BrandKnew August 2013

Branding matters. Because branding matters.

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08.13#16

07 09 Dear Readers: We have been witnessing a real hot summer, quite unlike yesteryears. And to keep pace with the soaring mercury, we have raised the content bar this issue. A lot of people do ask: what’s in a logo? It could be a nice word mark like Coca-Cola, Neiman Marcus or Disney or just the incredible Nike Swoosh (touted to be as the greatest logo of all times): in contrast read about the makings of an ugly logo in this issue filled with features like the art of building brand loyalty, the Pearl Jam way. There is a very insightful piece on the future of branding and how the digital dimension is playing a significant role in that. All along we have known that the creative output is a function of the brief. In this article on ‘The 8 steps to creating a great storyboard‘, we touch upon this oft ignored sine qua non. We have also touched upon the marketing lessons we can learn from psychopaths. Yes, you read that right! There has been a lot of talk about big data and analytics changing the branding landscape. We visit that in our feature on ‘Translating big data power to your brand‘. There is lots more including the 25 most patriotic brands….Now you know what we did this summer! So enjoy the issue.

Best.

Suresh Dinakaran

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

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CONTENTS

What 5 Fake Ads Can Teach You About Great Marketing 15 Big Brand Lessons From The 2013 Corporate Social Media Summit Brand Innovation Brand Evolution The trouble with having a lousy logo The 8 Steps To Creating A Great Storyboard The Future of Branding: The Digital Dimension (More Brand Management Lessons From Silicon Valley)

Marketing lessons from Psychopaths Jeep leads list of 25 most ‘patriotic’ brands Building Brand Loyalty: The Pearl Jam Way Translating big data power to your brand People power starts hitting brands where it hurts How to build following for an unglamorous brand?

The shifting sands of advertising: enter the brand journalist Why brands can’t afford to ignore social customer service Book, Line & Sinker

What 5 Fake Ads Can Teach You About Great Marketing Rohit Bhargava Sometimes clients don’t buy great ideas. And sometimes creative people have great marketing ideas for brands they don’t work on. I have thought for years that the greatest marketing idea for Crayola would be to create their own series of coloring menus and crayons for kids, and sell them to restaurants on a monthly basis as a subscription. But I never worked with Crayola, so that idea has just been sitting in my head for years.

Thankfully, the people behind the collection of ads in this post decided not to lock them away in the back of their minds.

Instead, they created concept videos or used Photoshop to launch these brilliantly creative concepts online. Together they offer some interesting lessons on marketing that works or doesn’t work, and why. Here are a few of those lessons:

Lesson #1 – Avoid Icon Temptation The “Think Small” ad introducing the first VW Beetle is a legendary print ad in the history of advertising. In this reimagined version first featured in a Behance collection of how classic ads might look today, the ad is “socialized” with everything from a hashtag to a QR code. In the process, it points out just how silly all our iconizing of ads with little social media buttons really is … especially for a print ad, which (in case you forgot) isn’t usually connected to the internet.

Lesson #2 – Stand For Something Bigger One fake ad I have used often in presentations is the fun concept ad above. While it might seem like a Heineken ad, it was actually created by a group of students at an advertising school. The concept is great, and easily shareable. What I started wondering, though, was why the students chose Heineken to complete this ad for instead of some other brand? The reason, I think, is because Heineken is an experiential brand. They sponsor large events and create branded moments for their customers. And because they stand for something larger than their brand, when a team of students decides to spend some creative energy making a fake ad … Heineken is at the top of the list of brands they choose to feature.

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Lesson #3 – Be The Brand You Already Are No one would buy an exotic expensive car like the Bentley pictured in this ad because they love the environment. They are buying it for another reason. And just as Hummer is not a brand that talks about the environment, Bentley has the same “opportunity” with their cars … which this ad brings to light. We may not like inefficient cars that are not built to be good toward the environment, but there can be a value for brands in knowing who they really are … and more importantly who they are not.

Lesson #4 – Be Unexpectedly Honest One of the most romantic notions that consumers sometimes imagine in a world of manipulative advertising is what it would be like if brands truly shared the entire truth. This fake ad for “the first honest cable company” shares a caricaturized version of what that ad might say if honest were at the heart of it. Thanks to the reality of an industry that has long been maligned for poor customer care and overpriced services – it’s no wonder the ad rapidly went viral with more than 3 million views so far.

Lesson #5 – Offer A Visual Reminder In a world with constant injustice and inequality, people may generally care but they need visual and frequent reminders of the problem in order to inspire them to take it more personally and choose to ad. This ad concept offers an interesting way to provide that reminder to people who may be choosing to throw away food and drinks. It may not change their behaviour in that moment … but it offers a visual reminder of the importance to not waste food that will last far longer in their minds.

15 Big Brand Lessons From The 2013 Corporate Social Media Summit Rohit Bhargava

There are all kinds of ways to judge the quality of a conference. Some people look at the venue, or the number of attendees.

Other look at the list of speakers, or the keynote presenters. Across the dozens of events I attend every year, I have seen or used almost all of these metrics myself. But yesterday I discovered a new metric while networking with speakers and attendees of the Corporate Social Media Summit.

People brought their bosses. Some speakers from last year invited their bosses to come and speak this year. Others brought their peers or bosses to attend. Every annual conference wants to draw loyal attendees. Few manage to deliver so much value that a year later they become the desired destination for bosses and colleagues too.

That’s the best introduction I can offer to a gathering of several hundred attendees and speakers at the New Yorker hotel over the past two days to discuss opportunities, strategies and insights around using social media for big brand marketing.

With over 35 of the biggest brands in the world gathered together, there were plenty of insights to come from speakers across two days of panel discussions.

Here are 15 highlights – curated from a combination of my own notes, conversations with speakers I moderated, and my reading the stream of tweets from the event (hashtag #csmny). Feel free to check out the conversation yourself and let me know if I missed anything …

01 “Reward Experimentation” – Outback To celebrate an Australian golfer poised to win a big tournament, one of the social media team members at Outback steakhouse decided to give away free meal coupons to 5 lucky winners over Twitter. The next day, when he told CMO Mike Kappitt about the stunt … Mike asked only one question: “why didn’t you give away 500?” For many brand marketing teams, campaigns are meticulously scripted and managed – but Outback believes empowering staff will encourage more experimentation. And experimentation will lead to success. While not ideal for every situation, their steadfast focus on rewarding smart thinking instead of punishing innovators is a big lesson more brand teams could use.

“Context Matters” – Express 02 We hear often about second or even third screen experiences. “There is only one screen that matters,” explained Express Director of Online Marketing Eric Gohs, “the screen in front of us.” In this single screen experience, context is everything because the way you experience a brand depends entirely on where you are. If you are walking down the street or in a retail Express store – your entire experience will be mobile. If you are at home browsing, it may be more tablet or laptop. Either way, the screen you are on should offer the perfect experience for the context you are in. For any brand that has placed QR codes on airline magazines (generally read on flights without internet access!) … this is an important lesson to remember.

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03 “Engage the Rogues” – Wells Fargo Workarounds are a popular use of technology. As Wells Fargo SVP and Head of Social Business Strategy Nathan Bricklin shared, “if you don’t have tools in house, people find workarounds.” Often those work arounds cause collaboration problems, because people are not communicating in a streamlined way. The less collaboration you have, the more people reinvent the wheel in every department – a problem Wells Fargo faces daily across more than 50 different business units and departments. The solution, according to Bricklin, is to “embrace the rogues.” In other words, find the people in your organization who are creating these solutions and leading the workaround groups, and find a way to work with them to solve their problems. As long as you can find them early.

“Educate Your Lawyers” – McDonald’s 04 If there is a consistent tension that nearly every brand marketer in the audience shared, it was the sometimes strained relationship that happens between legal and marketing. As McDonald’s Senior Director of Communications Heather Oldani shared stories of how her brand embeds social across multiple departments, one key learning became clear – she has good lawyers. But how can any brand build such a positive connection with their legal teams when sometimes real business issues may stand in the way? The key is that more marketing teams need to take responsibility for educating their lawyers. Often marketing people assume that it’s the legal team’s responsibility to understand social media. It won’t usually happen that way. Instead, finding moments to offer shared learning and education, and gain great understanding of both marketing and legal team’s roles is critical to building a more successful working relationship.

05 “Embrace Data Gymnastics” – Footlocker In one of the best buzzword moments of the day, Footlocker CMO Dave Lokes shared the concept of “data gymnastics” as a method for using sometimes incomplete or overloaded data to uncover big business insights – such as how consumers are moving from consideration to conversion. As big data continues to be a huge topic for brands, the idea of using data in new and unexpected ways to deliver business insights is a huge topic that was on the mind of many brand marketers attending the event. Similar to the clamoring from brands for better listening platforms several years ago – this new topic of how to understand and manipulate data was a consistent thread of interest (and confusion) for many brand marketers attending the event.

“Lose Control” – Mastercard 06 Mastercard doesn’t own the priceless campaign anymore. It may be a surprise to hear that one of the most iconic brand campaigns of the last several decades is now officially in the public domain – but it shouldn’t be.

In an engaging keynote presentation, Mastercard SVP and Group Head of Global Digital Marketing Michael Donnelly shared a new way of looking at the power of the Mastercard brand. “Mastercard is a technology company,” he shared, and went on to talk about the many ways the brand is probably already a part of your life and powers billions of transactions every year. The theme across his presentation was not only that Mastercard doesn’t need to own “priceless” anymore … but that this may be the same future any brand that manages to build an iconic reputation can expect at some point.

07 “Follow The Passion” – Sears People love what they love. For Sears, this led them towards creating a community focused on grilling called “Grilling Is Happiness.” On it, people can share what they love about grilling, when they do it, photos and plenty more. It was a perfect example of the secret truth of engagement that many brands have uncovered: follow the passion. For Sears, this means finding communities of people who love certain products, and encouraging that conversation by finding authentic ways to jump in.

“Know What Matters Most” – Dunkin Donuts 08 want to know about any Dunkin store location is whether it is open or not. So that information is front and center in any location search through their app. It was a powerful reminder that no matter how much cool and interactive content or experiences you might offer in multiple channels … there is still no substitute for giving your customers exactly what matters most to them. Even if it is as unsexy as listing opening hours.

“Hell hath no fury like a customer who drives to a Dunkin Donuts which happens to be closed.” Among the many truths that might have come on stage at CSM, this was one of the most incontestable. As Scott Hudler, VP of Global Consumer Engagement from Dunkin Donuts shared in a presentation focused on using mobile for consumer engagement, the most imporant piece of information that consumers

09 “Tell Real Stories” – Chobani Every company starts with an idea and nearly all of them have founder’s stories. Hardly any of them, however, involves a founder whose first step was buying a factory with a small business loan. On stage at CSM, Chobani SVP of New Ventures and Innovation John Heath used great visuals and powerful storytelling to share how the Chobani brand started, and the inspiration that led founder Hamdi Ulukaya to first buy that factory. He went on to share how Hamdi would later develop this new yoghurt brand that would grow over five years to be worth more than a billion dollars. The product is good, but the real lesson is that the story and the philosophy of the brand is what really powers the enthusiasm of their customers and employees on social media and beyond.

“Be Ready To Change” – Hertz 10 You may remember a time when Hertz first launched kiosks for renters to check in and get their cars, similar to the kiosks offered for checking into a flight at the airport. Consumers hated them – so the brand ditched them. It was just one moment in the evolution of Hertz to a technology brand that symbolized what they would need to react to over and over. In a dual presentation from CMO Bob Stuart and CIO Joseph Eckroth, there were plenty of insights about everything from getting marketing teams to work together with IT to integrating more innovative ideas through events like brand hosted hackathons. The underlying message is one that you’d expect to hear from a startup instead of a nearly hundred year old brand – embrace flexiblity, move quickly and be ready to change.

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“Retire Content” – ESPN 11 It is one of the most common mistakes in social media for brands to believe that every initiative or effort must last forever.

Instead, ESPNw Director of Social Media Strategy Katie Richman shared that content may be useful for some time, but then people can stop sharing it. When that happens, it’s time to “retire” that content. I often share on stage that the word “archive” is one of the most underused in social media. However you choose to describe it, the fact is content creation doesn’t need to be a black hole that sucks your time and effort forever. Sometimes the best thing you can do is walk away.

12 “Find Your Rich Uncles” – General Mills With this humorous description, General Mills Director of Public Relations Kirstie Foster shared the important fact that being able to try more innovative work and integration with social media requires finding someone on your management team who can be your champion (presumably male OR female!). When you have an internal champion, then resources, budget, and value all become easier stories to tell to managers and internal leaders who are hungry for results.

“Celebrate Your History” – KLM 13

As a nearly 100 year old brand, KLM has plenty of tradition. They find many ways to share this tradition online through social media – which has been a consistent thread of engagement for this completely Dutch brand. As they do, they find new ways to engage consumers and tap their excitement to be part of the greater community of KLM enthusiasts.

14 “Dig Into The Poo” – PETCO With the popularity of cats online, the advantage PETCO has over other brands to find topics for engagement is almost unfair. Almost. In an entertaining discussion on stage, Director of Social Media Katherine Smith talked a little about the opportunities and pitfalls in this wealth of content. People love to share photos of their pets and engage with other pet lovers. Sometimes the result is cute puppy photos. Other times, it’s poo … literally. But that’s nothing to be afraid of. The greatest conversations come from honest dialogue – even if it includes that “accident” in the living room you’d rather not think about.

“Create a Dedicated Team” – Target 15 One of the highlights of the conference was the chance to look behind the scenes at Target’s new personalized discount app called Cartwheel. The app has been featured in the media over the past five weeks and at CSM Product Leader Alan Wizemann and Social Strategy Manager Sarah Peterson shared some of the key learnings from the process of building the app. Chief among them was the value of building a dedicated in house team within the greater Target team. Though there was plenty of collaboration, this team operated as a startup within the larger brand. They iterated frequently, listening to consumers and publishing weekly updates to the app. Their independence was encouraged … and the end result was a pioneering product that many competitors and the retail industry is looking at as a precursor to the mobile future of loyalty programs and deeper consumer engagement.

Brand Innovation Mark J. Miller

Colgate Looks to Reinvent Toothbrushes With Caffeine, Flavors, Diet Aids

Colgate-Palmolive has a significant stake in the world’s oral hygiene market, with such toothpaste brands like Colgate, Elmex and Dentaguard, not to mention that the company accounts for one-third of the world’s toothbrush sales.

That number should go up if a U.S. patent that it applied for back in October gets approved. The innovation, “a new toothbrush that releases chemicals straight into your mouth as you brush,” could net the company an additional $330 million—and that’s only for one “flavor.”

The special paste would allow consumers to have such things as caffeine come to them through their toothpaste in the morning rather than waiting a few more minutes to get through a cup of joe. The flavoring would come through the toothpaste via a patch attached to the back of a specially designed toothbrush.

ABC News reports that Colgate Palmolive’s initial patent request was rejected in April because a “combination of two other patents issued to parties other than Colgate had similar elements. One was a chewable toothbrush and the other was a flossing patent.” (Chewable? How about an edible toothbrush so we can eat and brush simultaneously?)

Colgate has three to six months to respond.

Other potential flavorings that the company is exploring, according to its patent filing, include menthol, apple, mint, lemon and other fruits; tropical topical pain relief chemicals (kill that toothache while you brush); and appetite suppressants. Talk about multitasking.

If Colgate’s patent for the patch add-on is approved, the reinvented toothbrush “may work wonders for the company and help it to further strengthen its dominance in the oral care market worldwide,” Seeking Alpha opines.

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Brand Evolution Mark J. Miller

Cracker Jack Focuses on Improving Central Product in Brand Update

The first batch of Cracker Jack rolled off the line in 1896, the same year that Utah was admitted as a state, the first modern Olympic Games were held in Greece, and racial segregation was declared constitutional by the Supreme Court.

In other words, it’s a pretty old brand--117 years to be exact--but owner Frito-Lay doesn’t want the famous snack to be left behind in yesteryear. The brand is seeking a modern update thanks to new prizes and new flavors, though its main focus is to improve upon its central, caramel-coated product. The brand will be adding more peanuts to its original flavor while also introducing Cracker Jack Kettle Corn and Cracker Jack Butter Toffee flavors.

The new additions will build upon a growing offering which include caffeine-infused Cracker Jack’d Power Bites and hearty flavors like peanut butter and chocolate and cheddar BBQ. “After 120 years, we knew it was the right time for the Cracker Jack brand to modernize to really suit the changing snacking preferences among our biggest fans--while still remaining true to our nostalgic roots,” said David Skena , vice president of marketing, Frito-Lay, in the release. “By

offering improved prizes, more peanuts and delicious new flavors, we’re giving our fans a new and improved product experience that still celebrates what they’ve loved about Cracker Jack snacks all these years.”

The new “modernized” prizes will have digital touches, such as stickers that feature fun facts and special codes that allow users to get more information online. To aid Cracker Jack in becoming relevant in the present day, Frito-Lay has also had a branded app created that features baseball and pinball games.

Part of Cracker Jack’s longtime appeal (and probably the reason for a good deal of its sales) is the fact that Jack Norworth and Albert Von Tilzer decided to include it in the lyrics of their 1908 tune, “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” The baseball connection lives on this day as Cracker Jack and iconic bat company Louisville Slugger-which underwent a re-brand of its own recently--have teamed up for an online sweepstakes. Cracker Jack has also partnered with Macy’s and will receive a spot in the retailer’s “American Icons” summer catalog, while samples will be handed out in stores nationwide.

The trouble with having a

lousy logo Daniel Andreani

When I was a wee young designer, one of the first things my creative director told me was, “Dude, be careful when you start talking about a client’s logo. It’s like their little baby.

You can’t say it’s ugly.”

help people who didn’t know how to read. John Deere used a deer as a logo because many rural folks and farmers back then couldn’t read, and they wanted their “name” to be easily identifiable. This isn’t the case today.

This stuck with me until one day, when I couldn’t stand it anymore. An unlucky client ended up being the victim of my years of pent-up frustration because he made me put an ugly logo on my beautiful ads. I couldn’t take it anymore so I snapped, screaming, “Your logo is putrid! I can’t make it bigger. It ruins everything!” My client wasn’t amused. But you know what? My delivery was inappropriate, but my message was right and here’s why.

Your brand may just need a nice word mark (Coca-Cola, Neiman Marcus or Disney). People refer to the Nike Swoosh as the greatest logo of all time because its brand name is recognizable without the word “Nike.” Do you know how much they had to invest in advertising the Swoosh for people to eventually recognize it as Nike? Billions of dollars.

And I doubt you have billions to spend on promoting your company name.

A logo is a reflection of who you are. Stop freaking out about modifying your logo. If it’s old and dated, then you look old and dated. If it’s ugly and irrelevant, then you look ugly and irrelevant. Keep in mind that although the consumer probably doesn’t care much about what your logo looks like, they do get a feel for your brand from it. And that feeling better be a good one. Otherwise, it doesn’t matter how great your company or product is. If your mark is bad, then the first impression is that your product is bad.

Go easy on the overcrowded concept. I love the logos in which designers try to cram in five ideas. For example, a logo that includes a mountain, a tree, a dollar sign and a dog all within the letters of the pet shop name.

I’m being facetious, of course, but you get my point. Busy logos that try to force in concepts look bad, are difficult to replicate and are confusing to the consumer. Your logo should be simple. You can tell the rest of your brand story with your website, ads, brochures, business cards, PR, social media, etc.

It isn’t subjective. I hear that all the time. “It’s a matter of taste. My logo is fine.” Actually, it isn’t a matter of taste. It’s a matter of knowledge and expertise. If design isn’t your specialty, how do you know if your logo doesn’t look dated or too busy or silly, or whether the font choice is right? The art of logo design is a tricky one. Only a few master it, and as a marketer, you’re probably not one of them. Find and trust a great designer to create or recreate your mark. It will be well worth the investment.

Don’t get your 17-year-old son to do it. Your son may have taken a design class in high school and he’d probably do the work for $50. But, you’ll get what you pay for — a cheaplooking logo and that’s not good. Remember, if you have a great product but your logo looks cheap, that reflects poorly on your brand, which is not good for business. Especially in the long term. Yes, Nike did the Swoosh for a few hundred dollars over 30 years ago, but they were lucky. It’s just like winning the lottery and you know very few people actually win the lottery.

Do you need a logo? Believe it or not, your brand may not need a logo. Back in the day, logos were first created to

Not so big! An old joke in the advertising community is that clients are always asking for their logos to be bigger.

My answer to this request is usually, “Why? We can see and read it, right?” A big logo is like a large signature. It just comes across as being egotistical — LIKE YOU ARE TRYING TO SCREAM YOUR NAME! Do you know of anyone who likes to be screamed at? Probably not.

Chances are, if you are working with a well-trained, professional art director, the logo will be large enough.

There’s no need to scream. It makes your brand seem of full of itself, which can translate into being insecure.

So there you have it. If you have a bad logo, go ahead and change it, but be sure to hire a great designer. Do your research, and once you make a hire, let them take the lead and trust them. Ease into implementing the new logo. Start with your letterhead, then your other marketing efforts. Next year, you can do your signs. And the year after that, your trucks.

The 8 Steps To Creating A Great Storyboard Jake Knapp

At the Google Ventures Design Studio, we have a five-day process for taking a product or feature from design through prototyping and testing. We call it a product design sprint.

In the first two days of the sprint, we’ve learned about the problem, shared a lot of knowledge, and chosen the challenge we want to tackle in this sprint. It’s time to start cranking out solutions. Expect this step to take between two hours and all day.

existing ideas, you do yourself a disservice.

I call this step “diverge” because when everyone (from the CEO to the marketing manager) is cranking out quick sketches, we tend to get a lot of ideas--and different kinds of ideas. Remember in the Legend of Zelda how the map would light up rooms you had visited as you explored the dungeon? That’s what you’re doing on Day 2: illuminating all of the possible paths.

One problem with business-as-usual-design is that companies get in the habit of going straight to high-fidelity mockups. In a design sprint, we start designing on paper for a number of reasons: • It’s faster.

• Everyone can contribute (not just designers).

• Nobody gets too attached to the ideas that are generated because they’re so quick and rough. We purposefully use thick markers to make sure nothing gets too precious.

• Did I mention it’s faster?

Although you’re going to be generating ideas, don’t think of this as brainstorming--at least not the everybody-isshouting kind of brainstorming. Instead, everyone in the sprint will be working quietly and individually, often around the same table. The exercises outlined below force you to get ideas out of your head and onto paper, without getting stuck feeling like they have to be finished or perfect.

Dust off those old ideas In my experience, some of the best ideas that come out of sprints were usually around before the sprint started. It’s not that they were bad ideas; they just hadn’t gotten enough love yet. The sprint gives you a chance to put all solutions on a level playing field. If you don’t bring out your pre-

Because new ideas are so shiny and fresh, the facilitator needs to remind everyone to think old first. There’s no need to be embarrassed of that solution you thought of five months ago while eating a burrito or taking a shower.

Paper first

Run the series of exercises below to guide everyone from note-taking through sketching and sharing. See my earlier post for an exact list of the materials you need. I use my trusty Time Timer so everyone can see how much time is left in each exercise.

When I’m facilitating a sprint, I like to remind everybody that we’re not going to share any of the materials until we make storyboards--that’s step five of the cycle--and they’ll have plenty of time to polish those up. I want to make sure everybody feels loose and knows they’re actually going to have plenty of time to work, even though we’re keeping time as we go.

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1. Choose part of the problem In Day 1, you drew a user story diagram. Look at it together as a team. If the user story is more than two steps long (and it probably is), you’re going to need to divide it up before you start sketching. This is as simple as finding natural chunks in the story and drawing a box around them, like this:

Now decide which part to focus on first. It usually makes sense to have everybody in the sprint focus on the same part of the problem at once. If you take that approach, you’ll do one cycle for each part of the problem, with everybody collaborating on each part as you go.

You can also divide and conquer--everybody picks a piece of the story they’re interested in and works on that. This way is usually faster, although it introduces the risk that people don’t think about the user story holistically. If you have more than two or three chunks in your story, you might have to divide and conquer, or perhaps decide you’re going to focus on a smaller part of the problem for this sprint.

Either way, the facilitator ensures that everybody knows which piece of the user story they’re focusing on before you continue.

2. Take notes (5 minutes) At this point in the sprint, the whiteboards and walls are probably covered in diagrams, notes, and “how might we” sticky notes. This is your chance to reload that stuff into your brain. Everyone takes a piece of paper and jots down anything they think is useful.

3. Mind map (10–15 minutes) Now you’re going to add all the other ideas that are in your head, mix them with the notes you just took, and loosely organize them on paper. The mind map is going to be your “cheat sheet” you can use when you’re sketching UI ideas.

If you’re not familiar with mind mapping already, I often describe it as writing down everything in your head with no specific formatting; or quiet individual brainstorming.

You can write words and connect them or not, you can draw pictures or not--you basically can’t do it wrong. The important thing is that everyone is getting every solution, old and new, out of their head and onto paper at very low fidelity.

Here’s an example:

4. Crazy Eights (5 minutes) Everybody folds a blank sheet of paper in half four times, then unfolds it, so they get eight panels. Then you have five minutes total to draw eight sketches, one in each panel. Yes, you did the math correctly, that’s about 40 seconds per sketch, which is crazy…but it’s a great way to crank out variations of ideas quickly. And since these aren’t shared with the group, there’s no need to worry about making them pretty.

Since you have only 40 seconds for each drawing, you’ll need to turn off the self-editing and just get your ideas on paper.

Crazy Eights will also help loosen up your creative muscles and make you more productive in subsequent sketching exercises. If you get stuck, try repeating an earlier sketch with a small variation-- this type of exploration is useful and it keeps you moving.

For best results, do two rounds of Crazy Eights.

On the second round, everyone will have the hang of it. You’re scraping the bottom of the barrel, which makes it more painful to come up with new ideas, but often this is where the most interesting solutions come from.

Now you may be thinking, I’m a bit of a hypocrite: Earlier in this post, I said old ideas are best, and now I’m asking you to come up with new ideas. Don’t get me wrong, it’s OK to fill out your Crazy Eights sheets with old ideas.

But new ones are good too--just because old ideas tend to be stronger doesn’t mean they always win.

Pro tip: Get the Bit Timer app for your iPhone and set it to 30-second work periods and 10second rest periods for eight reps, so you don’t have to time it yourself. The rest period alarm acts as your 10-second warning to wind down your current sketch. (Crazy Eights are based on the 685 exercise introduced to us by Brynn Evans.)

5. Storyboard (10–20 minutes) Now we’re going to make that user story diagram more concrete, and we’re going to make something that will be shared anonymously and critiqued by the group. The goal is to take the ideas we’ve generated so far and sketch an actual UI showing how a user would move through this part of the story-- where they click, what info they enter, what they think, etc.

Start with a blank sheet of paper, and put three sticky notes on it. Each sticky note is one frame in the storyboard. It’s kind of like a comic book that you’re going to fill in. Look back at your mind map and your Crazy Eights and find the best ideas. Chances are, you’re itching to illustrate at least one of them in more detail. Now you’re ready to rock. I ask everybody to draw UI in the three frames of their storyboard showing a progression: first this, then that, then that.

There are three important storyboard rules: • Make it stand alone: Just like a real product, your drawing has to make sense by itself, without you there to pitch it.

In the next steps, people will be looking at these, but you won’t have a chance to talk about your idea until the end.

• Keep it anonymous: Don’t write your name on your drawing. You’ll want all ideas to start on a level playing field and it can be distracting to know which one was drawn by the CEO. • Give it a name: Come up with a catchy title for your idea.

That makes it easier to discuss and compare later.

When you finish the storyboards, hang them on the wall with some sticky stuff. Pro tip: Hang them side by side (like an art museum) so people won’t have to crowd in too tight to see them.

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6. Silent critique (5–10 minutes) Give everybody a bunch of dot stickers. Then, without speaking, everybody looks at the different storyboards and puts a sticker on every idea or part of an idea they like. There are no limits to how many stickers you can use, and I don’t even prevent people who want to brazenly vote for their own ideas. By the end, you’ve got a kind of heat map, and some ideas are already standing out.

7. 3-minute critiques (3 minutes per idea) Next, everybody gathers around the storyboards one at a time. First, people talk about what they liked, then we ask the person who drew it if we missed anything important. Usually the best, most popular ideas are the ones people can understand without an explanation, so the author of the storyboard often doesn’t have anything else to add. This process works far better than letting people explain their ideas first-which almost always uses up a lot of time.

Sometimes I like to do this step on a projector, especially if there are a lot of ideas to get through.

I’ll take photos of each storyboard on my phone, upload them to Dropbox, put them in a Keynote file, then make notes about parts we like with outlines and text labels as we go through on the projector.

This is easier for everyone to see, and you have a digital artifact of the ideas for later. The downside is the setup: Count on 15 extra minutes to capture and upload photos.

8. Super vote (5 minutes) Once we’ve looked at all the ideas, everybody gets one or two “special” stickers (which can be the same dot stickers from before with a pen mark on them). These are “super votes” for the ideas you think are the very best. Between the original heat map and these super votes, it’s very easy to see which are the strongest concepts.

The super votes offer a unique way to tweak the process to reflect the decision-making structure of your team or company.

Does your CEO make all final decisions about the product? If that’s the case, be honest about it and give her three super votes and everybody else one. Or maybe it’s a UX director or maybe a tandem of product and design who call the shots.

The simple rule is to give the deciders extra votes.

By default, this process will be a meritocracy, but that’s not always the way companies work, and frankly, consensus can lead to poor design decisions. The last thing you want are decisions that the deciders don’t truly support. On some teams, these may be unwritten rules, so don’t be surprised if it feels a bit awkward to bring it up--in the long run, you’ll be glad you did.

Repeat Now it’s back to the first step to start the whole cycle over again. (Don’t worry, it gets easier with every repetition.) If you split up the user story last time, it may be time to move on to another chunk. Often when I’m running a sprint I’ll realize at this point that our scope was too large, and we should just double down and keep working on the same section. Either way, the end of a cycle is a good time to take a few minutes and carefully decide where to focus next.

Expect a team to be able to do this cycle two or three times in a day before getting burned out. Throw in plenty of breaks and snacks to keep the troops moving.

Stay tuned for the next episode, where we’ll talk about how to decide which pieces of these storyboards go into your prototype.

The Future of Branding: The Digital Dimension

(More Brand Management Lessons From Silicon Valley) Jens Lundgaard

In this article you will learn... * How digital user experiences are taking over from traditional human touchpoints as the most important places for brands to come into contact with their customers * Why user experience is the future for branding agencies * Whether reputation is more important than branding

During a recent trip to the United Sates to meet Brandworkz clients at Silicon Valley Bank and Varian Medical Systems, I also had the opportunity to meet up with people from Facebook, Method, and MetaDesign. It was a fascinating trip, loaded with interesting experiences and stimulating meetings with some great people.

The collective insights of professionals I met, coupled with my own personal experiences of interaction with brands during the trip, prompted me to expand on some of the ideas I discussed in an article last year. So here goes.

1. The UI/UX Axis Digital user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) are key. In more and more areas, the primary way the customer connects to and interacts with a business is digital rather than human interface—though, of course, brand identity continues to feed powerfully into the digital experience.

Here’s an example from personal experience: At New York’s JFK Airport, I noticed that the food outlets featured touchscreen terminals on which customers made selections and ordered meals. Counter staff were there only to hand me the food once it was in the bag. My entire encounter with this brand—until the food was handed over by a human being—relied on the onscreen user interface: how it presented the food and how easy it was to order. In an airport bar, again a screen, not a person, was taking the orders. We selected Budweisers, which duly arrived by waiter.

However, two interesting observations emerged from this experience: 1. Budweiser packaging design traditionally has masses of intricate detail, designed for the physical world, and it is certainly not ideal when rendered as an on-screen thumbnail image. But therein lies the power of a long-established brand!

2. Though Bud may be able to cut it in any country, what about a newly established brand, or one that a foreigner may not recognize? I’d have a real problem working out what I was ordering from the on-screen image if I didn’t know Budweiser—unless everything was quick and easy to assimilate.

2. A Clear and Simple Message It follows from the above that when developing a brand it’s essential that the visual and verbal messaging be kept as simple as possible. If there is no human on hand to guide and persuade consumers, digital sales must begin with a crystal-clear, simple message and visuals—differentiated from the competition and totally consistent with brand identity.

Nothing particularly revolutionary about that in branding terms—but what is new is the need for branding and messaging to work even harder. It must, without any human assistance, persuade an increasingly fickle and time-starved audience while providing a great digital UI/UX.

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3. UI/UX and the Branding Agency In San Francisco we called on Method, an agency majoring in branding, UI, and digital product development. Its clients are businesses that operate in both the physical and the digital space, including Nokia.

It’s significant that Method has recently been bought by software specialist GlobalLogic. The attraction? GlobalLogic recognizes that customers now expect advanced technology and great graphic and UI design in the same package—and that the agency can help them deliver such an end-to-end service.

And consider how world-leading brands have been showing the way in the digital marketplace. Facebook focuses on UI/ UX to the point that it is almost anti-brand, while Amazon, eBay, and Apple are well established as UX giants. Even more traditional companies such as GE are building competence in this area because they see the corporate value of a unified UX strategy.

4. Online Reputation The Sunday of our US trip allowed for a bit of leisure, so we spent some time hiking around Half Moon Bay. When we arrived in the town, we came across two cafés, side by side. Which one to choose for lunch? Should we make our decision on the basis of branding, architecture, environment, or even the food on diners’ plates?

No. We immediately jumped onto Yelp on our smartphones and checked out the customer ratings of each café. After all, almost no consumer today makes a brand purchase decision without resorting to some sort of social media influence.

Indeed, for something worth as little as $10, we looked to the opinion of our peers to make a purchase decision. And a great crab sandwich that was, too!

5. Conclusion The recognition of digital UX’s importance seems to be slowly sinking into corporate culture the way “brand” did a couple of decades ago. Brand thinking has become a cornerstone in many businesses, and real financial value is being assigned to the intangible that is the brand. (However, the financial worth and the ability of branding to generate additional revenue are inexplicably still undervalued in some companies.)

So, branding agencies need to hire or train great UX people—and do it fast, or find themselves sidelined when clients are making agency hire decisions. CMOs must also start managing digital UI/UX as an asset alongside the branding asset, because they are inherently intertwined.

I’m not aware of any scientific ways of doing this yet, but keeping things simple goes a long way. For instance you could look at some of the following as KPIs: What percentage of your customer-facing digital applications or services... * * * *

Has been subject to a customer review or focus-group regarding UI and look-and-feel?

Has had UI/UX evaluated against what the competition is doing?

Has had the UI/UX and branded look-and-feel reviewed by a professional during the past three years?

Is available on iPad/iPhone and Android?

And, finally, here’s one that could fund all of the above: Have your digital applications been reviewed for missed opportunities of showcasing other services or products you offer, with a view either to deepening the relationship with your customers or increasing cross-selling (or both)?

Marketing lessons from PSYCHOPATHS Michael Taggart

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Like millions of you, I’ve been reading about the psychopaths in our midst. A slew of books posit the theory that roughly one in every 100 of us scores extremely highly in diagnostic checklists of certain personality traits – highly enough to be identified as a card-carrying psychopath.

This doesn’t mean one per cent of the population might, at any moment, extract their neighbour’s spleen and store it in the fridge next to the blancmange. Just because you are a psychopath, it doesn’t necessarily mean you want to kill people.

But you are very likely to be overflowing with characteristics like stress immunity, superficial charm, narcissism, social influence, a tolerance of punishment and lack of empathy, remorse or shame. No surprise then there are likely to be relatively higher numbers of psychopaths among FTSE 350 chief executives than in the general population. It turns out psychopaths also make good heart surgeons, bomb disposers and political careerists.

Now I’m no expert on psychopathy and I wouldn’t be so presumptuous as to try and educate you about the disorder – the books above are a good starting point – but it occurs to me that psychopathy should be interesting to marketers. By exposing the eccentric decision-making of the psychopathic one per cent, it necessarily reminds us how we, the ‘normal’ 99 per cent, make decisions, including the decision to spend money.

We go shopping with our lizard brain A clear difference, it seems, is that psychopaths have an underactive amygdala.

This is the small, ‘ancient’ part of the brain (Seth Godin calls it the ‘lizard brain’), which, in most of us, produces emotional reactions, like fear, love, and loyalty – the things we needed to survive when we were covered in hair, hunting our food on the African savannah and at constant risk of violent death in the jaws of wild animals.

Because psychopaths don’t use their amygdalae, it would be pointless trying to make them feel warm about your brand – they don’t feel warm about anything. To sell them something, you’d have to talk to the frontal lobe, the more recently evolved part of their brain; the area that gives rise to reasoning, planning and language. In other words, you’d need to explain how the trainers can protect them from injury, how the kettle is less prone to limescale…or how the meat cleaver will slice more cleanly into human flesh.

Not so for most of us. You need to get the blood racing. Accordingly, inspired brands, like Apple, have realised that often it is not as simple as telling consumers how, practically, a product or service will solve a problem efficiently. You need to tell them how that item fits in with their worldview, re-affirms how they see themselves, or supports their cause, purpose or beliefs. This is emotional, not logical. These things stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, excite the amygdala, as opposed to the modern, reasoning frontal lobe.

People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it This idea was, in my view, most ably explained by Simon Sinek in his 2009 Ted talk – “How great leaders inspire action”.

Throughout the presentation, which is 20 well-spent minutes if you have the time, he proposes that “people don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it”.

So if you want people to buy your product, you might be wasting your time explaining what it does. Sometimes you need to convince your potential customer that you share with them a belief, a reason to get out of bed in the morning.

To paraphrase a Sinek example, if Apple were talking to the psychopath, a marketing message might read: “We make great computers. They’re beautifully designed and user-friendly. Want to buy one?”

Meh. But Apple talks to the 99 per cent of us who shop with our amygdala. The company’s marketing narrative boils down to this: “In everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo, we believe in thinking differently. The way we challenge the status quo is by making our products beautifully designed and simple to use. We just happen to make great computers.

Want to buy one?”

See the difference?

So next time you bump into a psychopath, ask them what factors might make them buy your product or service – then, if you survive the encounter, do the exact opposite.

s d a e l p e Je t s o m 5 2 f o t s lis d n a r b ’ c i t o i r t a ‘p

an r Americ fo n o ti yard erican ansporta Chris Wood olize Am liable tr b e r m y s g in come to r provid , it has ar II, fo ly W te la ld r d o ing W ons. An for winn generati n r atriotic w fo o n s k n e most p ditio rand n th b o s c e a t y th s e e v It ’s ugh in a sur enture. er the to is named e of adv s d n n e GI’s und s a r a b Jeep ess and r Group’s ries. ruggedn le s y r h C catego p 25. te that in the to es in 35 ppropria y a m e a n ’s n it is d s D n p d a on an rand ous br So perha g firm, B of y-Davids 197 fam le in r h m a c o r H fr a , e s d s bran , Levi’ ay off ding re oca- Cola atriotic d sed bran p C a t t b s u o o k r t m o a Y e be New day, th ep even cted by a July holi u f d o n Heck, Je o c th r s u ers wa the Fo ly, no time for 0 consum 0 in ,5 t s 4 f teresting an ju o In d y . e e s e v c a r u la le s The ults re 16th p Americ h the res s Ford, in patriotic a it w h r y e il v th Keys, wit to hea . The o . e Top 25 rolet, which used th them all in s d n g Chev uto bra onal nly two a n the list, includin o f o rs’ emoti e e n o m o u s s e a n r w o a Jeep ting c rands represen Motors b l le a r a c e s n e a G 00 on its ads. out of 1 8 call9 f themes in o e s. scor g-waving ee y a e a fl K , h d c it n ti w a s io r s at a patr s, we wanted to all other s, according to B th d y e r p o p e to th of d n Jeep eir bran nce Day resident xpectatio e p th e d , t d n ff r n e o a e p w ik e m s engage sitively to says Robert Pas n the Ind perate o more po o e y v ll a a h n e value,” b articular rs traditio mers to p u te s t e n a k o r th c a te to ads.

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Here’s the Top 25 list: 01

02

03

04

05

Jeep

Hershey’s

Coca-Cola

Levi Strauss

Walt Disney

(98%)

(tie, 97%)

(tie, 97%)

(tie, 95%)

(tie, 95%)

06

07

08

09

10

Colgate

Zippo

Wrigley’s

Ralph Lauren

Kodak

(94%)

(93%)

(92%)

(91%)

(tie, 90%)

11

12

13

14

15

Gillette

New Balance

Harley-Davidson

Budweiser

Marlboro

(tie, 90%)

(tie, 89%)

(tie, 89%)

(tie, 88%)

(tie, 88%)

16

Ford (86%)

21

17

18

Louisville Slugger

Smith & Wesson

(tie, 85%)

(tie, 85%)

22

23

L.L. Bean

Walmart

Craftsman Tools

(tie, 82%)

(81%)

(tie, 80%)

19

20

General Electric

John Deere

(84%)

(tie, 82%)

24

25

Wilson Sporting Goods

Wrangler apparel

(tie, 80%)

(tie, 80%)

Building Brand Loyalty:

The Pearl

Jam Way

Tim Bierman, Whitney Pastorek, Aylin Zafar

Pearl Jam hasn’t released a music video in 15 years. It doesn’t do endorsements, commercials, or — heaven forbid — musicals.

Yet its Ten Club is widely regarded as the most loyal and rabid superfan base in the music industry. Here’s what a 23-yearold grunge band can teach us all about building customer relationships that last.

Imagine your iTunes library as a business analogy.

Radiohead represents the experimental, and sometimes head-scratching Google. U2 is the Nike-esque marketing powerhouse. The Beatles exemplify the game-changing Apple.

OK, but who’s our rock ’n’ roll Zappos? That band who treats its fans (and employees) like family? Pearl Jam. When it began back in 1991, Pearl Jam’s Ten Club was an ordinary fan group that sent newsletters and exclusive singles to card-carrying members. Four years later, all that changed.

After boycotting Ticketmaster for anti-competitive and monopolistic practices, Pearl Jam launched a totally independent tour that used the Ten Club to put the best tickets into the hands of its biggest fans instead of resellers. For many reasons — food poisoning, venue cancellations, and hailstorms among them — the tour was an unequivocal disaster. It should have mentally and financially sunk the band. But it didn’t, and Pearl Jam thanks its fans for that.

“We learned a lot about the importance of looking after fans and our members when it came to ticketing,” Tim Bierman (10CTim), manager of the Ten Club, tells The Build Network. “We also learned how challenging it would be to achieve our goals.”

Over the past 18 years, those goals have developed into a strategic superfan operation with roughly 200,000 active members.

“The band now packs arenas for two, sometimes three, nights in a row, thanks to thousands of intensely dedicated fans who call themselves the Jamily and travel hundreds of miles to sing along with every word,” writes Whitney Pastorek in Entertainment Weekly. “Pearl Jam has unexpectedly morphed into a modern Grateful Dead, and it just might be their saving grace.”

Here are three guiding principles of Pearl Jam’s superfan strategy: 1. Invest in your superfans, and they’ll invest in you.

For the vast majority of its live shows since 2000, Pearl Jam has reserved the best seats in the house for Ten Club members, who pay regular ticket prices in exclusive pre-sale events. To keep up with demand, Pearl Jam developed an in-house digital ticketing system that’s integrated into its password-protected Ten Club site. “We didn’t really look at it as an investment in capital, as much as an investment in our fans,” Bierman says. Last year, Pearl Jam took it a step further by partnering with

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the third-party technology company Modlife on “a new membership-based ticket ‘lottery’ system” that prompted the fastest concert sell-out in the history of Wrigley Field.

2. Trust your superfans with your brand.

Contests, giveaways, and reward systems are nothing new. But in 2012 Pearl Jam gave one of the Ten Club’s founders the ultimate thank-you: total control over the band’s set list. Brian Farias, who had seen Pearl Jam in concert 108 times, was flown to Amsterdam to attend a few shows and meet the band. There, frontman Eddie Vedder invited Farias to choose the songs Pearl Jam played live. “Forty to 50 drafts later, Farias created a set list that many fans are calling ‘the greatest’ Pearl Jam has ever performed,” writes Aylin Zafar in Time. “The band brought Farias out for a bow at the end of the show, an unbelievable moment for the superfan.”

3. Never act like a rock star.

“The band leads by example,” Bierman says. “Whether it’s a concert promoter, an usher at a show, or the fan in the back row, they are treated with respect. When you see that happening night after night, it becomes engrained in your day-to-day work. Respect for our fans is the guiding philosophy of Ten Club.”

Superfans are not your average customers; they’re the brand zealots who willingly and passionately recommend your company to others.

How do you grade your company’s relationship with its superfans?

Translating big data power to your brand Rupert Staines

The decision to interact with a brand can take many different routes and the journey to purchase is no longer twodimensional. Customers get inspiration and opinion from many different sources in their offline and online networks.

Marketers are desperate to join that journey, to understand what consumers want, desire and need. But how to do this effectively is the real challenge.

Big data is one of those buzz words being thrown around by business leaders as a way to gain insight into consumer sentiment and understand the needs of a brands’ audience. But what does ‘big data’ actually mean for marketers that are simply trying to process and understand consumer behaviour? Why do brands need to unlock big data? What’s contained within big data that needs a key?

It will not come as a surprise to many but there has always been ‘big data’; the difference is that today, technology has empowered everyone to ‘socialise’ information and made data both accessible and processable in milliseconds! Put simply, big data can provide vast quantities of vital information that marketers can use to fulfil the potential of the brand.

Understanding this data is hugely powerful and something that can really drive any business to the next level.

There are many platforms like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, which can be accessed by mobile devices where marketers can interact with consumers and gauge brand sentiment, but the challenge is not where to get the data from; it’s how to read it in real time and use it effectively. According to Juniper research, the number of smartphones and tablets will more than double by 2014, exceeding 350 million by 2017. The opportunity for marketers to capitalise on the swathes of information is reaching a tipping point, with those failing to do so being left behind.

Customers now expect a different approach and relationship to businesses. Outdated methods don’t grab consumers’ attention and are often delivered too late, rendering the advertising useless. Marketers have an unprecedented opportunity to use big data intelligently across all of their initiatives, not just advertising. Embracing an omni-channel approach will help marketers manage, target and deliver ads across web display, mobile, video and Facebook while plugging into an existing brand backend and feeding critical insight and intelligence into creative. This will put the brands back in the driving seat, and give them the transparency and control to make more effective, intelligent communications decisions.

For marketers to catapult their brands into a growth phase they need to act now to unify their approach to offline and online conversations. No longer can customer insights be presented back to the business in a silo. They need to be unified and anticipated. We now live in a totally connected and increasingly programmatic world that requires brands to develop a new and more responsive relationship to consumers… always on, relevant and useful!

People power starts hitting brands where it hurts Kenny Nicholson

Back in the day I guess life was simpler. The guy or girl in the local shop gave you bad service and you told the owner. He gave them a telling off and all was well. Not so easy when you’re talking about giant corporations, with millions of customers, huge supply chains and shareholders that often care about money more than anything else.

But, the internet revolution seems to be slowly changing this, giving people an easy way to have their voice heard, whether that’s taking five minutes to post a status update, tweet, send an email or even write a blog entry. For brands this means there may no longer be anywhere to hide. If someone wants to say something about you they no longer need you to acknowledge it, they can simply broadcast it on the World Wide Web, where millions of your current or future customers, the media and your competition can see it.

They might be being nice (good job on the V40 Mr Volvo, I love it) or they might be being nasty (pay your bloody taxes Mr Amazon). Either way you have a choice, to embrace it and try to help, or to ignore it and hope no-one notices.

Embracing feedback from consumers on social media can do your brand wonders, even turning something bad into something good. Think O2’s mobile network going down and people all over the UK being phoneless (cue panic and anger), tweeting O2 furiously to bitch, moan and threaten to switch. O2 could have come back all predictable and apologetic and probably just fuelled the anger, but they didn’t, they surprised everyone and came back with cheeky banter that entertained people and diverted their attention. A couple of my favourites being:

Bodyform did it too, when a man complained that their ads lied and Bodyform didn’t make his girlfriend happy, carefree and into roller-blading when she was on her period, they responded with a tongue in cheek, spoof video from the CEO that got them global coverage.

But many brands aren’t embracing people power (or just can’t keep up). Many are choosing to ignore people or pay lip service when they are outed on social media, feeling obliged to give more satisfactory responses because the world is watching.

TfL got slated on twitter recently for saying there were minor delays on the northern line, when passengers were in fact tweeting from the carriages (the joys of underground wifi) reporting being stuck for an hour, with others fainting around them. TfL didn’t seem so interested in responding as these reports started coming through or indeed interested in explaining why their tweets were so far from the truth.

Lies and lack of action seem to be the driving forces behind consumer frustration. We’ve had trust issues with brands for a while, but now there is growing evidence we’re just not willing to tolerate it anymore – we want to be listened to and we want the truth. It’s worth brands bearing this in mind, consumer voices are something you normally pay for, but now you can learn how to get it right and make your business more successful just by listening and talking to your customers on their turf.

There are three things to consider when you start a dialogue: 1) be personal 2) be honest and above all 3) be human. This isn’t as easy as it sounds and will involve hiring quick-thinking community managers, making sure they really understand your brand and giving them the freedom to respond immediately in the best way they think (maybe even giving them a small budget to maximise tactical opportunities).

The risk is that if you don’t, consumers will come together and start to damage your brand and your business. www.38degrees.org.uk is a site that helps people to do just this and is already mounting a campaign asking its 30k+ Npower customers to boycott them by switching providers (even helping them to make the switch easily). And www.wedeservebetter.org.uk, which has just launched, promises to use collective people power to expose the bad brands, praise the good ones and try and get them to change.

A clever (and brave) strategy that did more to show they cared about their customers than generic corporate responses, bringing the human aspect back to business and gaining them massive respect.

It seems inevitable that brands will come under increasing pressure to be genuine, add value and earn a role in people’s lives. If they don’t, collective people power will continue to grow and hit them where it hurts.

How to build following for an unglamorous brand?

Lindsey Plocek Why do Lady Gaga fans sleep on the streets of New York in glittery underwear just to score tickets to her shows? Why do sports enthusiasts wear hats made out of cheese in support of their favorite team? What motivates political activists to knock on doors during election season, and how did Oreo come to dominate America’s cookie market with more than 33 million Facebook fans?

There’s a commonality here. The brains behind these branding efforts were able to mobilize fans with emotion and inspire them to become full-blown advocates.

But what about the toilet paper, tampon, and household supply brands of the world — brands that undoubtedly face greater advocacy battles than markets like entertainment or dessert? While social media has helped glamorous industries accelerate word-of-mouth, others struggle to reach consumers who now opt-in to much marketing. How do you drive advocacy for brands that aren’t as innately moving — brands that many use and love, but just don’t think to engage with or advocate for as often?

We all know of products that won’t ever have the innate allure of an Oreo or Lady Gaga tickets — but there are core understandings about engagement that lead people to become emotionally invested. These understandings can help marketers in more challenging spaces drive advocacy, and ultimately, sales.

being clear. More than half of consumers are unaware of how brands give back, contribute to society, or create utility in their lives. Nearly all major brands invest in efforts like charitable giving, but does a lack of clear communication about the utility and social consciousness brands offer hurt consumer’s willingness to advocate?

Dish soap maker Dawn guessed the answer was yes. To create greater clarity around social consciousness, Dawn made it a major corporate and social priority to support wildlife following the BP oil spill. Dawn’s Facebook page dedicated to the effort, Dawn Everyday Wildlife Champions, has 497,629 likes, whereas the brand’s traditional page sits at 67,850. The brand’s recent social engagements speak loudly about fan’s excitement toward Dawn’s effort.

“Because of your efforts to help wildlife, I only use Dawn.

I tell everyone I know about this and ask them to use it exclusively. Thank you Dawn for caring” wrote one fan this week, with several postings much the same.

3) Join in on the conversation

1) Develop participatory systems

Before, brands in difficult spaces could rely on methods like TV advertising to get in front of consumers. Today, with greater importance placed on social media and content marketing, consumers dictate whether they even see many of a brand’s best messages. But how do you drive engagement when you market a product people need but just don’t think about often? You turn to consumers.

Consumers prefer to engage by providing their perspective.

Research shows 70% of consumers cite listening to feedback as the top reason why they participate with brands. In categories where people tend to make fewer emotional connections with brands, asking consumers for their opinion can also build an important bond between brands and consumers where there was none.

In its “Feel Good” campaign, Kleenex used social media to find 50 people tweeting about feeling sick. The brand then sent surprise care packages to the 50 sick people, and all 50 uploaded a photo of the Kleenex care package to their social networks. After launching the campaign, Kleenex continued to receive social love from sick consumers who wanted their attention.

This bond is partially a result of the Hawthorne Effect — the principle that people who are involved in research become more engaged because of the extra attention they receive.

From a marketing perspective, 64% of people asked to weigh in on things like flavors, bottle art, product names, and new offerings said they were highly likely to consider purchasing the product.

Some brands may look to word-of-mouth as a challenge.

But if more welcome the challenge as Dawn and Kleenex have, it will be interesting to see truly innovative, consumercentric campaigns emerge that allow brands to market “with” rather than “at” consumers.

2) Give people a mission beyond just a product or service Along with offering up an opinion, consumers become emotionally involved when they understand and identify with the problems a brand aims to solve, its mission, and its higher-level values. Yet research shows brands aren’t

The shifting sands of advertising: enter the brand journalist Alastair Duncan

The world of advertising is changing. Prolific online and multi-device media make for anywhere, anytime consumer engagement; while the Social Age has transformed customers into editors, airing their own critiques on a global platform, however qualified.

Savvier consumers put brands to the test, ever more indifferent to traditional advertising formats, while word of mouth and online commentary take over.

Content is king, they say – but never more so than now. Reliable content from trusted sources has come to the fore as a branding medium: giving consumers something they want as opposed to pushing out messages they’ve become conditioned to ignore.

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Enter the brand journalist The idea of journalists crossing over into the marketing mix is not new. There’s always been a corporate PR function to support reputation and news – but a journalistic background or skillset means strong qualification not just for these roles but also for content creation.

Differing from copywriters in their constant drive for objectivity and even cynicism, journalists breathe new life into marketing content, automatically operating from a robust, impartial, “no-one needs to standpoint.

The lines between branding and entertainment media have been blurring for some time, with content marketing such as Red Bull’s Stratos, ASOS’s shoppable videos – or our own client Jaguar’s recent films (pictured) featuring Damien Lewis and Lana del Rey – all paving the way for a future in which branded media is the norm.

Outward-facing brand ‘newsrooms’ seem to have followed suit organically. Coca-Cola has created its own lifestyle, sport and business title Journey; Intel, Cisco and Raytheon have invested in newsrooms and hired respected journalists, transforming their home-pages into media hubs.

Why are they doing it?

Trust has a lot to do with it: customers, losing patience with overt marketing messages, or memos from the CEO, have more faith in a known specialist within the organisation. Edelman’s own Trust Barometer ranks “technical experts inside the company” as the most credible corporate spokesperson.

And sometimes, people just want someone to deal with. O2’s well publicised outages had a huge impact on sentiment towards the brand – but in an unexpectedly positive direction, because the Twitter team handled the hundreds of complaints with humour and grace, and humanised the experience for the customer – a powerful outcome for a business brand.

Another factor is the rise of broadcasting outlets such as YouTube, and of news-publishing or socialmedia-editing toolsets (mynewsdesk, TekEngine, Hootsuite), which make corporate publishing easier.

Like many tools, these are great – but only if handled by the right people, hence the need for editorial skills.

Is it a good thing?

Undoubtedly, yes: it challenges the status quo, and that can never be a bad thing. However, there are various considerations to bear in mind: Firstly, no amount of brand guidelines and policies will help a brand that has nothing to say. Journalists want content they know will interest their readers, and are less comfortable writing selling messages and overt advertorials, so think about your content first.

Be prepared too for how much it costs. The trend in YouTube videos, for example, is towards highquality production; and Facebook and Twitter need regular feeding. Dead, old or poor-quality content is unforgiving, so invest properly.

Where’s it going next?

This is a theme just in its formative stages, and we can certainly expect more change as companies grapple with how to become publishers. Sentiment monitoring is likely to gain prevalence, enabling increasingly relevant, appealing content.

Meanwhile, corporate Twitter accounts still have some growing up to do. For the moment, like many celebrity accounts, they are merely ‘announcements’ dressed up as conversational content, so let’s see if they can develop into more natural forums to improve sentiment and build relationships.

Penetration into mainstream media is another point: will news that started in brand newsrooms eventually evolve into bigger stories? Journalism is another industry changing at a pace, so who knows how different it could look before long?

Why brands can’t afford to ignore social customer service Tamara Littleton

According to an NM Incite report, nearly three-quarters of customers would recommend a brand that gives them a ‘quick and effective’ response on social media.

Given this massive pay-off, brands are clamouring to get their social customer care in order – a Mashable post revealed that 80% of companies plan to use social media for customer service.

And it’s not just brand advocacy where companies can win big. Below are the main benefits, in my view, of delivering top-notch social customer service, based on a paper eModeration has just researched on the subject.

Meet customers on their own terms If you’re a brand, you can’t stop people talking about you on social media. The only choice you have is to join the conversation or not. And in the age of the ‘empowered buyer’, the smart brands have quickly realised there’s actually no choice at all – you have to get involved if you want to keep your customers happy and protect your reputation.

If users are asking you questions on Twitter, you should tweet right back. If they’re going to town with a gripe on your Facebook page, you roll with the punches and fix the problem. You can’t risk the potential damage caused by ignoring them. And you can be smart about intercepting problems. If someone’s complaining about a rival product, get into the conversation and offer them a better deal.

Offer a better customer experience As this report in CRM Buyer attests, an overarching goal for any self-respecting customer service department should be to ensure customers enjoy the same high level of service regardless of what channel they use.

To get an ‘omnichannel’ snapshot of your customer service and improve the customer experience, you need to integrate your social data with your CRM system (check out Comufy for this). When a customer tweets to complain, they expect that if they call later to chase up the issue, the person on the other end of the line will be aware of the problem.

There’s nothing more frustrating than having to start over from scratch. Joined-up, multi-channel customer service is the Holy Grail for marketers.

Win customers’ trust and respect Given the deluge of marketing consumers are swamped by daily, it’s no surprise they can be a little cynical about a brand’s official output. Avaya found that 51% of consumers have more faith in a company’s online forums than they do its website.

This may not come as a great surprise. But it does underline

the importance for brands to monitor forums for issues or negative feedback or mis-information, and come back quickly to put the problem right, or correct information.

Prevent customers broadcasting their problems to the world People will talk about your brand – positively or negatively – whether you like it or not. And human nature being what it is, they’re more likely to take to the social media airwaves if they’ve had a poor experience. Given the immediacy and exponential reach of social media, an awful lot of people can hear about one person’s problem very quickly.

The good news is we’re starting to see specialist issues resolution services emerge, which are helping brands tackle Facebook pages, Twitter feeds and online forums plagued by complaints and unresolved issues. Resolver is one to keep an eye on – it handles customer complaints for free, with brands buying its analysis on how to improve their customer service.

Talk with younger audiences The 18-25 demographic is notoriously hard to reach. Avaya found that the number of people interacting with a brand on social media increases dramatically in this age bracket.

This is reason enough to get your social customer service in order.

Ease the pressure on customer care teams.

Self-service communities and dedicated social care communities can really lighten the load of customer service teams. ASOS uses Get Satisfaction for a (partly) self-service community for ASOS Marketplace, and has won some rave reviews for its social customer service.

The two big upsides to this approach are that conversations (and complaints) are away from public channels, and queries can be grouped by subject, making it much easier for a customer service rep to address them in one go.

Book, Line & Sinker

By Geoffrey Moore

By Harry Beckwith

Crossing the Chasm

The Life of PT Barnum

By identifying the differences between “innovators” and “laggards” and everything in between, Geoffrey Moore creates a roadmap for how new markets develop. While his book focuses on high tech, the lessons that he draws and the example he gives are applicable to every industry and business situation.

You may think that “personal branding” is all the rage, but the true expert of self promotion was the great PT Barnum, who managed to enhance, build, change and strengthen his public image over half a century, forcing the world to take him on his own terms. Fascinating stuff.

Best quote: “’Why me?’ cries out the unsuccessful entrepreneur. Or rather ‘Why not me?’ ‘Why not us?’ chorus his equally unsuccessful investors.

‘Look at our product. Is it not as good--nay, betterthan the product that beat us out?’... In fact, feature for feature, the less successful product is often arguably superior.”

Best quote: “I have been a farmer’s boy and a merchant, a clerk and a manager, a showman and a bank-president. I have been in jails and in palaces; have known poverty and abundance; have travelled over a large portion of two Continents; have encountered all varieties of men, have seen every phase of human character.”

By PT Barnum

Selling the Invisible

Influence

The most significant economic transformation of the past 50 years has been the change, in the United States and Europe, from a manufacturing economy to a service-based one. According to author Harry Beckwith, the key to making the transition successfully is your unseen ability to build strong relationships with the people with whom you work.

As useful to salespeople as it is to marketers, Bob Cialdini’s book is all about how people say “Yes!” and what you can do bring them to that point.

In a series of intensely practical observations, Cialdini reveals how your actions and words can profoundly effect the desires and needs of your customers, colleagues and even your competitors.

Essential stuff.

Best quote: “The new marketing is more than a way of doing; it is a way of thinking. It begins with an understanding of the distinctive characteristics of services--their invisibility and intangibility--and of the unique nature of service prospects and users-their fear, their limited time, their sometimes illogical ways of making decision, and their most important drives and needs.”

Best quote: “There is a group of people who know very well where the weapons of automatic influence lie and employ them regularly and expertly to get what they want. They go from social encounter to social encounter requestin others to comply with their wishes; their frequency of success is dazzling.”

By Bob Cialdini

Positioning

Buy-ology

As true today as it was when published 20 years ago, this classic by Al Ries and Jack Trout lays out the basics of finding where your product fits in larger picture of what other people want and what other companies are doing. Some of the case studies are showing a little age, but this remains a seminal, essential text.

By injecting neuroscience into the art of marketing, Martin Lindstrom explains how everything we think and do is influenced by mental forces of which we are only vaguely aware (if at all). More importantly, Lindstrom shows how these impulses might be scientifically measured and then used to hone marketing campaigns. Scary, maybe, but sci-fi no longer.

Best quote: “Positioning is now what you do to a product. Positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect.”

By Al Ries and Jack Trout

By Martin Lindstrom

Best quote: “If marketers could uncover what is going on in our brains that makes us choose one brand over another--what information passes through our brain’s filter and what information doesn’t--well, that would be key to truly building brands of the future.

Permission Marketing

Guerilla Marketing

For decades marketing pundits thought about marketing in terms of cramming your brand messages down people’s throats. Seth Godin turned this concept upside down by pointing people have so many choices today that they’re going to pick and choose what messages they want to hear.

Thirty years ago, Jay Conrad Levinson took marketing out of the world of Mad Men and huge corporations into the hands of entrepreneurs and small businesses. The book explains why it’s no longer necessary to spend a great deal of money to gain visibility, as long as you’re willing to get creative. Amazingly, the book got it “spot on” way before anybody was talking about “going viral.”

Best quote: “Marketers want to get their messages in front of you. They must get their messages in front of you, just to survive. The only problem is-do you really want more marketing messages?

By Seth Godin

By Jay Conrad Levinson

Best quote: “Guerilla marketing requires you to comprehend every facet of marketing, experiment with many of them, winnow out the losers, double up on the winners, and then use the marketing tactics that prove themselves to you in the battleground of real life.”

groupisd.com

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The Long Tail

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

While the 20th century was dominated by hit products, the 21st century will be dominated by niche products, according to Chris Anderson’s groundbreaking explanation of web-based purchasing habits. As useful as this book is, you can get the gist of it from his original article in Wired.

Ultimately, marketing means understanding groups of people and how they think. While technology has changed over the decades, people haven’t, so it shouldn’t be all THAT surprising that in 1841, Charles Mackay captured the essence of bonehead group-think. Read this, and you’ll never be surprised by events like the Great Recession or the popularity of the Kardashians.

Best quote: “As demand shifts towards the niches, the economics of providing them improve further, and so on, creating a positive feedback loop that will transform entire industries-and the culture-for decades to come.”

By Charles Mackay

By Chris Anderson

Zag: The #1 Strategy of HighPerformance Brands

The Brand Gap

By Marty Neumeier

THE BRAND GAP is the first book to present a unified theory of brand-building. Whereas most books on branding are weighted toward either a strategic or creative approach, this book shows how both ways of thinking can unite to produce a “charismatic brand”-a brand that customers feel is essential to their lives. In an entertaining two-hour read you’ll learn: the new definition of brand the five essential disciplines of brandbuilding how branding is changing the dynamics of competition the three most powerful questions to ask about any brand why collaboration is the key to brand-building how design determines a customer’s experience how to test brand concepts quickly and cheaply the importance of managing brands from the inside 220-word brand glossary

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

By Marty Neumeier

Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits

Emotional Branding: The New Paradigm for Connecting Brands to People

We are now living in a world with over one hundred brands of bottled water. The United States alone is home to over 45,000 shopping malls. And there are more than 19 million customized beverage choices a barista can whip up at your local Starbucks. Whether it’s good or bad, the real question is why we behave this way in the first place. Why do we telegraph our affiliations or our beliefs with symbols, signs, and codes?

Emotional Branding is the best selling revolutionary business book that has created a movement in branding circles by shifting the focus from products to people. The “10 Commandments of Emotional Branding” have become a new benchmark for marketing and creative professionals, emotional branding has become a coined term by many top industry experts to express the new dynamic that exists now between brands and people.

By Marc Gobe

By Debbie Millman

Brandwashed: How Marketers and Advertisers Obscure the Truth, Manipulate Our Minds, and Persuade Us to Buy Marketing visionary Martin Lindstrom has been on the front lines of the branding wars for over twenty years. Here, he turns the spotlight on his own industry, drawing on all he has witnessed behind closed doors, exposing for the first time the full extent of the psychological tricks and traps that companies devise to win our hard-earned dollars.

By Martin Lindstrom

Storytelling: Branding in Practice

By Klaus Fog, Christian Budtz, Baris Yakaboylu

As a concept, storytelling has won a decisive foothold in the debate on how brands of the future will be shaped. Yet, companies are still confused as to how and why storytelling can make a difference to their business. What is the point of telling stories anyway? What makes a good story? And how do you go about telling it so that it supports the company brand? This book is written for practitioners by practitioners. Through real life examples, simple guidelines and practical tools, the book aims to inspire companies to use storytelling as a means of building their brand internally as well as externally.