
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Every small business believes it serves a need for a particular audience. The problem is knowing if that potential customer base is large enough to build a business. A neighbor of mine came back from the Caribbean after a wonderful week of fun and lounging on the sunbeds that were all around the resort. He’s a carpenter and thought it would be a cool idea to build and sell them to folks on the lake. He built a prototype and figured out the cost per unit and what he would price it at retail. Due to production costs and the number of potential buyers on the lake, even if he got everyone to buy, the profits were not going to be sufficient enough to operate a business. He wisely chalked it up to a cool idea and not a business. My neighbor was smart enough to realize that to build a brand, you need an audience. In this resort bed example, the target audience and the product need weren’t great enough to build a business and a brand around the concept. To build a strong brand and hit a single, you want to make sure you have a viable business that will lend itself to building that solid brand and assist the business’s growth.
Make Your Employees Brand Ambassadors To hit a double in building your brand, make sure your employees know what the brand stands for and are true to the brand in everything they do. Often the owner and management know what the brand equals, but the people actually interacting with customers do not fully grasp the brand and its intent. It is important that everyone is reading from the same playbook and knows what the brand stands for and how to represent it properly.
2. Train your employees to embody the brand and what it equals. 3. Have systems and protocols in place to aid employees in keeping the core of the brand top of mind. The key is keeping your employees engaged, informed and empowered. Capture the brand so they understand it and know what you want to convey. Don’t just assume they will get it. Train them with examples that are both pro and con so they are fully schooled to represent the brand properly. Once they are trained and understand the brand, put in a system to encourage them to support the brand message and reward them for acting in your brand’s best interests. The systems and protocols should help reinforce the importance of representing your brand. This is less about what they are saying to customers and more about how they are acting and embodying the brand. For example, if the brand is all about precision and cleanliness, then untucked and soiled uniforms are not properly displaying the brand.
Communicate Your Brand to the Public This step takes knowing and living the brand as a company, as well as communicating what you equal to others. Communicating your brand positioning is not just about the adjectives you choose to support what the brand equals. It also involves the methods and manner in which you are communicating the brand to the general public and, more importantly, to your target consumers. When you and your employees know how to communicate what your brand equals, you have hit a Brand Triple. Unlike the Brand Double, which focuses on how employees display the brand, a Brand Triple has to do with the messaging and communication of the brand to others.
Three Swings to Hit a Triple 1. Devise the manner in which employees should interact with customers. 2. Put together a check and balance system to ensure employee-to-customer messaging stays on brand. 3. Carefully consider the first and last impression you want to make when communicating the brand with the public. You would think these first two steps are so rudimentary that any business would have them down to a science. Wrong! Many companies do not know who they are or how to convey what the brand equals, and employees at these companies have brand confusion and questions. Instead of being sure when it comes to their brand interactions, they guess how they should represent the brand. This is an area where you can and should outshine large corporations. Your employees can have a much deeper relationship with consumers, and, because of the multiple hats they wear, should be able absorb the brand to the fullest. If your business focuses on these three simple steps, that goal is very obtainable.
Three Swings to Hit a Double 1. Fully capture what your brand equals in an easily digestible format.
To aid yourself and your employees, you can create phrases, copy and descriptions that hit the bull’s-eye when communicating with customers or clients. You have to not just know what the brand stands for but also how to properly communicate in order to not cause brand confusion. Create a checklist of points to touch on while engaging with customers, to stay in line with the brand and what it represents. It should include situational encounters where a customer makes a request or has a question and the employee has a guide to the appropriate answer or response. Also make sure there is a set opening and exit when communicating to punctuate the brand and its positioning so the first and last impressions are always on brand. You do not want staff flying by the seat of their pants and making things up on the spot. Lead them to the right path in consumer engagement and help them support the brand.
Get Target Customers to Amplify Your Brand Finally, when your target consumers understand the nuances of your brand and can distinguish how your brand differs from the competition, you have absolutely hit a Brand Home Run. Brand Home Runs are harder to achieve because you lose a bit of control of the message through its interpretation by consumers; however, if you have solid techniques in place to keep the message on-brand, straying from what the brand equals will be minimized.
Three Swings to Hit a Home Run 1. Make sure all communications, individual or mass, are consistent and in line with brand positioning. 2. Have one person/group review all outside messaging and any brand associations. 3. Reward loyal customers and fans with perks and special treatment to show your appreciation. You should have a brand filter or a systematic questionnaire to ensure all communications and associations are consistent with the brand. This filter needs to have questions that help you determine whether or not your brand is being properly communicated and represented. For example, one question could be, “Is the vehicle or manner of communication consistent with how the brand is perceived?” If you are selling pizza dough, you may not want to promote it in a restaurant review magazine that is more targeted to people who dine, whereas a baking, cooking or trade publication may make more sense, depending on your brand filter. Another example question in the brand filter: “Does the association help or hinder the brand?” Using the same example of the pizza dough, you do not want to sell your dough in a bakery that has terrible reviews. Sure, the fact that it is a bakery provides relevance, but their terrible reviews could assist in eroding your brand. Also remember, it’s always best when one
person or group is in charge of determining the relevance of the association, to keep the interpretation of the brand filter more consistent. If you communicate your brand message to your target audience properly and your brand positioning is easy to understand, not only will your employees be great brand ambassadors, but your most avid consumers will be as well. When your consumers are fans of your brand and identify with it, they, too, will become vocal in spreading your brand’s message. Word of mouth marketing has always been important in extending a company’s brand and offerings, but it is even more crucial in this age of social media. You want your consumers singing your praise across the various social media platforms, not only in the form of “Likes” but also in sharing their positive experiences and pictures. Just as you reward your employee, you should give perks and special treatment to those avid customers and fans of your brand who promote your products and services. Their endorsement is more powerful than any commercial or copy you could produce. When I was a kid, my mother always used to say that you are the company you keep. So hiring the wrong employees and aligning with the wrong vendors and partners will erode your brand. Fully understand everything about your brand and make sure that everyone who is a caretaker of the brand does so in the manner that you expect. A strong group of caretakers of your brand will lead to further reaching brand ambassadors with your consumers. When you build that consistency and integrity and it flows through your customers, you will hit a Brand Grand Slam! Lou Imbriano serves as President and CEO of TrinityOne, a marketing strategy and business advisory consultancy that works with organizations to turn around their marketing efforts and increase profitability through building stronger consumer ties and a more trustworthy brand.
Show, Don’t Tell Vikram Chadha
The other day, about a week back, I was sitting at Costa Coffee shop, China Court, Ibn Batutta mall having a conversation with a friend. We talked about many subjects but what got our conversation animated was the subject of how brands and business are changing, and the marketing mix is -transforming in today’s uber-competitive world. Across from where we sat we could see the Citibank kiosk trying their best to get attention of prospective customers. Two decades ago they would spend lots of money on their advertising and the big boys would normally win. However, today Citibank spends money on advertising but one can clearly see that the focus is now on platforms which enables them to build one of the key things in today’s world…which is engagement with the customers.
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Engagement The customers of today expect their brands to showcase what they stand for. Today’s customers prefer brands that encourage participation and sharing. The goal of the brands in this era is to create engagement with the people. It is important that the business actively drives this. Social media engagement is of paramount importance, but brands who are able to create both physical and social connect with their customers are able to form better engagement leading to better relationships. The key driver for the brands and business is they need to drive the engagement with their customers consistently and continuously in this cluttered world. To drive this engagement they must inspire their audiences.
I would now like to share an example of a company, online shoe retailer Zappos.com which just does exactly what I have mentioned in the paragraph above. One customer of Zappos.com described the feeling of receiving her shoe order as “Happiness in a box”. Tony Hsieh the CEO of Zappos.com believes in inspiring his audiences. According to Hsieh, a brand is a shortcut to emotions. Decide what emotion you want your brand to stand for. Three key things that he propagates and inculcates to his employee is to build engagement with the customers is a) to inspire them to provide better customer service b)inspire to improve the appropriate culture c) inspire to learn about the science of happiness.
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This is what leads people to be more attached to the brand and the company. “People would rather support a company that inspires you than one that does not” says Hsieh. There is a very popular story which exemplifies this. One night Tony Hsieh and his vendor friends returned to the hotel room late. One of them was craving for a pizza but by then the room service had closed. As a joke, Hsieh told him to call Zappos and they would arrange for the pizza. The friend took it in the spirit and called the Zappos customer service number. I am sure you would have got the drift of where my story is leading you. Though Zappos does not deliver the pizza, the customer service person found a list of local pizza places that would deliver to the hotel and arranged for the same to happen. Now this is really cool. It is unexpected. Now what this does is that the people will talk about the Zappos brand and say “Zappos is awesome”. Then people like you and me who are on social media will find about this and share this story further. This kind of brand advocacy is just incredible for the brand. The key thing here is that the story is based on what the brand did (action) for the customer. This also signifies how an engaged employee makes a big impact and how it leads to engagement with the customers. This showcases that it is not about telling people they provide great customer service but actually doing it. The number one driver of growth at Zappos has been repeat customers because of the way it has built engagement with its customers.
to immortalize the precious moments has enabled GoPro to build its brand story. By sharing these precious moments of happiness with friends they have built a strong communitypeople with a passion for sharing their adventurous experiences. Passionate people eager to share their exciting and engaging experiences together have bonded in this connected economy enabling the brand to thrive. The brand advocates use the social media as a key promotional tool to share their real experiences. Brand uses this user generated content for the content creation of the brand on the internet and social network. Here again the brand is telling its story be showing and by not telling people what it does.
The Connection Economy
True for both B2C as well as B2B
We live in a connected economy, and the medium of social media has influenced these connections. It also has an impact in the way we experience our brands. In this short span of connected economy, the market share dynamics have changed. Experience is only real when it is shared. The premise is that people will share their experiences with the brand when they feel connected with the brand, when they had fun, when they enjoyed, when they had pleasant memories. Sharing these experiences with their friends and family accentuates their well-being and build memorable association with the brand. They feel they are part of the connection economy and contribute in the growth of this economy.
This is not only true for B2C companies but it applies to B2B companies as well. Being successful in a B2B environment takes more than delivering a quality service or providing a product. Today, it requires helping customers succeed by improving their performance. The testament is that the more you help your customers thrive, the stronger your partnership becomes. Customer engagement is fundamental to customer impact. Fully engaged customers are emotionally attached and loyal. When this happens the customer will go out of the way to locate your company’s product or service. The key driver here, again, is not about telling that you provide great customer service but actually working with the customer, creating an impact and showing real results. Great brands are built by showing (action) and not telling. The proof is in the pudding.
GoPro – Be a Hero Let me take you on a journey of a company, GoPro, which has become a formidable company in a short time, because of being relevant and engaged with their customers in their experiences. The mission of GoPro is to help people capture and share their lives most meaningful experiences with others and to celebrate them together. Their target segment is the young, active, extreme sports enthusiasts. Their product and technology has enabled these audacious and passionate people together, who are eager to share their exciting experiences with each other. Energy, freedom and the ability
Vikram Chadha is a seasoned telecom professional with over 17 years of experience in Asia, Africa, America and Middle East in the telecommunication sector with du, MTN, Globacom, Reliance etc.Presently he is the Vice President of Marketing at du. Recently he has been honored by the World Marketing Congress and CMO Council as Top 100 Marketing leaders in the world.He was also awarded for Thought Leadership Award at Indian Innovation Awards 2014. Vikram Chadha is a thought leader on Mobile Data, Pricing, Digital and Cloud services for SMB’s, Building Brands and Innovation. He speaks regularly and shares his vision at leading industry events and writes for many top publications.
Why brands should spend longer writing their promoted trends Alex King
One of my more terrifying moments as a junior copywriter was being asked to write a promoted trend (aka promoted tweet/hashtag) for an FMCG client. It scared me for a number of reasons: the cost (up to £120,000), the all-eggs-one-basket nature of the media, the knowledge it would greet Twitter users all day long – and finally, the shoulder-shrugging attitude from the client and agency. Because a promoted trend is essentially just a single word, putting thought and craft into its creation wasn’t seen as an important exercise back then. Have things changed? Are copywriters being asked to actually spend a bit of time thinking about how to best make use of a £120,000 weapon? Or are brands continuing to chuck thousands of pounds at a single word without considering what they want in return? I had a look at three promoted trends from earlier this year and tried to answer my own questions. First up was Westfield, who employed the tried-and-tested technique of sparking debate with a ‘versus’ question: #heelsvflats. Engagement was good in terms of people voicing their opinions (with more than 1,000 mentions*), but that was where the journey stopped for the user. The trend didn’t point fans in the direction of the #heelsvflats photo competition – but perhaps the idea was to pique interest prior to the competition launch. If Westfield’s aim was to get people talking about shoes and fashion in general, rather than engaging with their content, then it got it pretty much spot-on. I’m not sure the same can be said for the second promoted
trend I looked at, from Xbox UK. #ForzaOutNow was the ultimate Ronseal approach to writing a promoted trend, as Xbox treated their promoted trend like they might an outer wrap on the Evening Standard. The message left no-one in doubt about what was happening in the gaming world on that particular day, but didn’t exactly encourage further chatter around the subject. In fact, that could be found under a different hashtag: #ForzaHorizon2 – which was used for the rest of the campaign, but strangely not chosen for the promoted trend. The final trend I looked at was BHF’s #CallPushRescue, which I found the most intriguing – simply because of the instant drama the word ‘rescue’ offered. The trend’s name was taken directly from that of the campaign – which centred around helping people understand CPR through a simple acronym. And whether it was because of the trend itself or the subject matter, it got people talking – #CallPushRescue saw more tweets, and a higher sentiment score (62*) than either of the other trends discussed. Purely from a copywriting perspective, the trend is snappy, echoes the wider campaign, and might actually come in handy some day down the line. The idea that remembering a promoted trend might one day save a life is romantic, but not quite inconceivable. And that thought in itself should convince brands, agencies, and writers to give these incredibly powerful pieces of media the time and respect they deserve when penning them. Alex King, copywriter at Nonsense *Stats from Topsy
26 Universal Questions for Positioning Your Brand (and Creating Your Brand Story) Ulli Appelbaum
How do I position my brand for success? What is the most compelling story I can tell about my business? Those are two of the most substantial questions marketers and entrepreneurs have to answer when running their business. In fact, the answers will determine whether their brand will gain traction in the marketplace, grow, and get shared by consumers—or not. An analysis of over 1,000 case studies from around the world of successful brand building has found that there are 26 different “approaches” to telling a brand story, each representing a different but proven opportunity to positioning your brand and telling your brand story. Each approach can be summarized by a key question (or set of questions), which I share below. Tapping into this collective marketing intelligence by answering those 26 questions will help marketers sharpen their brand positioning platforms and tell better brand stories.
Setting the Stage The first 10 questions deal with the context in which the brand can be positioned. They set the stage of the brand story, if you will.
1. Redefine your business: What other categories satisfy a similar need or provide the similar emotional reward that yours does? And what opportunities would this new perspective offer for building your brand and your portfolio? (Example: Cirque du Soleil)
2. Claim the gold standard: What is collectively understood and accepted to be the “ideal” your category has to offer, and how can your brand claim, utilize, or position itself against this ideal and its associations? (Example:
DiGiorno’s “It’s not delivery, it’s DiGiorno.”)
3. Be a part of culture: What cultural movement or subculture (and associated set of values) could your brand fit into or position itself against? (Example: the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty)
4. Tap into consumer rituals: How does your brand fit into your consumers’ existing rituals? What emotional transformation do they go through during those rituals? How can your brand become a believable part of these rituals and help in the transformation? (Example: the way people eat Oreo cookies)
5. Harness the usage context: Where do consumers consume or use your brand, and what expectations, associations (both positive and negative), and opportunities does this environment provide? (Example: the original Got Milk campaign) 6. Disrupt category conventions: What are the generally accepted rules for how your category operates, and which ones could you break to change the category dynamics and the way your brand is perceived? (Example: Pedigree’s Dogs Rules) 7. Resolve a category paradox: What are the biggest consumer frustrations in your category? What is your category’s biggest paradox? How can your brand help resolve them? (Example: Dyson doesn’t lose suction.) 8. Overcome consumption barriers: What barriers (real or perceived) are preventing consumers from purchasing or using your brand, and how can your brand help overcome those? [Example: the user imagery of Harley-Davidson’s core riders, the OWG (old white guys), preventing younger riders from identifying with the brand]
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9. Identify an enemy: What threat (real or imagined, conscious or unconscious) could your brand mitigate in your consumers’ lives? (Example: the Truth anti-smoking campaign focusing on the corporate executives of the tobacco industry)
10. Brand archaeology: What lessons can be learned from the strategies and tactics that lead to your brand’s growth in the past, and how can those lessons be translated into a contemporary solution? (Example: Buddy Lee)
Creating the Story The next nine questions deal with the offering itself and provide the building blocks to create the actual brand story. These questions help you illuminate the main characters of the brand story, their antagonists, and their most defining features.
11. Romance the origins: Where does your brand come from, and what explicit or implicit meanings are associated with this origin that you could use to enhance the appeal of your brand? (Example: Fosters Beer)
12. Craft a creation story: Does a compelling story arise from the expertise and care with which your brand is made, or the ingredients and components being used? (Example: Jack Daniels)
13. Romance the way the product works: Can a focus on how your product works and delivers its core benefit elevate your brand? (Example: Febreze doesn’t cover up the odors—it eliminates them.) 14. Celebrate the ingredients: Is there a highly differentiating ingredient or component of your product or brand that can be focused on to tell a compelling story? (Example: Westin’s Heavenly Beds) 15. Identify your brand’s defining attributes: What attributes do consumers find most distinctive and appealing in your category or for your brand? And which of those can your brand credibly claim or focus on? (Stella Artois’ “Reassuringly Expensive,” where price is a defining attribute)
16. Give meaning to the brand’s weakness: If your brand has a real or perceived weakness that acts as a barrier to consumption, what meaning can you associate with this weakness that would turn it into strength or benefit? (Example: Old Spice’s “If your grandfather hadn’t worn it, you wouldn’t exist” campaign)
17. Create a sense of scarcity and exclusivity: Can the scarcity and exclusivity of any aspect of your brand story elevate your brand’s appeal? (Example: Abercrombie & Fitch’s exclusive focus on the cool kids in school)
18. Conduct a torture-test: By showing how your product reacts under the most challenging circumstances or is used by those who depend on it the most, can you also demonstrate the value the product could provide to your everyday consumers? (Example: Duracell’s “Trusted Everywhere”)
19. Let experts tell your story: Who would be the most authoritative (or memorable) expert you could utilize to share your brand’s story? (Example: Hill’s Pet food “Vet’s #1 Choice for Their Own Pets”)
Defining the Connection The last seven questions focus on the type of value the brand offers to consumers and the role it wants to play in their lives. Does the brand connect with its consumers by delivering a powerful and differentiating benefit or experience addressing a relevant consumer need, or does it want to connect with them at a deeper, more purposeful level?
20. Highlight the benefit: Does your brand deliver against a relevant consumer need by providing a benefit that is new to the category, or by providing a new level of benefit, or by providing a new combination of benefits? (Example: Method Cleaning Products, Clean Happy) 21. Stimulate the senses: What are your brand’s sensory properties and how do they affect how people perceive, feel about, and interact with your brand? (Example: 5 Gum’s “Stimulate your senses”)
22. Dramatize the reward: What needs and wants drive consumers to choose your brand and how does your brand help your consumers help improve their lives? (Example: Wal-Mart’s “Save Money. Live Better.”) 23. Create a branded ritual: Can a set of ritualized behaviors be associated with the consumption of your brand that would give it increased meaning or emotional resonance with your customers? (Example: the Stella Artois nine-step pouring ritual)
24. Communicate shared values: Which core values driving your brand’s actions and behaviors would best match the core values that guide your consumers’? Looking at those two sets of core values, what narratives and positioning territories emerge? (Example: Molson Canadian Beer’s “I am Canadian”) 25. Highlight your purpose: What’s your brand’s core reason for being? Why does it exist? How does your purpose tie back to an unmet consumer need or something that is of significant relevance to your consumers? (Example: Cheerios’ Cheer on Reading Program) 26. Identify your brand’s archetype: What core motivations and desires do your consumers try to satisfy by using your category in general and your brand in particular, and which archetype best corresponds to this set of desires? What characteristics define this specific archetype and how can those guide your brand story? (Example: The Geek Squad Hero archetype) Ulli Appelbaum is an international brand strategist and the founder of First The Trousers Then The Shoes Inc., a brand strategy and research boutique that helps brands achieve their business potential by creating compelling positioning platforms and brand stories.
New year: New personal brand and 15 reasons why you need one Chris J Reed
If you want to achieve your business objectives in 2015 you should make a new years resolution to focus on developing your personal brand on LinkedIn and keep it going throughout 2015. It’s now more important than ever. People buy people. Always have, always will. That’s why the phrase “it’s not what you know it’s who you know” is as true now as it was 100 years ago. Today they are buying your personal brand. Think you don’t need a personal brand? Think again, here are 15 reasons why you need a personal brand in 2015: You already have a personal brand – if you don’t control it, it’s being shaped for you by other people. Your personal brand perception is out there of you, you can manage it or you can let others take it away from you. Up to you. If you want a new job then your personal brand will dictate whether you succeed or not. The first thing a HR director does is look at your LinkedIn profile. No photo, no summary page and no updated job title/experience and you won’t even get an interview.
If you want a promotion in your existing company you will stand more chance of getting it with an enhanced personal brand. If your competition for that senior role has more recommendations on LinkedIn, has more connections on LinkedIn and their profile altogether looks better they will beat you to that position. If you want to keep that client then you should focus on your personal brand –if you’re not and your client is being wooed by another service provider and their personal branding on LinkedInmeKTZuS-edit is better than yours then you may just lose that client. If you want to win that new client then you must enhance your personal brand – if you don’t and they look at your LinkedIn profile and see nothing impressive, no thought leadership, no connections, no company page then social selling rules dictate that you will miss out and not even know about it. If you want to impress the media then you must show that you are a thought leader and demonstrate your accomplishments through your original posting and personal branding on LinkedIn.
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If you want investors then you need to give them reasons to invest. People invest in people just like they employ people or buy from people because of the person. If you have a fully rounded personal brand on LinkedIn that looks impressive and is backed up with substance as well as style then you are more likely to 1) get investors approaching you and 2) be welcomed with an open door when you approach the investors. Why should someone invest in you if you can’t invest in yourself personally? If you want to reassure shareholders and keep them informed as to what you’re doing and how well you’re doing then having a personal brand that is full of confidence with updates as to how the company people are investing in is getting on LinkedIn is key. If you want to be an event speaker of any kind from speaking at a company event to speaking at a conference then you need to give the organiser of that event the confidence to employ you. If your personal brand on LinkedIn contains no speaking engagements or details of when you chaired an event successfully or recommendations from other event organisers then why should a future event organiser employ you? Add pictures, videos of you in action and list all the events that you have done and are doing. Confidence is everything in event speaking, for the organisers as well as the speakers. That confidence comes from a confident personal brand. They are banking on you satisfying their customers. They need to trust that you can. li personal pageIf you want to blog for a media brand then you have to demonstrate that you have the credibility and following to make a publisher allow you to blog for them and be exposed to their audience. They have to want you to publish for them. They are after all endorsing you by association. Therefore you should list out your writing experience and blogging experience on your personal brand on your LinkedIn profile and give people reasons why you are worthy of being their blogger. If you want employees or you want to keep existing employees then you have to have a personal brand worth following. All great leaders have great personal brands. Now that has changed from the battlefield and off line to social media, especially in a business context; LinkedIn. In a competitive world you need to impress and inspire your employees that it’s worth staying with you and you need to impress future employees that you’re worth following. A great personal
brand can tick so many boxes when it comes this. If you want to be recommended and referred to by others then you need a personal brand on LinkedIn worth showing to other people. Remember your LinkedIn personal profile never sleeps, it’s being viewed 24/7 from people all around the world. If you want to be headhunted then it goes without saying that you need a great personal brand on LinkedIn. You profile should contain all your achievements, awards, associations, companies you have worked for, promotions you gained and innovative things that you have done. If you don’t then there are plenty of other people on LinkedIn who a headhunter can move onto that will show all their achievements and give reasons why they should be picked because of the way that they have communicated their personal brand on LinkedIn. LinkedIn SEO. Many people underestimate the power that that LinkedIn has as an SEO (search engine optimisation) platform. It works in the in the same way that Google and YouTube does. Keywords in your LinkedIn profile, achievements, recommendations, visits, credible links, content, posts etc are all relevant in determining your position on LinkedIn searches. Don’t underestimate how LinkedIn works and how others use it to find you….or not as the case maybe! Google and SEO. You may have noticed that when you do a search on your own company or yourself that your LinkedIn personal profile and LinkedIn company page will appear next to or justdKXapf-edit below or sometimes even above your own website. This is a great asset, a great opportunity and potentially a great problem. If you have an incomplete company page on LinkedIn what does that say about your company? If you have an incomplete, sparse personal profile on LinkedIn and people find that on Google what does that say about your personal brand? In summary you are in charge of your own personal branding in 2015. If you wish to achieve great things in the business world your personal brand is where it starts and LinkedIn is the catalyst for this. If you don’t look after your own personal brand then you are more likely to fail in your ambitions and your competitors are more likely to win. If you do look after your personal brand then you are more likely to win and achieve all of your personal goals in 2015. It’s your choice. It’s never too late to start.
Why Social Media Marketers and Brand Managers Should Care About Employee Advocacy Dave Hawley
Both social media marketers and brand managers are asking themselves the same question: How can they make their brand’s story stand out in today’s noisy, always-on, social world? Let’s face it... Not every ad campaign goes viral, and not every social media post reaches the target audience. But that fact can change. What has lately been called an unsolvable problem by marketers has a relatively simple solution: employee advocacy.
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The Benefits of Employee Advocacy Many Fortune 1000 brands are empowering their employees to be brand advocates—in their own, original voice—on social media. Brands looking to reach new audiences as well as drive brand loyalty need only look to the people creating, building, and selling their products and services. Employee advocates are some of the best social marketers out there. Employees can help generate brand awareness, new engagement, and new sales. Research from Cisco shows that employees have 10X more followers than corporate social accounts. What’s more, a 12% increase in brand advocacy generally generates a 2X increase in revenue growth. Employee advocates have the power to drive a wide range of marketing value, such as: 1. Sharing company content on social media 2. Motivating their network to engage with company content 3. Consuming content published on the platform
How to Get Started Top brands are offering their employees social media training and an advocate marketing platform that enables them to quickly and easily share brand-approved content. Getting started usually means identifying internal business partners and getting leadership involved. Company leaders have the ability to model how employees should interact on social media. Support from leadership is a critical component. When leadership is involved, employees are more likely to participate. However, most company executives are more than happy to get involved when they see how various departments across their organization stand to benefit from employee advocacy.
has seen its program adoption double week over week. Moreover, its social media engagement increased 10X since the program launched. This Fortune 50 retailer’s success was due to its employees’ passion and brand pride, as well as the strategic way that the company rolled out its program. The company first launched with a beta group of about 300 socially savvy marketers and other key stakeholders who helped optimize and improve the program before rolling out the program to the entire company. After that, the retailer hosted an in-person training and a webinar training to get employees up to speed on the platform and social media basics. But the retailer didn’t stop there. After all, its program’s top initiative is to ensure on-going engagement. One way that the retailer is motivating employee engagement is making sure the program is always populated with brand content that is new and fresh. Another best-practice is to provide a variety of content, so employees always have something interesting and relevant to share. Thanking and recognizing employees is critical to keeping employees engaged. The Fortune 50 retailer highlights employees in weekly program updates and provides swag such as T-shirts or gift cards to employees to recognize them for being active advocates. The company also provides employees with first access to exclusive content, allowing employees to break the news, even before the press, which is a great way to encourage employees to share.
Employee advocacy, from marketing to sales to recruiting to corporate communications, has the power to drive results that reach higher than ROI (though it drives that, too). Many Fortune 50 brands have already seen huge value in being able to use their advocacy program to:
Other Fortune 50 brands have also seen major benefits and achieved much sought-after business results by investing in employee advocacy. For example, one Fortune 10 telecom company used employee advocacy to increase sales leads, train employees in social media, and drive program adoption. Thousands of employees have joined the program, and many have reported that their participation gives them greater sense of ownership over company updates and that they feel more engaged with the company culture.
1. Drive revenue
***
2. Increase social engagement
Social media marketers and brand managers everywhere can see better, stronger results with an employee advocacy program. With the companywide benefits Fortune 1000 companies are seeing—ranging from driving brand awareness to increasing sales leads, improving recruiting goal and more— it’s obvious that the time to get started with employee advocacy is now.
3. Drive website traffic 4. Power social selling 5. Increase brand awareness 6. Attract top talent
Learning From What Fortune 50 Brands Do For example, take one Fortune 50 retailer that recently launched an employee advocacy program to thousands of its employees at its annual company meeting. This retailer
Dave Hawley is VP of marketing at advocate marketing solution SocialChorus.
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ways that brands can get the most out of Instagram
Tamara Littleton
People have shared more than 16 billion photos on Instagram to date. With an average of 55 million photos uploaded each day, Instagram is a social media platform worth exploring. Although research shows that the engagement rate of Instagram posts is 15 times higher than those made on Facebook, SocialBakers reported that 23 per cent of marketers weren’t planning to prioritise the channel in 2015. ComScore found that 42% of millennial smartphone users were on Instagram, spending an average of 439 minutes on the app per month. Whether it’s down to limited resources, or a limited perception of the benefits of the channel, it’s clear that there’s a massive opportunity that many marketers are yet to explore.
Brand wins on Instagram LancomeUSA’s #bareselfie campaign challenged women to post sans makeup selfies. According to Lancôme, the campaign generated 50 per cent of the sales of its DreamTone serum, which had just launched. More than 500 hashtagged photos were uploaded. In 2013, Red Bull UK used Instagram to encourage cocreation. It asked followers to upload inspirational images which represented a red, blue or silver special edition can. The best images would win the chance to be featured on the Red Bull UK Instagram page and on billboard adverts across the UK. The campaign had more than 3,000 submissions and reached over 16 million people via mobile and social channels. Like any other social media channel, using Instagram requires a brand to consider three things: investment (in time and money), strategy and content. You can have an amazing idea for an Instagram campaign, but without the resources in place to implement it, you’re stuck. Posting random images without a solid strategy behind them will only get you so far. There are seven elements that a brand has to get right to create a successful Instagram presence. 1. Define the target audience, and know what it wants. For example, although many women may be interested in cosmetics, you may need to use different social media tactics to reach the teen and young adult
audience. Does the target audience prefer social media kudos, or discount codes? 2. Know the story that needs to be told and know its purpose. Consider what you want people to feel when they see the content, and think about what it is about the post that motivates them to act. What action should they be taking after they’ve viewed the image? Is the aim to get them to share the post, or to buy the product? Maybe it’s both. Give a clear call to action. 3. Creativity doesn’t end with the image. Brands that make full use of Instagram’s features, such as by writing creative or informative photo descriptions, will get more bang for their buck than brands that just see it as a box that needs to be ticked, or use the space to spam related keywords as hashtags. 4. Create unique content for the channel. It’s best practice to post unique content for each social media channel. Approach social media in a similar way to its regular users. People don’t tend to post the same message to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. What makes people post something on Instagram rather than their Twitter account? 5. Engage. If followers comment on an Instagram post, you need to be ready to respond and start a conversation. Instagram runs on dialogue just like any other social media site. 6. The Instagram page should reflect the brand’s image. Think of Instagram as the company mood board. People follow fashion labels on Instagram because they want to get the latest news on their favourite designers. They want to see the latest trends first. A brand’s Instagram page needs to be immediately identifiable as belonging to them. 7. Pick a style: professional, natural or usergenerated. You can use Instagram to create a polished looking set of images, working with professional photographers to achieve the right look. Some brands opt for the natural look – posting candid shots of things like behind-the-scenes events – by snapping the picture on a smartphone and uploading it with little editing. A third option is to use Instagram as a home for the brand’s user-generated, or co-created, visual campaigns.
Top Brand Marketers Share What They’re Gearing Up for in 2015 Gregarious Narain
In 2014, brands shored up their commitment to social, made innovations in their use of new platforms, and began to map and measure the effectiveness of their efforts. We saw Instagram outgrow and outpace Twitter, paralleling the overall rise of visual content and visual-first platforms. Wearable tech began shedding its sci-fi image, marketers pushed back against the loss of organic reach on Facebook, and YouTube influencers went mainstream. The question now is, “What will 2015 hold?” Recently, I had the opportunity to connect with marketers
across the Fortune 500, brands, publishers, and agencies at the Visual Revolution Summit. Most people were discussing challenges to overcome, accomplishments, and areas for improvement. I was curious to get a visceral read on what was top of mind for them in the upcoming year. Over a dozen conference speakers shared their perspectives, resulting in some key themes and predictions for the new year. You can find those in the following video.
Gregarious Narain is co-founder and CTO of Chute, which enables users to discover, organize, obtain consent, and publish fan photos and videos as a mobile app, photo gallery, banner ad, or even a billboard in Times Square. Previously, Gregarious was vice-president of Product at Klout
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The Anatomy of Buzz: How to Create Word of Mouth Marketing
The Art of the Pitch: Persuasion and Presentation Skills that Win Business
By Emanuel Rosen
By Peter Coughter Occasionally, a great idea will sell itself. The other 99% of the time, you have to find a way to persuade others that it is, in fact, a great idea. Most executives spend the vast majority of their time creating their work, and almost no time on the presentation. Through an engaging and humorous narrative, Peter Coughter presents the tools he designed to help advertising...
The first guide to creating the word-of-mouth magic that breaks through the skepticism and information overload of today’s consumers, and drive sales--and profits--to new heights. As Newsweek recently proclaimed, “Buzz greases the great conveyor belt of culture and commerce, moving everything from movies to fashions of the body and mind faster and faster.”
The Cluetrain Manifesto: 10th Anniversary Edition By Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, David Weinberge, McKee Jake The Cluetrain Manifesto began as a Web site (cluetrain.com) in 1999 when the authors, who have worked variously at IBM, Sun Microsystems, the Linux Journal, and NPR, posted 95 theses about the new reality of the networked marketplace. Ten years after its original publication, their message remains more relevant than ever. For example, thesis no. 2: “Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors”...
Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations By Clay Shirky A revelatory examination of how the wildfirelike spread of new forms of social interaction enabled by technology is changing the way humans form groups and exist within them, with profound longterm economic and social effects-for good and for ill
Contagious: Why Things Catch On
Marketing: An Introduction (12th Edition)
By Jonah Berger
By Gary Armstrong, Philip Kotler Marketing: An Introduction is intended for use in undergraduate Principles of Marketing courses. It is also suitable for those interested in learning more about the fundamentals of marketing. This best-selling, brief text introduces marketing through the lens of creating value for customers. With engaging real-world examples and information, Marketing: An Introduction shows students how customer value–creating it and capturing it–drives every effective marketing strategy.
If you said advertising, think again. People don’t listen to advertisements, they listen to their peers. But why do people talk about certain products and ideas more than others? Why are some stories and rumors more infectious? And what makes online content go viral? Wharton marketing professor Jonah Berger has spent the last decade answering these questions. He’s studied why New York Times articles make the paper’s own Most E-mailed List...
It’s Not How Good You Are, Its How Good You Want to Be: The World’s Best Selling Book By Paul Arden It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be is a handbook of how to succeed in the world - a pocket ‘bible’ for the talented and timid to make the unthinkable thinkable and the impossible possible. The world’s top advertising guru, Paul Arden, offers up his wisdom on issues as diverse as problem solving, responding to a brief, communicating, playing your cards right, making mistakes and creativity...
My Life in Advertising and Scientific Advertising (Advertising Age Classics Library) By Claude Hopkins Gain a lifetime of experience from the inventor of test marketing and coupon sampling -- Claude C. Hopkins. Here, you’ll get two landmark works in one, and discover his fixed principles and basic fundamentals that still prevail today.
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UnSelling: The New Customer Experience
UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging
By Scott Stratten, Alison Kramer UnSelling is about everything but the sell. We put all of our focus on the individual purchase transaction, while putting the rest of our business actions second. We’ve become blind to customer service, support, branding, experiences and even product quality. Sixty percent of a purchasing decision is made before a customer even contacts you. We have funnel vision, and it needs to stop.
By Scott Stratten, Alison Kramer Stop marketing. Start UnMarketing. No one likes cold calls at dinnertime, junk mail overflowing your mailbox, and advertisements that interrupt your favorite shows. If this is “marketing,” then the world would probably prefer whatever is the opposite of that. f you’re ready to stop marketing and start engaging, then welcome to UnMarketing. The landscape of business-customer relationships is changing, and UnMarketing gives you...
Marketing 3.0: From Products to Customers to the Human Spirit
Strategic Advertising Management
By Philip Kotler, Hermawan Kartajaya, Iwan Setiawan Understand the next level of marketing The new model for marketing-Marketing 3.0-treats customers not as mere consumers but as the complex, multi-dimensional human beings that they are. Customers, in turn, are choosing companies and products that satisfy deeper needs for participation, creativity, community, and idealism.
Creative Intelligence: Harnessing the Power to Create, Connect, and Inspire By Bruce Nussbaum
By Larry Percy, Richard Rosenbaum-Elliott ntegrating theory with application and presenting numerous real-life examples, Strategic Advertising Management, Fourth Edition, offers a systematic look at advertising within a theoretical and strategic planning framework. Authors Larry Percy and Richard Rosenbaum-Elliott present an overview of “how advertising works,” discuss what is required from a manager in order to develop an effective communication plan, and equip students with the skills necessary for successfully applying strategy to various processes in advertising.
Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation
Smart and eye opening, Creative Intelligence: Harnessing the Power to Create, Connect, and Inspire illustrates how to connect our creative output with a new type of economic system, Indie Capitalism, where creativity is the source of value, where entrepreneurs drive growth, and where social networks are the building blocks of the economy.
By Tim Brown
Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All
Make Space: How to Set the Stage for Creative Collaboration
by Tom Kelley, David Kelley Too often, companies and individuals assume that creativity and innovation are the domain of the “creative types.” But two of the leading experts in innovation, design, and creativity on the planet show us that each and every one of us is creative. In an incredibly entertaining and inspiring narrative that draws on countless stories from their work at IDEO, the Stanford d.school, and with many of the world’s top companies...
The myth of innovation is that brilliant ideas leap fully formed from the minds of geniuses. The reality is that most innovations come from a process of rigorous examination through which great ideas are identified and developed before being realized as new offerings and capabilities.
By by Scott Doorley, Scott Witthoft, Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University, David Kelley (Foreword) Make Space is a new and dynamic resource for activating creativity, communication and innovation across institutions, corporations, teams, and schools alike. Filled with tips and instructions that can be approached from a wide variety of angles, Make Space is a ready resource for empowering anyone to take control of an environment.