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07 11 Dear Friends: Its roasting in this part of the world. And things on the brands’ front are no less hot. This issue we cover the key lessons from sports icon LeBron’s James marketing success. The BrandZ listing of the Top 100 brands is a wake up call to the new reality of brands and their pecking order in an equally informed world. We also do a little bit of crystal ball gazing and look at how advertising would be like in the year 2020. We also examine the reason why Public Relations is getting killed while we also touch upon the fundamentals of a great logo design. What would certainly enthuse motorbike enthusiasts is the feature on Triumph, the once iconic bike brand and its plans to achieve that cult status all over again. The football fever is at its zenith and we have captured the 84 years old history of the World Cup in typographics. All this and more to kick on in this edition. So until the next one, may the best team win!
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Managing Editor: Suresh Dinakaran Creative Head/Director Operations: Pravin Ahir Magazine Concept & Design/ New Media Specialist: Mufaddal Joher Country Head, UK: Sagar Patil Country Head, India: Rohit Unni Digital Marketing Strategist: Mark Cijo Associate: Brand Success: Andre Van Helsdingen Web Specialist: Prasanta Kumar Sahu Online Support: Mahendra Kumar Behera
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CONTENTS
The Makings Of A Great Logo LeBron James’s Five Keys to Marketing Success What could advertising look like in 2020? The Top 25 Marketing Influencers [Infographic] 3 keys to Triumph becoming a great motorcycle brand (again) Social Media Special Report: The BrandZ™ Verve Index From New York to London to Berlin, the Race is on For City Dotbranding The Real Reason Public Relations Is Getting Killed The World Cup’s 84-Year History Reduced To Typographic Posters Where Do Eureka Moments Come From? Two Designers’ Quest To Create The Magazine “The Beautiful Game” Deserves Making a case for Cele(Sale)brity Endorsement! Book, Line & Sinker
The Makings Of A Great Logo SIX QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF WHEN DESIGNING A BRAND Lo Min Ming Your company’s logo is the foundation of your business branding. It is probably the first interaction that you will have with your customers. An effective logo can establish the right tone and set the proper ethos. After years of crafting logos for different projects, I’ve come up with a set of questions that I always ask myself before delivering a new logo.
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1. WHAT EMOTIONS DOES THE LOGO EVOKE? Above all design guidelines, the most important criterion is whether the logo reflects the character of the company. The emotions that the logo evoke should be appropriate to the company values. For example, the Disney logo evokes a sense of happiness and optimism. The curvy, fun typeface is appropriate for a company that has been making cartoons and animated pictures for kids. However, a similar logo style on a sales platform would not be appropriate. Designers should understand the psychology of colors and the effect that typeface has on the design of a great logo. For example, green promotes relaxation and usually reflects growth, health, and the environment. Red, on the other hand, may evoke danger and passionate emotions. Similarly for typefaces, Garamond, Helvetica, and Comic Sans all elicit very different sentiments. Serif fonts like Garamond promote the idea of respect and tradition, and are hence more suitable for an environment that demands integrity such as a university or a news publisher. Sans Serif fonts like Helvetica are clean and modern, and are well suited for hightech businesses. Casual script fonts like Comic Sans are probably best left for fun companies such as toy companies. A good understanding of the psychology of colors, typefaces, and shapes is an important part of making a great logo.
BEHIND EVERY GREAT LOGO IS A STORY.
The styling of the Disney logo is appropriate for a company that aims to be fun, but such a style would not be appropriate for a sales platform company.
2. IS IT UNIQUE? CAN IT BE INSTANTLY RECOGNIZABLE? A great logo is distinctive, memorable, and recognizable. Even if you have only seen it once, you should still be able to remember what it looks like after a period of time. A good way to test this is to show your logo to a friend, then cover it up and have your friend describe the logo in a week. A fresh pair of eyes can be very effective in figuring out the most memorable components of a logo. In addition, if the logo reminds you of others you have seen, it is not distinct enough.
The logos of Path and Pinterest are very similar.
3. HOW DOES IT LOOK IN BLACK AND WHITE? When I begin designing a logo, I always start in black and white. Designing with this limitation first forces you to make sure that the logo is recognizable purely by its shape and outline, and not by its color. A strong logo is one that is still memorable just by its contours. A one-color logo also provides the benefit of using your brand easily in multiple mediums with different backgrounds and textures.
It is much harder to recognize the National Geographic symbol once we remove its signature yellow color.
4. WHAT’S THE MEANING BEHIND THE LOGO? Behind every great logo is a story. A great logo is not about slapping your business name on a generic shape, which is why choosing from ready-made logos is a poor idea. A logo has to have a meaningful story. A good designer first understands the culture of the company, the tone of the product, and the vision of the business, much before embarking on ideas for the logo. The end result of a quality logo is reflective of the philosophy and values of the company.
The arrow in the logo represents that Amazon sells everything from A to Z and the smile on the customer’s face when they buy a product.
5. WILL THE LOGO STAND THE TEST OF TIME? How will the logo look in two, 10, 20 years? Designers should avoid getting sucked into flavor-of the-month trends. Trends like ultra-thin fonts and flat shadows are design styles that will probably not stand the test of time. Simple is far better than complex. A simple yet memorable logo can be used in 20 years without looking dated. A good way to test the logo is to let it sit with you for a while before releasing it. Some logos grow with you--the more you look at it, the more you like it. Some logos start to feel nauseating after a while--the more you look at it, the more you hate it. If after a couple of weeks with the logo you find it boring, the logo is probably not strong or timeless enough.
TO TEST A LOGO, LET IT SIT WITH YOU FOR A WHILE BEFORE RELEASING IT.
The simplistic outline and shape of the Apple Inc. logo allows it to endure the test of time. The first prototype of the logo would definitely not be suitable today.
6. IS IT CLEAR AND DISTINCT IN SMALL DIMENSIONS? Another way to make sure logos are simple and recognizable is to scale it down dramatically. Even at tiny resolutions, a strong logo should still be recognizable at a glance. This is also a good test to make sure that the logo is not complicated with unnecessary design flourishes. Here, you see that the Nike, McDonalds, Twitter, and WWF logos are still very distinct at small sizes. The GE and Starbucks logos are far more cluttered, and less recognizable when they are small.
These are not hard-and-fast rules, just guidelines for making an effective logo. It is still possible to make a strong, complicated logo, but understand the trade-offs.
Lo Min Ming is the cofounder of Pixelapse, a visual version control platform for designers. This article was edited and republished with permission from the author.
LeBron
James’s
Five Keys to Marketing Success Josh Haynam “King James” as he’s called by the media is one of the greatest players of all time, and there’s a method behind his madness. When his natural ability reaches its limit, LeBron continues to improve, using a few simple but effective life principles that can be directly applied to your marketing efforts. Here they are...
1. Have a practice schedule (and stick to it) Not every day is great. Sometimes, we wake up and don’t
feel the motivation to get work done. But a schedule will help ensure that even on those days what needs to get done gets done. Having a schedule and sticking to it actually makes us feel good because checking things off of a to-do list releases serotonin—a chemical stimulant produced by our bodies. In 2010, Lebron James was already established as force in the league, but he had a problem shooting three pointers: Just 33% of his long-range shots were going in. Knowing an improvement had to be made; he hit the gym—hard. Increasing his daily shooting dramatically and jacking up hundreds of threes every day, he stuck with an intense shooting schedule for two years as the results trickled in... slowly.
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keep track of how much of your time is productive, and FocusBooster, which will block out 25-minute segments for hyper-productivity.)
4. Be a networker LeBron James’s goal in life has been to be the greatest basketball player he can possibly be. That doesn’t mean he’s ignored how to be a networker. Lebron understands the importance of networking and takes advantage of it. “Basketball was my life—I just wanted to play and make a career,” he told Men’s Health. “It was never like I went to work every day and said, ‘Hey, I’m going to use this to make other business opportunities.’ But now that they’ve come, I’ve embraced them.” What opportunities have you ignored? Squandered?
To follow LeBron’s method for improvement with your marketing, set up a calendar and make sure every member of your team is involved with the schedule. (You can try using CoSchedule or a similar tool) Just as with LeBron’s practice schedule, there’s a drastic difference between marketing routinely versus sporadically, the following chart shows just how big that difference is.
Every day there are opportunities for creating lasting connections if we’d only slow down and take time to explore them. Pursue new partnerships for your business in verticals that aren’t traditional; think outside the box. Try keeping an “interesting people fund,” money set aside specifically to be spent on expanding your network. Use it to take people to lunch or build out a partnership just for the fun of it.
5. Make others better
2. Have a short memory
“In our sport, if you don’t have your teammates, you don’t have anything,” James says. Marketing isn’t basketball (unfortunately), but the same principle applies. The best ideas and greatest accomplishments are often the result of many smart people working together. Use your skills to improve the people you work with.
Start fresh every single morning, and don’t let any level of success go to your head. “It’s very easy to do that, especially in our league, because you’re paid so much money.” James told Men’s Health magazine. “Those mornings I say to myself, A lot of people do that. But the ones who say ‘I don’t feel like doing it’ and still go do it become the best. I want to be the best, so I go out and do the work. It’s a responsibility. I have my name to uphold.”
In game seven of the 2013 Eastern Conference finals, LeBron James offered to take his teammate Dwayne Wade’s place guarding the opponent’s best player, Paul George. Essentially, LeBron was taking on a tougher role in the game so Dwayne Wade would be freed up to score more points. James was putting his own ego aside to help his teammate be better. The result? A decisive victory and, eventually, an NBA finals win.
Whether your marketing is going well and you feel like an allstar marketer, or your marketing is faltering and you feel as if you’re treading water, there’s a temptation to get stagnant and falter from your schedule. But remember that you have a name to uphold and there are a thousand other marketers who would love to steal your customer base away.
In your marketing team, people have projects they are best at. Make it your job to keep each member on the tasks that are best suited to their strengths. If there is an impediment, a “defender” that is preventing optimal work, take it on yourself.
3. Don’t give in to distractions “I laugh and joke, but I don’t get distracted very easily,” Lebron told Men’s Health. Nothing kills progress like distractions. The ability to “plug in” and pound out work is a trait of the successful. James ascribes his success to commitment: “Commitment is a big part of what I am and what I believe. How committed are you to winning? How committed are you to being a good friend? To being trustworthy? To being successful? How committed are you to being a good father, a good teammate, a good role model? There’s that moment every morning when you look in the mirror: Are you committed, or are you not?” (Monitor your distractions using RescueTime, which will
(A practical way to discover what each member is best at is to take a Myers-Briggs personality test and compare your strengths within the team. If you’re a team of one, take the test to better understand where you can personally excel.) *** If LeBron James lives up to his own expectations to be one of the greatest basketball players of all time, it’ll be for good reason. He has set up a system for improving himself that’s taken his natural talent and propelled his career into stuff of legend. Take a page from his book and watch your marketing efforts reach new heights. Josh Haynam is the co-founder of Interact, a place for creating beautiful and engaging quizzes that generate email leads. He writes about new ways to connect with customers and build trust with them.
What could advertising look like in 2020? Landor Associates
Topic 1: What could/should advertising look like in 2020? No one will be talking about advertising as the first line of offense in a typical marketing plan by 2020. The everexpanding facets of marketing communications will have evolved exponentially from where we are today, and “pure” advertising—the kind you watch on TV, listen to on the radio, pass on a billboard, or read in a printed magazine or newspaper (remember those?)—will have gone the way of the buggy whip and tear-out coupon. The impact of this on the old conventions of ad making? Let’s start with the basics, like the classic “advertising reel,” the historical calling card of ad agencies everywhere that invariably features cute and clever 30- and 60-second spots strung together to demonstrate creative prowess to a targeted prospect. These will become increasingly irrelevant. Yes, that award at Cannes was terrific, but did it favorably and relevantly impact customer perceptions and/or, gods forbid, actually help them sell something? And how did that funny and “disruptive” ad idea with the flying dogs work within and across all of the other communication vehicles at the client’s disposal? “We are responsible for connecting with people in ways that are instructive, not disruptive…disruption is over,” Kimberly Kadlec, worldwide vice president of marketing for Johnson & Johnson, said last October at the Association of National Advertisers’ Masters of Marketing conference in Orlando. Clients and prospects are already seeking more comprehensive success stories about breakthrough programs, built around a meaningful brand idea that drives integrated social, experiential, and earned and paid media initiatives in ways that enhance brand equity and provide demonstrable results. How did the agency orchestrate the client’s overall marketing efforts behind the launch of its new product or service, how did it serve its overall brand value, and what did it ultimately accomplish? Maybe the Effies will finally get the full esteem they deserve in our industry—it’s not what you promise, after all, but what you actually deliver that counts in the end.
Where does creativity fit into this new, more collaborative world? Does it die if we all become slaves to exclusively delivering measurable marketing results by 2020? Marc Pritchard, the well-regarded global marketing and brandbuilding officer of Procter & Gamble, also spoke at the recent ANA conference and observed: “Insight without creativity is boring, but creativity without insight is worthless.” We already have more data at our disposal than we can usefully assimilate as marketers—and this will only grow by quantum leaps in the decade to come. The challenge is how to discern the information that has the most relevant value and what to do with it. As the search for meaningful insight clearly becomes more challenging, the demand for exceptional creativity among all of us—“suits” and “creatives” alike—does not diminish. Rather, it will be up to our emerging leaders in advertising, public relations, digital and direct marketing, event management, and social media specialties to coalesce around great thinking. It is they who will need to identify, craft, sell-in, activate, and infuse a compelling brand idea and story into a fully encompassing marketing program that engages customers and motivates results. The ad agency of today must therefore become the “marketing maestro” of the future—leading the vast communications industry as curators of best-of-class ideas and their implementation. Successful practitioners will be “communications customizers,” creatively and confidently assembling the multiple tools at their disposal in the service of client brand and business-building initiatives, be they tactical or strategic. No one size—or tool—will fit all, and it will be the ad agency of the future’s opportunity and, frankly, obligation to understand and orchestrate all of these tools as efficiently and effectively as possible if this industry is to stay relevant and vibrant. But in a digitized world where barriers between countries, clients, customers, and collaborators start to break down and the lines blur, there is now an historic opportunity for ad agencies to again lead us to exciting high ground and make sense of it all!
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Topic 2: What does the industry need to do now to prepare for this future? If ad agencies intend to maintain a leadership role in the marketing services industry of the future—and if they don’t, they will most certainly be trailing behind it—they may want to start by reconsidering what they plan to call themselves. “Ad agency” as a term may be familiar and one we’re fond of, but it implies a one-trick pony, for which the solution to virtually every marketing communications challenge ultimately resides in a piece of advertising copy. Sadly, this too often remains the mindset of many of today’s ad agency professionals, particularly among the young and less experienced in the industry. So the first step toward preparation for a brave new world of marketing communications is arguably education and training. Are middle managers and their teams familiar with what a PR firm does, or how digital media, direct marketing, or events marketing works, or how and when a branding and design agency best serves client needs? To effectively wield these tools with clients, young ad agency professionals must come to know them as well as they know how to evaluate a media plan or create a copy platform. Is there a more effective and appropriate way to seed a new branding idea than via a 30-second TV spot on prime time network or cable? What is the total customer journey when making decisions about a given product or service, and how do we best engage the consumer at the most opportune and efficient moments? How best to disseminate a message across multiple hard-to-reach audiences without expending a mass media-sized investment? How can earned media be employed to add credibility to a client’s advertised product claims, and what is the best way to engage the customer in a full brand experience, whether online or in person? These are the issues our clients are thinking about every day, and they need help from communications professionals who get the whole picture. Today’s ad execs must become as much the curators and molders of great marketing ideas as they have been historically hooked on being their supposed originators. Clients will be looking for maestros who will be knowledgeable in all the standard and burgeoning fields of marketing communications, comfortable in giving others the lead as opportunity and success require, and willing to park egos at the door when it comes to championing new ideas,
wherever they’re sourced. This is new turf for most agencies, but it is the only way to construct a cohesive, breakthrough marketing effort that takes full advantage of all the arrows in the quiver. Ford CMO Jim Farley has been an early and passionate advocate for just such a model with his marketing communications agencies, which in the United States is WPP’s Team Detroit. This is an agency without borders— walking its halls, a casual visitor has no real idea where Wunderman (direct marketing) meets JWT (advertising) meets VML (digital) meets public relations. This is completely by design: “The agency and client practice ‘TRAIN’: talent, resource, and insight network, which means they find the best resources for any given project, whether within the Team Detroit-WPP construct or outside,” says Farley. Team Detroit then brings its curated selection of best-of-class talent in for whatever the project or challenge requires. This philosophy and structure provide Ford and Team Detroit access to top people and a highly collaborative creative environment while still contracting with a single agency. It ensures a ready supply of great creativity while maintaining single agency control and responsibility. As a result, the process breeds innovation and cooperation, focusing the team on the best solution possible versus the best solution available within traditional agency confines. As Farley notes, this requires a strong creative director, secure in his or her abilities, who has the client’s best interest at heart. It is not a role for easily bruised egos. Can this agency model work for every situation? Undoubtedly not, but it is a far more forward-looking approach than what most traditional ad agencies are even willing to contemplate these days. The notion of branded skill sets and internal compartmentalization is fast becoming a burden, not a selling asset—just as speaking of our “digital department” will soon become the equivalent of talking about our “TV Department,” as ad agencies once did back in the 1950s. It is an increasingly seamless, borderless world we are living in, and it is time agencies again led the conversation and the solution. The clock is ticking. This article was first published as a contribution to the Wharton Future of Advertising Program’s Advertising 2020 Project
The Top 25 Marketing Influencers [Infographic] Verónica Maria Jarski Want to know who the biggest influencers are in marketing? Here are the top 25, according to InsideView. The criteria for inclusion in the list consisted of the following: being actively engaged on social media, being a hot commodity at conferences, being sought out for product or business endorsements, changing the marketing industry, and constantly sharing best-practices. Topping the list of marketing influencers is MarketingProfs’ own Ann Handley, followed by Ardath Albee, Carlos Hidalgo, Charlene Li, and Craig Rose. Check out the infographic to find out who the other top influencers are and to get a dose of inspiration for your own marketing:
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Veronica Maria Jarski is the Opinions editor and a senior writer at MarketingProfs.
3 keys to Triumph becoming a great motorcycle brand (again) Triumph Motorcycles: The Rise, Fall and Revival of an Icon Knowledge @ Wharton, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania When motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel attempted the longest jump of his career — 141 feet over the fountains at Caesar’s Palace, Las Vegas, on New Year’s Eve 1967 — he did it riding a Triumph. It was a logical choice given Triumph’s reputation for performance and scorching acceleration. The bike’s 650cc twin platform engine set the land speed record — 214.46 mph — as the world’s fastest motorcycle in 1956, a title it held (save for 17 days) for 17 consecutive years. Today, Triumph is the fastest growing motorcycle brand in the United States. Not only has Triumph North America experienced 29 months of sales growth, a 157% increase in revenue and opened 50 new retail stores, the company has almost doubled the annual volume of new motorcycle sales on the continent. The high-speed growth of Triumph is the result of an aggressive new strategy driven by North American CEO Greg Heichelbech. But, the journey of this century-and-a-quarter-old icon has been far from an easy ride. Heichelbech detailed the history of the storied Triumph brand and his vision to make it the market leader at the recent Retail and Consumer Goods Growth Summit organized by
Knowledge@Wharton, Wharton’s Jay H. Baker Retailing Center and Momentum Event Group. The company began after Siegfried Bettmann emigrated from Germany to Coventry, England, in 1885, and began selling bicycles as the Triumph Cycle Company. Three years later, the firm manufactured the first Triumph-branded bicycles and by 1902 had added an engine to produce its first motorcycle. World “I pulled the staff together War I was a boon for the company, in a conference room which provided and spent the day asking, more than 50,000 “Trusty Triumphs” ‘What’s wrong with your — the Model H department?’ We ended Roadster often cited as the first modern up with 300 large Post-it motorbike — to the notes on the board.” Allied forces. “The Trusty Triumph saved their butts many times,” Heichelbech noted.
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Triumph expanded into automobiles with its purchase of Dawson Car Company in 1921, but it split the car business from motorcycles in 1936. Over the next four decades, Triumph would introduce the parallel twin platform engine, set multiple speed records and race victories, and cement itself as an innovator and performance leader. It became popular with the likes of Steve McQueen, Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley and other celebrities, imbuing motorcycling with a sheen of glamour and dominating motorcycle sales worldwide for extended periods. The glory days of the 1950s and 1960s came to an abrupt halt, however, with the introduction of the Honda by Japan.
Rise and Fall “Triumph had a quality problem,” including persistent electrical problems, oil leaks and carburetor issues, said Heichelbech. “The BSA Group bought it and then sold it to Norton.” Union and management turmoil ensued, and in the late 1970s, the government stepped in and the Triumph brand became defunct. Then in the 1980s, real estate developer John Bloor stumbled onto the Coventry factory grounds. When he bought the land, he also got the rights to the Triumph name. Although the lore is that Bloor had never ridden a motorcycle, rather than bulldoze the factory, he decided to retool it, adopt some of the Japanese manufacturing techniques and create new, innovative, world-class products. A fire leveled the factory in 2002, but Bloor rebuilt it. Then in 2008, when the world financial crisis hit, the motorcycle market collapsed. “Sales of U.S. motorcycles across all brands dropped from 650,000 units to 375,000 units,” said Heichelbech. Heichelbech grew up riding dirt bikes and racing motocross. Milwaukee-based Harley Davidson was in his backyard. After earning his undergraduate degree in marketing at the University of Wisconsin in 1989 (later adding an MBA from Loyola University), he decided to apply for a job at Harley. Among other things, Heichelbech noted that Harley was known for its fierce loyalty to American manufacturing. “If you drove a foreign car, the interview was over,” he added. “I drove a Ford at the time and I got the job.” For the next two decades, Heichelbech steeped himself in the industry, traveling the world on Harley’s behalf and working his way up the corporate hierarchy through positions in field operations, marketing and dealer development. A number of his colleagues ended up at Triumph and suggested he come over. “I looked at the brand, and it was really the best opportunity out there,” he said, adding that the chance to revive a brand that had once been as strong as Harley was a powerful incentive. “I wanted it to be the dominant import brand,” he noted. Heichelbech became CEO of Triumph Motorcycles North America, the global company’s largest subsidiary, in November 2010 with responsibility for U.S. and Canadian
“The idea is to give demo rides” to get potential customers to experience the thrill of the bikes.
sales, marketing and distribution. At the time, the division employed 50 people, generated $74 million in annual revenue and distributed motorcycles through 165 dealerships. When compared with Honda, Yamaha, Suzuki, Kawasaki, Harley Davidson, BMW and Ducati, Triumph was at the bottom of the heap in North America. The primary culprits were lack of brand awareness, positioning and distribution issues.
The Revival “After 20 years in the industry, I knew what was broken,” Heichelbech said. “I pulled the staff together in a conference room and spent the day asking, ‘What’s wrong with your department?’ We ended up with 300 large Post-it notes on the board. It was very helpful in determining the tactical changes.” The next stop was the 14-member dealers’ council. “We were in Atlanta in January, and there was a snowstorm, of all things, so a one-day gathering turned into living with these guys for three days,” he recalled “Let me tell you, I learned a lot about what we needed to do and how to go to market.” The company’s business model was broken, Heichelbech added, and until the dealers were convinced it was fixed, they were not willing to invest in Triumph. Infrastructure was a big issue. Triumph still relied heavily on Excel spreadsheets, according to Heichelbech, which didn’t make the company easy to work with from a dealer’s perspective. The ability to match supply with demand was compromised. “We couldn’t ship anything out of our warehouse due to poor systems, bad layout, the wrong inventory and aging inventory.” In addition, since most motorcycle dealers carry three to five different lines of bikes, they have to work with 10 or more different information portals or dealer management systems. These systems track and automate various components of running a dealership including finance, sales, parts, inventory and administration. The feedback inspired Heichelbech to ditch his logistics department and use UPS for inventory management, a move that raised his fill rate, i.e., the ability to supply dealers with needed product, from 50% to 99%. He also opened a customer service operation that is available 24/7 365 days a year. “We were the first in the industry to have one for both dealers and our end customers,” Heichelbech noted. “It funnels all calls to Salesforce.com, which also collects all data from social media.” The service line doesn’t rely on voice mail, he added: Within two rings, a representative answers. The operation fielded some 60,000 phone calls over nine months ending this past March. “Our average close rate on an inquiry is 22 minutes, but it’s often done in just five minutes,” Heichelbech said.
The other big piece of the puzzle was positioning and awareness. Who was Triumph? Consumers wondered, “Are they still in business?” and “Do they sell cars or motorcycles?” Heichelbech noted. He implemented a strategy based around building an emotional connection with the consumer and added some new approaches to the traditional marketing mix, which historically included attending rallies such as Sturgis Week, now in its 74th year, and Daytona Bike Week. “The idea is to give demo rides,” to get potential customers to experience the thrill of the bikes, he said. “We’d spend $100,000 and see 5,000 people [at the rallies]. The trouble is, half of them are what we in the business call ‘professional demo riders.’”
“I don’t want incremental growth. I want to be number one.”
If you go to Daytona these days, don’t expect to find Triumph there. Heichelbech has found more fertile ground with social media and a partnership with denim company Lucky Brand. “The deal with Lucky Brand has been great,” said Heichelbech, while noting he’s been able gain broader visibility for the Triumph brand while spending considerably less money than the cost of being at the rallies. For example, Lucky produced a self-promotional video that included Triumph Motorcycles provided by Heichelbech. “It cost me just two motorcycles and I got 20 million views on YouTube,” he said, referring to a video that Lucky produced that included Triumph motorcycles contributed by the company. He’s also worked with the clothing label to introduce a line of Triumph-branded clothes that includes T-shirts, sweaters and jackets.
“We sell more Triumph T-shirts at Lucky than we do at our dealers,” he added, but he also found a way to boost clothing sales at the dealerships. “I just put it in their stores: 10 leather jackets, 20 shirts, to make it real to our customers, so customers can feel us,” Heichelbech noted. “I gave the dealers 180-day terms to sell them and if they don’t, they can send them back.” Sales of Triumph-branded clothing have gone from $1 million to $6 million in revenue annually in the last few years.
‘I Want to Be Number One’ Heichelbech has also expanded his media advertising buys beyond traditional industry magazines such as Motorcycle World to lifestyle publications including Men’s Journal and Sports Illustrated. But the appeal of his product has broken the gender barrier. “About 15% to 20% of our customers are female,” he said, spurred in part by Elena Myers, who won the Dayton 200 in 2012, and rider/racer/builder Sarah Lahalih, who is currently customizing a Triumph Scrambler. Since Heichelbech took over at Triumph, awareness of the brand and its heritage has grown, the number of dealers has increased to 225, annual revenue has risen to $184 million and profitability has increased by 200%. The company has also surpassed Ducati and BMW in terms of annual sales. “I don’t want incremental growth,” he noted. “I want to be number one.” The Wharton School is committed to sharing its intellectual capital through the school’s online business journal, Knowledge@Wharton.
Social Media Special Report: The BrandZ™ Verve Index Linking positive social media with brand power. A new tool for productive social media investment Ali Rana
PART ONE: OVERVIEW OF BRANDZ™ VERVE As part of our ongoing efforts to enhance and improve the BrandZ™ rankings report, we have included a new data source – our proprietary Verve Score methodology, which measures social media data. Using this Verve score, Millward Brown Digital has evaluated the social vitality of the BrandZ™ Top 100 brands. The core data is taken from the tens of millions of global Twitter conversations about these brands. In essence, the Verve score is a measure of the number of mentions for a brand combined with the favorability of those mentions. So, the higher the score, the more that brand has been elevated within a social context. Verve represents the accumulation of positive brand experiences among the engaged audience on Twitter. It covers brand users, peers and influencers, those exposed to brand communications, and those responding to news or blog sites. Verve classifies Twitter data both topically and attitudinally and reflects outcomes over time in brand equity, sales, and TV impact. Overall, Verve is best understood in the context of Brand Contribution. It is a signal of consumer interest and engagement, and is most closely aligned with brand strength and power, where it allows us to see the texture and detail of the consumer relationship to a brand, such as how celebrities can impact lifestyle brands, or where activism can shape perceptions of commodities Before going into more detail, it is important to highlight a few caveats:
— Scores vary by category. Certain brands may be very strong relative to their competitors, but that category may not be much talkedabout. Brand strength and marketing can help dial this up (such as American Express and Visa), but ultimately many people are less interested in tweeting about their financial services than they are about, say, fast food or fast fashion.
People really do tweet about their lunches. People like to talk about what they’re interested in or what’s in front of them, whether that’s food –“Casually ate a ten piece of KFC in ten minutes” – or fashion – “Shopping!! Literally cleaning out Zara…” — Verve reflects social audiences. Verve is an accurate reflection of what is happening in social media, but activists may over-amplify certain topics, while people having positive but ordinary experiences with a brand may not feel compelled to speak up at all. This is why we place social data in the larger context of the BrandZ™ rankings. Because we work from a common understanding of brand equity across both brand contribution and social media conversations, we can define a statistical relationship between the two. In a social context, anyone talking about a brand by definition has it at the forefront of their mind; therefore brands that are meaningful and different are most likely to be entwined in brand conversations on social media.
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PART TWO: BRAND HEALTH IN SOCIAL MEDIA Meaningful Experiences When gathering brand equity data, Millward Brown can require someone to answer a series of questions related to meaning and difference. However, in social, we can only infer from what is stated – no follow-up questions allowed. Meaning is the easiest to ascertain from straightforward statements about the consumer’s favorability toward the brand or whether it meets needs. Brand meaning is brought to the forefront in social media conversations. Its expression is most elevated among brands whose baseline consumer commentary is experience-driven. Within the BrandZ™ Top 100, Starbucks, Red Bull, Nike and eBay are all such brands: accessible, crave-able and consistent, they can provide a satisfaction so sweet it must be shared spontaneously.
Brand Difference When we look at the brands with the highest Verve scores among the BrandZ™ Top 100, we also see that third party commentary can have a significant impact. For example, technology, automotive and luxury all feature heavily because consumer experience is supplemented by coverage from thirdparty sources (news articles, blogs, etc.). Notably, these categories are also higher-consideration and more aspirational, characterized by more complex features, longer purchase cycles and lower purchase frequency. “Door to door
deliveries of the future? Amazon testing drones for deliveries”
Third-party coverage can often be a key influence for overall opinions, but these are frequently driven by the fact that the brand has demonstrated a point of difference.
The Impact of Marketing on Social Media Conversation It is important to note that marketing causes variations over and above the base level of social conversations, rather than forming it. Almost universally among the 2014 BrandZ™ Top 100 brands, consumer experience or thirdparty communications, amplified by brand strength, provides the foundation for social vitality. Three types of marketing tend to break through most strongly: (1) sponsorships of sports fields and event spaces, like Citi Field; (2) buzzworthy TV commercials, such as Budweiser’s Clydesdale Super Bowl spot; and (3) catchy social campaigns connecting branding to experience, like KFC’s fun #iatethebones campaign.
PART THREE: CATEGORY COMMENTARY Technology Within technology, social platforms are the clear leaders of brand performance in social. Unsurprisingly, their users frequently reference their activity and communities on the platforms – these brands are heavily experience-driven. That said, each platform has a distinctive pattern of its own: Twitter users tend to be addressing other Twitter users or
commenting on trends they see on the platform; LinkedIn commentators are often sharing content they have seen on LinkedIn; and people talking about Facebook use Twitter as a backchannel to gossip about other people on Facebook. Our Verve data indicate that while consumers do follow coverage of these platforms at a corporate level, they are primarily interested in the content and communities housed in social media. Technology brands are also divided by those that have strong consumer-facing brands and businesses versus those that do not: Google, Apple, and Samsung all generate a lot of attention, far overshadowing brands like Cisco or Siemens. The successful brands are characterized by a large proportion of third-party communications, primarily driven by new product launches and to a lesser extent, corporate observations (including investments and litigation). However, for some brands with a variety of popular consumer products, consumer experience plays a role as well: people register their use of Google’s large portfolio of products around the globe (including maps, translation, voice services, and more). Brands such as Apple and Samsung also attract commentary on their desirable mainstream products, as well as their more experimental efforts like wearables.
Financial Services Financial services are primarily driven by third-party communications – consumerfacing experiential commentary is minimal. However, silence does not necessarily mean indifference and comments can hinder as well as help. Distinct from the rest of the category, credit card brands American Express and Visa both had success with consumer campaigns that reiterated the “rewarding” promise of the cards. In particular, American Express led the way here, with #AmexSync and #PassionProject. These campaigns succeeded because they had not only a clear consumer incentive but also demonstrated the brand’s forwardlooking approach to changing media and technology habits. These brands also have some of the highest brand contribution scores in their category, suggesting that their performance in social media and their overall brand strength may have a symbiotic relationship.
Retail & Apparel These categories are highly experientially driven, as the spur for most conversation is an in-store experience or a coveted item. Because many people who talk about these brands have first-hand knowledge, this familiarity can augment the brands’ profile with other items of interest: mentioning The Home Depot in a joke about Miley Cyrus gives it extra comic zing; or one might feel closer to Beyoncé through her H&M endorsements. However, first-hand familiarity can turn into a negative when the news is bad, for example when social media picked up the horse meat contamination story, seriously compromising otherwise buoyant brand images amongst consumers.
Oil & Gas From a social media perspective, oil and gas companies are an example of where brands have to work extra hard to make social into a beneficial influence on their brands. Consumer interest in “pumping gas” tends to be relatively low, whilst criticism can be swift when there are environmental concerns. Nevertheless, because energy is a potentially emotive topic, it can be used to enhance brands in this sector where there is a positive story to be told.
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Ali Rana. SVP and Head Scientist, Emerging Media Lab, Millward Brown Digital Ali.Rana@millwardbrown.com With contributions from Anne Czernek, Senior Research Analyst, Armineh Nourbakhsh, Software Developer, Maarten Peschier, Senior Technology Scientist, Emerging Media Lab, Millard Brown Digital
From New York to London to Berlin, the Race is on For City Dotbranding Sheila Shayon
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio recently announced the first “sunrise” phase of the roll-out of the .nyc domain name prior to a full-scale public launch in October 2014. Part of a new class of generic top-level domains (gTLDs — although in this case they’re also called geoTLDs) from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the Big Apple is the first city in the U.S. with a toplevel domain catering to local businesses, organizations and residents. “The launch of the .nyc domain is one of the most anticipated arrivals for the city and the Internet at large,” stated Hizzoner. “There is no shortage of New Yorkers ready to claim their exclusive .nyc identities online, and this is their chance to reserve their piece of this city’s valuable digital real estate.” Jessie Pressman, CEO of tech education startup Bite Size Learning, was one of those New Yorkers who seized the opportunity. “Acquiring a .nyc domain is a chance to align Bite Size Learning’s brand with NYC,” Pressman, recently featured in Crain’s New York, told brandchannel. “As an emerging start-up the .nyc domain will lend credibility to our site while at the same time promoting our belief in supporting local business.”
Backers of .nyc are selling it as an unprecedented marketing opportunity for any brand looking to associate itself with the Big Apple and reap the inherent benefits including better visibility on search engines where mobile users make location-based searches. Pressman agrees. “I firmly believe that the .nyc domain will help Bite Size Learning grow. Not only because NYC businesses will want to work with a local firm, but also because businesses outside of NYC will hopefully be excited about partnering with a NYC company. Not to be cliche, but NYC is often called the best city on earth; associating Bite Size Learning’s brand with that type of perception can only be seen as a positive.” Neustar, Inc. is the official registry operator for .nyc. “The launch of the .nyc web address holds great potential for all New Yorkers, whose work embodies the spirit and opportunity of such a great city,” said Lisa Hook, Neustar’s President and CEO. “Taking advantage of the .nyc sunrise registration period and the .nyc Founders Program will give both New York City-based trademark holders and early adopters the ability to plan ahead for what will be an exciting transformation of the web and New York City itself.”
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NYC will generate revenue by collecting 60 percent of annual domain registration fees from the new Web addresses and Neustar has set a $20 registration fee for all .nyc domains during the sunrise phase. Former Mayor Ed Koch was an early supporter, as seen in a video from a 2009 ad campaign where he sums it all up: “DotNYC is the best real estate opportunity since the Dutch bought Manhattan.” Pressman believes a .nyc domain name will bring “Confidence in the brand and credibility. While .net is increasingly becoming more common, it still has a way to go in the public eye. bitesizelearning.nyc would automatically give a consumer more confidence in the veracity and reliability of our site and business.” It’s not just the Big Apple that’s looking to brand itself digitally with a custom URL suffix. More than 50,000 applications were received as soon as .london opened up last month, while .berlin became the first city to introduce its own domain, with over 40,000 domain names registered in the first 48 hours back in March. “The geo-TLDs are touted as having the greatest chance of success,” commented Jerome McDonnell, Group Trademark Director at Interbrand (brandchannel’s parent company). “It’s unclear if major brands will register with all the extensions, unless for defensive reasons. Local businesses will definitely
see opportunity in being able to secure their pure/exact name at this extension.” “It’s arguable that the dot city extension stands a better chance of success because consumers are already familiar with country codes ( .co.uk, .com.au, .jp, etc.) so they make sense to them,” McDonnell added. “Another advantage is that most have city government support behind them.” One question mark is whether municipal dotbranding makes a difference (beyond civic pride) on the web. As McDonnell notes, “I’m unsure as yet about the pluses of dot city extensions in search engine results and rankings, but given that Google already endeavors to tailor results to your location, a geoTLD might only enhance this and mean these domain names turn up higher in the results list.” It’s also a relative bargain, cheaper than what a company such as AXA (for example) paid to secure .axa, as Koch was right on the money: a .nyc domain name comes out to around $20 a year. Whatta deal!
Sheila Shayon, Social Media Blogger, Exec Producer, Shift Evangelist
The Real Reason Public Relations Is Getting Killed Lyndon Johnson Every time I read an article about public relations, my heart sinks. For an industry that is supposed to be about communication and building relationships, our industry is pretty bad at both. Moreover, a recent article on MarketingProfs claimed the information age killed public relations. Everybody is looking for something to blame for the steady demise of the industry, but they should really be looking in the mirror. We’re not that great at telling our own story, and—let’s face it—PR’s reputation has been in the toilet for years. I’ve been working in the industry since 1997, and it was bad even then. Customers were often unsure of exactly what they were going to get in return for the payment of the monthly retainer. Even now, excessive retainer fees, a lack of transparency, no clear value proposition, and dubious business ethics (such as most PR professionals selling publicity as PR and asking, “What’s your budget?” before asking their customers anything else) coupled with no clear ROI means that the reputation of our industry is currently at an all-time low. Is it any wonder we find it hard to be taken seriously?
The PR Industry Is Broken The industry is broken; it is not fit for the purpose it purports to have been designed for. The model is broken; the ubiquitous retainer and cookie-cutter PR process do not help the majority of agency customers. The definition has been bastardized
to the point that most newcomers to the industry never fully understand the fundamentals of PR. The result of all that is that nobody—not even people working in the industry—is clear about what PR is. We cannot agree on a single definition. There is no consensus on what value PR delivers or why businesses need it. That is what is killing the industry. Not the information age. Not social media. Not the devastation of the traditional media industry. So, what do we do about it?
Defining Public Relations There is no hope of repairing our reputation, communicating the value of what we do, and delivering on that promise until there is a clear definition that we can all stand behind. When I tell people that I have a PR company that helps entrepreneurs build the relationships they need to grow their business, those people often look slightly confused. Some people immediately assume that PR is about media coverage. That’s hardly surprising considering the majority of articles published by PR people talk about media coverage. Some people talk about social media. I explain that media coverage is generally just publicity, and that social media is a series of delivery platforms—not a discipline in its own right—in the same way that billboards are just one way for advertising agencies to deliver the work they do for customers.
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I explain that my definition of PR is everything that an organization does to build mutually beneficial relationships with its audiences. That is effectively the same as the PRSA definition. However, I am often told that definition sounds more like Marketing than PR. I’ve also been told that it is old-fashioned! The truth is that, without relationships, achieving anything is difficult. Imagine that you manage your most important relationships—spouses, family, best friends—in the way that most businesses manage theirs with journalists, via an intermediary. What happens when the intermediary is no longer there? The problem is that this model is how PR has been sold for decades. Businesses pay an agency for its contacts and have them manage relationships on their behalf in return for a monthly fee. When that doesn’t deliver the results they want, those businesses stop paying the money, and they no longer have the relationships. The truth is that those businesses never had them in the first place. But rather than building them themselves, businesses replace their publicity agency—because that’s what most are selling—with another agency that operates in the exact same way as the one they’ve just fired. I liken the model that most PR agencies use to sell publicity to that of leasing a car. You pay for the privilege to use the relationships—until you stop paying the owner. At which point, you have nothing. It’s crazy… and yet businesses still continue to buy in, knowing that the chances of success are slim. Knowing that it hasn’t worked before. Blinded by the promise of a new, shiny, team of “professionals” energized by the opportunity to make empty promises. If they’re honest, most of those people are energized by the prospect of the retainer income because they know that, whatever happens, they’ll have the cash at the end of the engagement regardless of whether it has delivered value to their new customer.
beneficial relationship or expecting them to take action on behalf of a business. The definition of each is the result of the intended outcome, not the process or the composition of the content. So, each activity can be part of a PR program if it is designed to build relationships, a marketing campaign if the desired outcome is to get an audience to do something, or a publicity program if the intent is simply to communicate information. So, why do most PR people only talk about the media audience? Because that industry is built on a model that sells activities—press release writing, media pitching, interview management, and, increasingly, content creation services— rather than a model based on intangibles, such as developing strategies for building relationships, which takes time and are tedious to bill by the hour. Moreover, PR requires an understanding of how to build relationships—and the majority of people working in our industry—at least on the agency side—don’t have the necessary skills. Just media pitching and updating social media sites can be done by most 10-year-olds.
Strike by Maserati Strike is the first 90-second TV spot run by luxury car manufacturer Maserati during the Super Bowl earlier this year. It has all the hallmarks of an ad, but is it a piece of publicity, marketing, or PR?
The traditional PR agency business model has to change.
PR, Marketing, and Publicity One of the big problems with PR is that it is not positioned correctly by so-called PR agencies. That is primarily a result of the definition being incorrect. Correctly positioning PR, marketing, and publicity—and communicating the value of each in relation to the other two—are central to demonstrating the value PR delivers and helping customers to put all of the pieces of the communications jigsaw puzzle in place. I’ve already explained that... • PR is everything an organization does to build mutually beneficial relationship between it and its public/audiences. • Marketing is everything an organization does to use these relationships to get an audience to take action on its behalf. • Publicity is the communication of information to an audience without the goal of either building a mutually
I consider that spot of the most beautifully conceived and executed pieces of PR I’ve seen in a long time. It might look like an ad, but it is categorized by the desired outcome. The desired outcome is to build relationships; therefore, it’s a piece of PR content. *** Until we, as an industry, can agree on a common definition for what we do, quantify the value that it delivers, and create a new business model that charges based on solving customers’ problems and delivers on its promise, the PR industry will continue to be misunderstood, undervalued, and viewed with skepticism by the only people that matter— our audiences. Lyndon Johnson is the founder of THINK | DIFFERENT[LY], a public relations company that helps entrepreneurs deliver the right message to the right audience at the right time using the right delivery channel
The World Cup’s
84-Year History Reduced To Typographic Posters GOOOOOAAAAALLLLL! Mark Wilson We’re all Americans here at Co.Design. So there’s a limit to how excited we can get about soccer. But we can get very excited about nice typographical work, like World 32. World 32, by New York graphic designer and former Metropolis magazine creative director Criswell Lappin, is a series of posters celebrating the historical stats of all 32 World Cup teams in two-color, Helvetica-based prints. They capture information like the year of the team’s first
appearance, number of wins, draws, losses, goals scored, and goals other teams have scored against it. “I was a huge baseball card collector growing up. I loved to look at the stats on the back of the cards and compare my favorite players,” Lappin tells Co.Design, pointing out the project›s impetus: “I wanted to create a project at the intersection of sports data and design.”
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Originally, he attempted a similar project with baseball but was overwhelmed by the wealth of stats. Soccer allowed him the chance to refocus the idea. All of the stats behind the project, wrapped in basic national colors and crystal clear Helvetica, shrinks the World Cup’s 84-year history in a more comprehensible scope. As you skim over the assorted prints, you can›t help but notice Brazil’s 67 wins, especially compared with the USA›s measly seven.
“Each of these countries takes such pride in being there, from the stalwarts like Brazil and Germany down to teams like Greece and Honduras--but for different reasons,” Lappin explains. “Brazil has its five championships, but just imagine how much the two goals that Honduras has scored in World Cup play meant to that country.” World 32 prints are available now, starting at $30.
Mark Wilson is a writer who started Philanthroper.com, a simple way to give back every day. His work has also appeared at Gizmodo, Kotaku, PopMech, PopSci, Esquire, American Photo and Lucky Peach.
WHERE DO EUREKA MOMENTS COME FROM? Maria Konnikova A man in a town married twenty women. There have been no divorces or annulments, and everyone in question is still alive and well. The man is not a bigamist, and he has broken no laws. How is this possible? This is the so-called marrying-man problem, which psychologists often use to study creative insight: the process by which we suddenly figure out the answer to something that had previously stumped us. A problem makes no sense at first. But then we turn it around in our minds and, presto, the answer comes. So, naturally, Mark Beeman, a cognitive neuroscientist at Northwestern University, who studies insight and creativity, likes to pose questions like this one to applicants who want to work in his lab. (The answer to this particular conundrum is that the man is a priest.) Beeman studies insight because it’s a key component in how creativity works—the main subject of his research. Creativity is the whole process of how we come up with new ideas; insight is just a step along the way, albeit an important one. A composer who writes a new, beautiful song has done something creative; the moment when she realized that she
could end it on a minor chord was insight. In general, creativity seems to come when insight is combined with the hard work of analytical processing. A person can’t discover the theory of general relativity in a dream if he isn’t a physicist who’s done some heavy thinking about the subject beforehand. In the field of psychology, there’s long been a certain haziness surrounding the definition of creativity, an I-know-itwhen-I-see it attitude that has eluded a precise formulation. During our conversation, Beeman told me that he used to be reluctant to tell people what his area of study was, for fear of being dismissed or misunderstood. What, for instance, crosses your mind when you think of creativity? Well, we know that someone is creative if he produces new things or has new ideas. A choreographer, an artist, a writer, a scientist, or a mathematician with a novel discovery—these are the creatives, the people who bring something new into the world. And yet, as John Kounios, a psychologist at Drexel University who collaborates frequently with Beeman, points out, that view is wrong, or at least not entirely right. “Creativity is the process, not the product,” he says.
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34 To illustrate, Beeman offers an example. Imagine someone who has never used or seen a paperclip and is struggling to keep a bunch of papers together. Then the person comes up with a new way of bending a stiff wire to hold the papers in place. “That was very creative,” Beeman says. On the flip side, if someone works in a new field—Beeman gives the example of nanotechnology—anything that he produces may be considered inherently “creative.” But was the act of producing it actually creative? As Beeman puts it, “Not all artists are creative. And some accountants are very creative.” Insight, however, has proved less difficult to define and to study. Because it arrives at a specific moment in time, you can isolate it, examine it, and analyze its characteristics. “Insight is only one part of creativity,” Beeman says. “But we can measure it. We have a temporal marker that something just happened in the brain. I’d never say that’s all of creativity, but it’s a central, identifiable component.” When scientists examine insight in the lab, they are looking at what types of attention and thought processes lead to that moment of synthesis: If you are trying to facilitate a breakthrough, are there methods you can use that help? If you feel stuck on a problem, are there tricks to get you through? In a recent study, Beeman and Kounios followed people’s gazes as they attempted to solve what’s called the remoteassociates test, in which the subject is given a series of words, like “pine,” “crab,” and “sauce,” and has to think of a single word that can logically be paired with all of them. They wanted to see if the direction of a person’s eyes and her rate of blinking could shed light on her approach and on her likelihood of success. It turned out that if the subject looked directly at a word and focussed on it—that is, blinked less frequently, signalling a higher degree of close attention—she was more likely to be thinking in an analytical, convergent fashion, going through possibilities that made sense and systematically discarding those that didn’t. If she looked at “pine,” say, she might be thinking of words like “tree,” “cone,” and “needle,” then testing each option to see if it fit with the other words. When the subject stopped looking at any specific word, either by moving her eyes or by blinking, she was more likely to think of broader, more abstract associations. That is a more insight-oriented approach. “You need to learn not just to stare but to look outside your focus,” Beeman says. (The solution to this remote-associates test: “apple.”) As it turns out, by simply following someone’s eyes and measuring her blinks and fixation times (how long she looks at something before either looking away or closing her eyes), Beeman’s group can predict how someone will likely solve a problem and when she is nearing that solution. Although that’s not an entirely new ability—the study replicates earlier work that relied on fMRI and EEG, which found similar patterns and showed that both the moment of insight and the preparatory phases are marked by distinct neural patterns, and it builds on a 2012 study of attention and verbal problem solving—it’s a more easily observable and potentially trainable approach. “This is less anatomical, but it’s more directly linked to attention,” Beeman says. “Your state of attention both before you get a problem and when you’re solving it matters.” That’s an important consideration for would-be creative minds: it helps us understand how distinct patterns of attention may contribute to certain kinds of insights. I’ve written before about the link between caffeine and creativity. This work suggests that being caffeinated may facilitate the
analytical part of the creative process but impede the insightfinding part, by honing your focus but dulling your ability to think more diffusely. It suggests, too, that timing is important. If you aren’t focussed when the problem is presented, for instance—that is, if your attention is already diffuse when “pine,” “crab,” and “sauce” first flash across the screen—you may find it harder to reach an insightful solution because you haven’t done enough conscious, analytical processing. You need to take the time to understand all aspects thoroughly before you try to facilitate your mind-wandering or daydreaming. In other words, don’t go for a walk or hop in the shower or take a nap immediately after getting a new problem. First, reach for that cup of coffee to make sure you don’t miss any details. Now Beeman and his colleagues are trying to see if their findings apply equally to people who have already accomplished something creative: Are the attention patterns that they’ve identified telling us something about creative achievement and not just creative potential, or, more specifically, the potential to come up with insightful solutions? To accomplish this, they are testing people who are advanced in fields that are traditionally considered creative and in fields that can be either creative or analytic, depending on how you approach them, like the creative arts, architecture, and advertising. What they want to know is whether these advanced-career individuals show the same creative-processing patterns as undergraduates. “We can’t study how they got creative,” Beeman says. “But we can see how their brains work.” Of course, there are parts of creativity that can’t be replicated in a lab—like luck. “Not all creativity is rewarded by society,” Beeman points out. Two people might have versions of the same idea, but one happens to catch on at the right moment. “The successful people forget that some of their success is dumb luck.” And there’s another problem, too: the answers to insight problems, which are one of the main things we can study, sometimes come from forces that are entirely mundane. One day a decade ago, when Beeman was still at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, one of his research assistants decided to stump a researcher candidate with the marrying-man dilemma. Instantly, the young man had an answer: a priest. Where did that flash of insight come from? “I went to Catholic school,” the interviewee replied promptly. “You said ‘man,’ I thought priest.” So we may not be able to predict who will go on to be the next Marie Curie or found the next WhatsApp—and the marryingman problem may not help you single out the next great creative scientist. (Ultimately, the interviewee did get hired, and went on to work as a research assistant at Beeman’s lab. He did well, but not exceptionally so.) But we may be able to learn enough about the workings of the creative process itself to apply it to our own thinking and become more creative in smaller, but valuable, ways. “You won’t win a Nobel Prize for rearranging your closet more effectively, but it could be important for daily life,” Beeman says. “Mundane creative processing is just as important. We just tend to forget that.” Maria Konnikova is a contributing writer for The New Yorker’ Web site, newyorker.com, where she writes a weekly blog focussing on psychology and science. She is the author of the Times best-seller “Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes,” which has been nominated for an Agatha Award for Best Nonfiction. Illustration by Jing Wei.
Two Designers’ Quest To Create The Magazine “The Beautiful Game” Deserves A new publication about soccer--and nothing but--tries to be as visually dazzling as the game itself. Michael Raisanen Is Eight by Eight “the magazine the beautiful game deserves,” as veteran designers Robert Priest and Grace Lee describe their soccer-themed quarterly? The designers are savvy enough to know that they couldn’t create just another snazzy print publication-even one laser-focused on soccer--and expect everything to go swimmingly. The duo’s design company Priest+Grace has received numerous awards and were critical to Newsweek’s recent re-entry into print. They’ve also worked with Esquire, GQ, ESPN, and Bloomberg. Eight by Eight--named after a soccer goal, eight feet tall by eight yards wide--debuted in late 2013. They knew their third issue would have to be killer--it would showcase the World Cup, essentially the most popular sporting event in the world, and they’d have to compete with top talent at established publications to prove their mettle. What could they do that no one else could do better?
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The design is, in a word, provocative. In that it trades in highly controlled excitement, it’s a stylish blend of Businessweek and ESPN The Magazine--it has the playful layouts and typographic experiments of the former, and the big, bold art of the latter. Key to the design are the illustrations. Eight by Eight makes no bones about leaping into a more agitated and variable design aesthetic. Priest and Lee portray some of soccer’s biggest personalities and story lines through sprawling and intricate illustrations that amp up the text. Text columns vary in width and number, and a slightly pop feel--with geometric sidebars and marginalia, and colorized text blurbs--defines what amounts to a vigorously calculated restlessness. Priest and Lee also experiment with typography, which often varies from one feature to the next. It’s refreshing to see Priest and Lee frequently opt for comics-inspired renderings rather than for photography. “We consider them like New Yorker cartoons,” Priest says. “They can be satire on the game--a reflection of life. And we can make a point with an illustration that can’t be made when a person is being photographed.” Some illustrations eat up the entire page, as do strikingly dramatic headshots, but other times there are empty spaces to ease the flow of reading. Why this tactic? “We had to anticipate what everyone else was going to do,” Priest tells Co.Design, adding that ideas they thought were original were appearing in other publications. “So it’s a question of doing them better,” Priest says. “We think the illustrations can do that.”
This is best embodied in the depiction of the 1982 semifinal between France and West Germany, the first game in the World Cup to go to penalty kicks to decide the winner. It’s told as a comic strip, though the turns the traditionally boxy panels are rejiggered with jagged lines that move the scenes along visually. This technique does bring the game to life in way that’s wonderfully immediate: “Injustice bleeds like a wound,” the story goes, right before it settles on an image of a 10-year-old in Marseille, head hung while sitting on some backstreet stairs, next to a soccer ball, vowing that France’s glory would come.
How did they tackle the World Cup issue itself? Predicting the biggest stories of the tournament proved to be no easy task, Priest admits. “With the World Cup,” for example, “a few players we predicted to have great moments have gotten injured,” Priest says. But does their strategy--of catering to the stimuli-seeking eye--work in a crowded field, and satisfy fans? (Also, can the magazine itself sustain this approach in the long run?)
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The cover subject for the World Cup issue is Argentine striker Sergio Aguero flying high above the pitch. Though Argentina is one of the tournament favorites, Priest says they didn’t want to take the easy route and pick Aguero’s fellow countryman Lionel Messi: “We thought about who could assist Messi or get the assist from him and possibly recreate how he [Aguero] helped Manchester City win the 2012 Premier League title on the last day of the season,” Priest says. While many of the illustrations in the magazine took just a revision or two to make it from idea to page, the cover is always (not surprisingly) a different story. Lee notes that since the founding of Eight by Eight, the team has wanted Mario Balotelli to be on the cover. The staff has a stack of Balotelli illustrations waiting. “We haven’t had the right moment yet,” Priest says. Initially, Balotelli was shown confronting his inner demons in a dark street with “Why Always You” painted on the wall, referring to one of Balo’s goal celebrations. “Our illustrator, Diego Patiño, has done probably 20 or 30 renditions of Balotelli,” Lee adds. “So we’ll have one when we need it.”
In addition to ample sports commentary and a slew of favorite-player profiles, this issue angles in editorially in ways that are not just about the current moment. The editors have done a good job of putting the sport in its historical context while also giving it a rustic indie cultural appeal beyond the masses. That sensibility emerges in a fictional piece with diary entries by the filmmaker Werner Herzog in advance of his would-be FIFA-sponsored trip to Brazil to referee the England versus Italy game. (The game took place last weekend.) There’s also a compellingly thoughtful spread called The NeverEnding Crash, with a Dürer-inspired illustration of the 1949 Torino plane crash that took out Torino F.C., “the defining team of the 1940s,” led by the gifted Valentino Mazzola who, the article’s author says, foreshadowed the universal player. (He scored 118 goals in 204 matches.) Given that the World Cup is increasingly saturated with news coverage every four years, Priest and Grace have been savvy about incorporating the work of noted artists Diego Patiño, Yuko Shimizu, Roberto Parada, and Brian Cronin to give the magazine its distinct look. For now, anyway, we see the appeal: World Cup players and their colorful depictions leap off Eight by Eight’s page. The games, as we all know, have begun.
Skylar is an Editorial Assistant at Fast Company. He’s previously written for Popular Mechanics, Esquire, Dwell and his hometown Chicagoland suburb newspaper. You’ll likely find him online shopping and browsing any website with infinite scroll.
Making a case for Cele(Sale)brity Endorsement! Rudy Heath One can say ‘What’s in a name? ‘or better’ What’s in a face ‘or go one step ahead and ask the question ‘ What’s in a face that’s a name? ‘. Well lots and lots if the rampant thriving of the celebrity brand endorsement market is concerned. The rise and rise of the ‘ aspirational culture ‘ has created fiefdoms of people who seem to follow these seemingly ethereal icons from sunrise to sunset and beyond. Is there a solid case that we have for Celebrity branding? Yes, very much according to Elle Stancliffe, Director at The Handbook Daily (www.thehandbook. com), which maintains a complete diary on celebrities across the film, fashion, sports and television world. “ I think you have to find a celebrity that you trust and most importantly that is suitable for your brand. Trust is the key, as you are asking that celebrity to project the image and promise of your brand and that is a huge thing, as obviously if a celebrity misbehaves or if there is some sort of scandal then that reflects on the brand as well, Kate Moss, Lance Armstrong, Lindsay Lohan are a few cases in point ”. Across continents there are several A Listers, the biggest of them from a pure recall and brand success has been Michael Jordan and Nike. The combination truly worked ‘ magic ‘ for the Nike brand and opened up a vast universe of customers for the sportswear brand across not just the US but other global markets too. Jennifer Aniston and Loreal is another example of a stellar and successful pairing. It truly was worth it for the L’oreal brand as it associated with the star right at
the peak of her success and popularity curve. In Bollywood celebrity obsessed India, Hyundai the automobile brand re engineered sluggish sales to become the No 1 car brand in the country thanks to a long association with the mega star Shahrukh Khan. Elle feels that there is a huge interest now in Reality TV stars becoming brand ambassadors because of the following they command and the emotional connect they managed to establish with audiences over the length of the broadcast and beyond. The risk associated with having the A Listers as your brand endorsers are also huge as all brands that had the likes of Tiger Woods, Oscar Pistorius, Michael Phelps etc as their face had to undergo the backlash caused by behavior not exactly becoming of celebrity icons. Also, brands tend to get a little ahead of themselves in the hope they have invested in a prize catch well ahead of the person’s highest peak point (Brand Andy Murray being a case in point pitted to be the next David Beckham or Roger Federer but in reality far away from those levels). All said and done, the pros seem now to outweigh the cons and the rush to board the celebrity brand wagon is getting intense by the day. Hyper clutter, extreme commoditization, trust, attention & resource deficit, increased awareness, shorter shelf life and the need to for speed to market and instant attention are all factors that are adding the fuel to the fire. As Elle of The Handbook Daily mentions ‘Celebrity branding is great for the right brands, and can often take a brand to a whole new level. Our culture has become more and more interested in celebrities and the ‘celebrity culture’ so it can be great brand association, and when done right, also often makes a brand more memorable and trust worthy’.
Book,
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Line
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions By Dan Ariely Why do our headaches persist after we take a one-cent aspirin but disappear when we take a fifty-cent aspirin? Why do we splurge on a lavish meal but cut coupons to save twenty-five cents on a can of soup? When it comes to making decisions in our lives, we think we’re making smart, rational choices. But are we?
All Marketers Are Liars By Seth Godin Seth Godin’s three essential questions for every marketer: “What’s your story?” “Will the people who need to hear this story believe it?” “Is it true?” All marketers tell stories. And if they do it right, we believe them. We believe that wine tastes better in a $20 glass than a $1 glass. We believe that an $80,000 Porsche is vastly superior to a $36,000 Volkswagen that’s virtually the same car.
Optimize: How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media, and Content Marketing By Lee Odden Attract, engage, and inspire your customers with an “Optimize and Socialize” content marketing strategy Optimize is designed to give readers a practical approach to integrating search and social media optimization with content marketing to boost relevance, visibility, and customer engagement.
Sinker Behavioral Economics For Dummies By Morris Altman A guide to the study of how and why you really make financial decisions While classical economics is based on the notion that people act with rational self-interest, many key money decisions—like splurging on an expensive watch—can seem far from rational. The field of behavioral economics sheds light on the many subtle and not-so-subtle factors that contribute to our financial and purchasing choices.
Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business By Ann Handley, C.C. Chapman The guide to creating engaging web content and building a loyal following, revised and updated Blogs, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and other platforms are giving everyone a “voice,” including organizations and their customers.
The New Rules of Marketing & PR By David Meerman Scott David Meerman Scotts marketing bible has become a modern day business classic. This is the book every ambitious, forward-thinking, progressive marketer or publicist has at the front of their shelf. Business communication has changed over the recent years. Creative ad copy is no longer enough. The New Rules of Marketing and PR has brought thousands of marketers up to speed on the changing requirements...
Managing Content Marketing: The Real-World Guide for Creating Passionate Subscribers to Your Brand
Return On Influence: The Revolutionary Power of Klout, Social Scoring, and Influence Marketing
By Robert Rose Let’s face it...content marketing is all the rage. Brands around the world are spending (on average) over 25% of their total marketing budget on content marketing. What’s been missing...until now...is the book that tells marketers exactly how to put content marketing to work.
By Mark Schaefer Winner of a Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Title Award! Return on Influence is the first book to explore how brands are identifying and leveraging the world’s most powerful bloggers, tweeters, and YouTube celebrities to build product awareness, brand buzz, and new sales.
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Marketing White Belt: Basics For the Digital Marketer By Christopher Penn, Michelle Wolverton Have you had people ask you how to get started in digital marketing? Are you working with social media practitioners who lack a firm grounding in the basics of marketing? Do you sometimes wish you had the fundamentals of marketing at your fingertips? Then grab a copy of Marketing White Belt: Basics for the Digital Marketer today.
Brainfluence: 100 Ways to Persuade and Convince Consumers with Neuromarketing By Roger Dooley Practical techniques for applying neuroscience and behavior research to attract new customers Brainfluence explains how to practically apply neuroscience and behavior research to better market to consumers by understanding their decision patterns.
Unlimited Power : The New Science Of Personal Achievement By Anthony Robbins Anthony Robbins calls it the new science of personal achievement. You’ll call it the best thing that ever happened to you. If you have ever dreamed of a better life, Unlimited Power will show you how to achieve the extraordinary quality of life you desire and deserve, and how to master your personal and professional life.
Likeonomics: The Unexpected Truth Behind Earning Trust, Influencing Behavior, and Inspiring Action By Rohit Bhargava How to become a trusted resource for consumers in a society of constant manipulation People decide who to trust, what advice to heed, and which individuals to forge personal or transactional relationships with based on a simple metric of believability. Success, in turn, comes from understanding one basic principle: how to be more trusted.
Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking By Andy Sernovitz (Author), Guy Kawasaki (Afterword), Seth Godin (Foreword) Master word of mouth marketing with this fun, practical, hands-on guide. With straightforward advice and humor, word of mouth expert Andy Sernovitz will show you how the world’s most respected and profitable companies get their best customers for free through the power of word of mouth.
Marketing in the Age of Google, Revised and Updated: Your Online Strategy IS Your Business Strategy By Vanessa Fox Search has changed everything. Has your business harnessed its full potential? A business’s search strategy can have a dramatic impact on how consumers interact with that business. But even more importantly, search engine activity provides amazingly useful data about customer behavior, needs, and motivations.
Online Marketing Inside Out (Online Marketing: Sitepoint)
Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind
By Brandon Eley, Shayne Tilley Online Marketing Inside Out is an invaluable book for anyone wanting to market products or services online - whether or not marketing is part of your job description. Small-business entrepreneurs and web-site owners will benefit from this information-packed book, as will traditional marketers with little or no experience of online marketing.
By Al Ries, Jack Trout, Philip Kotler (Foreword) ‘One of the most important communication books I’ve ever read. I highly recommend it!’ - Spencer Johnson, author of “Who Moved My Cheese?” and co-author of “The One Minute Manager”. ‘... Ries and Trout taught me everything I know about branding, marketing, and product management. When I had the idea of creating a very large thematic community on the Web, I first thought of “Positioning”...’ - David Bohnett, Chairman and Founder of GeoCities.