BrandKnew January 2018

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08 Dear Friends: We have rung out the old and brought in the New. Here’s wishing you & yours a BrandKnew 2018 loaded with actionable insights, brand wellness and perpetual prosperity. This issue we are digging deep on quite a few issues that will tickle and excite the imagination of brand marketers. For eg What will be in store for Advertising this year. And the 5 Marketing Trends that will influence the budget for 2018. We take a hedge and say it as it is that Nike’s ‘ Just Do It ‘ is the best brand story ever created. We extend that a bit through the feature on How to tell a great brand story. Those at the fulcrum of Content Marketing will adore the article on The Secret to Successful Content Marketing. The feature on Global Packaging Trends will excite many a marketer especially those in the CPG sector. Place has a place in marketing is best exemplified by the story on the same subject in this issue. There is ample more to soak in as we look ahead to embrace some exciting and challenging times. Until the next...

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suresh@groupisd.com Managing Editor: Suresh Dinakaran Creative Head/Director Operations: Pravin Ahir Magazine Concept & Design/ New Media Specialist: Mufaddal Joher Country Head, Australia: Norbert D’Souza Country Head, UK: Sagar Patil Regional Director: Krishna Chugh Country Manager, India: Vinit Chugh Content Creation Architect: Arunima Takiar Digital Outreach & Engagement Specialist: Khaleef Mayowa Junaid Associate Brand Connect: Hasitha Fernando Creator: Brand Stories: Salindu Sadishan

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CONTENTS

Could “Just Do It” be the best brand story ever?

Five global packaging trends for 2018 How Place Works in Brand Storytelling The Secret to Successful Content-Marketing In 2018 Is Having a Strategy, So Get One. Advertising: What’s in Store for 2018?

A Tale of Two Sodas—In Coke and Pepsi’s Pizza Fight, Brand Storytelling Wins the Day The Secret To Great Logos, From The Gurus Of Corporate Branding Take 5: How to Tell a Great Story 5 Marketing Trends That Should Influence Your 2018 Budget 5 Productivity Hacks to Become a Better Marketer What M&E Brands Need to Navigate a Multi-Screen World Three Mad-Scientist Marketing Methods to Ignite Business Growth Book, Line & Sinker

Could “Just Do It” be the best brand story ever?

HOW NIKE TELLS ITS BRAND STORY ACROSS MULTIPLE CHANNELS

By Shannon O’Neill

The idea of brand storytelling sounds great, but do you really know how to execute it for your brand and audience?

For instance, what role does brand storytelling play across multiple communication channels? How do you retell that same story over time and across channels to different audiences? And, more importantly, is your brand message flexible enough to go the extra mile on social media or in interactive models?

The Nike “Just Do It” campaign, launched nearly thirty years ago, is a great example of the myriad ways a brand can use storytelling in their communications and content strategy.

So what can content creators and other brands learn from Nike’s storytelling approach?

Boil Down Your Idea The beauty of the Wieden+Kennedy “Just Do It” slogan is that it resonates across cultures and experience. Everyone has felt the need to rebel, to push against stereotypes and accomplish the nebulous “it.” But, even more simply, it takes the idea of a hero and a villain and creates a personal internal tension between the active you and the inactive you.

The very first “Just Do It” TV spot in 1988 featured a shirtless older man jogging across the Golden Gate Bridge.

He waves at a few cars, and as the camera closes in on a head-and-shoulders shot, he says to the camera, “I run seventeen miles every morning.” Then, we cut back to a

black screen and the white letters announcing, “Walt Stack.

80 years old.” He follows this up with the joke, “People ask me how I keep my teeth from chattering in the wintertime . . . I leave them in my locker.” Then, it cuts back to the black screen and the white letters: “Just do it.”

The challenge and the victory are wrapped up nicely in unique brand story—an unlikely athlete who pushes his own personal limits. But, without stating it, the subtext is, “This 80-year-old man jogs every day; what’s your excuse?”

The TV spots with a “Just Do It” message have evolved into various campaigns over the decades, from in-your-face (think of the 1990s when Michael Jordan, Andre Agassi, and Bo Jackson dominated the campaign) to more subtle messaging.

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Nike’s case do things in a new way.

‘Just do it’ was open to interpretation, and many folks adopted it as their private mantra. And not just in the realm of fitness and exercise. [. . .] As a result of the line’s resonance, Nike’s brand image soared.”

While not every message, tweet, or image shared is the same, the “Just Do It” sentiment permeates—when we put our minds to something we are unstoppable—an idea that can apply to prowess on the field or as a team.

Nike has more social media followers than any other fitness brand, with over 7 million followers on Twitter compared to Adidas’ just over 3 million. Emblazoned across the top of the page is, you guessed it, JUST DO IT. If @Nike isn’t enough, you can also follow a number of other accounts tailored to your interests: NikeWomen, NikeBasketball, NikeFootball.

The most recent evolution for the TV spots is the “Unlimited” campaign, which features American track and field Olympic athlete Allyson Felix and American Olympic gymnast Simone Biles. In the Felix ad, her brother talks about what Allyson sacrificed to achieve her elite athlete status.

With footage of her performing at her peak and striking a piñata at a childhood party, his comments evoke the “Just Do It” narrative: “Truly fearless” because she’s “not afraid to lose.” A black screen comes up at the end with words flipping like a scoreboard: “Unlimited Grace,” “Unlimited Determination,” “Unlimited Dreams.” Only at the end does the “Just Do It” tagline appear. The message is clear, yet imprecise. It not only speaks to athletes, it speaks to anyone who is up for the challenge, physical or mental—not to mention the power invoked by seeing a female athlete reach her personal peak. It gets at the internal struggle to try and fail, or just not try at all.

Understand Your Brand Philosophy It doesn’t get much simpler than “Just Do It.” It is expansive and specific and Nike has played to both of these strengths over and over again. David Gianatasio writing for Ad Week sums it up this way:

“Exchanging tweets is no substitute for helping people think, dream, or in

But it’s their content strategy and use of hashtags and inspirational quotes from athletes and various sources that engages sharing. For example, the #BelieveInMore hashtag used images and videos of women training and competing in sports.

Build Your Brand Story The summer 2017 campaign featuring Muslim women athletes received a lot of positive press and reactions. This came along with a viral video campaign, “What Will They Say About You?”, featuring Arab and Muslim women athletes training and competing. It’s a flexible story and message, one that can expand and retract as needed.

In the ad, Nike unveiled their Pro Hijab, a head covering designed for female Muslim athletes. Within forty-eight hours, the video was shared 75,000 times on Twitter and viewed almost 400,000 times on YouTube.

The ad campaign featured figure skater Zahra Lari wearing Nike’s hijab.

The ad had some detractors, who saw Nike’s sale of the hijab as “support (of) the oppression of women,” capitalizing on a politicized issue, or simply slapping their logo on a product that already existed. Fans and critics kept the conversation going. And this is what good brand storytelling is supposed to do—spark a conversation, engage with an audience, and get people talking.

Sara al-Zawqari, a spokeswoman for the International Red Cross in Iraq, summed up the response in this tweet:

This is emotional storytelling at its best—taking a negative and turning it into a positive by stacking the odds against an athlete and then using the brand message (and in this case product) as a positive solution to the problem they are facing.

The brand, the consumer need, the shoes, the styles may evolve but the ethos of fighting against social and personal stigmas will never age.

Connect Your Product to the Message Nike even got into technology and interactive campaigns with its extremely popular FuelBand. Nike didn’t just stop with the technology; it used its social media channels to motivate its audience and users to, you guessed it, “Just Do It”—in

this case, in the form of whatever exercise or movement they were into.

Not content to simply sell the FuelBand, Nike featured LeBron James and Serena Williams in commercials wearing the product on the basketball and tennis court. Why? Because who better to compare the best version of yourself to than two of the best athletes on the planet? Now your simple brand story has reached fairytale potential.

It made a connection. You may not be able to play like James or Williams, but you can use the same technology. While the FuelBand no longer exists, it was the first wearable device to get people excited about sharing their fitness goals. They had a “Fuel Your Team” campaign where members could accumulate “Nike Fuel Points,” compete against one another, and share their results. It’s a simple equation of state-of-the-art fitness technology taking the Average Joe to the next level.

This summer, Nike became even more ambitious in its decision to bring together three of the world’s best runners to attempt to break the two-hour marathon record. On May 4th, Nike tweeted: The runners met on a Formula One racetrack in Italy, and it was live-streamed for the world to see. While none of the runners broke the record, that was never the point. The point was to create an event around the story of what it takes to attempt breaking a record: the innovation, the training, the determination. The campaign revolved around the story leading up to the race itself, with trailers introducing the audience to the runners. As Nike co-founder and track coach Bill Bowerman says, “The real purpose of running isn’t to win a race, it’s to test the limits of the human heart.” And, to test the limits of how the public will view a brand building a story, the documentary “Breaking 2” aired on the Nat Geo channel in September.

Are you going to come up with a tagline as enduring as “Just Do It” for your brand? Probably not. But can you take your brand message and get it down to its essence?

Absolutely. It doesn’t have to be an elaborate Wes Andersonstyle recreation each time; it just has to connect on several levels with your audience. Nike is a triumphant example of a strong, emotional brand storytelling strategy—using an internal struggle between the heroic you and the lazy you as the stage for their story.

Shannon’s love of reading, writing, and the arts has led to many career adventures. From her first job as an editorial assistant at the Harvard Business Review to news text editor at Ford Motor Company, to marketing director for bestselling author and story authority Robert McKee’s international seminars, Shannon has honed a unique set of skills.

Five global packaging trends for 2018 THOUGHTFUL BRANDS WITH THOUGHTFUL PACKAGING WILL DELIGHT THOUGHTFUL CUSTOMERS IN 2018. BY TIFFANY PACZEK.

By Tiffany Paczek

Packaging, particularly food packaging, has been a hot topic in the realm of sustainability and recycling in 2017. Marketing intelligence agency Mintel has announced five trends set to impact the global packaging industry over the coming year:

Looking ahead, David Luttenberger, global packaging director at Mintel, discusses the major trends set to influence the packaging sector worldwide in 2018, including implications for consumers, brands and manufacturers.

• Packaging will play a pivotal role in reducing global food and product waste,

The throwaway culture of today will evolve into one that understands and embraces the role of packaging as a primary means to reduce global food and product waste.

• online brands will reinvigorate their packaging in order to enhance the ecommerce experience, • brands who adopt a clear and succinct package messaging will be rewarded as consumers prefer brands that embrace minimalism, • brands will be called to keep marine conservation at the forefront of packaging development and to anchor the circular economy for future generations, and • contemporary packaging formats will see the centre-ofstore take centre stage.

Consumers have long considered packaging as often unnecessary, and ultimately as just waste to be disposed of.

But that misconception is now changing. A focus on package innovations that extend food freshness, preserve ingredient fortification, and ensure safe delivery is increasingly benefiting consumers. Brands will need to act fast by exploiting on-pack communication tools to educate consumers to the benefits packaging can bring, from extending shelf life of food to providing efficient and safe access to essential products in developed and underserved regions of the world.

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rEpackage As more and more consumers embrace online shopping, packaging will play a pivotal role in brands’ and consumers’ ecommerce experiences.

Online shopping is becoming increasingly widespread around the globe and is near ubiquitous in some markets. However, while online shopping’s key advantage is convenience, consumers expect more from their favoured brands. When designing packaging to be viewed online, and transit packaging to be opened upon delivery in the home, the experience of e-commerce packaging must reflect consumer expectations from shopping with that brand in-store.

Clean Label 2.0 Aiming for packaging designs that enlighten consumers’ purchase decisions, brands will reject approaches that offer too much or too little as they can leave shoppers more confused than informed.

Today’s consumers are more informed than ever; however, brands are in real danger of being rejected if consumers feel overloaded with information, leading to the questioning of provenance, authenticity, and transparency. The ‘essentialist’ design principle bridges the divide between not enough and just enough of what’s essential for consumers to make an enlightened and confident purchasing decision. Brands must bring the next generation of clean label to packaging design to provide a moment of calm and clarity for shoppers in an increasingly hectic retail environment.

Sea Change Plastic packaging adrift in the world’s oceans will become the catalyst driving brands to rethink packaging in a context consumers can understand and act upon.

Concerns over safe packaging disposal will increasingly colour

consumers’ perceptions of different packaging types, and impact shopper purchase decisions. Only by communicating that a brand is working towards a solution will this growing barrier to purchase be overcome. While collecting waste plastic from the sea to recycle into new packaging can raise consumer awareness, it won’t solve the problem. In order to keep plastic out of the sea, a renewed effort towards the circular economy is needed to keep packaging material in use.

rEnavigate Brands will look to contemporary packaging formats to help reinvigorate the centre-of-store aisles less visited by younger consumers.

Young shoppers are increasingly ‘shopping the periphery’, visiting the fresh and chilled aisles around the store perimeter and turning their backs on processed, ambient and frozen offerings in the centre of the store. The use of transparent materials, contemporary design, recyclability or unique shapes can help draw in younger consumers to the store centre, making it as appealing as the burgeoning perimeter to younger consumers.

Luttenberger says: “Our packaging trends for 2018 reflect the most current and forward-looking consumer attitudes, actions and purchasing behaviours in both global and local markets. Such trends as those we see emerging in e-commerce packaging have stories that are just now being written. Others, such as the attack on plastics, are well into their third or even fourth chapters, but with no clear ending in sight. It is those backstories and future-forward implications that position Mintel’s 2018 Packaging Trends as essential to retailer, brand and package converter strategies during the coming year and beyond.”

Tiffany Paczek is online editor, CWS and Facility Management (FM).

How Place Works in Brand Storytelling

By Shannon O’Neill

Who doesn’t love a good origin story? A backstory adds dimension to a character and helps explain their intentions in the narrative. If you think of your brand as a character in this scenario, then your brand’s origin story can be just as important.

brands like Detroit Denim, Ledbury, and Tom’s of Maine have successfully leveraged and challenged assumptions of place to their advantage.

Usually, brand storytelling focuses on the who, what, and why of a product or company, forgetting the all-important where. Imagine if Bruce Wayne’s parents had gone to the opera in London that fateful night and not Gotham. Gotham City is important to the plot of Batman—it’s where the Wayne family has roots and has made their fortune. Without it as a backdrop, the story would be completely different.

When you think of Detroit, well-made jeans may not be your first association. You may not think of clothing at all. As a Metro Detroit native, I can tell you that cars, Motown, and the movie RoboCop are usually in the top three.

Figuring out how to locate your brand’s place both literally and figuratively can impact your brand story. While place can certainly shape brand storytelling, it’s the articulation of the consumer’s relationship to that particular place that will resonate. Even as the Internet chips away at brick-andmortar retail, place is still an important differentiator in how we perceive products, especially in the lifestyle and retail markets.

When it comes to defining place as part of their origin story,

What’s Your Brand Narrative?

But manufacturing is in the city’s lifeblood, and Detroit Denim, founded in 2010, decided there was a better way to do things. Much of the brand’s appeal is in Detroit itself. In the last decade, Detroit as the “Comeback Kid” of American cities has been a defining narrative.

“Detroit has long history of manufacturing,” explains Brenna Lane, partner and production manager at Detroit Denim.

“We make things here. We felt the fallout of what happens when we stop making things here. Even though a lot of manufacturing has left, it still has the culture. Humans using a machine to make a product is a very Detroit thing to do and a Midwest and Rust Belt thing to do.”

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Detroit Denim Homepage

The narrative of Detroit Denim is part of a larger one—make things better here. The company website message is to-thepoint on the how and why: “The finest quality components.

All sourced from American companies. Handmade in Detroit,

by Detroiters. To expose the myth that it’s impossible to create a sustainable jeans business domestically. And help diversify the manufacturing base of Detroit, by producing a line of men’s jeans like no other.”

The “where” in this case matters both literally and figuratively. It challenges consumers to support jeans made by a brand committed to producing a quality product in a city once synonymous with “American Made” versus the alternative “where”— an unnamed low-wage factory overseas.

of the financial collapse. Turning from finance to shirtmaking, Watson and Trible transplanted the craftsmanship associated with London’s Jermyn Street to Richmond. Trible and Watson saw something in the city nearly a decade ago that connected with their brand.

“I think Richmond is going through a similar situation to a lot of older southern cities or older metropolitan areas in the country in terms of moving away from the traditional manufacturing base they used to have and becoming hubs of new forms of commerce,” says Watson. “To be able to tell the Richmond story is unique for that reason because you have this interesting blend of old history and a new up-andcoming genre of businesses and people in the area.”

“We want to see our city thrive again and want to see it thrive in a way that’s based on equity and access to fulfilling employment and want to see it successful for all Detroit citizens,” says Lane. “We’re big believers in re-shorting of the apparel industry and can help bring industry here in Detroit back.”

Who Does It Appeal To? In the same way that Ben & Jerry’s has become synonymous with a Vermont aesthetic and ethos, the luxury men’s shirts and accessories company Ledbury is building a similar symbiotic relationship with Richmond, Virginia. Their New South brand story and marketing are very much tied to the region—think Garden & Gun meets GQ magazine.

Friends Paul Watson and Paul Trible, who met in business school in London, founded the brand in 2009 in the shadow

Ledbury men’s shirt, hunting

With only two brick-and-mortar locations, Ledbury is anchored to Richmond. From Virginia-based names for shirt collections to a catalog that often features local restaurants and businesses, the company has roots in the region. In 2015, they decided to reignite the bespoke tailoring tradition by taking on one of the country’s oldest bespoke shirtmakers,

who happened to be based in Richmond.

Luxury brands leverage a visual lifestyle and aesthetic to make their brand come to life (think Burberry or Ralph Lauren), and Ledbury is in a unique position to promote a very Virginia way of life. Because they are headquartered in Richmond, their blog and catalog showcase the stories of local makers and events like their annual Ledbury Quail Hunt, which recently took place in Goochland, Virginia—the heart of horse country.

“It allows us to not be your typical fashion company which is New York-based or LA-based or London or Milan,” explains Watson. “It gives us a more unique perspective that is regional in focus for sure, but interesting enough that we’re not just another New York or LA fashion company. It lends a bit more authenticity.”

Why Does It Matter?

When Tom’s of Maine started out forty years ago, it had a mission beyond being the manufacturer of naturalingredients-only personal care products. The company also wanted to be “a good citizen in the communities where we operate.” This community-centric approach extends from the brand’s origin story in—you guessed it—Maine to the products they produce and outward to the communities they serve. It’s no coincidence that the company website features “Community” as a tab directly under “Products.”

In the case of Tom’s of Maine, the “where” is intrinsic to the company’s identity and values and those of its customers.

When founders Tom and Kate Chappell left Philadelphia and moved to the wilds of Kennebunk, Maine, they had a mission not just to simplify their lives but also to seek out natural foods and products.

Natural ingredients and a “can-do” attitude go hand-in-hand in most people’s perception of Maine as a place. “There is this notion of Mainers around ‘What does it mean to live a complete healthy life?’” explains Rob Robinson, integrated

marketing communications manager for Tom’s of Maine.

“I remember those values being passed on to me by my parents and that was pre-cultural focus on the idea that we would live in world with limited resources and we need to take care of the earth and one another. The cool thing about that is it’s culturally how a lot of Mainers think. It’s also very closely connected to the origins of the company and what the founders really wanted to present as to what the company stood for and this idea of being healthy and giving back to your community and learning, growing, and doing more. It happens to be the values that really set our consumer apart from the general population.”

Sometimes the perception of Maine as a place of extremes can go a bit far in a negative direction. And for a company set on building community, how the “where” of the brand story is told is important.

“Certainly we have cold winters and snow, but we also have absolutely beautiful summers—people consider us Vacation Land—they want to come here during the summer and walk on the beaches with their families and experience the coast together,” says Robinson. “And that’s definitely been something we’ve been trying to show more in our brand storytelling, sort of taking Tom’s of Maine out of the woods and showing people more of the sunny, coastal, beautiful ocean communities we have that are such a big part of the state and definitely influence a way of life for people.”

Understanding how place resonates with your target audience is important. It’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario—one may inspire the other, but the sooner your brand stories make room for place the better your customers will be able to connect to it.

Shannon’s love of reading, writing, and the arts has led to many career adventures. From her first job as an editorial assistant at the Harvard Business Review to news text editor at Ford Motor Company, to marketing director for bestselling author and story authority Robert McKee’s international seminars, Shannon has honed a unique set of skills.

The Secret to Successful Content-Marketing In 2018 Is Having a Strategy, So Get One. CONTENT-MARKETING IS THE MOST POWERFUL ENGINE DRIVING SALES, BUT FEW BUSINESSES HAVE A PLAN.

By Victor G Snyder

With only a few weeks remaining before we bid 2017 goodbye, now is the time to finalize marketing strategies for the coming year. It’s time to identify which parts of your old strategy worked and which ones you’ll need to throw out.

Also, are there any new techniques to replace them with?

accessible on mobile to reach the 53 percent of global users accessing the internet on mobile. But, now the tides have shifted and given way to a new kind of mobile first. According to this report, mobile will account for nearly 80 percent of all internet usage in 2018.

According to a report by Content Marketing Institute, 83 percent of marketers consider a content strategy very effective in increasing revenue. This is a significant increase from the 74 percent who placed confidence in the strategy the previous year. But even as more marketers understand the need to have a documented strategy, only a paltry 31 percent have documented theirs.

So, instead of focusing your strategy on desktop and then optimizing for mobile (as has been the case), consider doing the opposite. Plan for mobile users and then add desktop functionality. After all, 80 percent of social media time is spent on mobile, millennials and Generation Z are glued to their phones, and 57 percent of users won’t recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site.

For increased web traffic, a growth in leads, more loyal customers and that spike in revenue in 2018, a closer look at your content strategy is necessary. Set some time aside to analyze what has worked, and identify opportunities hidden within trends.

The key is understanding consumer behavior then adjusting your priorities in order to seize opportunities.

For instance, Cisco estimates that visual content will account for 82 percent of all internet consumer traffic by 2021. And currently, 74 percent of internet usage is being covered by videos, with live streaming growing in demand. Using this information, you can plan to have more videos -- both live and recorded -- in your content marketing strategy.

While it’s clear that visual content is a leading factor in content marketing success, your creativity may need some boosting. Pairing text-based content with visuals to keep visitors engaged was the norm in 2017. But, in 2018, it’ll be more about the type of visual content you’re posting and sharing.

Good enough? Here are four more tips to help you prepare for 2018.

1. Adjust your mobile first strategy.

In past years, the focus has been on making websites more

2. Get more creative and personal with your content.

For instance, while infographics and videographics are great, going live with raw content on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube may be more effective. Consumers want to purchase products and services from brands they know and love. That’s why 61 percent of marketers plan to use Facebook live and

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Periscope, while 69 percent plan to learn more about live video.

Prepare to share more organizational activities with your followers, especially the “behind the scenes” content. When it comes other types of content, like recorded videos, images and blogs, only post and share high quality content. Eightyfive percent of marketers believe posting higher-quality and more efficient content was the major reason for success in 2017. So, focus on original content that’s personalized to users and communicates to their emotions.

3. Prepare for new platforms.

If your business or organization didn’t tap into chatbots in 2017 for content marketing, prepare to incorporate it in 2018. Chatbots have proven successful in customer service and the same can be witnessed in content marketing.

A 2015 report by BI Intelligence shows how messaging platforms have caught up to social media in usage. More than 2.4 billion people combined are active on Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp on a monthly basis.

Why then aren’t you leveraging bots to reach out to your target audience? Bots are a great way to increase brand loyalty, engagement, your understanding of consumer behavior and even conversion rates -- all of which are necessary for successful content marketing.

And as you think about bots, also consider optimizing your content for voice search and using machine learning to deliver personalized content.

4. Don’t give up on email. Get better.

Are you struggling to see success from the emails you’re sending? Have you thought about giving up and focusing on social media and blogs? You’re not alone. Sixty-six percent of marketers currently share your plight. But, before you give up, consider that 79 percent of marketers said email was the most successful distribution channel in 2017. This was in comparison to blogs and Social media. That means you probably just need to approach email differently in the coming year.

Think about sending more targeted emails, especially in relation to a subscriber’s history. By understanding the specific products and services a subscriber is interested in, you restructure the type of content they receive. Leveraging big data and AI technologies will prove useful in achieving this.

Conclusion.

Interactive visual content, chatbots, storytelling and increased personalization will dominate the content marketing scene in 2018. You’ll need a carefully crafted and documented strategy that incorporates these trends, yet still maintains the traditional email to succeed.

A Florida native, Victor G. Snyder has served as a consulting business coach since 2003. He founded BossMakers in 2014, empowering entrepreneurs to filter out the noise, achieve flow and tackle the challenges that will get them where they want to be – ultimately, to own success.

Advertising: What’s in Store for 2018?

FORRESTER PREDICTS PAINFUL “AD CORRECTION” FOR 2018—HERE’S WHAT THEY’RE MISSING

By Rachel Haberman

Earlier this month, when Forrester released their 2018 predictions guide, one prediction in particular piqued marketers’ and advertisers’ interests: a painful “advertising correction” in which CMOs will divert budget away from their usual ad spends.

In Forrester’s own words: “CMOs can’t defend underperforming media spend focused on customer acquisition as churn rates escalate or stand idly by as digital platforms threaten to disintermediate their relationship with customers.” Ouch.

Yet the declining effectiveness of traditional advertising is not exactly a new observation. (Really: Here’s Harvard Business Review in 1990, reporting that more than half of the advertisements they surveyed did not result in increased sales. When that study took place, your faithful correspondent still wore diapers.) So why now? If marketers have been questioning the ROI of advertising for, oh, three decades but ad spend has kept creeping upward every year regardless, why should 2018 be any different?

A Questionable Omission: Where’s the Content Marketing?

Forrester’s guide doesn’t explain why 2018 will be the tipping point—but if you read between the lines, they appear to be crediting the emergence of technology that will help brands deliver better, more personalized experiences throughout the consumer lifecycle, from brand awareness to new customer acquisition to loyalty and retention.

I don’t question this increased focus on customer experience in the slightest. My individual experience provides plenty of anecdotal evidence: The Content Standard has been covering the intersection of brand storytelling and customer experience more and more over the last year, as well as the technology that makes it possible. But what I—and likely any marketer whose career has “come of age” alongside the rise of digital content—find to be a questionable omission is the role of content marketing.

In fact, I would argue that what has kept the advertising market strong despite its questionable returns has been the historical lack of viable alternatives for reaching consumers.

The choice between reaching consumers through traditional, if underperforming, means and not reaching those consumers at all is not much of a choice. But over the last decade, content marketing has finally come into its own as a tested alternative to traditional ad spend.

Even the most risk-averse CMOs can look to rigorous research and well-documented best practices to ensure that an investment in content marketing is a smart decision, not an uncertain experiment.

If anything, content marketing subtly underpins the priority shift that Forrester is predicting, and content marketing’s newfound maturity as a marketing discipline is what will

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common issues (without hours on hold with customer support), showing buyers how to get additional value out of their purchase, connecting them to a community of like-minded consumers, and entertaining and engaging them so they create positive associations with your brand.

2. Synchronizing loyalty programs to customer expectations.

enable brands to stem their reliance on traditional advertising in the year to come.

Forrester’s 2018 Predictions Here’s a look at each of the four areas to which Forrester predicts CMOs will divert their advertising budget in 2018 and the role that content marketing plays for each one.

1. Revitalizing CX to drive affinity and stem churn.

According to HBR, acquiring new customers costs between five and twenty-five times as much as retaining existing customers. Hidden in that wide range is the undeniable fact that churn is really, really expensive. And there’s a secondary benefit of prioritizing customer retention over acquisition: Satisfied customers are a more trustworthy mouthpiece for your brand than you are (hence our collective preoccupation with influencer marketing).

Pre-digital CX was synonymous with customer service. Was the buying experience pleasant and easy? If the buyer had problems with their purchase, was the company able to address them promptly? Today’s digital-first CX means higher expectations for instantaneous, digitally mediated customer service, as well as many more brandconsumer touchpoints—online communities, regular emails, social sharing, etc.—that create additional value for consumers.

In short, brands that can offer consistent opportunities for consumer engagement, pre- and post-sale, have a significant competitive advantage. Content, in this context, bridges multiple consumer needs: educating consumers throughout their buying decision, addressing

Again, retention wins over acquisition for spendingconscious marketers. While this is perhaps the least content-centric of the four areas predicted to soak up diverted ad budget, content can still play a valuable supporting role in meeting customer expectations.

Content Marketing Institute’s Robert Rose has written extensively about how brands can monetize their audiences.

While content, like advertising, is usually evaluated in terms of its ability to drive sales, Rose advocates for a broader point of view: content as audience builder. That engaged audience of subscribers does of course generate revenue directly through purchases, but they are also a strategic asset for the business.

In exchange for content they consider to be valuable, subscribed audiences provide valuable information: personal details and demographic information, but also, by way of their content consumption habits, insight into their needs and desires as consumers. Improving loyalty programs is only one way in which these insights can shape business decisions and better serve existing and prospective customers.

not reflect their interests or demographics. Three and a half years—and an eon in technological advancement—later, that number can only have continued to climb.

Much has been written (not least by this publication) about how technologyenabled personalization is revolutionizing marketing as we know it. But what about the consumer experience is being personalized? You guessed it—it’s usually content.

3. Understanding how to decode digital platform algorithms.

Marketers have been concerned with digital platform algorithms since the early days of search engines, but recent news stories (the investigation into foreign interference in the 2016 US presidential election, most notably) have brought to light exactly how influential digital platforms like Facebook, Google, and Twitter are—and how opaque the mechanisms are that power content discovery.

Content, and content discovery in particular, lies at the heart of this spending priority. Either through technology (think ad blockers and streaming services) or sheer habituation (banner blindness, for example), interruptive advertising simply does not reach consumers as well as it did even a generation ago. Brands’ corrective response has been to search for new channels to reach consumers, and with that shift in channel has come a shift in medium from traditional ad types to content that is optimized for discovery and sharing via the digital platforms where consumers are most likely to spend their time. For the uninitiated, this is content marketing in a nutshell.

The difference between this type of content and traditional ads is as much the consumer’s interaction with them as it is their form and substance. The consumer is in control; while the brand can (and should!) create content that takes advantage of the platform and the consumer’s tendencies, it is the consumer, and not the brand, who makes the decision to engage. That Forrester is predicting brands will divert their ad budgets to better understand digital platforms points to brands’ growing comfort yielding control to the consumer—a hopeful sign for content marketers.

4. Advancing martech to deliver individualized experiences at scale.

A handful of innovative digital properties—Amazon, Netflix, and yes, Facebook—have reoriented users’ expectations about the degree of personalization brands should be able to provide them in their online experiences. In fact, a 2013 study

by Janrain and Harris Interactive found that 74% of consumers report frustration when websites serve them content that does

The most visible form of experience personalization is familiar from the e-commerce realm: recommendations. Much like Amazon recommends products based on your shopping history, growing numbers of content-driven websites provide recommended content based on inputs like your browsing history, your individual demographics, and aggregate site trends. Behind the scenes, the most sophisticated marketing technology can use your content consumption habits to inform your entire omnichannel experience, incorporating email nurture and even offline retail experiences. More broadly, off-domain experiences will eventually approach the flexibility of true personalization, with improved targeting capabilities on digital platforms like YouTube or Facebook that enable brands to serve content only to the micro-segments most likely to engage with it.

A Death Knell for Advertising? Not Quite Despite Forrester’s gut-wrenching language, this “painful correction” is probably not a death sentence for the advertising industry. In fact, they predict that ad spend will only flatline in 2018, not decrease.

Yet they are pointing to a trend that is more important than a simple reduction in advertising revenue, which is a growing recognition on the part of brands that traditional advertising is not the centerpiece of marketing strategy it once was.

In an interview earlier this year with branded content producer David Beebe, he told me that brands “should be creating content that stops interrupting what consumers are actually interested in and become what they’re interested in.” This vision of the future doesn’t exclude advertising altogether, but it does ask the advertising industry to adapt to a new content consumption model in which the consumer’s desires are paramount. What would the advertising industry look like if they adapted their output to be discovered, consumed, and shared on the customer’s terms?

Actually, it would look a lot like content marketing.

Rachel Haberman is a consummate word nerd with a lifelong fascination with all things language. She holds a BA in Cognitive and Linguistic Science. Before joining Skyword, Rachel managed content marketing for an international development and strategy consulting firm. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and two cats named after physicists.

A Tale of Two Sodas—In Coke and Pepsi’s Pizza Fight, Brand Storytelling Wins the Day

By Christine Kayser

Remember CliffsNotes? They’re the stripped-down studyguide version of novels and other content. I was a nerd and a goody two-shoes in high school, so I didn’t often need CliffsNotes. But the few times I did use them (What? I said a goody two-shoes, not an angel), the difference was obvious, even to a teenager who just wanted to get her homework done.

While flipping channels (okay—it was while watching a Law & Order: Special Victims Unit marathon), I saw a soda commercial that seemed like a CliffsNotes version of another I had seen earlier in the day. These two ads—one from Coca-Cola and one from Pepsi—were so incredibly similar in their basic concept but so wildly different in their execution that as a marketer I felt a need to dig deeper. I wanted to understand why I was so drawn to the Coca-Cola ad, and so disappointed by the Pepsi ad.

The Concept: Pizza + Soda = Delicious

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The basic concept Pepsi presents—that pizza and soda are delicious together—is a solid one. It’s one that speaks to the average hungry and/or thirsty American on their couch watching an SVU marathon. However, it falls short of the concept’s potential. In essence, it’s the CliffsNotes version of the story.

soda = delicious story look like?

The Story of My Pizza

Pepsi starts their ad focused on a steaming, enticing pizza.

You can even hear the cheese sizzling. As a viewer, you start to get excited about the pizza. Who made it? Can I order it from my phone? And will it be here in less than thirty minutes? They’ve captured your attention—which is good— but can they keep it?

Then they hit you with the Pepsi. It’s an old-school glamour shot of the product in all its fizzy, icy glory. They alternate shots of the pizza and the Pepsi, linking them in the viewer’s mind.

They’re telling you that this thing you love—pizza—is even better with their product, the Pepsi. It’s a decent message— Pepsi and pizza. But the glamour shot alone—even combined with the enticing pizza—doesn’t quite make us care. Will we remember Pepsi the next time we order a pizza? Was this an ad for pizza? Now I’m hungry.

They close the ad with a simple tagline. Rather than something memorable and evocative (think Nike’s “Just Do It”) it’s a flat statement of facts—“Pizza with Pepsi. Delicious.” No one’s putting that on a t-shirt.

In the fifteen seconds of this ad, they’ve given you the CliffsNotes version, or the book jacket version, instead of the whole story they could have told. It’s the equivalent of telling someone Romeo and Juliet is about teenage romance. So what would the proper, non-CliffNotes version of the pizza +

According to Kate Santore, Coca-Cola’s head of creative content, their marketing strategy starts with the question, “How do we find space in the hearts and minds of our consumers?” That’s exactly what they do with this piece. In an ad series called “Food Feuds,” Coke shows the myriad ways people can enjoy a basic food item—pizza, tacos, or burgers. Playing off our apparent need to constantly argue over food (Pie or cake? Is a hot dog a sandwich? Boneless or bone-in?), it tells an old story (pizza + soda = delicious) in a timely way—“my pizza goes best with a Coke.”

And that’s where things get interesting. Each person that speaks has a different way they like their pizza. From the style to the toppings to the crust, none of them agree on the best

type of pizza. None of them are wrong—okay, so they think the guy who likes eggplant on his pizza is wrong—and all of them prefer their pizza with a Coke. In fact, the last words you hear in the ad are “only with a Coke.”

More than just connecting their product to a beloved food item, they’ve inserted it into the life stories of these individuals. Here’s where we get the full story of pizza + soda = delicious. Coca-Cola’s brand storytelling answers who’s eating the pizza, who’s serving the pizza, how do they like the pizza, who do they eat the pizza with, where do they eat the pizza, all in only thirty seconds. Compared to the Pepsi ad, this is a full-blown novel. This is the movie to Pepsi’s trailer, the TV season to the “previously on,” the whole pizza to the single slice. In our Romeo and Juliet comparison, this is the equivalent of Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 Romeo + Juliet film—it’s a retelling of a classic story in a timely way.

But Coke does more than just tell any old story: this story fits within their long-lived brand story. We get a glimpse of the people who make the pizza, a waitress delivering the pizza to a table, a couple making homemade pizza, a young couple out on a date, and others. They’re enjoying their pizza from takeaway counters, casual eateries, high-end restaurants, and at home. The ad features various ethnicities, genders, races, age ranges, and languages. It tells the story that CocaCola is for everyone and that everyone enjoys Coca-Cola.

According to the Content Standard’s coverage of Kate Santore’s 2017 Content Marketing World keynote: “What makes Coke special . . . is that a Coke is a Coke—the one I drink is the same as the one the president drinks. As such, their brand is democratic, inclusive, and relentlessly optimistic, which is what gives them the credibility to tell stories that are about so much more than soda. By casting their product as a character in a larger story, as the embodiment

of an attitude or an object of desire, they tell timeless stories.”

In this instance, the Coke is the unifying thread between all these disparate life stories. Whether you fold your New Yorkstyle slice or you cut your gluten-free crust with a knife and fork, if you’re eating it at a takeaway counter or at a table with cloth napkins, if you like pepperoni or even eggplant, Coke is a constant, beloved character in your world.

When the ad ends, you remember the Coke. You care about the Coke because Coke told you a story of a dozen pizzas, and any one of those people could have been you.

The Lesson These two ads illustrate a simple concept—that telling a story is more engaging than showing the product. Telling your brand story engages the viewer, entertains them, and captures their attention far better than interrupting their Law & Order marathon with traditional product advertising. In this case, Coke’s thirty-second look at all these varied mini life stories combined with the drama of the food feud and the shared love of Coca-Cola results in a more memorable and compelling ad. Pepsi’s glamour shots and snappy tagline don’t capture the audience in the same way.

Give your audience the full story—all the drama, heroes (the woman with the pizza necklace, of course), villains (the man that wants eggplant on his pizza), and happily-everafters (my pizza goes best with a Coke). Don’t give them the CliffsNotes of pizza + soda = delicious.

Christine Kayser is a Senior Content Strategist and former social media strategist working in Boston, MA. She holds a BA in marketing and an MA in communication management, both from Emerson College. She’s a devoted dog owner, an adoring aunt, and an enthusiastic home chef.

The Secret To Great Logos, From The Gurus Of Corporate Branding “SYMBOLS DON’T MAKE CLEAR WHAT YOU DO; IT MAKES IT CLEAR WHO YOU ARE.”

By Diana Budds

This year the inimitable branding firm Chermayeff Geismar & Haviv celebrates its 60th anniversary. Over the past six decades, these godfathers of corporate graphic design created logos for PBS, MoMA, PanAm, NBC, Chase, and more. And in a new video produced by Dress Code for the AIGA, the late Ivan Chermayeff (1932–2017) and Tom Geismar reflect on their past and augur the future of design, including timeless wisdom about what makes a good logo.

Three nuggets of wisdom are below.

A GOOD LOGO IS NOTHING WITHOUT A GOOD REPUTATION

“Historically you’d show your factory or a chair if you made chairs– that’s what logos were,” Geismar says in the video.

“But Chase was then the second biggest bank in the country so you could establish something that was basically arbitrary.

The job of a logo is to make you identify.”

Bad businesses often have good design, and the reputation of a company at a particular moment can eclipse even the strongest of graphic concepts.

“Symbols don’t make clear what you do; it makes it clear who you are,” Chermayeff chimes in. “The less they say, the better. Over time it’s going to take on the characteristics [of the company], for good or for bad.”

“If you ask someone, what’s a really good logo, they’re going to say Apple and Nike,” Geismar says in the video. “They admire the company. They’re never going to say Enron because you can’t disassociate Paul Rand’s logo from who they were.”

CGH’s logos and trademarks all come from an intensive research process that gets to the heart of the communication challenge a client has. This involves actually defining the client’s real problem–which isn’t necessarily obvious–and developing a solution. “We have to understand what our clients are, which isn’t always what they tell us,” Chermayeff says. The duo describes conducting interviews not about design, but about the work they do, to truly understand the culture of a company.

ABSTRACTION IS ESSENTIAL Chermayeff and Geismar’s big break was designing Chase bank’s octagon in the late 1950s, a symbol the bank officially adopted in 1960 and still uses today. Since there was no universal symbol that represents the banking industry, the designers saw an opportunity to do something distinct. And knowing the bank had a big advertising budget, they knew the symbol would take off.

LASTING LOGOS ARE BORN FROM RESEARCH

“We’re talking about what they do, who they are, how might they best be portrayed,” Geismar says. “It’s a process of investigation, creativity, and politics.” View the entire video here.

Diana Budds is a New York–based writer covering design and the built environment.

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How to Tell a Great Story

Take

STORYTELLING IS A KEY BUSINESS SKILL. HERE’S HOW TO MAKE YOUR NARRATIVES MORE PERSUASIVE.

By Kellogg Insight

Based on the research and insights of Craig Wortmann, Michelle L. Buck, Steven Franconeri, Mitchell A. Petersen and Liz Livingston Howard

As humans, we are hardwired to organize our thoughts through stories.

Which makes storytelling a powerful business tool. Telling a good story can help you connect with your audience on an emotional level. It can make complex data easier to digest, and make your arguments more persuasive.

So how do you tell great stories, particularly great business stories? Here is some advice from Kellogg faculty.

1. Get Your Stories Straight There are many business situations that call for a good story.

But you need the right one for the right occasion.

Craig Wortmann, a clinical professor of innovation and entrepreneurship at the Kellogg School and author of the book What’s Your Story?, identifies four types of stories all business leaders should have on hand: success stories, failure stories, funny stories, and stories of legends.

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When told at the right time, these stories can show character, reveal your ability as a leader, or demonstrate your drive.

Choosing the best story for a given situation, however, is less intuitive than it seems. If you are in an interview with a potential client, you might tell a story of failure instead of one of success. “By doing this, you show that you’re humble, that you’re a learner, and that you’re good to work with.”

On the other hand, success stories are useful once you have landed a client, but are still earning their trust. As you onboard the client, sharing how you helped another client through that same process can reinforce their sense of confidence.

Wortmann knows a CEO who tells a particular “funny failure” story to reinforce the importance of asking questions upfront.

The CEO relates how he once spent an entire summer cultivating a giant, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity through a contact at a global consumer-packaged-goods company. On their fourteenth phone call, he grew impatient. When he finally asked his contact when her company would be signing the contract, she informed him that she was an intern.

“She thanked him for all she had learned that summer,” Wortmann says.

2. Know Your Own Story Beyond anecdotes, leaders need to master their own bigpicture story—who they are and what they stand for—explains Michelle Buck, a clinical professor of leadership.

“When leaders have that sense of purpose in their story,” she says, “that transmits or translates to the people whom they are leading as well and makes the work much more engaging, therefore more productive, possibly more innovative, and ultimately, more profitable as well.

These stories also provide leaders with a sense of agility.

“We’re living in a constantly changing environment,” she says. “You have to be able to access what matters most very, very quickly.” And knowing your story helps you do that.

3. Telling Stories with Data There are times when your story—or your business’s story— needs to be told through data. And when that happens, please do not hand your audience a spreadsheet; you need to think visual.

“If you are not using visualizations and you feel like it’s sufficient, it might be overconfidence,” explains Steven Franconeri, a Northwestern professor of psychology with a courtesy appointment at Kellogg.

Data visualizations are crucial, he says, because forty percent of our brain is devoted to visual processing. Once upon a time, that helped us spot a lion lurking behind a bush. Now it can be harnessed to get your boss to approve your marketing plan, or your employees to buy into a new incentive program.

Telling stories with data can be hard. So Franconeri advises taking your visualizations for a test drive. Create a few different types—say, a bar graph, a line graph, and a scatter

chart—and do a few iterations within those styles. Then show them to some friends and colleagues and ask what story they see.

“Just imagine a simple line graph generally going up but with a few bumps in it,” Franconeri says. “Just when you show something like that, there are several stories that people could be seeing in that: the fact that there are two bumps, the fact that it’s going up in general, the fact that the acceleration goes down a little bit, that the growth seems to be diminishing.”

Franconeri stresses that even senior leaders need to understand the fundamentals of storytelling through data visualization.

“Your art department can make the visualization look good, but they can’t make it tell the story that you want,” he says.

“You are the person who knows what’s important in the data.

You are the person who knows what everyone else in the room needs to know and what actions they should take.”

4. The Power of the “Stupid” Story When finance professor Mitchell Petersen gives advice on how to communicate complex ideas, one of the tools he stresses is stories.

“There are no cultures that I know of that don’t tell stories,” Petersen says. “It’s fundamentally part of what it means to be human.”

These stories can become tangible shorthand for very abstract concepts. An elaborate story about a Coca-Cola investor swapping shares with first a Pepsi investor, then an orangejuice investor, next a peanut-butter investor, and finally a tractor investor, might vividly encapsulate the benefits of an otherwise nebulous concept like diversification.

When thinking up stories, do not be afraid to channel the ridiculous.

“The dopier the story, the more people may groan—but years later they remember it,” Petersen says. “I will meet people 5, 10, 15 years after [presenting information] and they do not remember the specific data, but that stupid story I told them years ago has rooted itself in their brain.”

5. Using Stories to Fundraise Crowdfunding has become a powerful tool for nonprofits and fledgling entrepreneurs.

To harness that power, make sure you tell your story well, explains Liz Howard, a clinical professor of management.

“The most valuable aspect of crowdfunding is actually getting the story out there,” she says. “This is something that is often overlooked. Narrative is critically important, because the story is what differentiates one initiative from another.”

For people to donate or spread the word about your efforts, the story behind the campaign has to resonate immediately.

“A compelling story, when it’s shared, has the potential to have a tremendous impact,” Howard says.

5 Marketing Trends That Should Influence Your 2018 Budget

By Jonathan Crowl

Between wrapping up end-of-year campaigns and aiming to finish 2017 on a high note, it’s tempting to live in the moment and procrastinate on your 2018 strategy development. But the foundation for next year’s success is being laid right now, as marketing leaders examine how they can push their current strategies to the next level.

the audience targeting options for video marketing content are better than ever before. These diverse tools can target a refined audience that makes your ad spending more efficient and profitable than ever before, while retargeting capabilities for video will make big strides in accuracy and contextual video placement.

This growth can’t depend solely on beating 2017’s performance numbers and ROI. Marketing leaders need to step back and examine the big picture of what’s happening across their industry. As new marketing trends emerge, savvy leaders are on the hunt for new ways to reach their audience, increase engagement, and drive growth for the entire company.

If your company is still holding out on video due to the costs and concerns about generating strong ROI from this channel, these enhanced targeting tools should serve as encouragement to get in on the action.

A man shoots video footage using a handheld camera

In 2018, many of the leading trends in marketing will revolve around deeper investments into channels that continue to be underutilized, despite strong evidence of their promise and value to brands. Here’s a look at five such trends that marketers will want to consider in their 2018 marketing budget.

1. Video’s value will soar as brands refine their targeting strategy.

We already know that video is a high-value medium that offers great potential for engagement from audiences. But its role in reaching consumers continues to become more prominent: By the end of 2017, 74 percent of all Internet traffic will be video-based, predicted Mary Meeker in her 2015 Internet Trends Report.

Similarly, marketers have also probably heard that the cost of video production continues to drop. With today’s technology, some video producers are getting it done with solutions as simple as an iPhone 8 and a high-quality microphone. But in 2018, the biggest boost to video will be the improved audience targeting capabilities that YouTube and other platforms are able to provide. Marketing Land points out that

2. Your consumer data needs an audit before GDPR goes into effect.

If your company does any business with European businesses or consumers, you’re about to get well-acquainted with

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GDPR will require companies to implement a range of changes to how they gather and maintain consumer data. If this new regulatory act is going to affect your business, it’s wise to begin a data audit now to assess which aspects of your current data management routine are out of compliance with these new rules. McMenemy reports that many global brands are hiring data protection officers to serve as the leads for this transition to more consumer-friendly data protection practices.

Don’t wait until the new regulations go into effect. Be proactive now and allocate some of your 2018 budget to preparing for this transition.

identifies top influencers among their target audiences, and they’ll need to make sure money is allocated to fund these influencer campaigns. If you don’t build relationships with your audience’s top influencers, it leaves the door open for your competitors to gain an advantage.

4. Brand storytelling will continue to evolve in complexity and depth.

Content creation continues to evolve on several fronts.

Beyond an ongoing transition to story-centric, narrativedriven content marketing for brands, creators are also investing more time into creating fewer high-quality pieces.

According to research from Orbit Media, bloggers in recent years have transitioned to longer-form content that takes six or more hours to create, instead of the one to two hours that was more common in years past. More importantly, they’re getting results: 49 percent of bloggers spending more than six hours on a single post reported “strong results” for that content.

Meanwhile, storytelling continues to expand across different channels, including mediums unfamiliar to most marketers.

CMO reports that 53 percent of marketers are either actively deploying or testing AR content, while 43 percent are doing the same for VR. AI and IoT are also receiving active interest from more than 20 percent of marketers, showcasing how marketers are sinking resources into research and development for the next generation of brand storytelling.

5. Brands will continue to build their own audience, instead of renting ad space.

Purchasing space to publish ads and content on relevant websites remains a core component of digital marketing, but many brands are also looking for ways they can take control of their content and the platforms used for publishing. Social media is one example of this transition in action: While the social network company owns the platform, brands have control over the content they create and promote, and they’re able to build a custom audience over time, according to the Content Standard’s Michael Box.

3. Influencer marketing isn’t going anywhere.

Were you hoping that influencer campaigns were one of those marketing trends that would quickly fall out of fashion?

You’re out of luck. According to data from Marketing Profs, 84 percent of marketers believe influencer campaigns are effective at reaching their goals. In fact, 55 percent of marketers believe they acquire better customers through influencer campaigns.

According to MDG’s “The State of Influencer Marketing” report, 48 percent of marketers plan on increasing their influencer budgets in 2018. The costs of influencer campaigns can vary widely depending on the influencer’s relative fame and audience influence, but MDG notes that Instagram influencers alone are already generating around $500 million in revenue every year.

In 2018, marketers will be forced to conduct research that

For a large global company, this might mean producing their own industry publication or even producing a proprietary content app that consumers can access directly, like what Netflix and other content destinations have achieved. In most cases, success hinges on the quality of original content offered through that content channel. If you’re able to create compelling content and collect this content in a single destination, you have a decent shot at building an audience that will come back time and time again.

Success in 2018 starts today, and it starts with a marketing budget that allocates money to the right initiatives. As you plan out the next calendar year, make sure you’re leaving room in the budget to spur on new innovations that help your brand marketing strategy evolve.

Jonathan has worked as a journalist for the past 8 years. His journalism credits include employment at the Omaha World-Herald, Willamette Week, and NFL. com, with projects appearing in New York Newsday, WRITERS’ Journal, and others.

5 Productivity Hacks to Become a Better Marketer

By Ivan Kreimer

Picture this: It’s Monday morning. You’re in your office, sipping your morning cup of coffee.

You sit down in your chair and turn your computer on.

As you think about the latest marketing campaign you’re working on, you decide to check your emails, like you always do.

Then, your heart freezes. You have 600 emails to read.

Ten minutes later, you get a notification in the right-hand corner of your computer. It’s your boss messaging you on Slack. She wants to meet with you to discuss some details about next quarter’s marketing campaign.

You haven’t even started working, and you already feel overwhelmed.

“I can’t keep up like this,” you say to yourself.

How can you keep your sanity when you have so many things to do? How can you keep your priorities straight and get everything done?

Wake up early People who work from 9 to 5 tend to wake up one or two hours earlier than their work time. These people usually spend their morning time having breakfast, reading the news, and checking their social media accounts and other tasks.

Ryan Robinson, an entrepreneur, writer, and freelance content marketer, suggests waking up much earlier:

My biggest productivity hack is waking up at 4:30 am.

I don’t do it every morning, but my goal is three times per week. What I do with those early hours of my day is extremely important—I treat them like a precious resource where I’m only allowed to write, whether for my blog or a column. I don’t check my social media feeds, don’t look at email, text, or make phone calls. What I gain mentally from spending 3-4 focused hours doing something that I love, just for myself at the start of my day, makes me feel like I’ve already accomplished something meaningful.

With the endless stream of distractions, keeping your productivity up has become one of the hardest tasks for any marketer.

Because Ryan works on multiple projects, including his personal blog, his online courses, and on client work, it can be easy for him to lose his sight on what matters most.

Waking up early becomes a way for Ryan to get things done and boost his productivity right at the beginning of the day.

Today, we’ll share 5 productivity hacks you can use to become a better, more efficient marketer.

Instead of waiting until you return from work, exhausted as most people are, you can use your free morning time to work

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on your side projects.

Block your distractions

JD Prater, Head of Customer Acquisition & Growth Marketing at AdStage, takes a similar approach to Ryan’s:

Back in the day, you could sit down in your office and focus your time to work. Nowadays, we have a ton of real-time chat tools and ever-growing email boxes and of course, smartphones. In short, it’s easy to get distracted.

I love waking up early and reading the latest blogs and articles. Living on the West Coast means I’m three hours behind so it allows me to catch up on the latest trends and happenings in marketing. This routine allows me to slowly wake up by drinking my morning coffee, reading the news, and coming in fresh to the office.

JD Prater mentioned this same problem when he said:

Twila Liggitt, Content Editor at Instapage and Founder of Acorn Digital Strategy, thinks going to the office earlier than most people can be beneficial for mental focus and productivity:

I wake up and get into the office early because that’s when my brain is at its best. It also helps the office is quiet early in the day, so it’s easier to get tasks done without office chatter or unscheduled meetings.

Twila Liggit also thinks distractions are the biggest productivity challenge:

As you can see, neither JD Prater nor Twila Liggitt recommends a specific time to wake up. What matters isn’t whether you wake up at 4:30 am, or 6 am; it’s all about getting the focus necessary to get more done before you step in your office.

Focus on the right things It’s easy for a marketer to get distracted by a multitude of stimuli. Email, social media, meetings, calls, and news are just a few of the many distractions you can encounter on any given day.

That’s why it’s key to find the time to focus on the things that have the highest impact on your business. For example, if you have been thinking about creating a new email automation campaign but don’t seem to have the time to create it, you must set some time apart in your calendar to do it. It won’t happen on its own.

To prioritize the right things, you should follow JD Prater’s advice and set up your calendar for success:

I’ve had to get very disciplined with how I structure my schedule each day now—which means protecting the first half of my day for writing and more creative work, while grouping sales calls and outreach emails into blocks of time during my afternoons.

Whatever you do, remember you only have a limited amount of productive hours a day. Focus the most important work for those hours and leave the non-important tasks later in the day.

The primary productivity challenge I face is endless distractions: constant emails/slack notifications pop up all the time and break my creative flow when writing or editing a body of work. (Three have popped up just in the time that I’ve been writing my answer to this question!)

Having a constant stream of distractions causes marketers to spread themselves thin until they end up doing too many things at the same time.

Tomas Laurinavicius (also known as Tomas Lau), a lifestyle entrepreneur and content marketing consultant, mentioned this when he said:

My biggest productivity challenge is multitasking. It’s my single biggest productivity killer that I am trying to fight practicing mindfulness and brutal prioritization to combat the fear of missing out.

Ryan Robinson also mentioned multitasking as his biggest challenges he faces:

My best “productivity hack” is guarding my calendar and setting a time aside for actual work. I make sure to not schedule any meetings during the morning, so I go headsdown and get sh*t done.

The key is to develop discipline into your work schedule.

No one forces you to open that new tab and check your Facebook feed for the 10th time of the day. When it comes to distractions, you are your own enemy. To overcome this problem, you need to be strict on the way you structure your day, just like Ryan Robinson does:

The main challenge I face is the constant distractions which hinder my ability to get into a flow. As marketers, we’re constantly bombarded with emails, slack messages, meetings, tweets, text messages, etc. We live in this always-on world where people expect to receive an immediate response. These interruptions make it difficult to get into a rhythm and focus on long-term strategy because they force you to live in the moment.

My biggest barrier to staying productive as a content marketing consultant is task-switching. In many ways, I’m still caught between working “in” and working “on” my business, since I still dedicate some of my personal time to writing some of my client work.

With so many distractions, your only hope to change the situation is to block as many distractions as possible. This tactic doesn’t imply turning off your phone and closing your door with a lock; such extreme solutions can bring more problems than relief to your workload.

Start with the basics. Muting your phone, closing distracting apps on your computer (Spotify, Slack, etc.), and deciding to ignore any desktop notification are simple ways to give you a head start. As Twila Liggit says:

Turning off notifications or not responding immediately to anything non-urgent will help me focus and do my best work.

You can get better results with the help of an app like Cold Turkey, which blocks a set of pre-defined websites for a specific amount of time (5 minutes to 8 hours), forcing you to

avoid websites that drain your productivity.

You can also emulate Tomas Lau and focus on yourself; meditation leads to higher awareness of one’s stream of thoughts, helping you see whenever you are doing too many things at once.

At the end of the day, it’s not you against your distractions; it’s you against yourself.

Have a morning routine We’ve seen how waking up early can help you set up the day for success. But waking up early doesn’t guarantee a successful morning unless you set a specific process to help you gain focus and make progress. Having a morning routine can be that process.

Morning routines have been used for ages by successful people all around history. In the book Daily Rituals, Mason Currey shows the different routines people such as Nikola Tesla, Voltaire, and Pablo Picasso, among others. In many cases, these successful people had strict morning routines which they used to get ahead from early in the day.

Tomas Lau said having a morning routine has been his main productivity driver:

The one thing that makes me a more productive marketer is my morning routine. For the last two years, I have been experimenting with my morning routine and optimized it to make me healthier, mindful, knowledgeable and creative. Here it is:

1. Wake up at 5 am

2. Drink a glass of water

3. Stretch for 5 minutes

4. Meditate for 10 minutes

5. Drink a cup of coffee

6. Read for 1 hour

7. Write for 1 hour

8. Journal for 5 minutes

9. Work on my to-do list for the day

10. Exercise for 1 hour

We’ve previously seen how Ryan Robinson and JD Prater used the morning time to focus on their work and get things done.

The key isn’t just to set up time in the morning to work but define a process you can consistently keep throughout time.

As Tomas Lau said, you need to test what works best for you until you hit a develop a habit. Instead of working against

your instincts, you will ingrain success in your daily life. As Aristotle used to say:

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

Get out and exercise Digital marketers tend to spend most of their daily hours in front of their computers with terrible posture. This problem not only is detrimental to their health; it can wear them out and decrease their productivity.

An effective solution can be to stop and get out for a few minutes every few hours, or at least once a day to catch some natural light and fresh air.

There are studies that show how our mental firepower is directly linked to our physical regimen. Adding exercise to our daily routines can help us: • Learn faster • Improve our concentration • Prolong our mental stamina • Get sharper memory The benefits of exercising can lead to lower stress and better job performance.

Twila Liggit agreed when she said exercising was her main productivity hack:

Taking an afternoon walk around the neighborhood helps get the blood flowing, reconnects me with the world, and boosts my brain power to finish out the day strong.

We’ve also seen how Tomas Lau exercises for an hour after finishing his daily to-dos.

You don’t need to exercise for an hour; you can reap the benefits of exercising with no more than 20 minutes. As Garrett Dunham, the author of Brutally Productive explains in his book, the key is to increase your heart rate without expending all your cellular energy, which would tank your blood sugar.

As long as you keep yourself out of the computer for a while and get your blood flow going, you will be able to increase your productivity.

Wrap up Finding your productivity sweet spot is a long-term process that will take you months and a deep focus on what works best for you.

Today we showed you what four successful marketers use to increase their productivity.

Take some of the ideas shown above and implement them in your workflow. Test them and see how they work.

If you start to feel like you are more productive, you’re on the right track. You got this!

SaveSave. SaveSave. SaveSave.

Ivan Kreimer is a freelance content writer that helps SaaS business increase their traffic, leads, and sales.

When he’s not traveling around the world, he’s reading and taking photos.

What M&E Brands Need to Navigate a Multi-Screen World

By Adobe Blog

People spend money when and where they feel good.”

This quote from Walt Disney, perhaps one of the greatest marketing and advertising minds of the 20th century, is just as true now in the age of virtual reality, mobile phones/device and laptops as it was in Disney’s world of newspapers, radio, and newsreels.

Consumers can now choose where and how to engage with content and brands. But multiple screens present a clear challenge for advertisers: how do they reach customers and make their message consistent? Technologies like a Data Management Platform (DMP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and cross-device platforms, as well as other marketing automation tools are giving media brands more visibility into their data and allowing them to form more effective audience targeting strategies. But with more than 5,000 marketing technology vendors, it can be difficult for companies to know where to start and how to begin turning their data into actionable results to drive acquisition, engagement, and monetization.

Experts say the best route to formulating a multiscreen analytics and data strategy is a two-step process: First, deploying the right marketing technology stack. Second, developing a clear data strategy to guide more engaging and personalized advertising experiences. The right technology

and the right mix of first-, second-, and third-party data will help M&E brands improve audience targeting and convert casual browsers into loyal fans.

Building your technology and data infrastructure.

In today’s fragmented advertising ecosystem, brands can succeed only if they develop a set of cross-channel delivery strategies that provide consumers with consistent, personalized experience across screens and platforms.

But this requires having a 360-degree view of the customer, and unfortunately, the technology that marketers rely on to achieve this view is just as fragmented as the media landscape in which they operate. Most companies use different vendors for different parts of their marketing stack, whether it’s a DMP to ingest customer data from different touchpoints, an identity management platform to identify and segment audiences, or a campaign execution and optimization tool like a Demand Side Platform (DSP).

Often, these technologies aren’t integrated and don’t speak to one another, making it more challenging to effectively apply them throughout the buyer journey. Most brands know they need foundational technology like a DMP for measurement and a DSP for deployment, but it’s everything in between that

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causes a challenge for brands when it comes to achieving true customer intelligence and data visibility.

Experts say M&E brands need to consider their business goals before they enlist the help of any technology vendor.

With walled gardens like Facebook and Google stockpiling massive amounts of customer data, data ownership — and data portability in particular — will be critical for M&E brands as they try to take more control over their customer relationships. First-party data will drive much of this effort, but brands must also rely on interaction and transaction data from a variety of sources.

“To deliver consistent information across channels, we must blend data from all internal, external, social, and thirdparty data sources. We must bring in all interactions and transactions and uncover customers’ relationships with other people and products to create true 360-degree views,” says Ajay Khanna, vice president of marketing at Reltio, which creates enterprise data-driven applications and data management tools.

“Once this reliable data foundation is ready, it becomes a single source of truth across all channels. And when the customer jumps channels in the middle of their journey, they’ll still get consistent service.”

Using technology to drive personalization.

For M&E brands, consistency also equates to personalization.

M&E brands need the ability to understand their audiences at a very deep behavioral and demographic level so that they effectively put the right advertising in front of them, according to Kevin Lindsay, product marketing head for Adobe Target.

Understanding where the customer is in their journey can help these brands deliver targeted messaging that moves customers further down the funnel. Therefore, it’s critical for brands to align their technology priorities with the buyer

journey to achieve personalization, Lindsay says.

“The lifecycle-journey management aspect of the technology stack is also pretty important for this vertical,” he says.

“With an understanding of the journey and lifecycle of each customer, brands can figure out what opportunities to monetize.”

An end-to-end suite of marketing software can help brands gain this visibility. The right technology solution should deliver real-time analytics that allow marketers to identify and engage high-value audiences and monetize these segments across desktop, social, mobile, and every other channel or platform. It also should enable marketers to easily manage cross-channel campaigns from one unified platform, and allow them to test what elements of a campaign are most likely to engage and convert consumers and easily make changes to improve campaign performance and personalize their messaging for different audience segments.

Using marketing tools to automate the decision-making process will be key as brands try to track consumers across platforms and understand their preferences. Most M&E brands simultaneously acknowledge that technology is the answer to achieving personalization at scale, but it’s also their main challenge. In one Adobe survey conducted this year, 51 percent of M&E marketing executives said marketing technology was a hurdle to formulating an effective datadriven strategy, and 49 percent of them said they thought their organizations lacked the technology necessary to capitalize on digital opportunities.

As M&E brands make more technology investments, they’ll have to keep close watch on the ROI they’re getting for the money they spend. If a technology leads to more fragmentation, doesn’t offer more visibility into their data or a better understanding of the customer journey, then it will hamstring these companies’ efforts to drive more personalized customer experiences, and ultimately their ability to monetize their audience.

Three MadScientist Marketing Methods to Ignite Business Growth

By Tom Shapiro

If you were asked to define your next move to ignite revenue growth, would you suggest firing 60% of your clients? How about grinding iPhones in a kitchen blender? No? OK, how about deploying basketball-dunking sumo wrestlers?

It might seem crazy, but those are all real-world tactics that have led to massive business growth for their respective organizations. In my book Rethink Your Marketing: 7 Strategies to Unleash Revenue Growth, I point to dozens of examples of counterintuitive, lateral thinking that led to not only accelerated new customer growth but also greater profitability and ROI. Here I offer three effective ways that you can use lateral thinking to reinvent your marketing and unlock new revenue growth for your business.

1. Rethink your audience Imprivata, a security software firm, had originally targeted banks, financial institutions, and healthcare facilities as its target audiences. After the financial collapse of 2008, the company pivoted, deciding to focus exclusively on the healthcare market. That meant firing 60% of its clients at the time. The bold move enabled the company to focus like a

laser on the needs of healthcare organizations and become dominant in its ability to close new business. The result was a 233% increase in revenue within six years.

Tableau Software makes databases and spreadsheets understandable to non-developers through its data analytics and visualization software. In the early days, when CoFounder Christian Chabot drove around trying to get IT departments interested in the software, he was met with deadend after dead-end. In those days, the IT department was the gatekeeper for technology purchases by large organizations.

So, Chabot rethought his audience and attempted something heretical at the time: bypassing the gatekeeper and going direct to the ultimate users, potentially pissing off the very IT departments to whom he had been trying to sell. The gamble, though, paid off. Business users loved the ability to translate complex data into easily understood visualizations. Tableau has grown by approximately 1,900% over the past six years, with more than 54,000 customers in its portfolio.

When thinking about your own audience in terms of growth opportunities, ask yourself: • Who is your ideal customer?

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• Which audience segment is most profitable or has the greatest potential, and would it make sense to narrow your focus to only that segment?

• Are there complementary markets that you should be targeting in expanding your audience?

• Similarly, are there other departments, roles, or job titles that you should be targeting?

• Into which regions can you expand geographically?

• How can you incrementally add new demographics to your target audience?

2. Rethink your marketing mix Sometimes, instead of your audience, it pays to rethink your marketing mix. Blendtec was an engineering-focused kitchen blender company with a minimal marketing budget.

The company preferred to spend its money on product development instead. One day, George Wright, the new marketing director, spotted Founder Tom Dickson grinding up a 2x2 board in one of its blenders as a test of the strength of the blender blades.

Wright realized he had uncovered something special, and he consequently launched a YouTube video series called “Will It Blend?” The videos featured Dickson, in a scientist’s white lab coat, blending everything from iPhones to golf balls, marbles, rake, crow bar, video camera, and even tire repair kit. The videos went viral. Within a year and a half of the release of the initial video, consumer sales increased 700%.

When Jon Spoelstra became president of the New Jersey Nets (now the Brooklyn Nets), the team had long been struggling.

Fans were apathetic. Ticket sales and sponsorships were in the toilet.

So, Spoelstra rethought all the marketing the team was doing, as he explains in his book Marketing Outrageously. First, instead of encouraging fans to come to games to see the Nets, he started marketing the other team’s superstars—something unheard of at the time. On top of that, he transformed the basketball games into family events, with entertainment the name of the game. Whenever the players would take a break, his entertainment engine would kick into gear, filling up all available time. For example, during the second half of games, he would have basketball-playing sumo wrestlers running up and down the court in their mawashi (loincloths), bringing pure delight to the kids in the stands. According to Spoelstra, the sumo wrestlers were more popular than the players. The result? In the three years after Spoelstra arrived, overall revenue rose almost 500%.

When thinking about your own marketing mix, ask yourself: • What are the top performers in your current marketing mix? How can you double-down on them?

• What are the bottom 20% in your mix? How quickly can you eliminate them?

• In brainstorming ideas, which options have the highest upside?

• What are a few outrageous ideas that should be explored?

• How will you go all-in on your new marketing mix elements?

3. Rethink your future Even if you do not adjust the scope of your target audience or your marketing mix, one thing is certain: Market change is inevitable, and successful companies learn to rethink their business and innovate accordingly.

Think of Research In Motion and its Blackberry phone compared with Apple and the iPhone. The former dominated the market until it stopped innovating and allowed Apple to transform the mobile phone market. Apple is now one of the most valuable companies in the world, whereas Blackberry is an afterthought.

Moz Co-Founder Rand Fishkin started out by offering website design services and, like Apple, iterated over time. When his Web design clients started looking for SEO assistance, he built up his expertise to the point where the company was an SEO hub of information. He later realized that the most valuable and scalable aspect of his business was the software used in the SEO analysis, and that led to the transformation of Moz into an SEO software company. What was once a tiny Web design agency has grown into a $42.6 million software business.

Amazon is another example of a company that has grown through continual evolution of the brand. The business started out by selling books online. Later, Amazon expanded into music, DVD/videos, software, home improvement products, video games, and gift items. The retail powerhouse now sells just about anything you can imagine.

Beyond retail, the company developed the Kindle reader, spawning a new e-book industry. The Amazon Echo smart speaker was Amazon’s first major foray into voice-activated devices. On top of all that, Amazon has been aggressive in building its cloud storage platform, Amazon Web Services, which alone delivers more than $12 billion annually. Amazon (like Moz) is an exemplary study in growth through constant change.

When thinking about your own brand’s future, ask yourself: • What are the major waves of change you are seeing in the market?

• What new products or services would appeal to your existing customers?

• How can you leverage your expertise to enter new markets?

• Do you have a structured process for planning the longterm direction of your business?

• What should your business look like in three years for you to have a powerful competitive advantage?

Tom Shapiro is the CEO of Stratabeat, a branding and marketing agency. He is also the author of Rethink Your Marketing: 7 Strategies to Unleash Revenue Growth.

Book,

&

Line

Sinker

Thinking Outside The Box: A guide to personal branding (Discover Yourself)

Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen

By Hanani Dube

Donald Miller’s StoryBrand process is a proven solution to the struggle business leaders face when talking about their businesses. This revolutionary method for connecting with customers provides readers with the ultimate competitive advantage, revealing the secret for helping their customers understand the compelling benefits of using their products, ideas, or services.

In this personal branding book, Hanani challenges readers to think outside the box when it comes to creating their personal brand professionally or for their business. Similаr to that if product branding, personal branding iѕ a way to enhance recognition. This guide will help you differentiate yourself and ѕtand out from competitors by helping you in identify what makeѕ you unique.

E-Commerce Branding

By SendPoints (Editor)

By Donald Miller

Social Millions: Social Media, Marketing & Branding

An incredibly competitive arena where retention is key, e-commerce must concern itself first and foremost with user experience. Combining a cohesive visual identity with ease of use to create a space that consumers respond to.

E-Commerce Branding provides an essential guideline from webpage design to brand image in both digital and print media. Includes pageby-page examples of wireframing for both classic and innovative layouts, theme discussions with international design studios...

By Erik Swanson

Badass Your Brand: The Impatient Entrepreneur’s Guide to Turning Expertise into Profit

Mass Persuasion Method : Activate the 8 Psychological Switches That Make People Open Their Hearts, Minds and Wallets for You (Without Knowing Why They are Doing It) Kindle Edition

By Pia Silva Forget everything you think you know about branding and “starting a business,” and throw out your “how to write a business plan” workbook. It’s never been easier to capitalize on the knowledge and expertise you already have, and with a few simple steps you can start making more doing what you love like the Badass that you are.

All Marketers are Liars: The Underground Classic That Explains How Marketing Really Works--and Why Authenticity Is the Best Marketing of All

By Seth Godin As Seth Godin has taught hundreds of thousands of marketers and students around the world, great marketers don’t talk about features or even benefits. Instead, they tell a story—a story we want to believe, whether it’s factual or not.

Meet Erik “Mr. Awesome” Swanson. Erik Swanson, or as many people refer to him as “Mr. Awesome”, is an award winning International Keynote Speaker and Success Coach as well as a Best-Selling Author. He travels the world assisting people to grow their businesses as well as their personal lives to new heights. This is his 4th book in his Habitude Warrior series (Other titles are: Secret Habitudes, Sales Habitudes, and Time Habitudes).

By Bushra Azhar

The 7 Critical Principles of Effective Digital Marketing Kindle Edition

By Kasim Aslam The 7 Critical Principles of Effective Digital Marketing is an attempt at establishing a baseline for one of the most tumultuous and changeridden industries in existence. It takes a step back from the strategies and tactics that most digital marketing approaches start with and, instead, establishes a core and foundational structure from which all digital marketing initiatives can and should operate.

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The Complete Guide to Facebook Advertising Kindle Edition

By Brian Meert In The Complete Guide to Facebook Advertising, Brian Meert teaches you how to advertise on Facebook. He walks you through step-bystep guides filled with illustrations and easyto-understand explanations. Additionally, he provides free resources and tips on how to create the perfect Facebook ad. Small business owners with learn how to run successful Facebook ad campaigns.

Growth Hacker Marketing

By Ryan Holiday This book points out that many of the megabrands of today haven’t spent much of anything on traditional marketing. Instead, they figure out how to reach customers who “sell” other customers on using the product. While I’m not certain that the techniques Holiday espouses will work in every (or even many) business situations, the book is worth reading simply to understand how companies like Dropbox and Twitter suddenly burst out of nowhere.

Explosive Growth: A Few Things I Learned While Growing To 100 Million Users And Losing $78 Million: Ultimate Startup Playbook In Entrepreneurship, Business Strategy, Online Marketing, Leadership & PR Kindle Edition

By Cliff Lerner

Brands and BullS**t: Excel at the Former and Avoid the Latter.

A Branding Primer for Millennial Marketers in a Digital Age.

By Bernhard Schroeder Brands and Bulls**t is the first book written exclusively for Millennial marketers and entrepreneurs to provide insights and tools on how to purposely create a digital brand. The kind of brand that ultimately creates such a powerful “feeling” in a customer’s “mind and gut” that they feel there is no substitute for your product or service.

Advertising, Branding & Marketing 101: The quick and easy guide to achieving great marketing outcomes in a small business Kindle Edition

SEO 2017: Learn search engine optimization with smart internet marketing strategies Kindle Edition

By Dixie Maria Carlton

No matter your background, SEO 2017 will walk you through search engine optimization techniques used to grow countless companies online, exact steps to rank high in Google, and how get a ton of customers. First, let me tell you a little secret about SEO marketing...

By Adam Clarke

This book will help you to understand the basics of business and marketing plans, branding, image, customer service and public relations so that you can grow your business through simple and smart marketing practices. Getting the basics right can make such a difference to the outcomes.

500 Social Media Marketing Tips: Essential Advice, Hints and Strategy for Business: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and More!

By Andrew Macarthy Struggling with social media marketing business? No likes, comments and clicks, matter what you try? Feeling overwhelmed or don’t even know where to begin? This book help.

for no just will

Branding Basics for Small Business

By Maria Ross We have chosen this one because it takes solid branding principles and makes them accessible for entrepreneurs and small business owners – without making you feel like you need the budget of an Apple or Nike to get your branding right.

You’ll feel right at home with it’s format of giving you basic questions to answer and then guiding you into implementation. This updated edition has added even more social media strategies and how-to’s for small business.