BrandKnew June 2013

Branding matters. Because branding matters.

06.13#15

07 09 Dear friends: As the heat gathers momentum, we welcome you to yet another issue of Brand Knew. As has been our wont, we have tried to pack in quite a bit into this. Being at the top of the pecking order does not insulate a brand like Apple from having its own challenges; it seems to have a job on its hands after the demise of Steve Jobs. We talk about another Celebrity icon David Beckham and the scenario after he hung up his boots, literally. As the social eco system gathers pace, we unravel the brands that are most talked about on Facebook. We also do a quick dip stick on whether brands are using the social media environment optimally.

Pinterest as we all know is the new pin up boy and we refer to how best brands should use the platform to engage and influence communities.

We go fundamental with the feature on Secrets of 7 Successful brands. The old adage size matters gets convoluted a bit as we assert, that, for brands, small is the next big thing. Outdoor and Out of Home seems to be attracting a lot of advertiser attention as explained in the piece The Science of Outdoor Advertising. There is lots more within these pages and we ask you to relish, share and write back to us.

Best.

Suresh Dinakaran

Managing Editor: Suresh Dinakaran Creative Head/Director Operations: Pravin Ahir Magazine Concept & Design/ New Media Specialist: Mufaddal Joher Country Head, UK: Sagar Patil Country Head, India: Rohit Unni Brand & Business Developer: Andre Van Helsdingen Brand & Business Developer: Dipti Vaidyanathan Web Specialist: Prasanta Kumar Sahu Online Support: Mahendra Kumar Behera

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CONTENTS

Apple’s brand challenge The Secrets of 7 Successful Brands The Nitty-Gritty of Brand Story Power What’s in a Brand?

For Brands, Small Is The Next Big Thing What Venture Capital Needs Now: Serious Brand Thinking Why brands must invest in building their online personality How To Design For The Sharing Economy David Beckham’s Soccer Career May Be Over, But His Brand Will Live On Brand Reputation And Why All PR Actually Is Good PR (Unless You’re Already Famous) The science behind outdoor advertising Meet the brands people are talking about most on Facebook 3 Creative Ways Brands Are Using Pinterest Big Brands Are Missing the ‘Social’ in Social Media Book, Line & Sinker Microsoft Plans Reboot of Windows 8 Amid Growing Frustration with OS

Apple’s brand challenge Mark J. Miller

While Apple has had some good news lately (it reached 50 billion downloads from its App Store, signed a deal with CW to have the network’s content appear on Apple TV, and its UK retail locations received the top customerservice rating in Britain), it also is going through some tough times as a brand.

A recent poll from Bloomberg notes that, “71 percent of poll respondents say the Cupertino, California, company has lost its cachet as an industry innovator, which includes 28 percent who say it is permanent and 43 percent who say it may be a temporary hiccup.” While some Apple loyalists remain dedicated to the company that has brought the world such innovations as the iPod, iPhone, and iTunes, plenty of folks in the general population aren’t as high on Apple as they used to be, with some turning to competitors like Google and Samsung. “Google plays offense while Apple has recently settled for playing defense,” Forbes reports. “Apple is struggling to maintain its position in the market, while Google is expanding its position.”

Google’s shares have gone over a record $900 while Apple’s are now just above $400 after being over $705 in late September. While it can be difficult to keep up with its own track record of innovation, Apple apparently has got to keep pushing in order to keep the masses satisfied.

“Where Apple went wrong is they began to confuse version releases and feature improvements with innovation,” Forbes reports. “What Apple is learning the hard way is even the most loyal base of consumers will jump ship when provided a valid reason to do so.”

Yahoo! Finance points out that Google’s stock is now more reliable than Apple’s, an attribute once widely given to the tech company. “Google’s business dynamics are less vulnerable to the kind of hit-driven product cycles and profit-compressing competitive gambits that withered investor confidence and trashed growth expectations in Apple,” the site notes.

This week, Google launched its streaming music service, All Access, which will directly compete with services like Spotify and Pandora, (and perhaps an Apple program that’s on its way). It also announced upgrades to its maps and games services, as well as merged its communication programs under the Hangouts brand.

Apple CEO Tim Cook will be in Washington, D.C., Tuesday to propose tax changes to a Congressional subcommittee “that would encourage firms to bring home more of their offshore funds,” The Huffington Post reports. The brand,

along with many other large corporations have been accused of balking taxes both abroad and domestically.

The idea would be “to put more companies’ offshore money to use creating jobs and conducting research and development in the United States.” AppleInsider.com has it that the company had more than $102 billion in cash overseas at the end of March, up 24 percent since the end of September. It remains to be seen what benefits Cook will propose for his company, which paid $6 billion in federal income tax last year. It is also in the middle of dealing with an antitrust suit in Europe that accuses “the company of conspiring with five of the largest publishing houses to fix prices on electronic books,” according to the New York Times. The five publishers have all settled, but Apple is pressing forward with its defense.

“I can tell you unequivocally,” Cook said, according to AppleInsider, “Apple does not funnel its domestic profits overseas. We don’t do that. We pay taxes on all the products we sell in the U.S., and we pay every dollar that we owe.

And so I’d like to be really clear on that.”

Meanwhile, the brand is still battling to try and dislodge Samsung as the top dog in global Smartphone sales.

The brands have gone head to head in marketing, with Samsung often poking fun at Apple loyalists. Apple is also still dealing with fallout from the poor labor conditions of China’s Foxconn Technology, which manufactures Apple’s iPads and iPhones. The company hired the Fair Labor Association last year to recommend new procedures, but while most of those recommendations are now in place, Apple is having difficulty bringing down workers’ number of hours, according to the New York Times.

Perhaps the company is finally feeling the longer-term effects of the October 2011 death of company co-founder Steve Jobs, who was always seemingly pushing for innovation. One person who has recently come out from Jobs’s shadow is his wife, Laurene Powell Jobs, who is currently worth about $11.5 billion. She has always been a private philanthropist, but the New York Times reports that she is ready to be more public in her giving.

“It’s not about getting any public recognition for her giving, it’s to help touch and transform individual lives,” said philanthropist Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen, who has been a pal of Powell Jobs for 20 years, according to the Times.

Maybe some of that good karma will rub off on her husband’s old company.

The Secrets of Successful Brands

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Paula Andruss

Whether they’ve been around for decades or were launched in the last two years, some companies just have a bit of magic when it comes to grabbing attention and establishing themselves as fan favorites. Of course, that “magic” doesn’t just happen by itself. From Warby Parker’s sensible pricing and do-gooder ways to lululemon’s sense of community and Hipmunk’s aww, so cute mascot, these brands have figured out how to work their way into customers’ hearts, minds and wallets.

Warby Parker A Clear Vision

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An affordable, stylish eyeglass retailer whose philosophy encompasses sophistication, purpose and fun, Warby Parker has seen steadily building consumer awareness and sales that have jumped by several hundred percent each year since its 2010 launch.

Co-founder and co-CEO Neil Blumenthal says the New York City-based company--named for the obscure Jack Kerouac characters Warby Pepper and Zagg Parker--tries to deliver on its promise by designing stylish frames using premium materials and offering them at the game-changing price point of $95, including prescription lenses.

The company also has a “buy a pair, give a pair” program that helps low-income men and women start their own businesses selling affordable glasses and is one of the world’s only carbon-neutral eyewear manufacturers. “Warby Parker exists to demonstrate that you can be profitable and do good in the world, at scale, without charging a premium for it,” Blumenthal says.

That positioning has struck a chord among consumers, says Tracy Lloyd, partner at San Francisco brand strategy and design consultancy Emotive Brand. “Today, consumers want their brands to matter more; they’ll support the brands that align to their values and are meaningful to them,” she says.

“This give-back mentality really resonates with people.”

Of course, serving up a great user experience and a bit of quirk

doesn’t hurt. Warby Parker emphasizes speedy and efficient customer service, and offers innovative shopping experiences such as a try-at-home option and a mobile retail pop-up shop housed in a renovated school bus.

“We try to create experiences that people want to tell their friends about,” Blumenthal says, noting that word-of-mouth accounts for more than half of Warby Parker’s traffic and sales.

Last year the company opened six new showrooms and doubled its employee ranks. Blumenthal attributes the rapid growth in part to the fact that the brand has meaning for many types of consumers, from style mavens to the socially conscious.

“We’ve found that different aspects of our brand resonate with different communities,” he says. “Although you can’t be everything to all people, you can definitely be something to some people.”

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Lululemon Athletica Good Vibes

today’s buyers. “People think of it as a community; by buying the brand they’re buying into something bigger. It’s not just about fitness or the clothes, it’s about finding that mind-body connection and doing something positive,” she says.

By creating a company story that’s focused on aspirational visions and goals, lululemon has built a brand that consumers want to live.

Founded in 1998, the Vancouver, British Columbia-based maker of pricey yoga and athletic apparel has always attracted a loyal following, but numbers have surged recently to include not only yogis and athletes but anyone wanting to be a part of an inspirational, feel-good community. “People care about our brand because they feel connected to it and what we stand for,” says Laura Klauberg, senior vice president of community and brand. “In addition to yoga and health, we’re also passionate about helping our guests create a life they love through the power of goal-setting.”

Julie Cottineau, CEO of brand consultancy BrandTwist.com, says functional and emotional brand promise resonates with

Seeking to expand its community, lululemon has opened more than 60 stores since 2011, creating a fresh batch of ambassadors--athletes, instructors or role models who promote the brand among their students and provide feedback on product design. Meanwhile, Twitter followers have skyrocketed 621 percent since 2011, while Facebook followers have increased nearly 200 percent.

Cottineau says that growth is fueled by a comprehensive strategy that inserts the brand message into nearly every point of consumer contact, especially the ubiquitous reusable shopping totes printed with the “lululemon manifesto,” which features inspirational sayings such as “Do one thing a day that scares you.”

It’s a tactic that can be especially useful for entrepreneurs who can’t afford to go up against the marketing budgets of established brands. “Months later, that shopping tote is not associated at all anymore with the pants or the top that the customer bought, but it is a little reminder of your brand’s story,” Cottineau says. “That’s a moment of impact that a lot of brands overlook.”

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Ted Free Thinking

But the gamble paid off. Today there are more than 1,400 TED talks available online, with more added every week. They’ve been viewed some 1 billion times by people around the world at the rate of 1.5 million times per day. (That’s 17 views per second.)

On the membership front, steep prices--the standard TED membership, including conference attendance, is $7,500 per year--have done little to deter customers; TED events typically sell out far in advance.

Born in 1984 as a one-off, invitation-only conference that brought together key figures from the worlds of technology, entertainment and design, the nonprofit known as TED is now one of America’s most recognizable brands--and, more important, a movement to spread ideas from innovative thinkers around the world.

John Michael Morgan, author of Brand Against the Machine, says TED’s evolution from a single event to a full-fledged brand comes from an exemplary job of marketing with people and not at them. “They care about the conversations their audience is having and assist with moving those conversations forward,” he says.

Executive producer of media June Cohen attributes TED’s growth to a widespread hunger for intelligent content and the quality of the organization’s inspiring, 18-minute lectures. But she is quick to add that the success is also a direct result of the philosophy of radical openness that empowers the brand’s global community.

Those conversations have morphed into brand extensions that include TEDActive, TEDGlobal, TED Fellows and TEDx, among others. Measures are in place to keep those factions true to the brand’s mission; for example, organizers of independent TEDx events may use the TED name and video content for free, but they must follow identity guidelines to ensure proper use of the brand’s valuable equity.

TED really exploded among the public in 2006, when it began giving its content away--a risky move that “could have capsized our business model,” Cohen says. “Why pay for it when you can get it for free online?”

Cohen emphasizes that giving TED’s global community access to all aspects of the brand is what continues to power it in every way. “Most companies find it difficult to pursue ‘open’ strategies,” she says. “But what you can see from TED’s trajectory is that openness has extraordinary rewards.”

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Hanky Panky Intimate Knowledge

team, posted a plea on Taco Bell’s Facebook page. Employing a loose interpretation of English grammar, the 15-year-old asked: “Is there any way you guys could make me a customized speedo that says think outside the buns on the back of it?” Thirteen days later, Taco Bell posted a reply: “What size do you wear? And what’s your address?”

Inspired by a bra-and-panty set Gale Epstein created as a birthday gift for her friend Lida Orzeck in 1977, the two started a company, taking a bold “by women, for women” approach.

“Hanky Panky promises to make women feel great about themselves, their undies and their sisterhood with other women who love the brand,” says Epstein, who serves as president and creative director. “We consistently deliver an exceptionally made product that is feminine, flattering and known for its fit.”

While the New York-based brand has long had legions of devotees--who tout the sexy but comfortable styles and one-sizefits-all thongs, available in a seemingly endless array of colors-the founders attribute recent growth to brand extensions such as collegiate and Hello Kitty licenses, a bridal collection and the slightly steamier After Midnight product line.

Branding expert M.P. Mueller, president of Austin, Texas-based Door Number 3 Advertising, says Hanky Panky addresses the complexities of the way all types of women relate to their bodies with an understanding and emotional engagement that resonates.

“Lingerie is not just to please the sexual partner anymore, but for women who want to feel good about their bodies and have fun in the bedroom across many life stages: from maternity lingerie that doesn’t make the mom-to-be feel like she’s being put out to pasture for nine months to the Hello Kitty line that recognizes the twentysomething who still goes back and forth between vixen and Mary Janes,” she says.

Another boost came from the 2012 launch of the Hanky Panky Pep Squad program, which appoints ambassadors at colleges nationwide to introduce the brand on campus and promote it via social media and special events. That growing collegiate audience is part of the reason the brand is approaching 20,000 Likes on Facebook, a number that has doubled in the last year alone.

“Our customers do our PR,” Epstein says. “The brand was built on buzz.”

Last year Ryan Klarner, a member of his Illinois high school swim

More than 2,600 people liked Ryan’s post, and more than 1,000 liked the reply. Ryan was already a regular customer--his post noted that he eats at Taco Bell “at least” five to seven times a week-but he is now a fan for life, or what’s known in the marketing world as a brand ambassador.

To Raquel Smith, marketing manager at Oneupweb, a Traverse City, Mich., digital marketing agency, Taco Bell’s handling of the request was a textbook lesson in how entrepreneurs can inspire customers. “It’s a great example of listening to your fans, providing value for them and creating a really strong ambassadorship,” she says.

Businesses routinely rely on loyal customers to serve as ambassadors--prized patrons who can be counted on to spread the word about a company’s products or services or general wholesome goodness. Some companies offer something in return, such as exclusive access to sales or product launches. But marketing experts insist that entrepreneurs don’t need million-dollar budgets to cultivate brand ambassadors. “It’s a matter of being able to find and activate those consumers to see who you are,” says Perry Fair, a chief creative officer at global ad agency JWT. “That doesn’t necessarily take a lot of money. It does take a lot of effort.”

Much of the process of building ambassadors occurs on social networks (though experts stress that face-to-face interaction should never be discounted). The key is to engage customers in conversation and let them know you’re interested in what they say.

“It’s really all about dialogue--listening--and if these people are carrying your torch, thanking them for that and rewarding them in some way that makes them feel good,” says Karen Post, president of Tampa, Fla.-based Brain Tattoo Branding.

Fair cites the recent case of Crayola. When a customer complained on Facebook that a new box of crayons contained an unsharpened Carnation Pink, the company responded by mailing a replacement.

The customer went on Facebook again and posted: “Guess who has a new crayon?”

Fair says Crayola’s small gesture spoke volumes about a willingness to listen--and respond--to customers. “When so much is happening online, brand ambassadorship is built off of customer service,” he says. “At the end of the day, that’s really what it is.” --Christopher Hann

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Pinterest All Aboard

saying ‘Here’s who I am,’” says Andy Spade, co-creative director of New York-based brand strategist Partners & Spade.

Faul attributes the brand’s popularity to the fact that it was shaped by users. “Pinterest started as a way to help people collect images across the web, but it didn’t take off right away, so we started talking to people using it and found it had evolved into a place for people to find and save things that inspire them,” he says. “We learned that the best way to build a product, service or business is to actually talk to the people using it.”

What began as a simple way to collect images on the web has exploded into a phenomenon of self-expression and inspiration from others. “People care about Pinterest because it helps them feel inspired,” says Don Faul, head of operations for the San Francisco, Calif.-based company. “You could get inspired to start a new hobby, or stumble on a product you never knew existed or quickly find something to cook for dinner. It’s also personal: It’s about the things you like.”

That kind of intimacy creates a strong emotional tie to the brand.

“What we like is who we are, so sharing what we like online is like

User-friendliness is also key. “Designing it so you pin on a board is brilliant, because it’s what you actually do at home,” Spade says.

“People understand that.”

Klout named Pinterest one of 2012’s most influential companies.

The site had more than 27 million unique U.S.-based PC visitors in 2012, an increase of 1,047 percent, and the largest year-overyear growth in audience and time spent of any social network, according to Nielsen. “We’re fortunate to have a passionate, engaged community of people,” Faul says. “They inspire lots of others along the way.”

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Tito’s Handmade Vodka Independent Spirit Award

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From the name on the bottle to the simple packaging and Americangrown, corn-based liquor inside, Tito’s Handmade Vodka is all about authenticity. That’s because its founder is all about keeping it real.

Bert “Tito” Beveridge (yes, really), founder and owner of the Austin, Texas-based sensation, began making infused vodka to share with friends before distilling his own recipe and turning it into a business in 1995. His philosophy--make it exceptional and accessible--hasn’t changed a lick since then. “My brand is about making really clean, smooth sipping vodka at a reasonable price, so most people can afford it,” Beveridge says. “It’s an extension of me--I make vodka that I like to drink.”

The man behind the brand brings to the product an engaging human face that its competitors lack, says Emotive Brand’s Lloyd.

“Good brands have good leaders with a strong vision, and that definitely comes through,” she says. “Consumers appreciate it.”

Extending that genuine personality across all promotional platforms lets consumers know what they can expect from Tito’s-the hallmark of a trustworthy brand. “When authenticity from a product is delivered at every interaction, it builds credibility,” Lloyd says. “Their website, social media and events all offer the same experience; that’s what builds trust and brings people back to the brand and [causes them to] tell others about it.”

People are definitely talking. In the last year, Tito’s has seen Facebook fans increase 93 percent to some 26,200 and Twitter followers increase 70 percent to more than 18,800--the largest following of any of the brand’s core competitors. Indeed, Beveridge credits social media for making it possible for his brew to share

Hipmunk ‘Agony’ Ecstasy

shelf space with the liquor world’s biggest players. “Social media is a great platform for a word-of-mouth brand, because it’s not just about who has the biggest megaphone,” he says. “For guys like us going against the Diageos and Bacardis of the world, it’s a leveling factor.”

But it’s the quality and price of the spirit more than anything that drives that fan base. Wine Enthusiast rated Tito’s a 95 out of 100, besting top-shelf contenders Ketel One, Grey Goose and Belvedere. A 750 ml bottle of Tito’s can be purchased for about $20, up to $10 less than lower-ranked competitors.

But even though the brand has taken off--Tito’s sold more than half a million cases last year and has posted near 50 percent growth each year for the last two--Beveridge refuses to make flashy enhancements that may take away from his authenticity, like updating his basic packaging: a stock bottle and paper label he designed himself using Corel Draw.

“Why pay an extra $5 more per bottle for shiny paint?” he asks.

“It’s the juice inside that matters.”

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The travel search site with the friendly little mascot--a chipmunk decked out in a scarf and aviator goggles--prides itself on not only working well, but also being more enjoyable to use than its competitors.

Hipmunk’s founders “wanted to create a site that was approachable, simpler and had a better user experience,” says a spokesperson.

“They wanted users to know that we are on their side, sorting through poor travel options and serving up the best possibilities.”

Understanding consumers’ pain points has always been the key to breakthrough brands, notes Door Number 3’s Mueller. “The best entrepreneurs tap into the frustrations and needs of consumers, both tangible and intangible,” she says. “Hipmunk recognizes that the American consumer craves simplicity. Its uncluttered homepage and presentation of search findings as a graph instead of a textheavy chart reflects being in touch with consumers’ need for quick knowledge and decision-making.”

Hipmunk promotes its brand promise to travelers primarily through a hands-on philosophy. “We’re approachable through Twitter and our online live chat, where we’re constantly talking to our users and making sure they’re having a good experience,” the spokesperson says.

Hipmunk continues to expand its product offerings, including the ability to filter searches based on “agony”--a combination of price, duration and number of stops--and a subscription-based businessplanning feature designed to streamline group-trip planning.

And while it may seem trivial, if executed well, an engaging mascot with a spirit that embodies the product and company can truly elevate a brand. “Humans love brands that use critters in them,” notes Mueller, citing the Aflac duck and GEICO gecko as popular examples. “If a topic is complex, critters bring us in and lower our blood pressure.”

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The NittyGritty of Brand Story Power Catherine Sherlock There’s been loads of talk about using stories for business communications—for good reason. Stories get people involved at a deeper level because they engage the senses and emotions and activate the brain. We learn more and remember better.

That’s why stories are a great tool in content marketing. Still, understanding the power of stories is one thing; knowing how to craft them... is another. So let’s delve into some practical applications of story; I’ll use case studies, annual reports, and video as examples.

Case Studies: Story Power in Action We learn vicariously through story. Brain research shows that reading a story about someone doing something activates the same areas of your brain as if you were engaged in those very pursuits.

That’s powerful stuff that you can take advantage of via case studies. People can experience the value of your company’s offerings by reading the experiences of satisfied customers.

Readers feel the pain of the problem and the satisfaction of success. For prospective customers, a well-told story can reduce fear of taking action and increase trust in your value.

Stories are great for case studies also because they help to quantify indirect and intangible values. You can demonstrate specific and actual client results and outcomes.

Start With Your Objectives Your first job is to think about what you want story to achieve.

You’re not just telling a story for the sake of telling a story—you’re using it to achieve your objectives. Choosing good objectives is a combination of being clear on your company and specific project goals and knowing your audience.

You want to choose a case study that supports your objectives.

Sometimes you don’t have the detail to make that decision until you’ve conducted the client interview, so you may have to revisit your objectives once the interviews are completed.

You may have more than one objective, but refrain from having too many, because you want to keep a clean storyline. Here are some sample objectives: * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Overcome resistance or buying objections Create resonance and connection Motivate and inspire Mobilize or reinvigorate people Capitalize on real-world events Introduce new directions Demonstrate your various value propositions Increase revenue per customer Educate about a specific aspect of your offering Break into a new market Create leads Enhance customer loyalty Communicate differentiation Increase market share

The Client Interview Is the Key to a Great Story An author who writes a fictional story gets to make up the needed details to keep you on the edge of your seat. You don’t have that freedom when writing case studies. Your job involves bringing a true narrative to life. That’s why the client interview is key.

Even clients who adore you haven’t generally given a lot of thought to the value your company has brought to their lives.

It’s up to you to unearth those details. Otherwise, your story will sound something like “we hired them, they did good, we were happy.”

The more digging you do during the interview stage, the more likely you are to uncover the type of detail that makes for an appealing story. The attention-grabbing story elements will be in the human and specific details.

Start by drafting a list of questions to ask. Make it a long list: You don’t have to ask them all. Your job is to listen. A long list of questions will enable you to get the client speaking again if the conversation dwindles.

Finding stories involves following up on little tidbits that your interviewee often won’t even recognize as valuable. That’s why it’s best to interview the person by phone or in person; you’re much less likely to get the kind of information that results in a great story from trading emails.

During the interview, you’re gathering information. Spotting a story is great, but if you spot a story and focus in on it too much, you might miss other opportunities for better stories or additional parts of the story that will leap out at you once you’re back at your office looking for patterns in the information you’ve collected.

Make sure to identify the emotional costs and gains. If you’re interviewing your customer and he says the customer service was great... that’s wonderful—but dead boring. And meaningless. The story is in the particulars. Dig deeper to find out what he means by that. What exactly happened? How did that make him feel?

What did it enable him to accomplish? How did it change his life?

Find out any odd details you can. The interview process is a bit of an art—and it’s the key to being able to construct a great story.

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Story Genres What kind of story would you like to tell? Mystery, romance, comedy, drama, adventure? I mention this somewhat tonguein-cheek, because using genre may not be suitable for every situation.

However, playing with genre can help you...

* Find patterns in your interview material

* Enhance your creativity and enjoyment factor as you approach the project * Provide ideas on how to start your story and keep a consistent tone throughout If you can find a strong genre that will work with your details, all the better. Maybe you can play up that your solution allowed your customer to get out of the office earlier for a romantic anniversary dinner. Perhaps the client’s problem was a mystery because your company had never seen that problem before, yet you persevered and overcame it. If you can have fun with it, your readers probably will, too.

Crafting the Story A story isn’t just a series of events strung together. The real story is about how the characters respond to those events. In other words, stories are about how people manage change, which is really about people’s internal growth. A great storyteller is able to bring that internal voyage to life.

In your case study, your happy client is the hero. You want your readers to be able to relate to how he or she feels. You want people to feel part of the story.

Tips for case study storytelling:

* In a story, you’re not telling. You’re letting the characters demonstrate. * Highlight the conflict and struggle. Stories are about our mistakes and struggle, because that’s how we learn.

* Who or what is your bad guy? Stories are about how hero achieves goal in the face of an obstacle. Every story has to have some kind of bad guy, or there’s no story.

* Engage the senses. People remember stories better than facts, and they remember stories that engage the senses more than ones that don’t. For example: “What he was hoping for was a smell like fresh baked cookies just out of the oven. What he got was something that smelled like a bag of garbage left out for a week in record breaking temperatures in mid-July.” OK... that may be overkill, but you can see how it engages the senses more than just saying it smelled good or it reeked.

Your Annual Report as Story Annual reports have a reputation for being really, really boring.

Really boring equates to “no one reads them.”

The reason they’re generally dead boring is because most of them are a bunch of data thrown together. Why write something no one wants to read?

A first-rate annual report captures people’s imagination and inspires them. A good report has emotion and creates links to greater purpose, goals, dreams, and vision.

Writing your annual report as a story can change it from a dull collection of facts and information into a marketing and communications piece you can be proud of. Think about why you are telling it and whom are you telling it to.

From the perspective of story, your annual report becomes the tale of your company’s year. Your company (and its people) become the protagonists: What happened to your company this last year? What main things do you want people to know about you? What were your successes and failures? How did that

change you as a company? What did you learn? How did the company’s experience last year contribute to this year’s hopes and dreams? Who were the champion employees and clients?

Was it a special year to celebrate—like the company had a special birthday or maybe became a teenager?

There are an endless number of fascinating stories once you begin looking for them.

Story helps bring your company to life, making it feel authentic and personable.

Video: Seconds to Launch Complex Ideas With the combination of image, voice, and music, video is a natural format for story. Video’s strength is its ability to communicate complex ideas in seconds.

Many companies aren’t capitalizing on that strength. Companies have instead clambered to get videos online as video consumption has exploded.... but that has led to heaps of “talking head” videos.

Recently, I ran across a company telling the story of how the company name came to be: It was named after one of the Arabian Nights tales.

I couldn’t tell you why they named the company, because the video consisted of the owner standing there telling the story. I skipped ahead. A minute later in the video, and she was still talking. I abandoned the video.

Imagine instead that you videoed your talking heads as they were telling stories—but only as a first component in your story research and development.

Then you applied the same rule in your video development as you do to get good writing—edit, edit, edit! Find the essence of the message you want to get across. Boil down the text or words until you have the minimum of words to convey that message. Examine your goal behind wanting to communicate this message.

You have your message, and you know why you want to communicate it. Time to make it live and breathe.

Think about how you want people to feel after they receive your information. How can you get that core message across in a story? How can you convey the feelings you want? How can you establish an emotional connection with your viewers? Close your eyes and tell yourself the story. Depending on how your brain works, that story may come in words, images, or a combination of the two. There’s no right or wrong way. Quickly jot down the notes of your internal brainstorm in quick sketches or words.

Create a storyboard to save you and your team time and resources. Storyboards allow you to work out your storyline and the accompanying words and images that will be the basis of your story—before you go to production. Various types of storyboarding software are available ranging in price, but you can also go low-tech and produce it on paper.

Video is a very flexible format. You can video clips, photos, animation, or combine them in any way to get your story across.

The key is to match your format to the emotional connection you want to create.

Use Stories to Produce Better Content Stories can be a compelling tool in your content marketing arsenal. They engage people, increase creativity, and provide an organizing framework for your content.

Take advantage of the inherent power of story to increase the influence of your content marketing.

What’s in a

Brand?

Tradition, culture, craftsmanship all contribute to the brand you buy. But how much more are you willing to pay for that label?

Jane Williams

Impeccably accurate timepieces are perhaps the essence of Switzerland. A Swiss Made watch evokes a concept of quality, a reputation that has taken nearly 500 years to build. Not surprisingly it’s one that the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry is determined to keep. The federation recently quit one of the country’s top business organisations, economiesuisse, accusing it of not wanting to sufficiently protect the Swiss brand.

The two organisations have been in disagreement over how much of a product is required to originate in Switzerland for it to be labelled “Swiss Made”. Current legislation says that only 50 percent of the value of the precision-tooled inner workings of a watch, known as the watch movement, has to be manufactured in Switzerland. There is no such law for other industrial products. The Swiss government has proposed legislation ensuring 60 percent of the source or manufacturing of any item with the “Swiss Made” tag be done in Switzerland. The 60 percent threshold, supported by the watch-making federation (although some members would like to see it raised as high as 80 percent), has been rejected by economiesuisse - which represents over 2 million businesses - as restrictive and impractical.

All of which brings into question how much culture and other intangibles – such as sustainability and provenance – are worth, how can they be reflected in the price tag, and how can companies or industries convince the consumer that these values are inherent in the (generally higher) price they pay?

Recent studies by St Gallen and Zurich Universities show the Swiss brand generates up to 20 percent more profit on luxury products and in the case of watches made in Switzerland – in contrast to watches made in countries such as China but using a Swiss designed movement - almost double the high-end price to well over US$100,000.

The use of cultural and geographical references to add value to a luxury product has always been a critical aspect of its marketing, notes Frédéric Godart, INSEAD Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour. “By

indicating a special cultural or geographical reference, luxury producers make replication harder and increase customers’ willingness to pay.”

Is it authentic?

Whether it’s a Swiss watch, an organic cheese or an old mining town looking to revamp into a tourist destination, the social and cultural value of a product is increasing as consumers become vigilant about the authenticity of their purchases.

“Today’s innovation in highly-developed countries largely consists of transforming cultural values and ways of life into sellable products and services,” Olivier Crevoisier, a professor at the University of Neuchâtel’s Group of Research in Territorial Economy (GRET), told a policy seminar at INSEAD’s Abu Dhabi campus.

Consumers, says Crevoisier, are educating themselves and are increasingly making choices based on a product’s provenance, sustainability or history. “But traditional activities like the watch industry as well as new ones have to find some legitimacy in public debate in order to create economic value.”

“The watch today is a cultural good, it’s a useless good really, everybody has a mobile phone (to tell the time) so why do people pay so much for a Swiss watch? It’s precisely because it’s embodying what we call authenticity,” Crevosier told INSEAD Knowledge noting the difficulty companies have in promoting their cultural value. “It’s not something you can claim for yourself. You can’t advertise with great credibility and say ‘we’re authentic’. Other people have to say it about you.”

Public discussion generates interest around a product and this creates value as well as testifying to the authentic nature of the brand, he adds, noting this desire to be seen as authentic has forced marketers to introduce some innovative techniques.

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Public discussion generates interest around a product and this creates value as well as testifying to the authentic nature of the brand, he adds, noting this desire to be seen as authentic has forced marketers to introduce some innovative techniques.

Many Swiss watch manufacturers are now turning their plants into tourist destinations. Often they are set on a farm or in an old village with a museum next door. Workers are taught to speak English and encouraged to interact with customers or journalists who are brought in to tour the facilities.

LVMH has taken a similar route, opening its major fashion houses, boutiques, vineyards and family homes to guests in an event called “Les Journées Particulières’, giving customers a glimpse at the craftsmanship behind its products.

Reinventing industry Cultural value is also providing opportunities for ailing regions, as they transform their heritage into a sellable product.

Take the Ruhr Valley of Germany, the old mining and steel district which fell into crisis as collieries and pits shut down in the late twentieth century. By leveraging off these roots the area has reinvented itself, promoting industrial heritage, by turning old mines, blast furnaces and factories into galleries, monuments and landmarks.

And it’s not just old culture which is being used, says Crevoisier. On the south coast of Sweden, the small town of Ystad, the backdrop for the popular Inspector Wallander series of books and television shows, has created a thriving tourist industry off the fictional tales using the series as an advertising tool to promote the region.

Value driven by debate Companies commonly use media events and celebrities to promote their products. But real value says Crevoisier is driven by open debate between experts, connoisseurs, NGOs and customers. Swiss watch-makers like many high-end manufacturers are investing in glossy magazines with articles which encourage journalists and experts to discuss not just the crucial competences of a product but the symbolic knowledge. By stirring up discussion , sharing experiences and swapping ideas across sectors and countries, consumers are becoming semi-experts in a product or sector and more willing to spend money on it.

The football industry has particularly benefitted from this type of knowledge diffusion. “Soccer is big business,” says Professor Crevoisier. “There are lots of newspapers and magazines looking at crucial points of a game or statistics.

This sparks debates everyday on the television or in bars and as people’s knowledge about the game increases they become more passionate and are willing to travel great distances to a match. They will pay a lot of money for tickets or access to a television channel to watch the game, they buy magazines, jumpers, hats.”

Anything that creates discussion will add to consumers’ interest and ultimately to the value of the product, notes Crevoisier which brings us back to the watchmakers and their public outrage over economiesuisse’s refusal to support the government’s “Swiss” bill.

“The watch industry has acquired a lot of experience with this “authenticity” and “marketing” during the last 10 years,” says Crevoisier.

“I think the watchmakers will get the regulation they want – probably a different standard than for other products. [In the meantime] they are very good at using this kind of episode to appear in the media as the true defenders of authenticity.

They would never miss this kind of opportunity.”

For Brands, Small Is The Next Big Thing David Brier

The Italians have known how great small can be ever since the first espresso was poured. Today, there are smaller and smaller smartphones, Apple’s Nano, and heck, even some car keys have gotten so small as to have disappeared, being replaced by buttons.

As we all now, the Greek yogurt category is exploding. Just the other day, I saw and purchased Chobani “Bite” yogurt which was so small (3.5 oz.), I was shocked. But, I realized it fit a need for a mid-morning healthy snack when I don’t have the time to get something else.

Twitter’s done it to language, changing the way we communicate. This has resulted in a generation of “scanners,” people who half-read or half-listen to what they see or hear. So the paragraphs in my articles have gotten shorter and shorter.

Even videos have caught the “micro-bug” with 15-second Viddys or 6-second Vines.

Amazon made the checkout process “smaller” with their “one click” checkout process, preserving the ever-sofleeting time we all consider so precious.

Why? “Consumers are overloaded. Too many choices. Too many demands. Too little time and attention to handle it all,” says Daymond John, Fubu founder, entrepreneur, and Shark Tank investor. “Anything that requires less space, takes less time, demands less attention has great appeal.”

And now this trend is expanding into new categories.

5-Hour Energy created a brand new “beverage/ supplement” category selling 1.93 fl oz “energy boosters” for over $3 in the most strategically perfect retail channel: convenience stores, when drivers are stopping to get gas and their caffeine fix of choice: coffee, cola, some energy beverage, or soft drink. The profit margin alone makes selling Coke look like a waste of time.

Why is small having a moment? Because the world has changed. Steve Olenski, senior creative strategist for Responsys, a leading global provider of on-demand email and cross-channel marketing solutions, shared this with me: “Small is the new big for the simple fact that our collective attention spans are at an all-time low. The reason for this is due largely in part to the digitally-enhanced world we live in. Desktop computers became passé and sure enough laptops are following suit. Marketers and advertisers need to constantly adjust to this sea change. Tinier screens plus shorter attention spans can only lead to one thing: Small is the new big.”

People have more distractions in the same amount of hours per day. The end result? We have “less time” and we need to cram more information in less space.

Whether it’s the circumstance of needing, doing, and consuming more or the fact that we have--relative to the tsunami of info, music, movies, technologies, accessories, etc.--less time, the solution has become “less.” Just look at the popularity of Tim Ferriss’ 4-Hour empire as confirmation of how big small has become. And take it to heart when considering your next product or new brand positioning.

What Venture Capital Needs Now: Serious Brand Thinking Geoff Cook

In early 2012, I made the case to Co.Design’s readers that venture capital firms should incorporate a more comprehensive awareness of brand and design into their investment decisions. It seems that my assertion was not so far-flung. In the months since, some of the more forward-thinking firms in the venture-capital world have demonstrated a growing awareness of the impact of design. Google Ventures expanded its internal studio to support design initiatives for its startups. The venturecapital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers launched the Design Council and Fellows Program to connect startups with talented students who will in turn be mentored by top design talent. Phin Barnes and the team at First Round Capital & IDEO began hosting “Design + Start-ups,” a running series of events where speakers address design philosophy, technique, entrepreneurship, and more.

These tactical steps are sure to improve overall design, particularly the user interface and user experience (UI/UX) of the products offered by the firms’ portfolio companies, while also expanding the firms’ networks within the design community.

“WHILE THESE EFFORTS SHOULD BE APPLAUDED, THERE REMAINS A GREATER OPPORTUNITY.” While these efforts should be applauded, there remains an even greater opportunity for venture capitalists to add value to their portfolio companies by sharpening their focus on brand. By “brand,” I refer not just to a new logo or identity but rather a company’s strategy, positioning, personality, story, and all other expressions thereof. While design is largely tied directly to a product (be it physical or digital), brand extends well beyond the frontiers of what is being produced, into environments and entire communities.

As venture capitalists look to history as a guide, I predict that we will soon see these firms incorporating in-house brand expertise into their overall roster of disciplines.

Consider the trajectory of companies in the industrial age.

An entrepreneur creates a product: Henry Ford the Model T; Thomas Edison the light bulb. At the outset, the product is the end in and of itself, and the manufacturer’s focus is on refining the product (read: engineering) to improve its functionality, efficiency, and cost effectiveness. At some point, however (often in conjunction with the onset of competition), the manufacturer realizes that by also focusing on qualities other than simply how the product functions, it can add value -- rendering the product more aesthetically and experientially compelling and distinguishing it from rival offerings. It is at this point that the company incorporates design into its overall product development. Once the product is strong enough in terms of both function and design, the company focuses on brand to further engage its consumers.

The same trajectory will increasingly hold true for companies in the information age. With most of the «new» products for this era now well established (search, social networking, e-commerce), even early and middle-stage technology companies are placing a tremendous emphasis on design, mainly in the form of improved UI/UX in the development process. Indeed, these companies have made the leap to this secondary stage at a greatly accelerated pace vis-àvis their traditional counterparts. And venture-capital firms have responded, adding design experts to their teams in order to better support their portfolio companies. Google Ventures went so far as to document its process, known as their “Five Day Sprint,” in a recent series of videos.

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History counsels that the next step for today’s companies will be a heightened emphasis on brand. This makes perfect sense. At a time when information is ultimately the commodity, «reliability» has come to be defined as much by what a company fails to do as by what it does do. Consider the case of Instagram. Purely from a product point-of-view, Instagram is an enormous success and a product beloved by millions. The engineering and design of the product, already impressive, continue to improve. But in 2012, the company made a change to its privacy policy that many users interpreted as a declaration of Instagram’s right to sell their photos to advertisers without compensating users.

The change caused an unprecedented number of users (by some accounts, as many as 8 million in just one month) to abandon the product. And yet a closer inspection of Instagram’s terms of service suggests a far more benign interpretation of the sentence in question (Instagram later rescinded the disputed language). The willingness of Instagram’s users to believe the worst of it reflects a fundamental distrust regarding a company’s intended use of personal information. It is a problem that all social media companies face, and ultimately, it is a problem of brand. At the end of the day, a brand reflects the trust that consumers place in a product or service based on name alone. In a world where trust is increasingly important and Brand = Trust, the significance of brand cannot be overstated.

Johnson & Johnson offers an instructive counterpoint to Instagram’s experience. From 2009 through early 2012,

highly successful online retailers operating on a flash-sale business model that offers products for a limited period at discounted prices. Fab is focused on design products and has grown parabolically since its launch in 2012. Gilt offers fashion, food, travel, and lifestyle deals and was growing at an equally rapid pace until its sales plateaued at $600 million in 2012.

“FAB HAS PLACED A TREMENDOUS EMPHASIS ON CRAFTING A BRAND THAT TRANSCENDS ITS PRODUCT.” However, while Fab has placed a tremendous emphasis on crafting a coherent and consistent brand that transcends its product, Gilt has taken a reactive approach to branding that has ultimately proved confusing to users and has diluted the brand’s value. Whereas Fab’s brand transcends its product, Gilt’s remains inextricably tied to what it is offering. In keeping with its brand emphasis, Fab has announced that it will be launching its own line of products later this year--a move that will generate an entirely new revenue stream for the company. Such a move is only possible because of the strength of Fab’s brand, which will give its products, if well designed and produced, an outsized chance of success. Gilt could similarly benefit from the revenue growth a branded product line would bring, but such a project would be hampered by the company’s inability to commit to a specific (and thus powerful) brand identity.

the company recalled over 10 of its leading consumer products, including Children’s Tylenol, Extra Strength Tylenol, Aveeno Baby Lotion, Motrin IB, and Rolaids. But because Johnson & Johnson is such a trusted brand, the recalls had little impact on its bottom line. Indeed, J&J’s fourth quarter results for 2012 exceeded expectations.

Brand can also add value in the information age by positioning companies to move beyond their core products or services. Take the example of Fab vs. Gilt. Both are

The majority of venture capital firms today remain committed to bringing in outside brand experts on an as-needed basis. But such an approach is tantamount to crisis management--a reactive approach to branding brand problems only after they have become manifest, which then often serves only to weaken the brand further.

By contrast, a proactive approach that anticipates potential branding brand issues and crafts a strong identity with an eye toward those challenges will generate brands with greater resiliency and scope, thereby making the concerns that inevitably arise that much easier to navigate. Venture capital firms would be well served by bringing brand experts on staff full time to identify and address the brand challenges that their portfolio companies face before they rear their ugly heads.

Why brands must invest in building their online personality Mark Inkip,

Marketing activity has always traditionally centred around campaign cycles, with activity peaking and troughing throughout the year. But thanks to the digital age in which we now live, consumers are demanding a constant and consistent 24-hour, seven-day a week engagement with brands.

This means that marketers need to look far beyond the next three or four campaign cycles and instead look to create a solid foundation of customer communication on which future activities can be built. This can be a difficult scenario for many brands to contemplate, given that the average marketing director or brand manager is only likely to see five or six of these cycles in their tenure.

Today, what brands need to do more than anything is build their personality online. And so far, few have really achieved that. This is the reason why content marketing is such a hot topic right now. A content driven marketing strategy allows a brand to effectively engage with their consumers in a non-interruptive way and to build an ongoing relationship with them, rather than periodically jumping up and down and ‘pitching’ a product at them in a quick burst of activity and then going away again.

A lot has been written about how storytelling is becoming a hugely important marketing art now, and we are at last starting to see brands move away from the concept of catchy one-liners toward the production of long-form and compelling content that gives brands substance. A content driven marketing strategy that uses this approach allows a brand to feed a constant stream of valuable and relevant information to customers.

This isn’t to say that campaign marketing is dead, it will forever have a crucial role in helping to open up channels and spark customer interest – but its thanks to content marketing that brands are now able to create a deep and lasting relationship with their customers.

In spite of this, too many brands still don’t ‘get’ the value of content creation. Marketing culture in general remains geared toward the short term, and around acquisition numbers. Retention remains a hard sell.

The tools to create compelling content are right there in front of us – but too many marketers still don’t embrace them to their full potential. It’s great to have a Facebook page, and to drive people to it when you have something you want to push, but the real skill is in keeping them coming back in between campaign cycles. Ten years ago we didn’t have many ways to engage with consumers unless they contacted us first. Now that this is no longer the case we have the perfect opportunity to drip feed content – good, relevant and engaging content – and place it in the hands of potentially eager brand advocates.

What seems to put a lot of brands off is that they don’t understand how to measure the value of content in the same way they can campaign bursts. To create a long-term, content driven strategy and invest time into it without being able to absolutely measure the results from it, is a brave move. But the brave are the ones that ultimately succeed.

Coca-Cola seems to have got it – pretty much everything they do is geared around content creation now.

Red Bull too is a great example of a brand that embraces a long-term marketing strategy. Rather than see them talk about their products or campaigns, Red Bull focuses most of its marketing efforts on leveraging long-term sponsorship deals, then monetising the value of that sponsorship through the creation of compelling content.

Campaign driven marketing activity will continue to have its place and agencies will still win awards for their part in this. But my prediction is that as time rolls on, so will the emphasis by marketers on longer-term, strategic engagement – and this shift will be born out of a content driven strategy.

How To Design For The Sharing Economy Lada Gorlenko

The definition of ownership is changing. We are becoming less interested in owning products and accumulating wealth through long-term purchases.

Instead, we crave experiences, seeking out things without much of a financial or time investment, and have a newfound appreciation of bargains and second-hand possessions (a song about thrifting is leading the Billboard charts as I am writing this). We increasingly consume products and services through renting, sharing, and purchasing subscriptions. Being “socially connected” is no longer just about having a lot of people to share your news with; these days, it’s about having a lot of people to share your stuff with-either for free or at a fraction of the market fee. It’s about collaborative consumption.

Last month, The Economist proclaimed that while “ondemand” consumption is still being defined, the fact that it is attracting the “big boys” like manufacturers, regulators, and insurance providers in search of a model that works for them means that it isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Collaborative consumption is growing from a trend for the young and urban to a viable alternative for everyone.

From renting a movie online (e.g., Netflix) to renting a stranger’s couch (e.g., Couchsurfing), the economy of sharing changes the way we behave, consume, seek new options, and commit to decisions. The phenomenon is not just about getting access to new cars and the latest movies; it’s also about creating a new type of peer-topeer commerce, making meaningful connections, and establishing a sense of trust among those involved.

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The new sharing economy presents unlimited opportunities for us as consumers to reinvent our spending habits. It also poses a number of big challenges for businesses, as it confronts the traditional notion of creating consumer demand for purchases. Businesses will need to reconsider their distribution models that encourage shared ownership, as well as product lines that support multi-user product life cycles.

If collaborative consumption is the commerce of 21st century, how do we support it with 21st-century design catered to the community rather than to individuals?

Most current designs are geared toward individual users and don’t seem to change much for multi-user experiences. Similarly, today’s collaborative consumption model is mostly about how the products are shared, not about how they are designed. How do we bring the two together? Here are a few principles to keep in mind as we navigate the new challenge of collaborative consumption as both consumers and business architects.

1. Identify the right match That is, which products and services are best suited for collaborative consumption and which are better to be left as to the conventional marketplace? For example, it may seem that size matters; the smaller the product is, the easier it could be passed on to another user. Dig deeper and it’s not true if you consider, for example, shared car services such as Zipcar and Car2Go. Similarly, one may say that digital products are easier to share than physical goods. Again, this doesn’t seem to be the case, with many examples of neighborhood sharing and renting of everything from electrical drills to furniture.

2. Allow for repeat customization How do we design for recurring customization of a product so that subsequent owners can make the product feel like their own and remove the traces of previous ownership? Software customization is relatively easy: Wipe it out, and it’s ready. How about customization of hardware, beyond changing covers and decals? If a new owner wants to change a particular module or add a peripheral, keeping the otherwise working product, how do we support it? Once again, cars give many examples of re-use and re-customization. But digital products still operate in the throw-away mode once an owner discards a product. There isn’t a sustainable model in place for recycling mobile phones or any other kind of electronics in the same way there is for paper and plastic products.]

This makes them much less sustainable than they could have been otherwise.

3. Re-think maintenance to prolong product lifecycle We tend to look after products we own to prolong their life. When products change hands often, wear-and-tear is a big issue. What are the materials that will make products look new longer? What are the techniques for easy refresh, so that a product is more appealing to new users? How should design of a product change to accommodate new maintenance models? Also, if shared products will tend to live longer, how do we design for easy upgrades of hardware parts?

4. Allow for multi-user scenarios The previous challenges relate to sequential collaborative consumption where products are passed on from one user to another. However, collaborative consumption also stimulates concurrent usage among different users, such as when multiple users interact with a multitouch surface or similar interfaces. These interactions can also be parallel multitasking, in which multiple users interact with the same device doing different tasks. Consider, for example, a case where one user works on a PC directly while another accesses the machine remotely.

Simultasking will reqire a lot of design innovation in order to tackle these collective experiences.

5. Understand that reputation is the new currency Collaborative consumption creates a new system of credit, for both online and in-person sharing. Online interactions are particularly prone to questions about trust: How can you trust a vendor who isn’t completely traceable. Any bank that lends you money has access to your credit score. By contrast, you need to earn the same kind of trust from each and every online community; your LinkedIn reputation means nothing to Ebay. This ought to change very soon. If we want to support collaborative consumption, UX professionals have a huge role to play in figuring out trust verification and the very nature of online verification.

We may not have all the answers yet on how to design for collaborative consumption, but its potential as a key ingredient in a green economy is clear. The practice supports social sustainability by creating communities of people who want to share what they own and by encouraging trust among those involved. It also supports environmental sustainability by enabling products to live longer, reusing parts and materials, and reducing electronic waste. Now, we just have to figure out how to make it appealing to everyone.

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David Beckham’s Soccer Career May Be Over, But His Brand Will Live On Mark J. Miller

Another English soccer legend is retiring. David Beckham announced his retirement from pro soccer not long after his former coach, Sir Alex Ferguson, made the same announcement.

After two more games, Beckham will be hanging up his cleats, but the star athlete was sure to rack up a few more titles before he cleans out his locker. Thanks to Paris Saint-Germain’ s recent win to claim the Ligue 1 title, Beckham is now the only person to have won four national club championships in four different leagues in four different countries. He’s also the first English player to score at three consecutive World Cup finals, and he’s been honored by the Queen of England. Not a bad rap for a guy that kicks a ball around for a living, but there’s a lot more to Beckham’s success than what simply lies on the field.

“If you had told me as a young boy I would have played for and won trophies with my boyhood club Manchester United, proudly captained and played for my country over 100 times and lined up for some of the biggest clubs in the world, I would have told you it was a fantasy,” he said, the BBC reports. “I’m fortunate to have realized those dreams.”

While millions of faithful soccer fans worldwide will remember Becks for scoring this goal or that, everyone else will regard him as one of the only elite soccer players to break through mainstream media and one of the world’s most saught-after athletes. While most of Beckham’s personal brand success comes from his soccer career, his star-studded marriage to former Spice Girlturned-designer Victoria Beckham as well as his suave appearance and personality have won him top spots among the world’s biggest and best brand campaigns.

The mild-mannered star has also been lucky to enough to have impeccable brand choice, a move that has arguably won him approval by a wide birth of consumers. Sales of Beckham’s jerseys and shoes alone have generated over $2.3 billion in revenue, EPLTalk.com reports.

The father of four notably worked with Sainsbury’s to help get kids to exercise in schools, and for his adult fans, stripped down to his skivvies for ads with H&M and Emporio Armani. He played Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” by kicking a soccer ball against an oversized Samsung Galaxy and he’s kicked a ball around on the beach for Pepsi, not to mention his longtime relationship with Adidas.

Don’t let his retirement from the sport fool you into thinking his brand is retiring, too. Earlier this year, Beckham was employed by China to help them put a good face on the country’s soccer association after a stream of scandals, and OK! Magazine reports that Beckham recently signed with Sky Sports, a subscription TV sports brand, for a five-year, $30 million gig as a brand ambassador.

Brand Reputation And Why All PR Actually Is Good PR (Unless You’re Already Famous) Rohit Bhargava

Lots of people who don’t work in public relations will tell you that “all PR is good PR.” In other words, if people are talking about you – it doesn’t matter what they are saying. Then there are those who are in the profession who will usually tell you the exact opposite … that PR can be positive or negative and you need to focus on improving your reputation above all else. Who is right?

The problem is, they both are … in the right situation.

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The Challenge of Obscurity If you are trying to launch an unknown brand, you have the challenge of obscurity. No one has heard of you and what you are trying to sell or provide. There is a natural barrier to your message getting out there, because there is lots of noise to compete against. In that sort of environment, just getting ANY attention is usually a good thing. The more people share your name and talk about your brand, the better off you are.

Brands with the obscurity challenge need to focus on getting noticed. So using guerrilla marketing or big stunts to attract attention can work. Flash mobs to introduce a product or holding up crazy signs or dressing in silly costumes at a large event can get coverage. You might call this the “Go Daddy Strategy.” In the early days of the Super Bowl, Go Daddy reached a national audience by creating over the top ads that were banned from airing on television because they were deemed “too racy.” So the online domain seller drove people online and introduced themselves to the market as THE PLACE to buy domain names. Every year after the Super Bowl, their guerrilla marketing stunts worked so well, they typically lead to record sales days. The PR may not be good, but it works.

For years, all PR was good PR for Go Daddy.

The Challenge of Reputation On the other hand, if you have an established brand that everyone has heard of – you have the challenge of reputation. The most important thing isn’t introducing your name to the world, it is changing or maintaining your reputation to be a positive one. Many brands with this challenge resort to measuring the value of their PR based on the volume of coverage they get.

But measuring media clips every month doesn’t work anymore, because simple mentions of brands in media aren’t enough anymore.

Brands with the reputation challenge need to focus on measuring sentiment. And as soon as you start to focus on sentiment, the “all PR is good PR” argument is flawed. Simply getting people to talk has little value because your brand is already known. What matters more is WHAT they are saying about you. The ultimate example of how this works is something we could call the “KFC Strategy.”

In the early 90s, the fast food brand Kentucky Fried Chicken decided to rebrand to KFC in response to growing negative media pointing to fried chicken as an unhealthy food item. They changed hardly anything on their menu, choosing instead to “solve” their problem with a rebrand. For years, they continued to be criticized. Recently, their new campaign “iatethebones” was created to launch their latest “innovation” – boneless chicken with the same famous original recipe. The campaign has been getting mixed reviews, some good PR and some bad.

The larger problem is that the brand has seen a huge 36% drop in sales due to a combination of the Avian Flu crisis and reliance on foreign sales in China to compensate for “a tale of eroded market share, bankruptcies, and franchisee lawsuits,” according to BusinessWeek. A catchy new tagline and contest is driving some PR … but the long term value to the brand will be minimal.

In what may seem like the biggest irony, the answer for how to contrast the good PR with the bad may actually come from the very brand that started by focusing on creating controversy at all costs: Go Daddy. Several months ago I wrote a post about how Go Daddy may offer the perfect lesson for brands on how to grow up. It was an unpopular way to look at the value of their longstanding sexually charged advertising. But it does point to the real truth when it comes to the value of positive or negative PR … that it works best as an evolution.

In other words, believing in the old adage that all PR is good “as long as you spell the name right” only works until they already know how to spell it.

Source for Cartoon Image: Marketoonist

The science behind

outdoor advertising

Alasdair Reid

Neuroscience – the monitoring of brain activity when subjects react to sensory stimuli – is most often used to gauge the relative strengths of different creative executions.

But occasionally (and sometimes controversially), it has been used to determine the relative potency of different media.

Ocean, which specialises in large-format premium sites (such as the cylindrical IMAX wrap), wanted to see if size and quality really matter. So it asked Neuro-Insight to recruit 115 people, who donned headsets that captured their brain activity as they watched a filmed journey featuring 24 outdoor sites around West London – 11 Ocean sites and 13 from other outdoor owners. The group had already seen the sites in real life during an escorted bus journey that preceded the study.

Heather Andrew, a founder of Neuro-Insight, explains that, through measuring the brain response of participants on a second-by-second basis, it becomes clear that unique large-format poster sites were eliciting a stronger emotional response than standard ones.

“This emotional response tells the brain something important is happening and primes the brain to remember it, resulting in higher levels of memory encoding,” she says. “Memory encoding is hugely important, because it correlates with purchase intent. This pattern of response – high emotional intensity followed by strong memory encoding – is what characterises the effectiveness of these premium outdoor sites.”

The research also concludes that digital sites tend to elicit more powerful responses than static ones. There’s clearly self-interest at work here, but the study could be more good news for the premium outdoor sector – and for the medium as a whole.

Some past neuroscience studies have flirted with a debased form of pop psychology. But Justin Gibbons, Arena Media’s creative director who is an expert on neuroscience in marketing, gives the initiative a clean bill of health.

“I am overwhelmingly positive about it,” he says. “It’s what I call a sensible use of neuroscience – not over-claimed or overstretched, but good, solid thinking and a wellexecuted approach. When research chimes with common sense, all the better.”

Roy Jeans, the chief executive of Rapport, echoes this – the best sites really do have a “wow factor”. He adds: “There has been a small element of a leap of faith in booking these larger destination sites, so it’s good to know that the short- and long-term value is there.”

Andy Tilley, the chief strategy officer at Talon, agrees with the wow factor: “In this study, format, scale, location and architecture, together with the artistry of the execution, had a marked influence on emotional engagement and memory encoding.”

But isn’t there a worry that Ocean will use this to push up prices in this part of the market – worth around £100 million of the 2012 total outdoor revenue of £971 million?

Ocean’s chief executive, Tim Bleakley, gives reassurances on that one: “No, we’re not going to be charging 50 per cent more. But we are able to say that our [existing] approach to pricing is realistic – and we’re delivering more value than you thought.”

Meet the brands people are talking about most on Facebook Christopher Heine

Even though Facebook’s deals strategy has involved hits and misses, it appears that its 800 million users love to either comment about or share low-priced offers. How else to explain DealDash—an auctions-based Web player focusing on heavily discounted items—beating out the likes of Coca-Cola and Walmart when it comes to the social platform’s People Talking About This (PTAT) metric?

PTAT rates brand posts according to how many interactions they generate, such as likes, shares, comments, mentions, check-ins, etc. Facebook introduced the metric in late 2011, attempting to give marketers a clearer view of the effectiveness of their messaging on the social site. When asked about PTAT in the last year or so, most brands speaking with Adweek have said they pay close attention to the stat.

And, per research from SocialBakers exclusively shared with our publication, DealDash is reigning supreme. It seems remarkable that the New York-based company—with roughly 1.2 million Facebook fans—creates more interaction than Coke (65 million fans) and Walmart (29 million). Also according to SocialBakers, a body-conscious garment marketer called 45 Minute Skinny is doing a superb job creating Facebook chatter.

Check out the full Top 10 lists for U.S. and global brands in terms of PTAT, per SocialBakers.

Facebook “PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT THIS” Top 10 US Brands by Absolute Numbers

Top 10 Worldwide Brands by Absolute Numbers

No. of Fans

People talking about this

No. of Fans

People talking about this

DealDash

1,152,735

1,411,894

1,152,735

1,411,894

Visa

4,845,806

735,544

Samsung Mobile

18,682,296

1,169,671

159,509

694,319

Coca-Cola

64,813,955

1,125,009

29,060,581

674,476

Smirnoff

10,954,895

1,099,743

FreedomWorks

4,241,894

535,816

Yo Amo Los Zapatos

1,451,490

813,189

Malibu Rum

1,258,586

482,295

BrahmaTimao

1,346,742

751,768

16,643,716

377,048

Visa

4,845,806

735,544

Michael Kors

5,121,280

325,371

Dove

14,604,445

700,646

Right Change

3,057,578

323,067

45 Minute Skinny

159,509

694,319

T-Mobile

3,117,492

315,718

Walmart

29,060,581

674,476

Brands

45 Minute Skinny Walmart

Disneyland

*Source: SocialBakers. Numbers from May1-13,2013

Brands

DealDash

3 Creative Ways

Brands Are Using Pinterest Mitt Ray

Are you looking for some creative ways to use Pinterest?

Would you like to make stronger connections with your customers?

Although many brands run creative contests on Pinterest, here are some new ways to engage audiences and build your presence.

Take a look at what these 3 brands are doing to get inspiration for using Pinterest creatively for your business.

#1: Help People Get to Know You Better The Our People board shows you pictures of Ben & Jerry’s employees.

The Our Factory board is a collection of images that show what happens inside Ben & Jerry’s factory.

These boards, along with others like On a Mission, History, Vermont and Flavor Graveyard, help Ben & Jerry’s to form a special bond with their followers. As boards are pinned, followers get to know the product, the company and the people who work for them better. People prefer dealing with people they know, rather than companies of strangers about whom they know nothing. Visitors will likely be keen on having more Ben and Jerry’s.

When you think of Ben & Jerry’s on Pinterest, the first thing that pops into your mind is probably a brand page full of ice cream recipes, frozen desserts and other sweet stuff.

True to their roots, Ben & Jerry’s has done something completely different. They have used Pinterest to help their audience learn more about the company.

On their brand page, you find boards that teach you everything about who they are, what they do and how they treat their fans.

The Fan Photo’s board is full of photos from fans who are enjoying Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.

These images will help engage their fans and double as testimonials. When people look at others enjoying ice cream, they want some, too. And they might buy some Ben & Jerry’s to get involved like everybody else.

This board shows that Ben & Jerry’s cares about their fans, that they want their fans to be a part of the company. This is an attitude that goes a long way toward attracting more loyal fans.

How does your audience want to engage with you on Pinterest? Is your conversation there one-sided?

Or are you making it easy for people to get to know you?

To build a committed following on Pinterest, follow Ben & Jerry’s lead. Instead of simply pinning content and products to your boards, make an effort to help your followers learn more about your company and get them involved.

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#2: Get Strategic With Guest Pinners When Guest Pinner: Automatism’s Lori Langille pins to the group board Etsy created for her, not only does Etsy’s board gather more pins from an expert source, they also attract followers from her because the board is displayed on her personal Lori Langille (Automatism) profile.

In turn, illustrator Lori Langille (Automatism) receives increased exposure through the pins on her Guest Pinner: Automatism board, as well as followers who find her through the guest board on Etsy.

Etsy has made incredible use of Pinterest’s group boards feature, also known as contributor boards.

Associating one contributor with one group board, as opposed to associating many contributors with one group board, can help avoid complications with content. Group boards with too many contributors and no moderators often suffer from issues such as oversharing of spam pins that aren’t relevant to the board’s topic.

In addition to the Etsy-curated boards on their brand page, they have several guest pinner boards, on which a contributor who is an expert on a subject contributes pins. Both individuals like Guest Pinner: Automatism and companies like Random House, Whole Foods Market and Martha Stewart Living contribute to boards for them.

How can your business best use guest contributors to your Pinterest boards?

Which experts are in your network who could share value with your audience on Pinterest?

Follow Etsy’s example and create a valuable community on Pinterest with the help of others.

This association benefits the creator of the board and the contributor and forms a strong relationship between the two.

#3: Run a Campaign to Give Back the Pin It to Give It board. Every time someone repinned from the board, Sony Electronics donated a dollar to The Michael Phelps Foundation. The campaign ran from November 27 through December 31, 2012 and raised more than $12,500.

This campaign had a unique spin when compared to other competitions with the overused Pin It to Win It campaign title. Sony’s label clearly communicated that the campaign was about helping others.

One of the most interesting things I’ve seen on Pinterest was Sony Electronics’ Pin It to Give It campaign.

Sony Electronics used their Pinterest brand page to curate an array of Sony Electronics products that were pinned to

This not only helped Sony Electronics build their brand image by showing that they give back to their community, it also helped them engage their audience and create product awareness. Visit the board today and you will see pins that have been repeatedly liked and repinned—many more than 200 times.

How can you get creative with Pinterest contests?

Think like Sony Electronics and create something that is not only unique, but that engages your audience in a way that makes your campaign stand out.

Make the Most of Your Pinterest Community Pinterest offers unique opportunities to engage with your audience, thanks to the visual interactions.

These are just three examples of brands using Pinterest in creative ways to engage their followers, create partnerships and build community.

Big Brands Are Missing the ‘Social’ in Social Media Todd Parsons

Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson lifts a Virgin America teammate on the red carpet during the celebration of a new nonstop service from Los Angeles International to Las Vegas McCarran airports A recent report from Forrester Research (FORR) found that a third of U.S. marketers surveyed were dissatisfied with their social marketing results. Meanwhile, only 38 percent of those surveyed targeted their fans on social networks, and just 38 percent targeted friends of fans.

You would think those results would give marketers pause.

Forrester also reports, however, that U.S. marketers are pouring more than $2 billion annually into social media— including ads and promoted content—to try to reach the 1 billion-plus social media users.

What many big social media advertisers have failed to grasp is the “social” component of social media. To date, many brands have focused on individuals rather than relationships among individuals and the economic power of those relationships. Who is most likely to influence their friends? Who is most likely to share with friends? Who is most likely to buy or take some other action? Those are vital questions to address to truly unlock the social value of an audience.

That effort starts with a brand redesigning its digital advertising so individuals are encouraged to engage their social networks on the brand’s behalf. If the campaign is paired with the proper analytics, a brand gains visibility into how its offer is playing out among friends and their followers and among brand “likers” vs. “non-likers.” It can understand who is influencing whom to take action.

Many major brands today, however, are not taking full advantage of their social advertising opportunities.

For instance, Target’s (TGT) current “Give with Friends” campaign on Facebook (FB) lets consumers choose an e-gift card design, invite friends to contribute, then give a

gift together with them. By simply leveraging paid media in tandem with the social activation, Target would be able to have more of its audience do the selling for them and reach a new audience in the process.

In March, Virgin America unveiled a promotion to mark the launch of its nonstop flight service from Los Angeles and San Francisco to Newark, N.J. The “Fly Like a Boss” campaign offered an engaging social media contest on Twitter and Facebook with attractive goodies, including the chance to score a ticket to the launch and attend a Google+ (GOOG) hangout onboard with Virgin Group Chief Executive Officer Richard Branson and Mashable CEO Pete Cashmore. While the campaign was a winner, it missed an opportunity to encourage people to refer the offer to friends. Were social analytics tied to automated advertising efforts, Virgin could have identified key buyers, sharers, and influencers—and consumers like them— based on their social actions to further improve future promotions.

If you’re someone like Buzzfeed, with content that is so darn cute, timely, or jarring that it becomes infectiously viral right away, it’s not as critical to deliver a social experience that combines gaming with a shareable reward.

Content consumption and sharing will do the heavy lifting of delivering that new audience, and the offer can be a tasteful companion.

But for most brands, unconnected tactics in social media aren’t going to gain traction with people who are there to hang out and share cool stuff with their friends and family. Instead, brands need to create the architecture that ignites the “social” in social media if they are truly going to thrive.

Book, Line & Sinker Taking Brand Initiative

By Mary Jo Hatch & Majken Schultz

Brands often perish because they lose sight of who they are and how others perceive them. In Taking Brand Initiative: How Companies Can Align Strategy, Culture, and Identity Through Corporate Branding, authors Mary Jo Hatch and Majken Schultz provide an analysis of why corporate brands have trouble adjusting to change, and what they can do to capitalize on the opportunities that inherently arise in times of adversity. A brand identity complex can lead strong corporations into a lethal spiral of internal selfdoubt and external mixed messaging. This book, however, addresses the steps corporate brands can take—from establishing brand equity to Vision-Culture-Image (VCI) alignment—to ensure that their brands remain robust, competitive, and firmly invested in the futures of their customers, employees, and stakeholders.

Brand Risk: Adding Risk Literacy to Brand Management

By David Abrahams

What Is Branding?

By Matthew Healey

Media Rules!: Mastering Today’s Technology To Connect With And Keep Your Audience

Many branding professionals share the experience of attending a social event and hearing, “So, you work in branding. That’s like advertising, right?”

Well, now there is a book to hand those people— What Is Branding?, by Matthew Healey. Despite its simplistic title, this book comprehensively explains what branding is and why it’s essential to businesses. Healey delves into the five general components of branding: positioning, storytelling, design, price, and customer relationship. In addition to the well-written content, the book is filled with sturdy pages offering quality images and portfolios that visually reinforce the author’s detailed explanations.

By Brian Reich and Dan Solomon

Designing Pornotopia: Travels in visual culture

By Rick Poynor

By Tom Asacker

The author’s description of a window display as a “randomly organized tableaux of disparate things” would serve as a better title for this book.

Yes, it touches on porn (encroaching our lives, mixed with consumerism, capitalistic, nihilistic, atavistic), but it also riffs on the inanity of Saatchi’s lovemarks hype and cynicism in advertising (an ad for Channel 4 programming). When Poyner is not contemplating the role of urban gardening on our visual psyches, he invites the reader to consider what effect our interaction with sexual imagery and innuendo has on young minds and whether the cumulative effect will be a collective turn off. The tone is more blog rant than rigorous essay.

Risk is unpredictable by nature, but without it success wouldn’t be possible—or even interesting, for that matter. In Brand Risk: Adding Risk Literacy to Brand Management, David Abrahams delves into the murky realm of the unknown as it applies to branding and business. He explains how effective brands do not avoid risk, but find ways of determining acceptable levels of risk and navigating them to leverage their branding power, influence, exposure, and value. This book not only details the strategies behind risk literacy, but the attitude as well—an attitude that must be embraced not only by CEOs and managers, but the entire brand architecture.

As technology advances and—in theory—makes everything easier in our lives, it has become increasingly difficult for branding professionals to differentiate their brands from the crowds of competition. Today, more than ever, connecting with consumers saturated by an incessant flood of media competing for their attention is a significant challenge. Thankfully, authors Brian Reich and Dan Solomon are here to help. In Media Rules!: Mastering Today’s Technology To Connect With And Keep Your Audience, they address every level of communication, from blogs and Google searches to face-to-face customer service and broad scale social leadership techniques.

Book Yourself Solid In “Book Yourself Solid,” Port provides the reader with a detailed step-by-step account of his method for obtaining clients. According to Port, 93 percent of business owners who implemented his system experienced more than a 30 percent increase in their total number of clients. If you are looking to enhance your personal brand, it may be beneficial to read Port’s thought-provoking book.

By Michael Port

A Clear Eye for Branding

Asian Brand Strategy

In “A Clear Eye for Branding,” Asacker, a branding guru, transcribes a hypothetical conversation with a business executive sitting next to him on a flight.

Throughout the discussion, which resembles a professor-student conversation, Asacker uses real-life examples to help explain the branding business to the inquisitive gentleman. The witty, yet provocative, book is filled with such valuable information that the reader might want to keep a pen and paper handy for notes.

Covering a region that spans highly branded companies like Banyan Tree and Shiseido to barely branded knock offs, Roll starts out with an intro chapter on branding with a special focus on Asia, and then dives into the region’s unique culture and customer mix. Scattered throughout and filling two whole chapters, the author examines a good mix of internationally known brands (Singapore Airlines, Samsung) and as-yet unknown (Li Ning, Giordano, Jet Airways). Those who are new to branding and new to Asia will find this book useful.

By Martin Roll

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Millennials and the Pop Culture

By William Strauss & Neil Howe

How do old crusties at Puma know what appeals to “young people today”? To target Millennials you need to have an idea of what it’s like to be a kid—now—in today’s world. The authors set out to describe the unique features of this generation, which they define as age 23 and younger. And true to form about generational shifts, Millennials are completely different from their elders in Gen X. In fact if the research is true then the dirty secret about today’s youth is that they are more apt to be squeaky clean. Very US focused, this book is for the armchair sociologist, parents, and anyone targeting youth today.

Overpromise and Overdeliver: The Secrets of Unshakable Customer Loyalty

Edited by Rick Barrera

DIY: Design It Yourself

Branding for Nonprofits: Developing identity with integrity

By DK Holland

Targeted at nonprofits, this book is for any organization that believes it’s above corporate shilling. Holland leads us softly with facts and logic until we arrive at the realization that everything really does have a brand (politicians, religions, museums). The good news is that a clear and consistent brand identity can aid an organization in growing brand awareness; the question is how to arrive at that clear identity.

Practical and process-oriented, the author walks us through the design brief (tailored to nonprofit concerns), exploring design options, launch, and implementation. Non-threatening, easy to read.

By Ellen Lupton

By Emily King

Not groundbreaking, but if you’re still trying to get your head around “what is a brand and why should I care,” this book is as readable as any we’ve seen this year. After drawing the reader in with what branding is not, the authors focus on defining, identifying and instructing the reader in devising a dominant selling idea (DSI—what used to be called USP). Short illustrative examples from current popular brands quickly make the point and move on to more enlightenment. The book has teeth; the authors are not afraid to stake out a position (focus groups blow, the AFLAC duck is a quack), but they have a tendency to get overexcited with their own outrage.

By Bill Schley & Carl Nichols, Jr.

Branding Unbound Leave no channel untapped for reaching consumers. Mobile marketing, ring tones, electronic signs, Wi-Fi on the grocery cart, RFID and countless other innovations allow brand owners to better research (data mining), better reach (targeting, advertising, distribution) and better delight their markets. The possibilities are endless but the old rules still apply: all of the technology is useless if the brand itself is not worth communicating.

By Rick Mathieson

An appealing basic background manual in graphic design and production for a wide variety of applications (blog, clothing, books, business cards, brand identity). We like that it asks creative brief questions (what is this, who is it for), suggests different ways to solve a typical problem (consider the various options in business card development from paper to fonts to layout), and offers practical hints (sandpaper can damage your printer). But it lacks attention to brand identity. What does your choice of sandpaper tell the consumer? What type of consumer will it attract? Caution: a little bit of knowledge can be dangerous; if you have no talent to begin with, drop the book and walk away.

Why Johnny Can’t Brand

Robert Brownjohn: Sex and Typography The first half of this book is devoted to Brownjohn’s short life. Pictures, interviews, and newspaper clippings try to convey a composite of the designer’s life; probably equally revealing are the drink and cigarette, which appear in nearly every photo and hint at the drug addictions Brownjohn never managed to shake. Call us insensitive but the second half of the book was much more interesting. Here the book gives over whole pages to the work. Album and magazine covers, typefaces, signs, film title sequences, and advertisements illustrate the artist’s talents. Not enough sex, considering the promising title.

An engaging and straightforward articulation of basic principles that we know about customer satisfaction but don’t deliver. Starting with a basic explanation of what is a brand promise, Barrera demonstrates how companies like Toyota, Commerce Bancorp, Bellagio, and Best Buy define this promise and then deliver it.

There’s a reason that Hummer, Disney, Apple have such strong customer loyalty, and it doesn’t have to come down to sheer luck or size. It merely requires brand owners to understand their brand and their audience.

Humble Masterpieces: Everyday Marvels of Design

By Paola Antonelli

These are the everyday objects we take for granted. Sugar cubes, chopsticks, tweezers.

All beautifully photographed in close-ups and lovingly applauded for their simple but functional roles. While we marvel at computers or tall buildings, we should as well scratch our head at the ingenuity of the corkscrew, the beauty of a whisk or the indispensable Post-it Note. Known authorship is attributed (the baseball, spark plug, paper bag), but it is not a barrier to being included (pasta, dominoes, condoms). Inspirational to anyone tasked with a seemingly underwhelming design project.

Microsoft Plans Reboot of Windows 8 Amid Growing Frustration with OS Barry Silverstein

The technology world is an unforgiving battleground for brands that fail to catch hold. Windows 8, Microsoft’s highly touted operating system seems to be one of those brands that didn’t quite take off as expected.

Even as Microsoft pursues a re-branding based around the new Windows design, the word on the street is that Windows 8 will be getting an “update” later this year. Read that as an attempt to fix problems that have been frustrating both consumers and device manufacturers. Tami Reller, head of Microsoft’s Windows division, was blunt in telling the Associated Press, “Are there things that we can do to improve the experience? Absolutely. There is a learning curve and we can work to address that.”

Despite sales in the past six months that basically have equaled sales of Windows 7 in about its first six months on the market, “Windows 8 has struck a sour note with parts of the computer-buying public,” reports The New York Times. The new look with its colorful tiles “left some customers cold.” The tiles appealed to users of touchscreen technology, which is more widely available on tablets than on PCs. And right now, Windows-based tablets are a fraction of the market. According to research firm IDC, Microsoft’s Surface tablet makes up less than 2 percent of the market, which Apple’s iPad comprises almost 40 percent. Meanwhile, PC sales have dropped 14 percent in Q1 2013, the worst decline in twenty years.

It’s not just customers who are complaining—computer manufacturers aren’t too pleased, either. As just one example that represents the tip of the iceberg, Toshiba Australia’s managing director Mark Whittard told The Australian “there was a lot of confusion with Windows 8, my personal view is that they [Microsoft] confused the market with a couple of different flavors.”

Vendor unhappiness extends to cell phone manufacturers as well. Nokia CEO Stephen Elsop got the message from investors at the recent annual general meeting—”they’re running out of patience” with Microsoft’s mobile operating system, which runs on its Nokia Lumia model and others, and urged the company to switch. One shareholder said at the meeting in Helsinki, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Please switch to another road.”

But Elsop, apparently, is standing by the Windows Phone, at least for now. Elsop isn’t alone in standing by the brand, as news broke Tuesday that Yahoo extended its search deal with Microsoft for another 12 months, in which Microsoft profits off of every Yahoo user that uses its Bing search engine.

As if to confirm Elsop’s support, news about the imminent launch of the Nokia Lumia 928, which Nokia desperately hopes will compete with Apple’s iPhone 5 and Samsung’s Galaxy S4, was leaked on Tuesday as Verizon prepares to make it available on its network. Meanwhile, Microsoft was doing its part to try to shore up interest in Nokia’s Lumia line with an ad that showed Apple and Samsung users in an all-out brawl while urging consumers, “Don’t fight. Switch.”

Cute advertising notwithstanding, the reaction to Windows 8 is reminiscent of a prior Microsoft launch, Windows Vista. That is exactly what Microsoft didn’t want—so the company is retrenching in hopes of putting a little magic back into Window 8.