BrandKnew February 2017

Branding matters. Because branding matters.

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Dear Friends: January has just whizzed past and now we enter the month of Valentine where our love affair with all things brands and branding continues unabated. Not unlike earlier issues, this edition too is feature rich. Right from how Advertising is tackling the Anti Muslim attitudes(and rightly so) to Marketing Trends that we can expect to see in 2017.Not exactly espionage but the feature on how brands can capitalise on Competitive Market Intelligence is really worthy of soaking in.The creative community and all marketers will find the article on What is Common to both Beyonce and Shakespeare and their Key to Creativity very uplifting.Contrary to predictions, it’s no time to write an Obituary for Email Marketing just yet as the feature on the same will share and testify. We have all been through this(and continue to do so) but relief is at hand. The story on how to avoid Death By PowerPoint will be an eye opener.

Often neglected(thinking inside the box os needed here), in this issue we tell you how your Employees can become your best Brand Ambassadors. For those obsessed with User Interface Design, we take a blast from the past and feature The Best and Worst of UI in 2016. There is bags more as you dig deep and I wish you happy and fruitful engagement with the February edition of BrandKnew.

Au Revoir till the next.

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Suresh Dinakaran @sureshdinakaran

@Brandknewmag

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CONTENTS

Top brand moments in 2016: 5 CMOs share their biggest milestones of the year How advertising is challenging anti-Muslim attitudes The 5 Marketing Trends to Keep Your Eyes on for 2017 No more Death by PowerPoint How to capitalise on competitive marketing intelligence ‘Home of Guinness’: 5 Questions with Brand Manager Colette Coughlan What Beyoncé & Shakespeare Have In Common: The Key To Creativity Why Email Marketing May Be Major in 2017 The Best And Worst User Interfaces Of 2016 Slow Medicine for Brands in the Social Era 5 ways to turn employees into brand ambassadors These Brand Consultants Turned Nights on the Town Into Market Data Agencies get excited about Instagram ads in Stories and new analytics tools Is Your Organization Addicted To PowerPoint?

5 Symptoms And 6 Proven Remedies Book, Line & Sinker

Top brand moments in 2016: 5 CMOs share their biggest milestones of the year FROM NEW BRAND IDENTITIES TO MAJOR AD CAMPAIGNS, CMOS FROM STUBHUB, PELOTON AND MORE SHARE THEIR TOP MOMENTS DURING THE LAST 12 MONTHS.

By Amy Gesenhues

It was a big year all around in digital marketing. From video and social to martech and ad tech — there was no slowing down when it came to the ways marketers could engage their audiences, share their content, interact with consumers or measure their outcomes.

Marketing Land kept a close eye on all the latest digital marketing trends throughout the year, but we wanted to know how CMOs would remember 2016. So we turned to StubHub, Peloton, Mizzen+Main, Olapic and HopSkipDrive to ask what major milestones helped shape their brands during the last 12 months.

From StubHub’s major rebrand and Olapic’s acquisition by Monotype to Mizzen+Main’s “Portrait of a Patriot” campaign and Peloton’s event that brought 400 cyclist to NYC — it appears these brands had just as big a year as the digital marketing industry that serves them.

Top Brand Moments in 2016

Jennifer Betka, CMO, StubHub In May, StubHub unveiled a new brand identity and launched a new advertising campaign. I see this as the moment we opened the aperture on our brand to better reflect the mindset of our customers.

In the past, StubHub had appealed to a primarily male, sports-focused audience. StubHub’s new identity — with its more modern logo, dynamic imagery, vibrant color palette and ability to convey the emotion inherent in live experiences — gives us an opportunity to be clear about our purpose — to connect people through live experiences — and appeal to a wider audience, across more event types, and in more cities around the world.

Today, the StubHub brand reflects a broader view of live experiences, to appeal to fans of singer Adele as much as fans of boxer Anthony Joshua.

As importantly, it’s working. New customer metrics for 3Q 2016 showed that we attracted more new female customers than new male customers, and for the first time, more new customers purchased first in the music genre versus the sports genre.

But we’re only getting started, and we’re working to realize this vision across more of our marketing and brand programs in 2017.

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Carolyn Tisch Blodgett, VP of Brand Marketing, Peloton Our best brand moment was our “Home Rider Invasion” event in NYC in May, where over 400 riders descended upon our flagship Chelsea studio from around the country to participate in a weekend of live classes and activities.

Home riders traveled thousands of miles to meet each other in person for the first time and experience the Peloton community all together.

Rachel Meranus, CMO, Olapic Olapic celebrated two key milestones in 2016: Olapic proudly grew to a new level with a major rebrand and introduced “Earned Content” as a critical category for marketers to fill a massive demand for engaging branded content. On the heels of the rebrand, Olapic was acquired

by Monotype, a public company that helps empower expression and engagement through font types, technology and expertise.

To watch the utter joy and excitement these riders felt from being together in person — it brought the definition of “brand love” to a whole new level!

Janelle McGlothlin, CMO, HopSkipDrive

Jen Lavelle, CMO, Mizzen+Main At Mizzen+Main, we have supported United States veterans and their families since the founding of the company. This year our veterans campaign, which ran the week of the holiday, was the best moment of 2016.

Titled “Portrait of a Patriot,” we featured a veteran and their personal story each day of that week on our social media channels and Mizzen+Main blog. The campaign as a whole was well received by our audience and gave us an opportunity to express gratitude for our nation’s heroes.

Making the campaign all the more meaningful, we shared the stories of Mizzen+Main team members and their family members who have served, including our COO, Ryan Kent, and Customer Engagement Associate, Justin Feagin.

2016 was such a great year for HopSkipDrive, so it’s hard to pick just one moment. I think filming our new brand videos tops the charts for me. We interviewed a handful of parents who use HopSkipDrive regularly and hearing their testimonials was so encouraging.

We get feedback from customers all the time; our customer support team is in constant communication with parents and we’re always hearing how we are improving their lives, but having the chance to connect with parents who have benefited from the service directly really validates our service and reinforces the difference we’re making in families lives.

Amy Gesenhues is Third Door Media’s General Assignment Reporter, covering the latest news and updates for Marketing Land and Search Engine Land.

From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas.

How advertising is challenging anti-Muslim attitudes IN YEAR OF ANTI-MUSLIM VITRIOL, BRANDS PROMOTE INCLUSION

By Sapna Maheshwari

The gentle piano music starts as the doorbell chimes. A whitehaired Christian pastor greets his friend, a Muslim imam, and the two converse and laugh over a cup of tea, wincing about their creaky knees as they prepare to part ways. Later, it spurs the same idea in each for a gift: kneepads sent via Amazon Prime. (It is a commercial, after all.)

The piano notes accelerate as the men open their deliveries with smiles, and then each uses the item to kneel in prayer: one at a church, the other at a mosque. The final chords fade.

The ad from Amazon and its message of interfaith harmony became a viral sensation this holiday season, at the end of a year in which talk involving Muslims became particularly ominous. Amazon — which aired the commercial in England, Germany and the United States — cast a practicing vicar and Muslim community leader in the lead roles and consulted with several religious organizations to ensure the ad was accurate and respectful.

“This type of a project is definitely a first for us,” said Rameez Abid, communications director for the social justice branch of the Islamic Circle of North America, one group Amazon worked with. “They were very aware that this was going to cause controversy and might get hate mail and things like that, but they said it’s something that they wanted to do

because the message is important.”

A slew of major American brands — including Honey Maid, Microsoft, Chevrolet, YouTube and CoverGirl — prominently featured everyday Muslim men, women and children in their marketing last year. While such ads were apolitical in nature, focused on themes of community and acceptance, they were viewed as bold, even risky, in a year when there were campaign statements by Donald J. Trump about a Muslim registry and a ban on Muslim immigrants.

It was “a glimmer of hope in the midst of a greatly traumatic year for Muslims,” said Mona Haydar, an American poet and activist who appeared in a recent Microsoft commercial with a variety of community leaders, including a transgender teenager and a white policeman.

“For me as a Muslim woman, I represent something right now in the country that for some people incites fear,” said Ms. Haydar, 28, who wears a hijab and hails from Flint, Mich. “This normalizes the narrative that we are just human beings.”

Several advertising executives likened the movement to the decision by mass marketers to cast same-sex couples and their children in ads for the first time in 2013 and 2014, making inclusion and acceptance a priority over potential criticism from some customers.

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New Amazon Prime Commercial 2016 – A Priest and Imam meet for a cup of tea. Video by amazon

“With the kind of gay parent issue, we’ve gotten a little closer to acceptance, but the Muslim issue in America is still pretty raw for a lot of people,” said Kevin Brady, an executive creative director at the ad agency Droga5, which worked last year with Honey Maid on a commercial about white and Muslim-American neighbors. “I don’t think it should be, but it’s one that I think brands took an extra step of courage to really go out there with in 2016.”

A campaign for YouTube Music in the middle of last year highlighted five individuals, including a young woman in a hijab, rapping to a song by Blackalicious while walking through a school corridor. The inclusion of the ad, “Afsa’s Theme,” was purposeful, said Danielle Tiedt, the chief marketing officer at YouTube, adding that highlighting diversity is “more important than ever.”

“I don’t think diversity is a political statement,” she said. “This is an issue of universal humanity.”

For its ad, Amazon was painstaking in its attention to detail, checking with religious groups about costuming and background imagery, and sending over final proofs of the ad for review, said Mr. Abid and Antonios Kireopoulos, an associate general secretary of the National Council of Churches, another group Amazon consulted.

Ads showing any kind of racial diversity can now attract heaping amounts of vitriol online — most of it delivered anonymously — as State Farm discovered last month when it posted an ad of a black man proposing to a white woman on Twitter. Anti-Muslim remarks, like “they don’t belong here,” peppered the comments under Chevrolet’s video in June of two twins from Los Angeles, named Ruqaya and Qassim, who were accepted into a soccer program the company sponsors.

They were 8 years old when the video, which did not mention religion, was made.

Mr. Brady said the agency had prepared Honey Maid for potentially hateful responses to its ad, though it fielded fewer than he feared. (On Facebook, the top comments are appreciative and heartfelt.) Nida’a Moghrabi, a cheesecake seller and mother of three daughters who starred in the commercial with a neighbor she befriended a few years ago, said she had initially been irritated by some rude comments on Facebook and YouTube until she realized how ubiquitous

such remarks were.

“If you go to the adoption commercial from Honey Maid, you still see nasty comments,” Ms. Moghrabi said, referring to an ad of a child talking about his new brother. “So I was like, if they’re complaining about adopted kids, of course I’m not going to worry about their comments about me.”

The response from her community was positive, she said.

Such ads are “encouraging for the younger generations, like those who are afraid to mention that they’re Muslims,” she added. “My daughters are more confident now, and I believe their friends who are Muslims, they know that we’re accepted and we’re loved.”

With more Americans dwelling in siloed information bubbles, commercials have the potential to reach audiences with diverse viewpoints. Amazon said its ad had aired during programs including the “Today” show, “Empire” and “Blue Bloods,” while Microsoft said its placements had included “The Voice,” “Pitch” and “This Is Us.” Dr. Kireopoulos said he had first seen the commercial outside work while watching a National Football League game on television, giving him hope that many different audiences will see it and consider the message, particularly as reports of hate crimes against American Muslims rise.

“I imagine the violence will unfortunately continue, so it will take more vigilance on the part of community leaders and everyday believers to work together,” he said.

Ms. Haydar is hopeful about the potential.

“In 10 years, this commercial might have lived on in the heart of some young kid who saw a Muslim woman in a commercial and didn’t see the boogeyman in my face, and instead saw a normal human being,” she said. “Then if somebody says something about Muslims that’s kind of crazy, maybe that kid can say, ‘I saw this commercial, and she actually just seemed kind of normal.’ You don’t know what the reverberations look like.”

Sapna Maheshwari is a business reporter covering advertising for The New York Times. She previously covered retail and e-commerce at BuzzFeed News and Bloomberg News, and has contributed to Bloomberg Businessweek.

The 5 Marketing Trends to Keep Your Eyes on for 2017 FROM DETAILED CONTENT TO INNOVATIVE SOCIAL-MEDIA CAMPAIGNS, HERE ARE SOME TRENDS TO LOOK OUT FOR IN THE UPCOMING YEAR.

By Small Business PR

As we’ve seen repeatedly this year, it’s always hard to predict the future. But companies try every year, from budget projections to planning marketing strategies. Though we’d all like to be clairvoyant enough to know what the next best thing will be, it’s incredibly hard to accurately predict new trends well enough to get a jump on the competition. There are, however, trends that we can assume will continue over the next year.

Here’s our pick for trends to keep an eye on for the upcoming year.

1. Detailed content.

Content marketing has been adapting and growing over the last 10 years. In the past year, we have seen a particularly large leap forward in detailed content. It’s no longer enough to have strong keywords, links, and good meta tags. Your content needs to be relevant and interesting enough for people to read more than the first paragraph. With so much content out there, every piece needs to reach exactly the audience looking for it. Otherwise, it simply gets lost in the noise of other content.

2. Innovative social-media campaigns.

The last year has seen significant changes for the social media landscape. With social media taking over as the primary source of news, ads, and other information, it’s more important than ever to innovate and diversify your marketing campaigns. From Snapchat filters to Facebook Live events, companies that can adapt with the changing social media landscape and stay on the front wave are going to see better ROIs than those who fall behind.

3. Interactive content.

The past few years have shown the power that having an interactive strategy can have. For-profit companies can

benefit from studying the ways that other causes are using to garner attention. The Ice Bucket Challenge and, more recently, the Mannequin Challenge have become a social media phenomenon for a reason. People like to get involved in the story. If you can draw your customers in and make them feel like they are part of something larger, you’ll build both excitement and loyalty in your audience.

4. Personal stories and content.

Though this is not a new concept, it is increasingly important.

As advertising becomes more ubiquitous, people look towards others like themselves to determine the next big thing and whether a product is worth purchasing. Putting a name and a face to your customer base will help them feel connected to your brand and product. It is absolutely essential, however, that this is genuine. If personal accounts and experiences are fabricated, customers will feel betrayed and negative reviews spread faster than positive ones.

5. Specific audiences.

With the ability to reach so many people daily, it’s necessary to be more specific than ever when determining your target audience. Having a blanket campaign that tries to appeal to everyone is going to make your brand fade into all the other content out there. Determine the specifics of your audience, from education level to associated likes, and find the best way to reach that group for each product or service. It may be more work, but the benefit will far outweigh the cost and effort.

Over the next year, the most important thing of all is going to be leaving room for new ways of interacting with customers.

Whether the next trend is virtual reality, artificial intelligence, or immersive marketing, having the ability to be part of that new conversation will be essential for any company hoping to grow in 2017.

No more Death by PowerPoint How Bono, Apple And LinkedIn Make Presentations Engaging And Memorable

By Carmine Gallo

An estimated 350 PowerPoint presentations are given every second around the world. How many are ‘boring’ is impossible to know, but as a communication advisor who watches presentations every week, I’ll make an educated guess—the majority of them.

In my opinion, the problem has never been the tool itself.

We don’t have a PowerPoint crisis; we suffer from a creativity crisis. In fact, PowerPoint presentations in grade school or high school are often more enjoyable to watch than those given in corporate settings. Young people raised in the Instagram generation are more likely to create presentations loaded with pictures, videos and multimedia elements—the very components that neuroscience tells us are more effective when presenting data or information.

From time to time in this column I offer very specific tips and strategies to make your next presentation far more engaging and memorable. Today, let’s tackle the problem of presenting data in a more engaging way, especially a key statistic or number that you want your audience to remember

and act upon. Whether your presentation software of choice is PowerPoint, Prezi, or Apple Keynote, the strategy works the same. Data is more impactful when it is personal, contextual, and tangible.

Make Data Personal Data is abstract and unemotional. Data is simply a number, statistics or group of facts. The people behind the data are far more interesting. The U2 singer, Bono, delivered a thoughtprovoking TED Talk titled, The Good News on Poverty. He wanted to highlight the stunning progress being made reducing extreme poverty. The presentation was designed in Prezi, an online presentation tool growing in popularity.

I am a keynote speaker and communication coach. I am the author of seven international bestsellers including my newest book “The Storyteller’s Secret: From TED Speakers to Business Legends, Why Some Ideas Catch on and Others Don’t.

To watch the video, click here

Bono speaking in Canada (photo Geoff Robins/AFP/ Getty Images)

5–8 March 2017

Innovation and creativity are the two magical phenomena that drive the world forward.

From the way VR is transforming communication, to how we connect physical and digital landscapes in revolutionary ways, you’ll hear about it at Dubai Lynx. Key speakers from R/GA London, IDEO, Framestore, IBM and many more will share future-forging ideas.

Join us from 5 to 7 March at the Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai, to discover the future.

And if you’ve nudged the dial forward with some ground-breaking creative work recently, be sure to enter it in the new Innovation category for the Dubai Lynx Awards.

www.dubailynx.com #dubailynx

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Dubai Lynx International Festival of Creativity 5–7 March 2017 Awards Ceremony 8 March 2017

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How to capitalise on competitive marketing intelligence 10 TIPS FOR EFFICIENTLY IMPROVING YOUR COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE

By CEB STAFF

When trying to get senior decision-makers in a company to respond quickly to either a threat or an opportunity for the company, strategists tend to put a lot of effort into making their message as compelling as possible.

About half (51%, according to CEB data) of their effort goes into increasing the strength of the signal, so to speak, and is an approach that includes improving the quality of the information and presenting it in a more compelling way (see chart 1).

While this may seem like a sensible approach it is actually not the most effective. In fact, boosting the signal strength in this way is not nearly as powerful as helping senior execs come to a decision.

That doesn’t mean to say that it’s not worthwhile spending time on improving the quality of the data or making a presentation more compelling, just that it should be done as efficiently as possible. Heads of strategy in CEB’s network of strategy teams shared the following tips on quick, and easy ways to improve data quality and its delivery.

Improve the Data Quality 1. Lead with assumptions: Start the conversation with non-financial statements about the future to avoid discussions about the validity of the data.

After all, it is hard to argue about the validity of a hypothetical statement.

2. Document the data gathering process: Track and make available detailed information about how the data was gathered.

Being upfront about data sources will answer possible questions in advance and help you gain credibility.

3. Triangulate data: Use a variety of sources (internal and external) and choose the best data – that which is corroborated by numerous independent sources.

Senior managers are less likely to question the validity of data that is supported by several unique sources.

4. Focus on predictive indicators: Predictive indicators help reveal which economies, sectors, or companies show relative strength.

Because these indicators are about what will be in the

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future, senior leaders are more forgiving about the need for accuracy.

Present Competitive Intelligence in a More Compelling Way 1. Speak the language of the audience: When sharing competitive intelligence (CI) with colleagues, take into account whom you are talking to and what their priorities are. Make the information as relevant to them as possible.

2. Use pre-reads intelligently: Sending pre-reading material only works when it is not overdone. Be selective about using it.

3. Pre-sell: People have their own ideas and they need time to accept new ones. Identify or create opportunities (e.g., one-on-one meetings) to share information before asking senior leaders to discuss it.

This is particularly true when sharing CI that is unexpected or that contradicts the conventional point of view.

4. Conduct war games: When people step out of their roles, they are able to temporarily remove their biases and understand the external environment better.

5. Use a third party to eliminate biases: Invite an outsider (e.g., topic or industry expert) to include the point of view of an objective bystander.

Someone that is not directly involved in the company will be able to understand where different stakeholders are coming from and provide guidance on good options for the firm.

6. Provide options on a course of action: Don’t present only a threat or only an opportunity; this leaves people with more questions than answers.

Provide different possible responses and explain the pros and cons associated with each of them. If people understand the implications of responding to a threat or an opportunity they will be more open to discussing it.

CEB Innovation & Strategy provides senior leadership and their teams with insight and actionable solutions to transform operations. CEB’s insights, tools, and advisory services to help member executives focus efforts, move quickly, and confidently address emerging business challenges.

‘Home of Guinness’:

5 Questions with Brand Manager Colette Coughlan By brandchannel

In 2015, the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin was voted the No. 1 tourist attraction in all of Europe at the World Travel Awards—winning over other popular attractions such as Buckingham Palace and the Eiffel Tower.

It’s located at the Guinness Brewery at St. James’s Gate (Irish: Grúdlann Gheata Naomh Séamuis), which was founded in 1759 by Arthur Guinness. The iconic Irish brand is today owned by Diageo, formed by the merger of Guinness and Grand Metropolitan in 1997.

Guinness brand manager Colette Coughlan, who leads its advertising, brand and PR campaigns, positions the Guinness Storehouse as a “must-see” attraction with both tourists visiting Ireland as well as the Irish population. brandchannel had the opportunity to speak with Coughlan about marketing the “Home of Guinness” as both a brand experience and as a leading global tourist destination. brandchannel: How do you define the Guinness brand—and how has it changed over the past five years?

Colette Coughlan: Guinness is an iconic brand. We brew beer that can be enjoyed by everyone. The depth and flavour of Guinness is extraordinary.

Our beers are very distinctive with a unique brewing process and a noted two-pour serve for our Guinness Draught. At its core, Guinness is all about beer and people and igniting great conversations. It’s a world

famous brand sold in 150 countries and brewed in 40 countries.

The past five years have seen a surge in creative brewing and radical new beer styles. Currently the beer category is exciting, aspirational and appeals to both genders. It’s an exciting time with a vibrant culture of innovation and entrepreneurial spirit, which is an integral part of the Guinness DNA and has always been at our heart, starting with our founder, Arthur Guinness.

For the first time in our history, we’ve opened the doors to our 100-year-old pilot brewery, the hub of our experimental brewing, called The Open Gate Brewery. Here we are introducing the world to our brewers in their home of experimentation and innovation. The Open Gate Brewery is the driver behind beer experimentation, craftsmanship, innovation and creativity. It’s a global destination for beer enthusiasts who are eager to discover and experience a deeper connection to beer innovation, in a truly authentic environment. bc: How do you bring the Guinness brand’s history, DNA and values to life and make them relevant and interesting to people today?

Coughlan: The Guinness Storehouse is Ireland’s number one visitor attraction and positioned in the market as the “Home of Guinness.” Everything we do here is unique and authentic to the Guinness brand. We are the physical manifestation of the brand and bring the brand values of power, goodness and communion to life through an engaging and immersive experience. When we opened in 2000 we welcomed 500,000

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Guinness Africa Special and Rye Pale Ale in the US. bc: What role do mobile, social and digital platforms play in creating an engaging brand experience at the Guinness Storehouse?

Coughlan: Our digital presence is very important to the success of the brand. Our visitors connect through social media to share their experiences at the Guinness Storehouse.

In fact, the most Facebook check-ins in Ireland in 2015 happened at the Guinness Storehouse. Our visitors like sharing their emotions and their experience as they are actually going around the attraction.

Our brand story hasn’t had to change through the years, which makes us truly authentic. What has changed is how visitors share their experience online. Part of our success is our commitment to constantly innovate to deliver an excellent visitor experience.

visitors through our doors and we have seen those numbers grow to 1.6 million annually.

When visitors enter the seven-story building, they can follow the unique step-by-step brewing process and get an insight into Arthur Guinness himself. They can learn how to pour the perfect pint, explore the comprehensive Guinness Archives and delve into the records and advertising from 1759 through the present. And, of course, they can enjoy the best views of Dublin city from our Gravity bar, which boast 360-degree panoramic views of the city below.

Quality is part of our DNA. It’s hugely important to us in everything we do from the Guinness beers to our people, the experience, customer service and food. Arthur Guinness believed in the quality of his beer so strongly that he had the amazing vision to sign a 9,000-year lease at St. James’s Gate. We live this legacy every day. We also put great effort in our recruitment process, our training, culture and values.

Our people are passionate about every visitor by providing the warm Irish welcome and ensuring visitors feel at home getting to know the Guinness brand.

Last year we were the first tourism business to use leap motion technology as a way of bringing visitor stories online. We built a large Instagram wall on the fourth floor designed to encourage, collate and display user-generated content using the hashtag #StorehouseStory or @homeofguinness. Visitors can navigate the gallery of images to see their own photo. bc: Looking forward, do you see real-time experiences playing a large part of building your brand story?

Coughlan: The entire tour is interactive and multi-sensorial from touching the ingredients, to smelling and tasting the beer. The most interactive and hands-on part of the tour is without doubt, our Guinness Academy. This is a bespoke Guinness bar where our visitors learn to pour their own pint of Guinness. For many visitors, learning to pour the perfect pint of Guinness is a unique experience and something that connects them physically and emotionally with the brand.

bc: How do you attract your target audience and then extend the experience after they’ve visited the Guinness Storehouse?

Coughlan: While we are certainly a brand attraction, we are also a tourist attraction and pay close attention to consumer trends in the tourism industry and target key markets based on projected growth. We look closely at our visitor figures and look for growth areas. We invest in advertising, social media, PR and media relations to attract visitors each year.

For a number of years now, our marketing has been focused in the US, UK, Canada and Europe, and we have seen growth in these markets this year. While the brand roots are in Dublin, Guinness is truly a global brand. We are rooted in beer and culture around the world. We are constantly responding to consumers all the time with new beers such as

The Guinness Storehouse as a real-time experience plays a key role in the Guinness brand story. In the era of multimedia technology people are craving real and authentic experiences where they can connect with friends in a meaningful way. At the Guinness Storehouse, we provide a space where visitors can enjoy the beer, converse with friends and create lovely memories.

What Beyoncé & Shakespeare Have In Common: The Key To Creativity

By Jon Youshaei

What makes Beyoncé so iconic? Many artists have the talent, but few keep making hits like Queen Bey. So how does she do it? And is there something about her creativity that we can learn from?

To find out, I binged on everything Beyoncé. Every song, music video, concert performance, and interview from Destiny’s Child to Lemonade. Soon, I noticed a strange pattern.

Let’s start with an example: Beyoncé’s 2008 music video, Single Ladies. It got so much buzz that Kanye West infamously interrupted Taylor Swift to call it “one of the best music videos of all time.” But most people don’t realize that this “all-time” video comes from a past time. Namely, June 1969. On The Ed Sullivan Show, choreographer Bob Fosse debuted a dance featuring three women in similar outfits on an empty backdrop…

I couldn’t believe it. Did Queen Bey really copy-and-paste like this? Surely, I thought, this must be a standalone incident. But then I saw her 2011 Billboard Music Awards performance of Run The World. People applauded her epic visuals and exotic

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dancing. But a closer look reveals that Beyoncé’s visuals came from Italian pop star Lorella Cuccarini.

If you peel back the partition on this flawless diva, you’ll find a bookworm. That’s how Beyoncé found ideas from the streets of Mozambique to the stages of Italy. She’s religious about research. For her Run The World performance, she scoured YouTube to find Tofo Tofo.

“I saw this YouTube clip maybe about a year ago,” Beyoncé said in her documentary. “I held onto that, locked it away in my memory bank and said ‘for my next project when I do uptempos, that’s how I want to dance.’”

And her moves are from Mozambique dance group Tofo Tofo:

Beyoncé’s “memory bank” is what old-time advertising execs call their “swipe file.” Long before the internet, they cut out magazine ads, put them in a folder, and adapted them into their projects. Today, Beyoncé uses her swipe file to do the same: research, record, and recall inspiration. She even attends shows to swipe ideas.

“Nobody going to want us to go to their shows, Frank,” Beyoncé once said to creative director Frank Gaston Jr. “Because we’re going to take everything…we go and meet everybody and say ‘hey great show!’ and then steal it.”

It happened again with Beyoncé’s newest album, Lemonade.

In the video for Hold Up, Beyoncé saunters down a sidewalk in her flowery dress before smashing a car window. In 1997, Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist did the same for an installation at the Museum of Modern Art.

Beyoncé encourages her team to do it, too. After all, it was her makeup artist who first saw Lorella Cuccarini’s visuals.

It’s because Beyoncé understands that creativity is a collective process. That’s why she works with so many people when others artists get comfortable with the same small crew. While Beyoncé keeps strong ties (close colleagues like Gaston Jr. who’s been there since Destiny’s Child), she grows weak ties (colleagues she doesn’t frequently work with) to replenish her swipe file. She’s done this more throughout her career with Lemonade being her most collaborative album yet. Beyoncé worked with an average of 9.6 writers and producers per song. That’s up from 5.9 for her first solo album, Dangerously In Love.

There are more examples, including Crazy In Love, 7/11, and Countdown, where Beyoncé repeats her pattern of taking the forgotten and making it famous. So does this make Queen Bey more of a con than an icon?

Some critics say yes. But here’s where I realized they’re dead wrong. Beyoncé’s creative process isn’t copy-and-paste. It’s copy with taste.

Duke Sociologist Martin Ruef found that people like Beyoncé who have more weak ties are typically three times more creative than those with small networks of friends. It’s because they branch out rather than think the same as close contacts.

By letting more people input inspiration, Beyoncé puts out more masterpieces like Run The World which blends Tofo Tofo’s African dance, Cuccarini’s Italian pop and samples Major Lazer’s electro beats.

Critics who dismiss Beyoncé as unoriginal miss the point.

She’s more about elevation than imitation. She credits her sources. She spent five months finding Tofo Tofo through

Mozambique’s US Embassy — and hired them as dancers. In doing so, Beyoncé’s adaptations give new life to the lineage of artists behind it. In fact, before Beyoncé copied Cuccarini, Cuccarini copied a Japanese artist named Kagemu.

If Cuccarini didn’t adapt Kagemu then Beyoncé may not have discovered her work and created Run This World. Same story with Single Ladies. The most interesting nuance about Beyoncé copying Bob Fosse is how she discovered the dance.

It wasn’t by digging through the 1960’s archives of The Ed Sullivan Show. It was because, in 2007, a viral video remixed Fosse’s routine to DJ Unk’s “Walk It Out.” “I saw this…on YouTube and it’s these three ladies and one of them is Bob Fosse’s wife, who’s this choreographer, “ Beyoncé said. “They put Walk It Out to the music, it’s from like the 60s – and it’s one take and I thought ‘wow, how amazing would that be now,’” In other words, Beyoncé made Single Ladies in 2008 because of a 2007 remix of the 1969 dance. That’s the power of copy with taste. It elevates art so more people can enjoy the past in the present.

Beyoncé’s creative process is part of a greater trend. Duke statistician David Banks researched how geniuses often cluster in the same place and time because it was easier to

copy from one another. For example, Elizabethan London was home to William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe and other prolific playwrights. In fact, Shakespeare copied so much that critics claimed he wasn’t a person, but a pen name for four contributing authors. Like Beyoncé, he was religious about research, scouring old books like Arthur Brooke’s The Tragicall Historye of Romeus & Juliet.

In 440-380 BC, the same happened in Athens. The city gave rise to Plato, Socrates, Pericles, Thucydides, and other great minds. In 1450-1490, Florence was home to Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Donatello and other immortal artists.

For them, it was easier to find inspiration because they could hear great philosophers in person or see portraits as the paint dried.

Years from now, we may look back at 2016 and say the same.

We’ll talk about how the internet allowed us to swipe from anywhere and any era. And we’ll remember a Houston native named Beyoncé Knowles who did it best. But the question remains: how will you be remembered? Most of us believe creativity entails looking up at the stars and pondering until ideas hit us. But maybe, we should look back at the stars who came before us. Look at those who differ from us. After all, innovation starts as the imitation of different inspirations. It’s why we’ll face the same critics along the way. They may call us knock offs. But that’s how the greats start off. Beyoncé was once The Next Diana Ross. But today, as Oprah said, “she’s not the Diana Ross of our generation, Beyoncé is the Beyoncé of our generation.” So who’s the you of your generation?

There were so many great clips in the article that I decided to make a video about it. See below.

Why Email Marketing May Be Major in 2017 INBOXES MAY BE CONSIDERED KING THIS YEAR AS IT BECOMES HARDER TO GET CUSTOMERS’ ATTENTIONS. USING THESE EMAIL MARKETING TIPS MAY HELP YOU STAND OUT.

By Dave Charest

Fake news, ad blockers and less robust reporting metrics from social media sites are just a few of the reasons why marketers are putting more resources into email marketing to reach their customers. In this landscape, businesses may find that they need to do more to inspire customers to open and respond to their messages.

Yet before I dig into how to help you effectively reach customers through email marketing, let’s take a closer look at six reasons why the inbox may rule small business in 2017.

6 Drivers Behind the Resurgence of Email 1. Fake news. The proliferation of fake news sites—those that intentionally publish propaganda and disinformation to boost social sharing and drive website traffic—has made some consumers think twice about the source of the content they’re consuming. Since email marketing is permissionbased, the customer usually already knows and trusts the source of the message. This can be an upside for smaller businesses because they can engage customers on a more personal level.

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Businesses that understand the needs of their customers and can deliver personalized experiences to the inbox may see gains for their efforts.

3. More inboxes. The eMarketer report “Email Marketing Benchmarks 2016: Relevancy, Frequency, Deliverability and Mobility” discusses the current state of email.

Email’s performance metrics and trends serve to make email more relevant to customers, according to the report. The report estimates that the number of email users will go from about 240 million in the U.S. in 2016 to over 259 million by 2020.

4. The lack of transparency in reporting engagement on social media. With email, marketers can typically see the direct correlation in their outreach to customers and the customer’s response because they can see who opened, shared and clicked through the content. This transparency isn’t always clear with other channels if there are multiple touch points when it comes to reaching the customer online.

5. Better email marketing platforms. Email marketing platforms continue to evolve, making it easier to segment lists for personalized messages, automate campaigns to save time and send messages when customers are actively online to boost response rates.

6. The growing trend toward monetizing website traffic through niche newsletters. The New York Times and Washington Post are two examples of publishers that are monetizing their web traffic through e-newsletters.

Specifically, they’re sending newsletters that appeal to segments of their audience such as readers of their cooking, media or travel sections. There’s no reason why smaller publishers or small businesses couldn’t adopt the same idea and boost engagement through even more personalized content and offers.

Effectively Reaching Customers Through Email Marketing Given these factors, marketers will see opportunities and challenges in 2017 as they compete for mindshare in the inbox. Here are four ways for businesses to help break through the noise.

1. Follow the opt-in rules of engagement. By now, most people understand that email is a permissionbased marketing channel. Still, names may sometimes get automatically added to lists when marketers mistakenly assume they have the customer’s permission based on a visit to their website or a recent purchase.

Instead, ask for permission first. Think of it from the customer’s point of view: They already get enough email. If they’re not expecting to hear from you, they may overlook

your message. Another reason is that you could be reported for spam. When this happens, there’s the potential for all your marketing emails to be flagged and sent directly into a spam filter or the trash.

2. Anticipate more activity on mobile. In a November 2016 report, email testing and marketing analytics company Litmus looked at more than 1 billion opens “collected worldwide with Litmus Email Analytics” during October 2016.

Of those emails, more than half were opened on a mobile devices.

So when it comes to creating email marketing campaigns, you may want to make them mobile friendly—your audience is likely to be reading your message on a smartphone. This includes using short copy and enabling fast downloads so customers can easily grasp the meaning of your message and act on it.

Another factor to plan for is the steadily increasing click rates on mobile devices. For example, an internal report from Constant Contact found there were 57 percent more email opens on mobile devices in the U.S. than on desktops on Black Friday 2016. As consumers take more action on smartphones, consider building mobile campaigns with a single call to action, big buttons to accommodate fingers and secure one-click transactions that make it easy to pay or register for an event.

3. Mix content using a variety of tools across different platforms. It’s getting even easier for marketers to create turn-key campaigns without compromising the quality or personalization of their content.

New email functionality can make it easy to use “content blocks” that instantly populate a newsletter with specific actions for readers to take. Also, automated emails that recognize a customer’s birthday or anniversary are simple ways to stay top of mind without adding more to your todo list. Along with these tips, consider mixing things up with different types of content such as video or links to podcasts.

4. Tailor your email lists. Just because there will be more email addresses, it doesn’t necessarily equate to more opportunity. A key to successful email marketing is engaging customers on a personal level with content and offers that appeal to their particular interests and needs.

To help achieve high levels of engagement, email marketers may want to consider diligently managing and cleaning their lists. This, too, is an area where smaller businesses can set themselves apart from large chains. It may be easier for smaller businesses to segment their lists and continuously refine them based on personal engagement with customers.

Email remains among the fastest and most direct paths to engaging customers. As we enter 2017, competition may heat up for your business. Businesses that understand the needs of their customers and can deliver personalized experiences to the inbox may see gains for their efforts.

Dave Charest, Senior Manager, Content and Social Media Marketing, Constant Contact

The Best And Worst User Interfaces Of 2016 THE HUMAN NECK WAS NOT DESIGNED TO BE USED LIKE A JOYSTICK, AND OTHER THINGS WE LEARNED FROM THIS YEAR’S MOST NOTABLE UX.

By Mark Wilson

Remember 2016? It was the year that our smartphones became boring, and smartwatches proved to be less a revolution than an alternative to any other watch. But things also got weird this year: VR finally had its moment in the limelight—Oculus Rift and HTC Vive both hit after years of hype—while Pokemon Go and Snapchat normalized augmented reality, seemingly overnight.

Scrip

Here are our favorite—and least favorite—UI projects from the year.

THE BEST Clara In a world where every speaker in your home wants to crack a joke, Clara is a quiet revolution in AI assistants. Rather than living in some product or app, Clara is a virtual person that you simply CC on emails. She then gets to work scheduling meetings or dinner reservations on your behalf. Never mind that Clara is really a small sweatshop of people doing these tasks for you while Clara’s own AI grows up. Clara frames AI not as a friend who needs your attention, but as a powerful tool that you could mindlessly loop into any email on any platform. It made giving up my Clara trial account feel like I was handing over my personal time machine to the year 2030.

Spending cash is literally painful to the human psyche, while spending credit is not. For the sake of our budgets, NewDealDesign wanted to bring some of that pain back with a concept called Scrip—an oversized copper coin that reshapes its surface to various denominations of currency, letting you flick over $1, $5, or $10 at a time to pay for your items. The idea is to move users to acknowledge the money they’re spending with this tangible interface, without losing the convenience of a credit card. Scrip might not actually exist anytime soon, but NewDealDesign tells us that unnamed, major players in the financial industry reached out after seeing the concept. So maybe its painful UI could influence the future of payment after all.

Pearl

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Despite one-off projects by Hollywood directors like Justin Lin and 360-degree documentaries released by major media companies like the New York Times, VR storytelling doesn’t really gel like a regular old movie does. Or it didn’t, until Google put Pearl on the HTC Vive.

Directed by Academy Award winner Patrick Osborn, the sixminute short puts you in a car with a father and daughter, capturing hundreds of miles driven and two decades lived.

But while it’s an animated movie, Pearl is a trojan horse of narrative UI, a master class in how visual storytellers can use environment, framing, sound, and other elements to lead a viewer’s attention even though that viewer can literally look anywhere. You can watch Pearl in a browser, but if you have the chance, I’d recommend the full experience on an HTC Vive headset. It’s Oscar-worthy.

Adobe XD

Say you want to mock up an app. Not just the screens, but the flows and animations; you want a full prototype while you wait for your engineers to figure out the algorithms. Until this year, the only answer was Sketch—an app with all the complexity of Photoshop, loaded with a suite of plugins.

Adobe XD, on the other hand, launched this year with a toolbar of just six buttons. Yet the app allows you to build the entirety of an app prototype and see it working on your phone or tablet in real time. Its best UI detail is how it links buttons to various pages. It uses arrows—long stretch arrows—that you drag from one place to another. It’s the definition of intuitive. XD is slowly gaining features in prerelease and has yet to replace Sketch, but it shows Adobe continuing to refine its creative interfaces with more utility and less bloat.

Biologic

Wearables like the Apple Watch generally ask for a lot of

attention in exchange for only minimal utility. Every vibration says “Hey, look at me! Look at me! Ignore your spouse! Gap emailed to let you know that they have a sale going on!”

But what’s the alternative? Don’t wearables need some sort of interface to be useful? Maybe not. Biologic is a synthetic bio-skin, made by MIT’s Tangible Media Group, that asks nothing of you. When you get hot and sweat, its flaps curl open to provide air circulation. There are no motors or batteries—but just as importantly, there are no beeps bugging you or buttons to hit, either. It’s the epitome of “calm computing.” Biologic uses the natural behavior of Bacillus Subtilis natto bacteria, which expand and shrink in response to atmospheric moisture, to cool you off without distracting you. Meanwhile, MIT is working Biologic technology into lamp shades that react to light, and tea bags that can signal when they’re done.

Amazon Go Grocery Store

What if you could just walk into a grocery store, take what you wanted, and walk out? That’s the shopping experience at Amazon’s Go grocery store, which opens officially next year.

So how does it work? Err, no one knows for sure, actually.

But it appears to scan your phone when you walk in via RFID, much like getting on an RFID-enabled subway system. From there, face tracking surveillance around the store follows you to watch what you buy. Honestly, though, who wants to think of Big Brother watching when Amazon lets you shoplift Chobani to your heart’s content?

Tiltbrush There’s a moment that happens to everyone who uses Tiltbrush for the first time. They hold a wand in front of their face, confused. Then a moment later, their jaw drops, awestruck, as they realize they can draw light in midair. A minute later, We might not be and they’re using Tiltbrush’s using Tiltbrush controls like an old pro, simply creating what they imagine. in 20 years, but I Tiltbrush finally went live for guarantee we’ll be the public to try this year, after being in demos since 2014. Its using something UI magic relies upon good old skeuomorphism to work: Your that looks a whole left hand becomes a cubed lot like it. palette with controls like color and stroke style. Your right hand becomes a paintbrush with one function: Painting. If you want to change your paint, you

power tools, to understand exactly what you’re doing at any given moment.

Alexa In Everyday Things

simply tap your brush to the appropriate part of the palette.

But inside virtual reality, what should be a cloying design becomes something like literal skeuomorphism. It’s still a visual metaphor for our benefit, like the felt poker tables of iOS’s old Gamecenter, sure. But to paraphrase Ben Stiller in Dodgeball, it’s a metaphor that actually happened. In virtual reality, you can actually wield functional tools that were nothing more than an interface metaphor just a year or two ago. In other words, an old fishing video game might have shown you a pole button, but virtual reality allows you to grab that pole and and cast out your line. Because it’s so literal, UI can be both more intuitive and more satisfying to the human touch than ever before.

We might not be using the Tiltbrush app in 20 years, but I guarantee we’ll be using something that looks a whole lot like it. Because Tiltbrush is just painting—in midair.

I’m still not so convinced that Alexa is anything but a salesperson who lives in your home. But as a user interface, Amazon is making smart moves in increasing Alexa’s reach across devices by opening up the technology for third parties to incorporate. Most recently, GE built a desk lamp that includes Alexa at its core, while a new development kit by Conexant, a maker of voice processor chips and software, will allow hardware developers to prototype new Alexa devices in days rather than months. Consider that one day the world could be so technologically advanced that you could talk to any device you own. Alexa’s easy integration is laying the foundation for such a future—if Google doesn’t beat it there.

EM-Sense

Brain to Brain Interface

Smartwatches are kind of useless beyond fitness tracking, but what if they could sense anything you touched? That’s the idea behind EM-Sense, created by Carnegie Mellon in conjunction with Disney Research. Built into a smartwatch, EM-Sense measures the electromagnetic resistance of objects you touch. And with that information in hand—ahem—it can do all sorts of things, like pop up a contextually relevant menu, or just automatically unlock your smart door without an additional prompting.

The team continues to play with similar technologies. A follow up called ViBand, for example, requires no special hardware.

Using a totally stock smartwatch, it can read the vibrations of anything from your own hand gestures, to the whirring of

User interface design is centered around human-computer interaction (also known as HCI). But artist Dmitry Morozov imagined hist project, 2ch, as human-human interaction instead—by enabling humans to communicate with one another wordlessly. 2ch is pyramid full of motors, hoses, robotics arms, and video monitors. Users wear EEG skullcaps that read their brainwaves. The goal is to use their brainwaves to get their half of the pyramid device whirring in sync with the other half, a process that can take two to three hours of mutual work. For all of our efforts in communicating more easily with computers, it’s easy to forget that the final goal of UI could be to com municate mindlessly with one another.

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THE MOST SURPRISING Pokémon Go

Don’t be surprised when others copy its tricks for years to come.

What can be said about Pokémon Go that hasn’t already been said? Sure, its numbers have fallen off since it hit this summer, as 10 million people flicked virtual pokéballs at Rattatas that seemed to be standing in the real world. But this addictive augmented reality gimmick, coupled with its gameplay that forces you to walk around and explore your city rather than plant on the couch and veg, still entertains hundreds of thousands of people each month. Pokémon Go’s interface changed the rules of gaming. Don’t be surprised when others copy its tricks for years to come.

Facebook’s Artificial Waiting Patterns

When Facebook offered to do a security check for me—and I watched a progress bar slowly grow on my screen—I suddenly realized that I’d been had. After all, Facebook can generate my algorithmically attuned feed in milliseconds. What was I doing waiting on “security?” Facebook fessed up to this little UI lie, and a number of other people in the industry spoke to me about the matter, too. In 2016, our web became so fast that we don’t really have to wait for anything. But the human psyche hasn’t caught up, and we still don’t always trust when important things happen instantly. So artificial waiting was born, and now, it’s on sites and in apps all around us. I wonder how long it will be until we decide that waiting for anything, no matter how important the information may be, is just a waste of our time?

THE WORST Apple Touch Bar

Apple. What were you thinking? The Touch Bar, which debuted in this year’s Macbook Pro update, is something like a mini iPhone strip that sits above the keyboard. Obviously it sounds like a great idea: It allows apps to add their own unique buttons for the user to press in space otherwise wasted by F-keys. The problem is that it’s not tactile the way actual keys or buttons are, so it has none of the muscle memory quotient that many pros rely upon with their keyboards. Instead of really solving an interface dilemma, at best the Touch Bar simply moves an interface that would have been on the screen to the keyboard, forcing you to glance down from your work, and hunt and peck for the right button, like it’s 1993. And at worst? Can we all be honest about its design? This looks like something HP would have released about five years ago.

VR Neck Controls

It was the worst trend to emerge with the rise of VR: Neck controls, or what are sometimes euphemized as “gaze controls.” These controls basically turn your neck into a joystick. And let me tell you, the human neck was not designed to be used like a joystick. One can understand how the VR industry thought this was a good idea: With no single control standard, the only common factor across all headsets was the user’s head. So why not use that head?

And indeed, UsTwo used gaze control to some success in Land’s End. But for most games, it’s just exhausting, and after 20 minutes of swinging your head around as a makeshift starship turret, you’ll long for a good old-fashioned gamepad—immersion be damned.

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.

Slow Medicine for Brands in the Social Era

By Jon Feagain

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Digital media has made our lives better. We feel more inspired and connected thanks to tools like the freedom-bestowing cell phone, which brings us closer to family, friends and the values and passions that define us.

The slow movement will prize quality products done with purpose and craftsmanship. Find ways of incorporating craftsmanship into all aspects of your business: design, delivery, experience and marketing.

The drawback is that we’re constantly looking at our gadgets and losing perspective. But a correction is afoot. In a recent Doneger Survey of 250 consumers between the ages of 18 and 44, 60% felt that there is too much “stuff” out there.

Brands should acknowledge that their “always on” social marketing approach can be part of this problem, and should focus instead on finding more meaningful, less frantic ways of connecting with a “time-poor” consumer.

In praise of long formats

Decelerate is the new innovate

Explore ways to imbue greater meaning into the purchase.

Consider how Tom’s and Warby Parker have successfully brought together style and philanthropy. Also look at how new experience tools, such as augmented reality (think Pokémon Go), can make the discovery and shopping journey more engaging.

Brands should begin their post-social media reset by paying attention to a powerful and growing consumer shift that favors simple, yet meaningful, physical experiences. This shift is giving new life to various industries and brands. Music has bounced back thanks to festivals and tours; publishing has been rebooted by the sales resurgence of physical books.

Even fashion, an industry with a complicated relationship with time (think fast fashion) is beginning to embrace a slower pace, with a greater focus on craftsmanship, provenance and personalization.

The following are some ways in which brands can slow down, grow and amplify.

Time-off as strategic imperative An inspired and balanced workforce will yield more innovative and creative solutions. Brand experience leaders like Ikea and Google are giving their employees more time off for important life events, and to explore what matters most to them, recharging and inspiring them to be brand advocates.

Expect more of this as competition heats up for talent.

Cultivate a long-term movement Brands need to envision their full stories and harness their founding vision to build a purpose-driven strategy. Envision what your movement stands for and how your product offering protects and delivers this. Allow more time in your creative and business processes to collaborate with partners who bring a new perspective and can help amplify your brand story and engagement.

Create desire Consumers don’t like brands that try too hard. Take a lesson from Apple’s reclusive playbook and evoke a bit of mystery around your product and brand. Think of obsessively nurturing brand-right elements coveted by your consumer -- such as design and engineering -- and turn them into a conversational art form that includes smart reveals, iterative upgrades, unexpected collaborations and other ways to surprise and delight.

Salute artisans

Inspiring brands have powerful stories to tell. Tap into the increasing popularity of long-form and niche content formats to reinforce your brand’s expertise and life perspective. A good example is eBay’s “Open for Business” podcast series.

Rethink promotional strategies

When in doubt, simplify Simplify the entire shopper journey for your customer, giving them more time to do things they enjoy. Invest in utility functions that deliver this but don’t get stuck in telling a tech story. Focus also on simpler yet more emotive marketing strategies. Edit the number of communication channels you use, and stick to those that provide the biggest brand engagement.

A more human take on marketing KPIs Our current data-driven, iterative marketing approach has generated great targeting opportunities and cost efficiencies.

As we move towards a slower, more experience-driven moment, we need to make sure we’re also incorporating softer, yet pivotal, metrics, including lifetime consumer value, wider-frame brand equity studies, employee retention, brand advocacy, and so on.

Focus on relationships Leverage new personalization technologies to deliver a warmer, more relevant experience to your customers. Nurture the next generation of customer service that listens and delivers the type of welcoming, informed expertise consumers want to make time for.

And most importantly, as brand steward, take time to see the world. Get to know your consumer better and learn new things. Take the time to nurture and amplify your brand’s inner voice. If you do, time will be on your side -- and that’s a great starting point to build a powerful, timeless brand.

Roberto Ramos is SVP of marketing and creative services at The Doneger Group.

5 ways to turn employees into brand ambassadors

By John Porter

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Brand ambassadors are key to helping an organization expand the reach of their business online. If you have employees who love working for the company and believe in your brand, you have a chance to empower them to become some of your very best brand ambassadors.

Regardless of their position in the company, every employee can have an important part in helping you build a strong successful brand. The key really is in their energy, engagement, and commitment to the company.

simply copy and paste text and/or attach images to different posts across networks.

This makes posting on social media channels extremely easy to do. Your brand ambassadors won’t have to worry about using something that is outside of the guidelines, and you can have peace of mind knowing that they are posting messages that fit into the voice and aim of your promotional strategy.

Provide incentives

Best of all, many of your employees may be already actively promoting you on social media. You just haven’t formalized the process and rallied them into a team for maximum impact. Here’s how you can empower your team members to become brand ambassadors with these five easy tips:

Who doesn’t love a little friendly competition? Create a challenge among brand ambassadors to reach the goals of the promotion campaign. You can award prizes for the employee who recruits the most referrals using special hyperlinks or the person who generates the most sales.

Create a positive environment

You can reward your best ambassadors with bonuses, a small office party, giveaways or getting off work a few hours early.

Incentives like these can motivate your team to go above and beyond.

In order for your employees to talk positively about your brand, the first step is to make sure they actually enjoy working for your company. You need to create a pleasant working environment in which your employees feel valued and satisfied.

Your employees need to feel part of the team and see how they are contributing to the company’s mission. When team members feel appreciated, they’re more likely to work on your behalf and to go the extra mile for your requests. That includes spreading the word about the company.

Offer a set of guidelines Before your employees start spreading the word about your brand across social media, you need to create a social media policy. These set of rules will guide your brand ambassadors in posting content that is in line with the company’s vision.

Get your team in the same room to introduce them to the policy and train them on how they can spread the word through social media and through their offline relationships.

You want to be clear about what they should and what they shouldn’t do. Create a “rules” sheet so they can hold onto it access it in the future. These guidelines will help your brand ambassadors avoid posting like wildfire with messaging that is off-brand.

Equip employees with the right tools You want to create the lowest barrier to participating, so to have a successful brand ambassador team, you may need to create an easy social media toolkit that has ready-made assets already in it. Pre-write copy, design graphics, take photos, determine hashtags and customize all assets for the different platforms you plan for your brand ambassadors to use.

You can upload the entire toolkit in a cloud-sharing platform so that your employees can easily download the assets and

An interesting fact to note is that companies which have recognition programs in place have about 31 percent lower voluntary turnover than companies without such programs.

So, the bottom line is that incentivizing their efforts can really work on your behalf.

Build a relationship of trust Hopefully, you’re engaging some of your most energized and loyal employees as brand ambassadors, people who really believe in the brand and are committed to it. But to get everyone on the same page, you might want to hold a focus group and allow all your employees to test and give feedback on the product or service they will be promoting.

You’ll get honest feedback that you can incorporate into your marketing strategy - and you’ll contribute to them feeling empowered as your spokespeople. They’ll feel like they have an insider view and that you are taking their opinions seriously -- and that’s one step in the direction of building true loyalty and trust with your ambassadors along the way.

Final thoughts If you’re ready to see your brand take off -- and for your employees to feel valued and part of the bigger picture -then consider forming a team of brand ambassadors who will communicate positively about the company on social media.

What you’ll find is that they will influence their networks and those people will influence other circles, creating a ripple effect that will have a positive effect on your brand.

John Porter is a Southampton-based freelance writer and a tech head.

He enjoys writing about new technology and is particularly interested in all types of productivity apps.

These Brand Consultants Turned Nights on the Town Into Market Data THEY WATCH AND THEY LEARN.

By Jennifer Miller

In 2013, Christopher Krietchman was walking down the street in Manhattan, worrying about his flailing meal-delivery company. Krietchman was the founder of Fresh Grill Café, which cooked and delivered healthy meals to New Yorkers.

When he launched in 2008, online food delivery barely existed. These were the days of first-generation iPhones, back when Groupon could make you a success. “We had customers in Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan and New Jersey,” he says now. But slowly -- and then seemingly all at once -- everything changed. Groupon imploded as the market flooded with meal-delivery services like Seamless and Blue Apron, all of them with better technology, fresher branding, and more efficient order fulfillment than Fresh Grill Café.

Krietchman had been an industry pioneer, but he’d failed

without a solid business plan and vision. Now the industry had no place for him. He wasn’t ready to give up on his company, but he didn’t know how to fix it.

Then, that day on the street, he bumped into Winston Peters, an old college acquaintance. Peters, it turned out, co-owned a brand-building company called MyÜberLife Consulting Group, which specialized in “cultural insights.” What did this mean? Peters explained that his team spent their days and nights on cool-hunting excursions across the city. They immersed themselves in music, fashion and art and then used that knowledge to craft marketing and development strategies for their clients. Krietchman had never heard of such a thing, but he was excited. “A quick switch went off in my head,” he says. “If you want to know what the market is

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about, you’ve got to be in it, and they were really in it.”

MyÜberLife has a handful of part-time associates, but at its helm are Peters and his colleagues Jey Van-Sharp and Kwasi Gyasi. They’re three good-looking men in their mid-30s who always, unfailingly, wear black. It’s a uniform of sorts, and one that allows them to either stand out (like at the Soho House rooftop pool) or blend in (like at a warehouse party).

Peters and Van-Sharp became friends at Manhattan College, where they both studied engineering and bonded over New York City nightlife. They met Gyasi at a party in 2005. He’d recently left a job as a product development analyst and had been helping artist friends monetize their creative pursuits.

Herein, the trio realized, was a business opportunity. As VanSharp explains it, they “wanted to help creative people be more business-minded, and vice versa.”

Over the past decade, MyÜberLife has worked for large brands like Pepsi and Uniqlo as well as entrepreneurs including gallery owners and fashion designers. It offers a range of services like drafting business plans, conducting market research, developing branding strategies and advertising campaigns and, of course, providing the elusive “cultural insights.” The partners charge $250 to $450 per hour, or work on retainer.

In their stark, stylized getup, the trio makes an intimidating sight. They read part high-fashion, part Goth. Van-Sharp paints his nails black, wears thick silver jewelry and has duct tape wrapped around his pricey Guidi boots. Peters has a thick, Amish-like beard. And Gyasi sports a fitted suit jacket and pants cuffed inches above his ankles. When you see them out together you think, Who are those guys? Are they for real? But when Krietchman sat down with the team, he was impressed. “They’re so pleasant. They’re perfect gentlemen. People respond to them.” Krietchman certainly did. During an early meeting, the group led him through a kind of therapy session, encouraging him to drill into his objectives: Why had he started Fresh Grill Café? What was he trying to achieve? Whom did he want to serve? Krietchman explained that he was a former body builder who wanted to help people maintain a healthy lifestyle. He’d gravitated toward a business in food because nutrition was something he knew about from his lifting days. Was he passionate about meal delivery? Well, not especially.

This was good news, because MyÜberLife didn’t think Fresh

Grill Café was sustainable. They’d come to this conclusion after doing an autopsy of Krietchman’s finances and a thorough investigation of the market. But at the same time, the team had been conducting a very different type of research.

They were out every day and night attending events, concerts, openings, parties, dinners and brand activations, immersing themselves in as many cultural spaces as they could pack into each 24-hour day. What they learned told them not only why Fresh Grill Café was failing but how Krietchman could succeed, if he were willing to let the culture guide him.

In some ways, MyÜberLife is a typical business consultancy.

The team analyzes your financials, researches the market, advises on branding. They spend hours each week in client meetings and brainstorming sessions. But this work is conducted in between their citywide culture-hunting missions, which they refer to as “going out.” The value that going out provides their clients is not easily explained and often sounds like nonsense. They’re happy to try, though. From Peters: “We’re seeing what people are wearing, drinking, the music they listen to, who they’re hooking up with. For us, that is qualitative data that we turn into quantitative data.” And from Van-Sharp: “My job is to be at the subculture, take that information and translate that into real strategy.” And from Gyasi: “We have to see the nuances: what people are talking about, what they care about, what’s relevant to them.”

Even their titles are infuriatingly vague. What’s the difference between a business strategist (Peters), a business adviser (Van-Sharp) and a business developer (Gyasi)? How are they getting paid hundreds of dollars an hour to hang out at clubs and attend art openings? The reason is a shift in the kind of information brands find valuable. The past decade-plus in marketing was defined by data -- search results, social media shares, highly trackable online behavior -- that promised to both assess and predict consumer behavior. But hard numbers, it turned out, couldn’t provide all the answers.

“I’ve watched the pendulum swing from cool hunting to big data, and now it’s moving back,” says Jake Katz, a longtime trend researcher for outfits like NBCUniversal and MTV, and the current VP of insights and strategy at Revolt Media & TV. He says brands are displaying more “cultural curiosity” these days. They’re coming around to the understanding that “people who are overly reliant on data need to make just as much effort to understand their culture.”

What this really comes down to is that old branding buzzword: authenticity. Any entrepreneur knows the definition intuitively.

A company should have a deep familiarity with the desires and values of its audience, and should treat consumers like individuals, not data points. But brands still have a lot of ground to make up. George Newman, associate professor of management and marketing at the Yale School of Management, says authenticity remains “top of mind” to consumers. He points to a 2016 survey by brand strategy firm Cohn and Wolfe, which asked 12,000 people about 1,600 brands in 14 markets. Seventy-eight percent of respondents said there was an “authenticity gap” between brands and buyers.

“You have these communal domains where people derive identity, even if there is money being exchanged,” Newman says. The challenge for a brand, then, is to sell something to a community without making it feel like you’ve “violated the norms” by “putting a price tag on everything.”

Sometimes bridging that gap is straightforward. When Nike launched its skateboarding line, Nike SB, Newman says the brand quelled an initial backlash among skaters by hiring respected skateboarders to its leadership team, sponsoring competitions and producing skate videos. “They showed that ‘Hey, we genuinely care about the sport. We’re not just trying to make a quick buck,’” he says. Today, Newman says, Nike has some of the highest sales of any skate shoe brand.

Before Nike, Red Bull ran the same playbook with extreme sports and, in the process, became the gold standard of how to truly serve a scene.

But not every marketing plan can be so straightforward.

That’s why cultural Sherpas are on the rise -- people who can speak both the language of branding and the language of cool.

between two disconnected communities: the artist on the street and the brand manager in the boardroom. She says the difference between herself and a “typical agency person” is that while she does work a typical 9-to-5 schedule, she has an “entire other cultural universe” that she moves in at night and on weekends. Now she helps large and small brands -including Pepsi, Delta and W Hotels New York -- find the right artists to partner with.

“Influencers” offer another avenue of authenticity. A lot of influencer marketing is done pay-to-spray style -- just hire someone to blast your brand’s message to their large (but possibly uninterested) social following. But some influencers are selling themselves as full-service cultural guides. One is 30-year-old video producer Levi Maestro, who films his friends as they explore Los Angeles. His videos sometimes include product placements -- but brands come to him, he says, because of the way he brings them into his world.

Hennessy, for example, worked with Maestro for a year as he hung out and talked creative process with a coterie of recording artists, stylists, animators and fashion designers.

Maestro not only brought new, influential voices to the cognac brand’s attention but also presented them in a natural way.

“The goal is to make the experience as close to home as possible,” he says, “like taking a friend to the airport.”

And as brands seek authentic connections to audiences, some businesses are starting to realize: Hey, we already speak to an audience -- and can charge others for access.

Smirnoff and Mixmag offer a good case study. “We wanted to partner with people who could identify trends in the culture, identify the breaking artists of tomorrow and help us build their careers,” says Justin Medcraft, Smirnoff’s senior global brand manager. So Smirnoff approached Mixmag, a 33-year-old, U.K.-based publication that’s considered a leading voice on the electronic dance music (EDM) scene. With Mixmag’s help, the vodka brand created the Smirnoff Sound Collective, a series of events, concerts, short documentaries, original song productions and panels aimed at launching and promoting the careers of underrepresented EDM artists, like women, minority and LGBTQ musicians. “Readers aren’t getting a brand message shoved down their throats,” says Rebecca Jolly, the CEO of Mixmag U.S. “It’s a natural extension of what we already do, just with a Smirnoff lens.”

But what happens if a brand isn’t just looking for an artist to partner with, or exposure to a new audience? What if the brand isn’t even sure what it’s looking for? That’s why there are companies like MyÜberLife that now make it their business to be cultural omnivores, studying the nuances of different subcultures -- and the business opportunities they create.

These people can take all forms. There are large companies like Vice, which has made a fortune out of embodying a certain attitude and scene, and now is hired by brands that want to be part of it. Then there are smaller connectors like Katie Longmyer, who came up in the New York City club scene, where she built relationships with DJs, rappers, promoters, photographers and artists. She eventually joined the branding department at Warner Bros. Records, but when she left in 2008, she realized she was able to move fluidly

Shortly after 10 p.m. on a Thursday, Peters, Gyasi and Van-Sharp arrive at a warehouse in Williamsburg, that overexposed hipster neighborhood of Brooklyn. They’re here for a Kia-sponsored party called Drive to the Moon, which is full of … well, it’s hard to categorize the crowd.

The revelers are mostly black and Latino twenty-somethings, many dressed in overalls and skinny jeans. They sip from slim cans of Stella Artois, and their multicolored hair and Supreme sweatshirts are moving to the beats of Chase B, a DJ known for his successful Illroots Radio mixtapes.

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Krietchman took the advice. Three years ago he closed Fresh Grill Café, and this year he founded Wellvyl, a social club for the health, fitness and wellness community. Every week, the company hosts a handful of events, like educational panels, workout sessions in unlikely places (art galleries, hotel rooftops), meditation sessions and group dinners. The Wellvyl team curates event guest lists to connect people with similar interests. “We’re your wingman and your wingwoman,” he says. When you come to a Wellvyl event, you could meet your spouse or your next business partner or simply make a new friend. “That’s what the market wants. That’s what they care about.”

“They’re not hip-hop kids,” Van-Sharp yells over the music, to explain. “They’re hopsters -- hip-hop hipsters.” It sounds like a joke, but it isn’t. These kids have their own style, their own preferences in music, design and, no doubt, brands. And sure, they probably don’t give a crap about Kia right now.

(They live in New York; none of them are buying cars.) But they’ll likely give the company some credit for acknowledging that not all urban kids belong in the same bucket.

This is the MyÜberLife trio’s third event of the evening, and they’ll be scene-hopping until 3 or 4 in the morning.

Before this, they were at a Chelsea art opening (the highlight: taxidermied bats) and then to a new, multisensory meditation studio in Manhattan called Woom. There, a very different party was under way. It was just as crowded as the Williamsburg warehouse, only instead of Stella, the largely white guests threw back spicy, alcohol-free energy shots.

Instead of Chase B, they danced to underground electronica by a Dutch-American guy known as the Scumfrog. And instead of pregaming in their cramped Brooklyn apartments, this crowd warmed up with a 40-minute meditation session.

To the uninitiated, the Woom scene could be just as confusing as the hopsters, but MyÜberLife had also visited their kind before. In fact, a few years ago, as they were advising Krietchman about Fresh Grill Café, wellness events like these led them to believe that custom food delivery was a losing business strategy.

Wellness, the team had explained to Krietchman, was no longer just a series of disparate habits -- like joining the gym or cutting out carbs. In the years since Fresh Grill Café launched, wellness had become a lifestyle, shaped by the places people worked out, the clothes they wore, the food they ate and who their friends were. As Gyasi said, “wellness had become a status symbol.” And status was cultivated by going out, by seeing and being seen. “The opportunity is in the community!” Van-Sharp told Krietchman. Krietchman grasped the disconnect with his meal service: sitting at home ordering kale salad was not exactly social. Van-Sharp continued, “Let’s build a brand where we get the fitness community together and help facilitate connections: platonic, romantic, professional.”

So Krietchman had a new brand. But he still needed to position it as desirable. As with all subcultures, that meant speaking to potential customers not with a bullhorn but with a wink. It required nuance. And so here, too, MyÜberLife set to work.

The trio developed a series of advertisements to be promoted on Wellvyl’s social media feeds and via Google. One of them featured six women in stylish yoga wear posed in a pyramid of downward dogs. Overlaid on this was the quote “Oh, we talking teams?” It’s from Drake’s hit “Big Rings,” which VanSharp says would send a signal about Wellvyl’s sensibility as culturally savvy, a little cheeky and encouraging of risk-taking.

A different ad featured a black-and-white photograph of acclaimed “brutal-chic” fashion designer Rick Owens, along with a quote that read, in part, “No outfit is going to make you look or feel as good as having a fit body.” Owens’ androgynous style wouldn’t appear to have much in common with the workout crowd, but MyÜberLife knew otherwise: Owens had done a successful collaboration with Adidas and so may be familiar to Wellvyl types. The MyÜberLife guys also suspected that people attracted to the Manhattan wellness scene would be both fashion-forward and responsive to the quote’s anti-consumerist message. In other words, these messages conveyed all kinds of subtleties, intended to catch the attention of the right people and attract the cool crowd (or the crowd that wants to be cool). It’s the kind of marketing artistry that’s impossible to achieve with data.

These are early days for Wellvyl, but the message seems to be working. A year after launch, it has 200 paying members, a long waiting list and around 30 employees. The company’s social media following roughly doubles every month. Krietchman is now planning a wider advertising campaign throughout the New York City area, along with a line of merchandise and athletic wear. His dream is to open a physical location that combines a fitness hub, a coworking space and a social club.

And when he does, he says, he’ll be looking to MyÜberLife to help him expand his crowd.

Agencies get excited about Instagram ads in Stories and new analytics tools

By Yuyu Chen

Only five months after Instagram released Stories — a feature that, well, borrowed from Snapchat — the photosharing platform announced today that it will be letting 30 brands place ads within Stories and is offering them a free analytics tool called “Stories Insights.”

Agency executives were largely enthusiastic about the two features.

“Instagram was nowhere near Snapchat for a while but it is innovating fast,” said David Song, managing director for agency BARKER. “Now it is time for Instagram to expand ad offerings and make money.”

Currently more than 150 million Instagrammers use Stories every day, and 70 percent of its users are following a brand on the platform, according to company stats. And with those eyeballs, the network is now eager to monetize. Ads within Stories are very similar to those you see between your friends’ Snaps. Each ad is no longer than 15 seconds.

“It is the first time that we have offered full-screen ads,” said Vishal Shah, director of product for Instagram. “We found common interest between people and businesses and we want to carry that over to Instagram.”

Instagram is testing this new ad format with 30 brands including Nike, Unilever and Capital One. During the initial test, the platform is focusing on one objective: Reach. These 30 beta partners will be able to see relevant reach metrics available through Power Editor, Shah noted. A global rollout will follow over the next few weeks.

As an added bonus, the a new ad format on Instagram means that Facebook has more inventory to sell in its Audience Network. The price for each impression of ads within Stories — like other ad formats in feed — is auction-based, so the more targeted, the more expensive an ad can be.

“It’s smart of Instagram to start with a bidding system based on impressions. When it has more metrics I suspect that it will start selling ads based on clicks,” said Song.

While it is too early to know how expensive an ad within Stories can be, Song believes that Instagram is now a formidable competitor to Snapchat. Snapchat Lenses, for instance, can cost hundreds of thousands dollars for a two-week buy. And the price for Discover can go up to $20,000 per day for a brand to just be there, according to Song. Some agencies

also see Snapchat’s ad-sales approach as experiencing “growing pains.” Snapchat told Digiday that its ads options are usually under $100,000 and geofilters start at $5.

“Snapchat is a smart company but products like Discover and Lenses are just too expensive for what they can do. Discover is basically licensing the space rather than advertising,” said Song. “A big difference is: You buy Snapchat ads at a fixed price range without impression guarantees but you buy Instagram ads based on impressions.”

Michelle Feldman, media manager for agency Carrot Creative, also believes that ads within Stories are great to the point where “ad targeting and placement continue to extend across platforms.” From a production perspective, Feldman thinks that brands should make their Stories ads short and sweet as they need to catch viewers’ attention right away.

“You really need to design something that speaks to the platform,” said Feldman. “I think ads in Stories should be as natural to Instagram as possible, but at the same time, appealing to human eyes.”

Ads within Stories aside, Instagram is rolling out a free analytics tool called “Stories Insights” for business profiles today. So brands will be able to see the reach, impressions, replies and exits (the number of people who leave your Story) for each individual Story.

This will make advertisers’ work easier because so far, analytics for Stories has been completely manual, said Liam Copeland, director of decision science for social agency Movement Strategy.

“As insights are built out and offered to partners, we’ll be ready to integrate deeper data into our Story reporting,” he noted.

Instagram opened advertising to businesses of all sizes back in September of 2015. This year, Instagram’s ad revenue is projected by eMarketer to reach $3.6 billion worldwide, up year-over-year 96 percent from 2016. This will represent 12.3 percent of Facebook’s global ad business this year.

In comparison, Snapchat will generate $935.5 million in worldwide revenue this year, says the research company.

Yuyu Chen, Brands Reporter

Is Your Organization Addicted To PowerPoint?

5 Symptoms And 6 Proven Remedies

By Shani Harmon and Renee Cullinan

Do you remember the key ideas from the last PowerPoint presentation you sat through? Probably not. PowerPoint was intended to facilitate the communication of ideas. Ironically, it often does just the opposite. It creates a barrier between us.

It causes the presenter to talk at his or her colleagues, rather than with them. The very presence of slides puts meeting participants into zombie mode. At its worst, PowerPoint can contribute to disastrous decisions.

Yet, for all that it has been mocked, PowerPoint is still the dominant tool for communicating within organizations.

While it is extremely effective in specific situations, most organizations have developed an unhealthy dependency on it. Is your organization addicted to PowerPoint? Symptoms include: 1. You spend more time lining up the boxes than thinking through the ideas inside of them 2. People reuse a deck developed for one purpose in a completely different context (e.g., “You asked me to share a product update so I thought I’d just run you through the slides from last month’s Sales Summit.”)

McChrystal commented, “When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war.”

• Participants get distracted by the way information is presented, rather than focusing on the information itself • Slide preparation takes away from valuable thinking and reflecting time More importantly, people are wired to absorb and retain information when it is shared through narrative. Most PowerPoint presentations block the very narrative they are intended to bolster, thus slowing progress and undermining our collective wisdom.

Happily, there are some simple remedies. Next time you’re preparing for a meeting or need to engage with a group, first think about the purpose and the content, then choose from these cures:

3. The number of slides regularly exceeds the minutes allotted to the discussion

1. For nuanced or complex content like a business case or decision recommendation, ditch the PowerPoint and use a word processing application instead. The narrative format forces deeper thinking by the writer and is the most effective and efficient way for the reader to get up to speed

4. When asked a question, people are more likely to say, “I have a slide on that” rather than simply answer the question

2. When you’re doing group ideation or planning, turn off the projector and hand out the post-its. If the meeting is virtual, consider mind mapping software

5. Group wordsmithing is a thing

3. To mobilize a group around a big idea, tell a great story

Sound familiar? If one or more of these statements rings true, chances are PowerPoint is undermining the quality of thinking and dialogue within your organization. Here are some of the implications:

4. To exchange relatively simple information such as project status, have a conversation and / or use a project website where anyone can access the information anytime

• Relying on form more than content leads to superficial thinking and the “selling” of ideas, rather than critical thinking and exploration

5. If you’re problem solving, start with a well-defined problem statement and supporting root cause analysis, then gather the subject matter experts around the whiteboard to get solutions flowing

• Bulleted lists don’t show inter-relationships or the relative importance of ideas

6. Put meeting agendas and background information directly into the meeting invite

• The inherent linearity of a presentation inhibits the natural flow of conversation and stifles active engagement (Consider how often you’ve asked a question only to be told “that’s coming up in a few slides.”)

Amazon, LinkedIn, and the U.S. Military have banned PowerPoint from meetings. Is it time for your organization to break the dependency as well?

• Visuals often don’t represent complex information accurately and can take more time to create than they are worth (Perhaps the most famous example is the slide depicting a U.S. military strategy, on which General

We write about progressive work practices for a busy world. We cofounded Stop Meeting Like This to revolutionize how work gets done. We help complex, global organizations become more agile, productive, innovative, and energizing.

Book,

&

Line

Sinker

How to Write an Inspired Creative Brief

Hey Whipple, Squeeze This

By Howard Ibach

Very few advertising books are as easy and enjoyable to read. Written by a modern master of the advertising craft, it contains a wealth of information that everyone should know. If you’re just getting into the business, you’ll find a step-bystep guide to every aspect of advertising. If you’ve been around for decades, you’ll not only laugh (and cry) throughout the book, but will still pick up tips and reminders that continue to make you a better creative professional.

One of the most important documents in the creative process is the creative brief. It gives the creative department its marching orders, telling them where to start digging for great ideas.

Filled with examples of powerful and effective creative briefs, and written in a laid-back but very informative way, this is essential reading for everyone in the communications industry.

By Luke Sullivan

Truth, Lies & Advertising: The Art of Account Planning

Ogilvy On Advertising

By Jon Steel

David Ogilvy was an advertising legend. His legacy lives on through the many branches of the Ogilvy network, and his books. Ogilvy On Advertising is considered an advertising bible, filled with indispensible knowledge and candid thoughts from a man who once said “it isn’t creative unless it sells.” Although decades old now, the principles within the book are as relevant as ever, and you’re doing yourself a severe injustice if you have not read it from cover to cover.

Great account planning ensures that advertising connects with the customers. But you don’t need to be an account planner to garner a world of savvy information from this book. Jay Chiat, founder of Chiat\Day, calls it “The best newbusiness tool ever invented.” Memorable, and highly successful, campaigns like “Got Milk?” and “Think Different” started with smart account planning. A book that’s a must-read for everyone in your advertising agency, not just the account department.

By David Ogilvy

Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable

From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor

By Seth Godin

By Jerry Della Femina

What if you see a black and white cow after only ever seeing brown cows? It stands out. But what happens when you keep seeing more and more black and white cows? What stands out then? It would take a purple cow. That’s the basic premise of Godin’s seminal book on transforming your business, and your advertising, into something remarkable. Stand out, be amazing, or blend in and go unnoticed.

Possibly the longest title ever written for an advertising book, and yet it doesn’t make the information inside any less punchy. For people addicted to the life and work portrayed in Mad Men, this is the book for you. A vivid and noholds-barred memoir of Madison Avenue advertising in the 60’s, it’s considered a cult classic, but should be right there on your shelf next to Ogilvy’s book.

Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind

A Technique for Producing Ideas

By Al Ries, Jack Trout

The foreword by Bill Bernbach, one of the greatest advertising professionals who ever lived, should be enough to let you know that this is a gem. And although published in 1965 (from a presentation first delivered in 1939) it’s timeless advice to help copywriters, art directors, designers and planners jump-start their creative juices. If (or when) you hit a creative wall, this book will help you hammer it down.

We see thousands of advertising messages every day. We probably remember just a handful. Being part of that handful is what this book is all about.

How to position your product or service, and therefore, how to market it, is the foundation of a successful advertising and marketing campaign.

How do you become an industry leader? How do you take advantage of competitor weaknesses?

By James Webb Young

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Lateral Thinking: Creativity Step by Step

Caffeine for the Creative Mind

By Edward de Bono

The only truly practical workbook in the top 10, this book has enough exercises in it to give your mental muscles an extreme workout every day. Try them all once, then try them again. Find different solutions to the same problems (something advertising is all about) or use the exercises to limber-up before tackling a work-related task. It’s also a great way to stay sharp when you have that rare down-time.

How does creativity work? How do you get results from it? How do you think differently, and more efficiently and effectively? Edward de Bono’s classic book explains it all. Anyone who thinks for a living should read this book, and other works by the same author. It’s easy to copy great ideas, but to know how to have them, and how to develop them, that’s pure gold.

Social Media Marketing Workbook: 2016 Edition - How to Use Social Media for Business Kindle Edition

By Jason McDonald This isn’t a fancy book. This isn’t a pie-in-the-sky book. This is a practical hands-on book, with links not only to free tools but to step-by-step worksheets. By the end of the book, you’ll have a social media marketing plan ready for your business AND specific plans for each medium that makes sense for you (e.g., Facebook, Yelp, Twitter, etc.).

Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

By Seth Godin Few authors have had the kind of lasting impact and global reach that Seth Godin has had. In a series of now-classic books that have been translated into 36 languages and reached millions of readers around the world, he has taught generations of readers how to make remarkable products and spread powerful ideas. In Linchpin, he turns his attention to the individual, and explains how anyone can make a significant impact within their organization.

By Stefan Mumaw, Wendy Lee Oldfield

ZAG: The #1 Strategy of HighPerformance Brands

By Marty Neumeier “When everybody zigs, zag,” says Marty Neumeier in this fresh view of brand strategy. ZAG follows the ultra-clear “whiteboard overview” style of the author’s first book, THE BRAND GAP, but drills deeper into the question of how brands can harness the power of differentiation. The author argues that in an extremely cluttered marketplace, traditional differentiation is no longer enough— today companies need “radical differentiation” to create lasting value for their shareholders and customers.

Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web

By Brian Solis, Ashton Kutcher (Foreword) Engage! thoroughly examines the social media landscape and how to effectively use social media to succeed in business?one network and one tool at a time. It leads you through the detailed and specific steps required for conceptualizing, implementing, managing, and measuring a social media program.

The Content Trap: A Strategist’s Guide to Digital Change Kindle Edition

Methods of Persuasion: How to Use Psychology to Influence Human Behavior Kindle Edition

By Bharat Anand

By Nick Kolenda

Digital change means that everyone today can reach and interact with others directly: We are all in the content business. But that comes with risks that Bharat Anand teaches us how to recognize and navigate. Filled with conversations with key players and in-depth dispatches from the front lines of digital change, The Content Trap is an essential new playbook for navigating the turbulent waters in which we find ourselves.

Using principles from cognitive psychology, Nick Kolenda developed a unique way to influence people’s thoughts. He developed a “mind reading” stage show depicting that phenomenon, and his demonstrations have been seen by over a million people across the globe.

Methods of Persuasion reveals that secret for the first time. You’ll learn how to use those principles to influence people’s thoughts in your own life.