BrandKnew July-September 2015

Branding matters. Because branding matters.

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Dear reader: We are well and truly into the second half of the year and time seems to be moving at a whirlwind pace. There is quite a bit of arsenal as usual in this issue. For all those having a fetish for blue, we debate about the Problem with the Colour Blue in branding. We also talk about what advertising needs to focus on : ie solving problems. For the PR fraternity, the feature on how to make your press release stand out would be certainly of interest.

FIFA is getting around after corruption scandals hit them like a free kick. The feature on how sponsoring brands are contemplating pull out (including Nike). A bit esoteric as it may sound but the article on designing happiness does truly that. We also touch upon Visual Marketing and the Tactics and Challenges that come with it. The Infographic on Marketing Automation would appeal to the marketing technologists surely. Marketers seem to be uncertain about the reach that Instagram is providing their brands- read about it as well. Lots more to nibble on. Happy Reading!

Best always

Suresh Dinakaran @sureshdinakaran linkd.in/1dsjYaW

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bit.ly/1h95tgO suresh@groupisd.com Managing Editor: Suresh Dinakaran Creative Head/Director Operations: Pravin Ahir Magazine Concept & Design/ New Media Specialist: Mufaddal Joher Country Head, Australia: Norbert D’Souza Country Head, UK: Sagar Patil Country Head, India: Rohit Unni Digital/Social Media Marketing: Loknath Swain, Vishnu Nath Associate: Brand Success: Andre Van Helsdingen Web Specialist: Prasanta Kumar Sahu Online Support: Mahendra Kumar Behera

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CONTENTS

How Advertising Needs to Focus on Solving Problems Why brands should get serious about social sharing FIFA Brands Are Finally Feeling the Heat of Scandal - Especially Nike YouTube’s best ads of the last ten years: The neuro-science verdict The Problem With The Color Blue The Rise of Marketing Automation [Infographic] Visual Marketing: Top Tactics & Challenges Enduring Rules of Business Success Mood mismatch between TV shows and ads may hurt advertisers: study Three Branding Lessons From a Grammy Award-Winning Violinist Build a lasting community around your brand 6 Tips for Designing Happiness 5 Simple Ways to Make Your Press Release Stand Out Marketers Grapple With Uncertain Reach of Branded Content on Instagram Book, Line & Sinker

How Advertising Needs to Focus on Solving Problems

By Kofi Amoo-Gottfried

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Once upon a time, not too long ago, being an adman or woman was a pretty sweet gig. Not just because of the glamour, the Mad Men-type excesses, the bottomless expense accounts and four-week shoots in Los Angeles where we mostly kicked back at Shutters—but because what we did meant something.

to consider the implications of each tweak, change, re-brief or—God forbid—repositioning. We’re stuck in the hellish bottom-left corner of Eisenhower’s Decision Matrix, working nights and weekends on things that are always incredibly urgent but ultimately unimportant in the bigger scheme of solving big, meaty business problems with creativity.

We solved big, meaty business problems with creativity. We made work that mattered, work that changed behavior, affected culture and transformed the fortunes of businesses.

That’s the gig that got us all into the business, kept us coming to work every day and attracted the best and brightest to this industry. Those were the days.

The only way back is to go back to the beginning. To elevate and venerate problems. Maybe even more than we celebrate solutions. For that to happen, everything needs to change.

But like Biggie said, “Things done changed.” We’re now deluged with news of people leaving the industry in droves.

We wring our hands over how to keep up with the latest advancements in digital, and how to keep procurement at bay. We grapple with razor-thin margins, and how to recruit and retain world-class talent.

And we get to see headlines like this pop up in our feeds almost daily: “Agencies unable to prove they are driving value for clients risk becoming little more than ‘dust’”—an austere warning from a Diageo executive.

Us? Dust? How did we get here? One notion is that we stopped asking the hard questions. Or more appropriately, we substituted the hard questions with easier ones, with more readily apparent answers. So we got enamored with intermediary measures like awareness, engagement, brand appeal and impressions.

(Sidebar rant: Can we all agree that the “impressions” statistics at the end of every case study video mean very little?

Basically we’re celebrating that, maybe, perhaps, someone somewhere might possibly have had an opportunity to see the thing that we made. Rant over.)

The more enamored we got with these limited proxies of effectiveness and performance, the farther and farther away we got from the business. And the farther and farther away we got from the problem.

Charles Franklin Kettering, the American inventor, engineer, businessman and holder of 186 patents, once wrote: “A problem well stated is a problem half-solved.” Without a clearly articulated and inspiring problem to align everyone around and focus our collective energies on, all that’s left is a moving target and a contest of opinions. And frankly, there’s only one winner in a contest of opinions—the person who pays the bills.

So we’re relegated to taking orders instead of adding value.

And since we’re not always clear about why we’re doing what we’re doing, the orders come thick and fast, with little time

Client organizations need to be completely integrated among the finance, sales, product and marketing functions. Far too often, the marketing agenda is divorced from the business agenda, which puts the true problem beyond the reach of any advertising.

The client-agency relationship needs to start way upstream of the communications brief. Clients need to invite agencies into the depths of their business, to share all of their data and to welcome a fresh point of view on their business, marketing and communications problems. Instead of tissue sessions on creative ideas and campaigns at the outset of relationships, let’s have brainstorm sessions to generate potential problems­­­, then refine based on which problems have the most potential to transform the business.

And agencies will need to look entirely different. Today, we’re the proverbial person with the hammer to whom everything looks like a nail; the solutions we can offer are, by definition, limited to our capabilities. Creatively, we’ll need to cultivate an open-architecture approach to solving problems where the nature of the solutions is dictated entirely by the problem.

We need to become true general contractors, willing to bring in whomever it takes to get the job done.

Talent-wise, this shift will require a new breed of multidisciplinary thinkers. These will be people not defined by functional departments or their role in the process, but by their ability to build strategy and create around a single transformational question that’s designed to get to the heart of the business problem, and to express that problem as a shift in consumer behavior rather than just an attitudinal shift: What behavior do you want to change?

Without the clarity of necessity, there’s no invention. And without invention, there’s no value. And without value, we’re, well, dust.

Kofi Amoo-Gottfried (@KofiAmooG) is FCB Garfinkel’s chief strategy officer.

Illustration: Magoz | Kofi Amoo-Gottfried Illustration: Alex Fine

Why brands should get serious about social sharing

By Shawn Kemp

Creating your own unique, high-quality Facebook content can be a very time-consuming job. Luckily, it doesn’t have to be, as Facebook isn’t just about your content. It’s also about sharing other people’s content. After all, a community is formed by sharing of ideas and messages, not just people and organizations talking at each other.

Many managers of high performing Facebook pages share content from other Pages every day—and see big results.

Because curated content helps fill in the holes in your content calendar, it should map to your strategy, be high-quality and fit your page (message, type of content, etc.) While each audience is different and you need to know what will resonate with yours, these five simple and easy ways to find content will work for any page manager looking to successfully repurpose content for maximum effect.

Streamline content curation It can be just as time consuming to find great content as it is to

create it if the process is not automated in some way. Luckily, this is made easier than it seems with the help of several tools on the market such as Hootsuite, Buffer, Crowdtangle and ActionSprout (of which, in full disclosure, I am co-founder) that will show you those posts that are taking off on their Pages—which often is a good sign that they’ll work well on your page, too. Share the content or use these success cases as a way to brainstorm ideas for creative posts of your own.

Boost supporter engagement The Facebook News Feed does not slow down. There’s a lot going on, making it easy to miss something important.

Imagine how your supporters would react if you could find the best content related to your mission on Facebook, and consistently deliver it to them, helping them not miss out on important news, events or memes? Everyone wants to be the first of their friends to like, comment and share the hottest content on Facebook, and your supporters are no different.

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Doing so will help transform your Facebook page into a source of solid and relevant information, which will boost engagement and reach. It enhances trust with your audience and your credibility, turning you into an expert in your nonprofit niche. Take for example this top trending image:

• What do you hope others will learn?

• Or pose a question.

Adding your own thoughts can be a great springboard to start a conversation and encourage followers to become more engaged. Be sure to respond to folks in the comments and encourage them to contribute.

Build digital karma Online, what goes around often comes around. Want to get noticed by a powerhouse in your ecosystem? Share their stuff with your audience over the next few months and always add your two cents. While it’s not a sure thing that they’ll notice your efforts and repay them, without a doubt it works more often than not.

Or this article:

How Often Should You Share Other People’s Content?

While your audience really determines the ideal original content to curated content ratio, as demonstrated to you through analytics and tracking, a popular formula that works well is Give, Give, Give, Ask (as popularized by bestselling author, Gary Vaynerchuk).

Let’s break down that perspective: • Give (Others): Share a great blog article full of information that enriches the community from a heavy-hitting website and generates support for your organization. Don’t ask for anything in sharing this. Just add to the conversation.

• Give (Yours): Post/repost a native video created by one of your followers. It’s funny, inspirational and/or makes a point. Again, don’t ask for anything, just share.

• Give (Others): Share a high-quality image taken by an independent photographer supporting the greater community. Just share with your perspective.

Illustrate your value It’s all about becoming a valuable resource. When you can dig up great articles that your audience is interested in— regardless of the source—you’ll earn abundant respect.

Building trust and credibility doesn’t happen overnight. You’ll have to post great content for a while to gain a reputation of quality with your audience.

Add your two cents!

When sharing a piece of content, add value to the conversation: • What did you like about the piece?

• What was most important?

• What did you learn?

• Ask (Yours): Create an original post with an ask, or curated call-to-action, to generate a pre-determined response – such as e-mail address for a newsletter.

The formula above creates a sense of sharing, contribution and helpfulness that will take you a long way in growing engagement. And that usually means 60% to 80% of your posts will be sharing other people’s content rather than posting your own.

While not every organization has the bandwidth to create 100% of their content 100% of the time, luckily the very nature of social media is about sharing and participating in a greater ecosystem. Pair these tips and tactics with analytics to better understand what types of content engage your audience, and then create a cycle of content curation that you consistently fine-tune to maximize audience engagement.

Shawn Kemp is co-founder of ActionSprout, where he helps power people’s ability to create lasting change by connecting organizations with their supporters.

FIFA Brands Are Finally Feeling the Heat of Scandal Especially Nike

By Mark J. Miller

A week after FIFA’s world was turned upside down and 14 people were arrested in connection with alleged corruption in world football, brands had released the requisite toothless statements about being disappointed and demanding FIFA to the clean up its act.

Only Visa really came on strong as if it might actually end its sponsorship if FIFA couldn’t find a way to fix things quickly.

YouGov data showed that consumers weren’t upset with the brands at that point so there was no reason to lose those hundreds of millions of potential eyeballs.

Now, though, media intelligence platform Meltwater is finding that attitudes toward top FIFA sponsors are “skewing largely negative” in the social media world. In the Asia-Pacific region, for example, Nike and McDonald’s were mentioned

along with words such as “corruption,” “bribery” and “scandal.” Coca-Cola and adidas are also being lambasted by consumers online.

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Nike, however, is the brand getting the most heat on social media, Meltwater research shows, largely because the company is alleged to have paid millions of dollars in bribes to sign Brazil to a sponsorship deal.

The film has been labeled pure “propaganda” and likely earned a few chuckles when Neill, as former FIFA head honcho João Havelange, welcomes current president Sepp Blatter (Roth) with the words, “He is apparently good at finding money.”

Blatter, of course, has said he will resign from his post, though it remains very unclear when he’ll actually pack up his belongings and leave the building. His announcement, though, led comedian John Oliver to fulfill promises he recently made on his show, Last Week Tonight, to eat items from the McDonald’s dollar menu, wear a pair of ridiculouslooking adidas shoes and drink a Bud Light Lime and call it “delicious” afterward if Blatter was ousted. Oliver hilariously made good on his word this week, noting that he hadn’t promised what he would say before drinking the brewski, coming up with humorous options.

Nike denies the allegations and is busy pushing itself as a feel-good brand with a new video supporting the American women’s national team that just posted its first victory at the Women’s World Cup in Canada.

Bud Light proved it has a sense of humor, toasting Oliver on social media for being a man of his word.

US consumers showed their dislike for FIFA in another way this past weekend when the film “United Passions,” which tells the story of world football’s governing body and was heavily financed by FIFA itself, was released in 10 cities. The film, which stars such big names as Tim Roth, Sam Neill and Gerard Depardieu, could not have bombed more. It brought in a total of $607 in the first two days, the Associated Press reports. One theater in Phoenix only tallied $9, meaning one person saw it there in two days.

Meanwhile, brands keep hoping consumers will turn their eyes away from the chaos in Zurich to the games being played in the Women’s World Cup in Canada right now.

According to the Wall Street Journal, brands have spent nearly triple what they shelled out on the last WWC, which was held in Germany. Perhaps helping this year’s cause is that it is taking place in North America, so games are being broadcast during ideal viewing hours for US fans.

YouTube’s best ads of the last ten years: The neuro-science verdict

By Heather Andrew

Everyone loves a “greatest ever” list and YouTube’s top five ads of the last decade – as voted by users – is no exception. From Volvo Trucks’ “epic split”, Turkish Airlines “Kobe vs Messi” selfie shootout and Volkswagen’s Darth Vader toddler, to female empowerment messages from Always and Dove, the list is a brilliant testament to global ad creativity.

Creativity and effectiveness go hand-in-hand, or they should do, and while the first is relatively easy to identify, proving ad effectiveness is a lot more complicated. With marketers increasingly turning to neuro-science to reveal subconscious factors involved in ad effectiveness such as emotional response and memory encoding, what makes these ads work from the brain’s point of view? Here are five key insights.

A clear narrative arc When our brains are following a sequence of events, they pick up more strongly on elements that are related to one another.

Focusing on a single narrative with a clear beginning, middle and end contributes to the brain storing an ad into memory, as the brain latches on to each new development in order to understand the story. There is compelling evidence to show that what goes into memory correlates with subsequent purchase decisions and behaviour.

While all five of the ads featured have a strong narrative, Volkswagen’s ad, which starts with the toddler dressed as Darth Vader, tracks his increasing frustration as his “powers” don’t work and climaxes with “Darth Vader” successfully “starting” the car, is a particularly clear example, providing a well-trodden path for the brain to follow, all the way to the end of the ad.

The brand as hero of the story Our brains are very selective about what goes into memory otherwise we’d be overwhelmed by irrelevant details. This means that brands that are intrinsic to an ad’s narrative are more likely to be put into memory. Each of the five ads featured in the line-up succeed in this respect.

In Always#LikeAGirl ad and Dove Real Beauty Sketches, the brands are the resolution of the ad answering the question, who is bringing me this content?

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Patterns and repetitions Our brains are programmed to spot connections between individual elements in a sequence of events; patterns and repetitions help highlight the connection between the different elements of the narrative.

Tension/anticipation In our brains anything that builds tension is sending signals that something important might be about to occur. The signals put our brains on high alert and makes them very receptive to whatever might follow.

Tension might be built by any one of a number of things – music building to a crescendo as in the Volkswagen ad’s use of The Imperial March (Darth Vader’s theme), a sequence of scenes building towards a climax (Turkish Airlines, Volkswagen, Volvo, Dove).

A focus on people/characters All of the top five ads focus on a few characters (instead of many) who are human beings (as opposed to animations), which helps to create a stronger sense of personal relevance, making it easier for viewers to identify with the situation. A sense of personal relevance is key to driving levels of memory encoding enabling brands to directly appeal to consumers.

Heather Andrew, chief executive of Neuro-Insight

The Problem With The Color Blue

By Devin Liddell

BLUE MAY SEEM LIKE A SAFE BET FOR A BRAND’S IDENTITY. THE DATA SUGGESTS OTHERWISE.

In brand design, the color blue is everywhere. Roughly 60% of Fortune 500 companies feature dominantly blue brand identities. Nearly half of Major League Baseball’s 30 teams sport a blue signature color. The “Big Three” US automobile manufacturers—General Motors, Ford, and Fiat Chrysler— are all blue. The same goes for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. This makes little sense from the perspective of designers. Differentiation is supposed to be a good thing, but magenta T-Mobile and brown UPS and orange Home Depot look like crazy-uncle outliers against this blue backdrop.

There is plenty of psychological research on reactions to blue and other colors, but to evaluate BRANDS HAVE TO the strategy of choosing blue for a brand, we wanted to measure COMPETE—THEY how blue actually performs, HAVE TO WORK to examine how it measures up against other colors in AGAINST THE IDEA competitive environments. After all, brands have to compete— OF SAMENESS they have to work against the AND COMMAND A idea of sameness and command a premium. So we looked at the PREMIUM. comparative performance of

blue and other colors in several real-life contexts, including: Major League Baseball’s 2014 season; the 20 largest sports teams by payroll: and similarly sized data sets from the Fortune 500 and other metrics-based business rankings.

The Blue Socks Based on the signature brand colors of its teams, Major League Baseball can be divided up into just seven color blocks: blue, red, orange, black, green, purple, and yellow. The number of blocks gets a lot smaller when the blocks consisting of just a single team—black (Chicago White Sox), green (Oakland Athletics), purple (Colorado Rockies), and yellow (Pittsburgh Pirates)—are removed. That leaves us with a 13-franchise blue block of teams, a 9-franchise red block of teams, and a 4-franchise orange block of teams. We then compared the performance of these blocks, using just hard numbers: team payrolls and wins and losses. So, as a “team,” how did blue do in 2014?

The blue block of teams comprised 46% of total MLB payroll, but just 43% of total wins; conversely, the orange block of teams comprised 10% of total payroll, but 14% of total wins.

Dividing each individual team’s payroll by its total number of

wins reveals the team’s “cost per win”—what it paid in payroll for each victory. Within this metric, five of the ten highest cost per win figures in 2014 belong to blue teams, including the highest cost per win team in the L.A. Dodgers, which paid $751,028 more per win than the orange San Francisco Giants, the eventual World Series winner.

The blue block of teams had a lower average win total figure (80.9 wins) than both orange (82.7), and red (88.8). Given that both the 2014 American League Central division race an American League Wild Card race were separated by a single game, these margins matter.

Despite the fact that more than 40% of MLB teams are blue, a blue team has won the World Series just once in the last 10 years (2009 New York Yankees). It’s also worth noting that the New York Yankees had 2009’s highest opening day payroll of around $201 million US, which was $65 million more than the secondhighest team payroll that year—so while the Yankees won, they definitely paid far and away the most for that championship.

A BLUE-LOGO TEAM HAS WON THE WORLD SERIES JUST ONCE IN THE LAST 10 YEARS.

The Blue Bottom Line So, blue underperforms in Major League Baseball as reflected in wins-losses and payroll efficiency. But sports are sports. How does blue perform in major league business?

MLB consists of 30 teams, so the 30 biggest companies by gross revenues as ranked by BLUE COMPANIES Fortune offer a same-sized data to examine. While MLB is not a EARN A LOT set study in color diversity, the Fortune REVENUE, “30” is nearly binary in its color representation; other than Apple BUT ARE LESS (white) and Fannie Mae (green), 30 biggest companies in the PROFITABLE. the U.S. are either blue or red.

With 19 companies in the top 30 featuring predominantly blue brand identities, blue companies represent 63% of the total list and contribute a 63% share of total revenue—but just a 45% share of total profits. Put more simply: as a group, blue companies earn a lot revenue, but are less profitable than their red, green, and white peers.

Blue lags behind all other represented colors in the “profit as a percentage of sales” metric. Red companies on the list average 7.1% margins while blue companies average 6.6% (note: Apple and Fannie Mae profits are off-the-charts, and as single-color outliers here they defy meaningful comparison). To put the difference between red and blue group margins here in perspective, if the blue group earned the same average profit percentage on its sales that year as the red group, the blue companies would be collectively $12.24 billion richer.

The Big Blue Marble Maybe this is all just crazy correlation, and nothing more. Or perhaps this is an American phenomenon, and looking at blue’s performance in sports and business more globally will redeem blue in some way.

To see if this is the case, we looked at the 20 most profitable companies in the world and the 20 teams with the largest player payrolls on the planet—a list that includes the biggestspending teams from MLB, the NBA, Barclays Premier League (England), Ligue 1 (France), La Liga (Spain), and the Bundesliga (Germany).

First, the 20 most profitable companies in the world: Blue companies represent 40% of the list, but the blue block’s

through color. But while this is correlation, there certainly is a lot of it to suggest that blue underperforms consistently, and in similar ways, across different contexts.

Blue Streaks

FOUR OF THE FIVE LARGEST TEAM PAYROLLS ON THE PLANET BELONG TO BLUE TEAMS.

share of revenues is just 34%; conversely, the red and green blocks have increased shares of revenues compared to their proportional representation on the list. That trend is echoed in the color blocks’ respective shares of profits; blue’s share of profits decreases, while the red and green blocks’ shares increase.

Next, the 20 biggest sports teams in the world by team payroll: Four of the five largest team payrolls on the planet belong to blue teams. Only one of those teams—Paris Saint-Germain in France’s Ligue 1—actually managed to win its most recent league championship. Among the Barclays Premier League teams on the list, there are two blue-red, same-city rivals represented in Manchester City (blue) and Manchester United (red), and London’s Chelsea (blue) and Arsenal (red); while Chelsea and Manchester City finished the most recent BPL season 1-2, which looks like a bright spot for blue, this is deceptive: red’s Arsenal and Manchester United have 33 league titles between them to ‘CALMING,’ blue’s Chelsea and Manchester combined nine, despite ‘PEACEFUL,’ AND City’s all four clubs having 100-plus‘RELIABLE’—THERE’S year histories.

NOT A LOT OF SEX APPEAL IN THOSE ATTRIBUTES.

Obviously, the performance of individual professional sports teams and large national and multinational businesses cannot simply be explained

So what about causality? What are some possible reasons for blue’s underperformance? Here are our two theories for consideration.

Theory #1: Blue is Just Too Chill Color theorists frequently connect blue to attributes like “calming” and “peaceful” and “reliable.” There’s not a lot of sex appeal in those attributes. In performance-driven contexts like sports and business, is it possible the underbelly of those attributes is that they lull audiences—including players, employees, and customers—into underperformance?

Theory #2: Blue is the Color of the Un-bold Blue is cited as the “most popular” color among both men and women. This means blue, as a brand color, is likely the easiest color for groups of people to agree on. If a blue brand is an indicator of a consensus-driven culture, might that also mean that those cultures are essentially self-made for the middle—they are less inclined toward the big risks and bold moves so evident in more dictatorial market leaders.

These theories may or may not explain blue’s underperformance in sports and business, but the stats imply that blue is below average. And blue’s underperformance doesn’t mean it isn’t a lovely color for a sensible car or a comfortable duvet. Just not for a brand with big ambitions.

Devin Liddell leads the brand strategy offer for design consultancy Teague, working collaboratively with clients such as Anheuser-Busch InBev, The Boeing Company, Intel, JW Marriott, Microsoft, and SC Johnson to create research-driven brand strategies and consumer experiences.

The Rise of Marketing Automation [Infographic]

By Verónica Maria Jarski

Marketing automation has grown to a $1.65 billion industry, according to the following Marketing Automation Insider infographic. An estimated 142,00 businesses now use marketing automation.

Here’s a look at the rise of marketing automation and reasons for its popularity.

The first marketing automation tool was Unica in 1992.

Due to faster Internet speeds in 2006, marketing automation vendors began creating Cloud-based tools.

The emergence and popularity of social media also spurred email marketing vendors to build other automated marketing tools.

To find out more about marketing automation’s growth and reasons for it, click or tap on the infographic:

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Veronica Maria Jarski is the Opinions editor and a senior writer at MarketingProfs.

Visual Marketing:

Top Tactics & Challenges

By Ayaz Nanji

Professional photography is the best performing visual content type, according to a recent survey of marketers from Digiday and Chute.

The study was based on data from a survey of 204 marketers working at brands, agencies, and publishers.

Some 59% of respondents say professional photography is one of the visual asset types that perform best on desktops; 55% say it is one of the visual asset types that performs best on mobile.

Original graphic design/illustration ranks as the second-best visual asset type for both desktops and mobile.

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Below, additional key findings from the report.

Ease of Development Respondents say stock photography is the easiest visual content type to create and incorporate; original graphic designs/ illustrations and video are considered the hardest to develop.

Challenges Respondents say a lack of time/staff resources is the biggest challenge to creating visual content.

About the research: The report was based on data from a survey of 204 marketers working at brands, agencies, and publishers.

Ayaz Nanji is an independent digital strategist and the co-founder of Inbound ContentWorks, a marketing agency that specializes in content creatio. He is also a research writer for MarketingProfs. His past experience includes working for Google/YouTube, the Travel Channel, AOL, and the New York Times.

Enduring Rules of Business Success

By Prof Rajesh Srivastava

Do you want me to share with you the simple rules which can guide you to take decisions to build a valuable business? “Go on� I hear you say.

First, let me give the floor to the experts.

Michael E Rayon and Mumtaz Ahmed* studied 25,453 companies, over 44 years, to discover the 3 Rules that helped them achieve enduring success. These rules are applicable across industries because they are distilled from analysing a wide crosssection of companies hailing from diverse backgrounds.

All these companies consistently pursued seemingly elementary rules.

1. Better before Cheaper - in other words compete on differentiation instead of price.

2. Revenue before cost - that is prioritize increasing revenue over reducing cost.

3. There are no other rules so change anything you must to follow Rule 1 and 2.

The rules neither dictate specific behaviour nor are they general strategies. They are fundamental concepts on which companies build greatness over many years.

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Has any Company of recent vintage, which we love and admire, embraced these rules?

Take Singapore Airlines (SIA), which in the eyes of many is a truly great company. It has embraced all the 3 rules.

Let me share practices which are adopted by SIA.

1. New Aircrafts: SIA invests heavily into buying new aircrafts. Its fleet, in 2009, on an average were 74 months old, compared to the industry average of 160 months. New aircrafts which come with state of art technology & fittings provide customers with a better on board experience as compared to other airlines who fly ‘older & dated’ aircrafts.

2. Training & retraining its Employees.

SIA invests heavily in training & more importantely in retraining its employees. The fresh recruits are provided with 4 months of intensive training which is twice as long as the industry average of 8 weeks. Extensive training ensures that the staff are able to deliver a memorable experience to their guests each time they come in touch with the airlines.

3. More staff on each flight.

In a normal SIA flight there are more cabin crew members as compared to other airlines. This ensures better quality service as compared to other airlines.

These practices would indicate that SIA is guided by the Rule of 3 while taking business decisions.

No wonder it has earned international acclaim for its legendary service.

Has SIA finacially benefitted by embracing these rules?

to negotiate a better deal from the aircraft manufacturer which results in cost saving.

3. Repair and maintenance cost: Since its aircrafts are new hence the repair and maintenance bills for 2008 is 4% as compared to other airlines where it ranges from 4.8 to 5.9%. Lower repair & maintaince cost translates to benefit cascading down & fattening the Bottom-Line.

4. More time in the Air: Because the air crafts are new, hence they spend more time in the air -13 hours - as against the industry average of 11.3 hours. Remember an airline makes money when the aircraft in the air and not when it is parked on the ground.

5. Fuel cost: Fuel is major cost component for an airline. Since SIA aircrafts are new hence they consume less fuel per air miles flown as compared to competitor’s aircrafts which are of an older make & hence guzzle fuel. Lower fuel consumption means more margins which in turn results in a healtier Bottom Line.

6. On time Departure & Arrival and few disruptions in schedule: Since the aircrafts are new hence the majority of flights take off & land on time. There is a miniscule deviation from schedule. A trait which is eminentely desired by air warriors who go out of there way to offer their business to SIA.

7. Better Guest experience on board:

Indeed the financial parameters of SIA have become more robust by pursuing the Rule of 3.

1. Depreciation of Aircraft: Depreciation of new aircrafts results in tax shield which lowers its taxable income & correspondingly increase its cash profit. Moreover SIA on its volition, depreciates these new Aircrafts over 15 years, not 25 years an industry practice. Futher lowereing its taxable income.

2. Lower price Aircraft : Remember, SIA invests heavily into buying new aircrafts & hence places regular ‘large orders’ for air planes. It pays for these acquisitions in cash & therefore it is able

New aircrafts, on time departure & arival, few deviations from schedule, better trained airhostesses, more number of staff per flight - act in unision to deliver a memorable & unforgettable experience to each of its guests on board; so much so that the memories linger much after they have deplaned.

The next time they have to fly, they naturally choose to give their business to SIA which results in SIA having a healty top line & an equally robust bottom-line.

If you wish to build a business where customers offer their business to you then without wasting time adopt the Rule of 3.

And then put up your legs and see your business grow from strength to strength.

Rajesh Srivastava earned his engineering degree from IIT,Kanpur, and studied management at the Indian IIM,Bangalore. He has over three decades of successful experience creating value in fields as diverse as the alcoholic beverage industry, food and commodities, personal care, lifestyle industries, and education. He has conceptualized, launched, and nurtured over fifty products which enrich the lives of Indian consumers’ every day. Brands he has promoted include Bagpiper, McDowell Signature, Royal Challenge, Blue Riband, Blue Riband Duet, Captain Cook, Park Avenue, Premium Range of Personal Care Products, and Lomani.

This article is inspired from the finding eloqutently laid out in an article titled •“Three rules for making a Company Truly Great. “In Harvard Business Review(April ‘2013) •SIA content taken from “Singapore Airlines’ Balancing Act “ HBR (July august 2010) *“Three Rules For Making A Company Truly Great” by Michael E. Raynor and Mumtaz Ahmed, HBR April 2013

Mood mismatch between TV shows and ads may hurt advertisers: study

By Susan Krashinsky

We’ve all been there: watching a TV show that reaches a quiet, dramatic moment, only to be jarred by a commercial with loud announcers, upbeat music or gaudy animation.

The effect is annoying for viewers – but this mismatch may also be hurting advertisers.

That’s the finding of a new study in the Journal of Marketing .

In a series of experiments, the researchers found that people are more likely to skip “highly energetic” ads when they are in a “deactivated” mood – for example, when they are watching serious, dramatic programs such as The Americans, Homeland or The Good Wife.

Not only that, but that type of mood mismatch also made viewers less likely to remember the brand message.

The findings are important since, thanks to the popularity of online streaming video and PVR technology on TV sets, viewers are able to skip commercials more often than they ever did in the past.

“The advertising landscape is more challenging than ever before because consumers are increasingly prone to tune out traditional forms of advertising such as television commercials,” the authors wrote in the study.

Many advertisers tend to create upbeat commercials in order to get attention. In their evaluation of commercials on the U.S. online TV and movie service Hulu, the researchers found that roughly four out of five commercials were “relatively energetic.”

But the study suggests that advertisers may want to consider also producing low-key commercials to fit the media environment in which they are placed, or at least to be more careful to place energetic commercials alongside shows that won’t present such a mismatch – comedies such as Modern Family for example.

“There’s a reason why I’m watching a type of show. I want to stay in that emotion state,” said Dhruv Grewal, a marketing professor at Babson College near Boston and one of the study’s authors. “It’s really important that advertisers keep in mind the context.”

In one experiment, participants watched a sad video . They

then watched an ad, and rated how difficult it was to watch, as well as how energetic they found it to be. Commercials with a positive tone did not irritate viewers, but they rated very energetic commercials quite difficult to watch.

Another experiment asked people to watch either a sad video or a neutral video followed by one of two commercials for Geico – either “highly energetic” or “moderately energetic.”

Participants could press a button to skip the ad whenever they wanted.

There was not a significant difference in the time people spent watching each commercial after they had watched a neutral clip; but when they were in a lower mood, after watching the sad movie clip, they skipped the high-energy commercial more quickly than the moderate-energy one.

And this was not just because viewers were sad and the ads were positive in tone: the same result happened when the experiment was repeated with moderate- and highenergy ads on a negative subject (anti-drug public service announcements).

Similarly, the sadness of the video clip was not necessarily the defining factor: it was the low-key mood state people were in after watching the sad clip. Another experiment tested this by asking people either to write about a life experience that made them excited, one that made them feel relaxed or a typical day. Participants then watched one of the same two Geico commercials, with similar results to previous experiments.

Furthermore, other experiments in the study showed that people actually had a harder time with brand recall when they were in a “deactivated” mood state and exposed to a highly energetic commercial.

Given how quick people can be to skip ads, the implication is clear.

“With most commercials, the tagline, the brand, is often in the last three to five seconds,” Prof. Grewal said. “If people are not watching, that commercial is not going to be effective.”

Susan Krashinsky - Marketing Reporter, The Globe and Mail

Three Branding Lessons From a Grammy Award-Winning Violinist

By Julia Melymbrose

If you think the prices you can charge your clients depend entirely on your skills and the quality of your services, you’re dead wrong. Having killer skills is a prerequisite to being successful in the marketplace, but surprisingly enough, those skills can have little to do with what your customers pay you.

Moreover, if your website doesn’t project the right kind of image and speaks the right sort of words to your clients, you’ll be left playing the “cheapest price wins” game, and never be able to charge what you’re really worth.

The difference between hearing crickets and hearing your account cha-ching all day long is your brand.

Every business owner and entrepreneur needs to get right the following three brand elements to get ahead: context, perception, and priorities. And because talking about online branding and website presentation can sometimes feel a little abstract, we will use real-life experiments to see exactly how these three factors can affect your brand and your prices, and how you can successfully incorporate them into your overall website plan.

The Subterranean Musician Joshua Bell is the Grammy Award-winning violinist who played the Oscar-winning score in the movie “The Red Violin.”

In 2007, after a couple of full-house, standing-room-only concerts, with the “cheap tickets” going for $100 a pop, the virtuoso fiddler teamed up with a Washington Post reporter to conduct an experiment.

Exchanging a formal concert suit for jeans, a T-shirt, and a baseball cap, Bell set up at a corner of L’Enfant Plaza Metro Station in Washington DC and played part of his concert program while he stood next to a trash can. Both reporter and musician wanted to see whether people going by would recognize the quality of the playing (even if they didn’t recognize the musician) and whether they would stop to enjoy the music.

1. The context of the experience What do you think happened that cold January morning in DC? Surprisingly, only a couple of people stopped. The man who has been said to “play like a god” barely got some spare change for his efforts.

Did Joshua Bell play any worse that morning than during his evening concerts? Nope.

Was everyone who happened to pass him by tone-deaf?

Again, no.

The problem was not the “service” or “product” but the context. People weren’t at the subway station to enjoy the music. They were furiously shuffling in and out of subway cars, trying to get to work on time, thinking about their big presentation, and planning out the day ahead of them. A busy subway station during morning rush hour is hardly the right context for classical music.

Context frames everything, including the value we ascribe to something. And this same rule of context applies to your

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website.

With so much emphasis given to online content these days, we’ve forgotten the importance of context. But the right context is what determines the value of your services to your customers.

If your website looks completely amateurish, with half the buttons and links on it not working, and everything simply thrown together willy-nilly—just so you have some content— then you’re practically placing your business next to a trash can in a subway station. Will anyone pay you $100 to “play” for them?

Nope—most people won’t even throw a dollar bill your way.

For your website to function as a successful base for your online business, it must provide the right professional (and professional-looking), high-value context that will frame your high-quality services or products.

2. Perceptions and expectations Seven years after the original experiment, Joshua Bell returned to the subway in 2014 to try his luck again.

This time, Bell made some changes.

Instead of jeans and a T-shirt, he put on on a neat black shirt and ditched the cap. He also took along with him nine students from the National Young Arts Foundation. The classical “orchestra” set up its impromptu concert not next to a trash can but in the main hall of Union Station.

This time, people noticed. Not because they knew who Bell was. And not because they remembered reading a story about a classical violinist in the metro from seven years ago.

People took notice because their perception of Bell and his music was different the second time around. This violinist was a well-dressed musician, accompanied by young talent, playing in the main hall of a station at lunch time, and someone who had obviously gone to great trouble to delight passing audiences. Still not the best context for classical music, but the performance commanded respect and attention, and raised the audience’s expectations.

Same goes with running an online business. It’s not your skills necessarily that will make the difference between getting paid $10/hour and $100/hour, but the perception your clients have of you. When people don’t have the chance to meet you in person, your online presence will form the basis of their perception of you and set the expectations for your future relationship.

Does your website look like the same old same old and your copy read like some corporate faceless machine typed it up for the frigid-hearted? Then expect to be rewarded with some same old frigidly low payments, too.

Your customers have to perceive your special value first to be willing to pay a special price later. High-quality and professional, of course, are not to be confused with formal.

If your style is silly or whimsical, then by all means show that. But show it through high-value graphics, professional

pictures (of you sticking your tongue out), and intriguing yet colloquial copy captivates the attention of your ideal clients.

3. Priorities We’re all busy in life. And we all have lists of priorities that help us make it through the day and crash on the couch in the evening with some traces of sanity still left. And if something’s not topping our list of priorities at a particular moment? We’ll simply ignore it. And this is exactly what happened to Joshua Bell in his first experiment... At 7:15 in the morning, “enjoying some nice violin music” was on no one’s list of priorities.

The second time Bell took to the subway, however, he played at 12:30PM—right in the middle of everybody’s lunch break—when most passersby were looking for a way to clear their heads before returning to the office.

Your clients are busy people, too. So busy in fact, that they may have never stopped to consider the benefits of your products or services to their lives or businesses.

Even though you understand how you can help your clients and why they need to hire you, that doesn’t mean that they do, too. It doesn’t matter how unrealistically low you price your services; if people don’t see the benefit in what you do, they won’t buy. Like Bell playing at 7:15 in the morning, you’ll be completely ignored by everyone.

To communicate your true value to your customers, you first have to understand their priorities, and then position your services accordingly. Targeting young, stressed-out moms? Show them how you can help boost their confidence and restore their sanity. Targeting budding, overwhelmed entrepreneurs? Show them exactly how your services can put their business on the map. Targeting busy, successful business people? Show them how you can save them tons of valuable time.

Prioritize your message according to the benefits for your clients—not the features you’re selling—and they’ll pay whatever you charge—no questions asked. *** Getting paid what you’re worth is a complicated business. In fact, it’s all about what you show. If no one understands your true value or how exactly you can help them solve a problem, you’ll be stuck in low-price land forever.

No matter your skills and talents, the way you brand yourself and your business online plays a huge role on how your ideal customers perceive and reward your value. When you present your skills and services in the right context, create the right perception about the value you can offer, and match the priorities on your ideal customers’ stay-sane list, you’ll be golden.

Julia Melymbrose is the copywriter at the branding and website studio Chocolate and Caviar, which specializes in creative, one-of-a-kind websites.

Build a lasting community around your brand

By Ben Shwartz

Given that the internet has become a stable, ever-present tool in any information-seeker’s arsenal, your company’s Web presence plays a key role in the overall success of your brand. Thus, it’s in every brand’s best interest to create a positive online customer experience, and the right amount of interaction is one of the most dynamic and effective ways to do so. By taking an interactive route to connect with your customers, you’ll provide more enhanced forms of communication while receiving more nuanced feedback from your users, thereby establishing a win-win situation for business and customers alike.

Strive for engagement For better or for worse, the internet is a springboard from which users are constantly craving interaction and feedback.

In order to drive interest and engagement, internet users need an elevated experience that provides more than just words on a page. Whether your content is supplemented by photos, videos, infographics, live chats, and the like, you’ll provide your visitorwith a layered experience that actively appeals to the propensities of the modern day internet user.

By providing your community with relevant written content supplemented by engaging media, your efforts will be met with gratitude from your readers in the form of increased retention and time spent on-site.

The experiential model In terms of customer service, it’s a known fact that a poor service experience will generate more talk and circulate to more listeners than a good one. It’s important to approach these possible negative encounters with a stealthy damage control plan in place in order to alleviate potential wordof-mouth blows to your brand. In these instances, transparency and assuming responsibility are key. By smartly communicating in a direct and straightforward manner, your brand’s ethos will be elevated in the minds of consumers.

Apologize for any misdoings while communicating that you have genuinely considered their comments and concerns, and follow up with an actionable response. Whether you investigate further into a potentially recurring issue or offer the customer at hand a discounted service or consolation, allow your output to speak not only to this specific customer, but also to all other audience members. By taking a publicly active stance to provide for a better experience, you’ll be able to put offsetting comments to rest while positioning your brand as vocal, progressive, and transparent.

Foster loyalty In our age of digital impersonalization, it can be difficult to distinguish corporate marketing from genuine customer appreciation. By defining your target audience’s needs, wants, and concerns and by tailoring your content and interaction around that, you’ll be able to distinguish your brand on a personal level that will set it apart from competitors. Allow your channels of interaction (including but not limited to inbound marketing and social spheres) to take an individualized tone and style that will speak to the humanity of your users in the midst of potential technological barriers. Customers value trust and thoughtfulness in a company’s culture, and these opportunities for individuation can lead your brand to the forefront on your community messages alone. Take the time and effort to show appreciation and consideration for your customers, as loyalty is a key tenet in fostering thriving and long-lasting relationships.

Community matters In the same vein as building customer loyalty, your ultimate long term goal should be to establish an enduring community of like-minded individuals that share a common affiliation with your brand. While a community or marketing manager can indeed be the direct personal link to individual customers, his/her job should also include more widespread social outreach that will call for participation not only with the brand itself, but also between community members. Usergenerated content in the form of open-ended group chats, contests, and community events (online and offline alike) will contribute to the resources available on behalf of your brand to your community as a whole. In all, customers want to know that they aren’t alone on the web. By crafting mediums that call for participation and engagement with others, you can offer tailored content, enrich the scope of your brand, and establish an elevated level of rapport between community members that will remain in the hearts and minds of users.

By providing your customers with a variety of methods of interaction, you’ll be setting the stage for meaningful and useful engagement that will ensure that your company’s messages are communicated effectively and to the best of its abilities. Be sure to keep interactive elements in mind when dealing with community outreach, as they are essential building blocks to establishing the best version of your brand that it can possibly be.

Ben Shwartz is the vice president of marketing for Spot.IM, the first “everywhere” social network. He loves to buy and sell websites, and immerse himself in anything and everything in the realm of online marketing.

6

Tips for Designing Happiness

By Randall Stone and Dan Clay

THE SECRET TO CONSUMER LOYALTY? IT’S LESS ABOUT THE MOMENT OF INTERACTION AND MORE ABOUT WHAT COMES BEFORE AND AFTER, SAYS LIPPINCOTT. For decades, companies have taken for granted the notion that focusing relentlessly on improving customer interactions will lead to greater loyalty from the people who buy their products and services. The relevant metrics usually pertain to familiar questions: How well am I delivering in-the-moment?

How are customers experiencing my brand across a range of touch points—call centers, websites, social media, mobile apps, in-store? What will make customers deliriously happy when they’re directly engaged with my brand?

BRANDS MUST TAP INTO THE JOY OF ANTICIPATING AND THE WARMTH OF REMEMBERING.

But singular focus on the inthe-moment interaction a customer has with a brand means companies are missing moments when engagement might be more exciting and compelling for consumers: before and after the

interaction. Happiness researchers find that upwards of half of someone’s happiness is built in moments of anticipation and remembering. Happiness is as much about how we look forward to and look back on an event as it is about the event itself. To make customers happy, brands must tap into the joy of anticipating an experience and the warmth of remembering it.

Most brands miss these opportunities to deliver happiness, which may help explain the wide disconnect between companies that believe they’re delivering a superior customer experience and what the metrics tell us about their customers’ actual level of satisfaction. In a Forrester survey, more than 80% of leaders say their companies are focused on boosting customer experience through incremental or radical improvements. Yet in 2013, only 8% of the companies in the Forrester Index achieved excellent customer experience scores.

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The Happiness Halo A wealth of research reveals that the emotional component of customer experience is a better predictor of loyalty than the functional, cognitive component. To devise innovations that make customers feel differently, we need to broaden the lens beyond the operational and transactional to focus more on the behavioral and emotional—what we at Lippincott are starting to call “the happiness halo.”

MEMORIES ARE CONSTANTLY BEING RECONSTRUCTED BASED ON SUBSEQUENT EVENTS.

“We make our decisions in terms of our memories,” observed Nobel Prizewinning psychologist Daniel Kahneman in a 2010 TED Talk. Brands need to recognize the power of memories as manifested in Kahneman’s conception of “The Remembering Self.”

But memories aren’t movie clips stored on a hard drive; they reside in nerve pathways that fire anew (and rewire) each time we remember the event, as cognitive psychologist and memory expert Elizabeth Loftus has shown. This means that certain moments, like “peaks” and “ends,” disproportionately dominate memory, and that memories are constantly being reconstructed based on subsequent events.

Researchers at University College London have developed a corollary of sorts to Kahneman’s Remembering Self.

They’ve demonstrated that positive expectations influence a person’s overall happiness as much as actual experiences do. “Anticipation” measures compose half of their “equation of happiness.” Likewise, marketing professor Marsha Richins has found that even the most materialistic consumers receive more pleasure during the “anticipation” phase of a purchase than they do during the “acquisition” phase. We might call the dynamic at work here “The Anticipating Self.”

Brands, too, can build excitement by withholding information.

In 2013, Alexander Wang posted a cryptic message about an event on the High Line, Manhattan’s elevated walkway. All it said was the time and the location, and that “all details will be received upon entry.” Attendees wound up being treated to a big clothing giveaway. What can your brand hide to make the anticipation phase as exciting as possible?

2. Tempt

6 Tips for Maximizing the Before and After Practically speaking, what does all this have to do with making customers happy? It means recognizing 1) that features and attributes of products and services can only take you so far and that true happiness is gained through experiences that produce meaningful and lasting positive emotion; and 2) that because “The Interactional Self”—what happens between the before and after—has long enjoyed top billing in the customer-experience equation, incremental happiness benefits for brands are more likely to come from innovations targeting the Anticipating and Remembering selves. Here are six tips for how today’s experience innovators can harness the happiness halo.

1. Tease The movie industry has been doing it for decades: tease with a preview of coming attractions to stoke eager anticipation.

A variation on Tease, the idea here is to highlight the promise of an experience. Consider Universal Orlando’s website, which offers a digital version of its physical “Wizarding World of Harry Potter” attraction for upcoming guests to explore, building familiarity and excitement prior to the visit. There’s scientific evidence, from pioneering social psychologist Robert Zajonc, that “mere exposure” to unfamiliar things can increase someone’s favorability toward them. What can your brand expose to give customers something to look forward to?

3. Make it Special

Most customer experiences, from hotels to retail, have the opportunity to connect to a “limited resource,” if we simply reframe the experience as something WHAT MOMENTS worth looking forward to. As Robert OF YOUR BRAND Cialdini wrote in Influence, everything’s EXPERIENCE MIGHT more attractive when availability is limited. From Egg Nog to Thin Mints, BE A LIMITEDthe art of the crave-able, limited-time TIME TREAT FOR treat proves Cialdini’s point. A long CUSTOMERS? daily commute, for example, might be reframed as a special moment for self-enrichment (as Audible does), or an obligatory business trip might be reframed as a rare chance for an extravagant, restorative sleep (as Westin’s “Heavenly Bed” promotes). What moments of your brand experience might be a limited-time treat for customers, and how can you frame them that way?

4. Surprise

Dopamine is stimulated by unpredictability, which explains why surprises exert a disproportionate influence on our Remembering Self. Walmart Savings Catcher allows customers to scan their receipt and, if Walmart finds a lower price at another area store, they’ll surprise customers with an eGift card for the difference. The surprise likely yields a greater experience boost than would have resulted from paying a lower price in the first place. What post-interaction surprises can your brand deliver to bring unexpected joy to the Remembering Self?

5. Crescendo

“What defines a story are changes, significant moments and endings,” says Kahneman. “Endings are very, very important and,” in the case of a person’s memory of an event, “the ending dominates.” Thus, like a great drama or symphony that builds to an unforgettable crescendo, brands that make a positive last impression win favorable memories. This can take the form of something as simple as Walgreens’ “Be Well” goodbye, now discontinued, WHAT’S YOUR “LAST which anchored the brand IMPRESSION,” AND HOW on health. What’s your “last impression,” and how can you CAN YOU MAKE IT A HAPPY make it a happy memory?

MEMORY?

6. Displace

The catharsis of venting is overstated. Controlled studies by Iowa State University researchers showed that fits of rage are more likely to intensify anger and that tears can drive us deeper into sadness. Brands, though—in constant search for feedback—force customers to relive negative brand moments. Instead, of overwhelming customers with surveys, displace the old bad with new good—like the Southwest pilot who ordered pizza for passengers trapped on the tarmac.

What can your brand do to turn negative experiences into story-worthy memories?

For business results, emotions matter. Truly delivering impact requires going deeper into human understanding, realizing that happiness is built not just in interactions, but also in anticipation and remembering. Expanding our conception of the “customer experience” opens up a whole new world of experience innovation possibilities: the joy of anticipation, the immersion of interaction, and the warmth of remembering.

We’ll drive long-term loyalty and business growth, and all get a little happier as a result.

Randall Stone is a senior partner and serves as director of Lippincott’s experience innovation group. He is an architect and consultant with 30 years of experience in developing unique retail and hospitality brand identity, design and customer experience. Dan Clay is an associate in brand strategy based in Lippincott’s New York office. His past work covers a wide range of branding topics. He’s most proud of time spent revitalizing historic brands like Walmart, Caterpillar, and eBay.

5

Simple Ways to Make Your Press Release Stand Out

By Nash Riggins

No matter what industry your company is a part of, you’re bound to be facing competition—a lot of competition. To stand out from a sea of lookalikes and wannabes, your company must reach out to the right people.

That outreach starts with maintaining an effective network of press relations.

For a lot of companies, finding PR success can be extraordinarily frustrating—especially when just starting out.

But the good news is that it’s actually fairly simple to get your brand name out there and in the media.

Put on a smile, be patient, and follow the following five simple steps.

1. Make the right connections Even the most extraordinary press release on earth will be ignored if it’s not sent to the right people. So, before you start cold-calling journalists with news about your company’s innovative new products, sit down and think about who it is you’re talking to.

First, assess your target audience and decide which media outlets members are most likely to be using day in and day out. Then, take a look at each section of those publications to

figure out where your business story would fit. For example, are you trying to raise awareness about a new tech product, or are you announcing a new company scholarship?

Not everything qualifies as a breaking news story, so you should bear in mind that firing off a quick email to the editor-in-chief of a national newspaper is a waste of time and energy. It will never be read, and you’ll probably end up getting listed as spam.

Instead, take a look at the editorial contacts of each section, and go straight to the bottom of the totem pole. After all, if you’re shooting for a large publication, even the deputy section editors might not have the time to read the dozens press releases coming through their inbox.

Try your run-of-the-mill reporters first, and don’t just fire off a cold, automated email. It’s not hard for reporters to tell when they’re one of 300 people on the receiving end, and your impersonal emails are far more likely to go unread. Instead, phone each reporter before trying to send through a press release. Introduce yourself and what you’re promoting, and ask whether it’s something they’re interested in. That way, they’ll have a human voice in mind when reading your work.

It’s truly staggering how much that four-minute phone call will improve your chances of publication.

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2. Remember the 5 Ws Once you’ve figured out the target of your press release, start writing. Remember that most journalists are busy people, and they don’t have the time to make corrections or rewrite gibberish. If you want to see your story in print, you’ve got to do your best to get it right the first time.

First and foremost, that means writing your press release like a news story. A winning release should be written using an inverted pyramid. That’s just a fancy way of saying that all the meatiest chunks of your release should be at the very top.

In essence, the first sentence of your press release should sum up the entire story in just a few words—answering all questions of who, what, where, when, and why... and in the process answering why your story is worth the reader’s time.

As you progress, keep the language objective. If your press release is interesting enough, a lot of busy publications won’t even take the time to edit; they’ll merely cut and paste it onto their website. But the only way to achieve that sort of success is to give your release the tone of a typical news bulletin.

If your company is making some sort of assertion in your press release, acknowledge opposing viewpoints in the same way a news story would. Then, prove why your opinion is stronger. That will not only please editors but also help convince readers that your new product or service is a musthave.

To conclude, wrap up your news item with a bit of context: Will this development change your company’s standing in a particular industrial sector? Is this the first time your new product or service has been made available in your region?

By showing how your news item fits into a bigger picture, you’ll drastically widen the interest surrounding your press release. After all, your company’s new “smart shoe” might appeal only to a small number of consumers, but plenty of readers will have something to say more generally about the advancement of wearable technology.

3. Add a little flavor After you’re done writing your press release, take a look at where you might be able to break things up with a bit of color.

Bear in mind that to slip it past their editors most journalists will require quotes from at least two people within the company. After all, a story isn’t worth much if it hasn’t got a couple names and faces.

Here is your chance to add a bit of color and analysis to your news item. Spice up the technical specifications of a new product with juicy adjectives. Compare it with competing products and make bold statements outlining why yours is superior.

In this day and age, nobody’s got the time for a news item that’s the equivalent of a dry piece of toast.

But be wary. Don’t say anything damaging or overtly disrespectful about your competition, as that could ultimately

turn customers against you. That said, your quotes should seek to create a bit of friendly controversy surrounding your company. With any luck, you’ll have people disagreeing with your company’s bold statements and turning your marketing campaign into a genuine news debate.

4. Don’t forget a friendly reminder Once you’ve got your press release signed, sealed, and delivered, it’s time to play the waiting game. That said, sometimes journalists need a bit of encouragement. Give them a day or two to respond. If you don’t hear back, nothing’s wrong with dropping them a follow-up email or making a quick phone call.

Most news rooms are fast-paced, and it’s likely your editorial contacts read just four lines of your press release before being asked to focus on something else. Give them a friendly reminder about your story and why they should be interested.

Eventually, you’ll catch them on a slow news day, and they’ll be eternally grateful that you helped them fill a news slot.

5. Publish, publish, publish OK, so you’ve finally got a magazine to bite and your company news is out there in the open. Do you sit back and relish in your minor success? Of course not. Part of your job is to make sure as many people as possible see that clipping. Tweet the link to followers, start a conversation on Facebook... Capitalize on that publicity.

If you’d approached other publications about your release, it’s time to go back to them to point out that somebody else is running the story. That might be all the encouragement they need. A lot of news outlets might pretend they run only exclusive stories, but it’s usually just an act. News is news, and if people are expressing a genuine interest in your story, serious publications have no choice but to publish it.

That said, it’s worth approaching different publications post-release to gauge how you might be able to repackage the story to suit their needs. For example, perhaps you can provide a local or regional slant on a new-product release.

You can earn your press release a much larger space in print if you take the time to offer different publications their own slant. That way, you’re maximizing exposure, and they’re upholding some claim to exclusivity. *** In the end, good PR is all about patience and perseverance.

If your company news is truly of interest, it will eventually get the exposure it deserves, so long as you keep trying to get it out there. So develop sincere relationships with like-minded journalists, and keep thinking about ways to improve your media reach.

Nash Riggins is an American business journalist based in central Scotland. He writes for the Huffington Post, World Finance, EuropeanCEO, and the New Economy.

Follow his blog: www.nashriggins.com.

Marketers Grapple With Uncertain Reach of Branded Content on Instagram

By Tim Peterson

Instagram Influencers’ Followers See 70% of Their Branded Posts, Per TheAmplify’s Estimates Brands on Instagram can’t bank on people liking, sharing or commenting on their posts as a way to get those posts in front of more people, including people who may have missed the original post. There’s no algorithm to resurface old-yet-popular posts. Instagram is not Facebook; it’s Twitter without the retweet ripple effect.

factors like engagement rates and whether someone who follows an influencer on Instagram performed some activity on Instagram. That could include favoriting a photo on the same day that influencer posted a branded photo, said theAmplify’s CEO Justin Rezvani, who noted that his company charges advertisers based on estimated impressions.

The average photo or video posted to Instagram by a brand reaches 25% to 35% of the brand’s followers, said 360i’s VP of social media Matt Wurst.

While far from conclusive, theAmplify’s estimate is as good of a guess as marketers have of how many people see their influencer-created branded posts. “Right now [advertisers] are still looking at [Instagram] followers as a proxy for actual potential reach, because there haven’t been better figures to use,” Mr. Mallin said.

To get in front of more eyeballs, brands have two options.

They can buy ads to to push those posts in front of more people. Or they can pay so-called “influencers” -- Instagram users who have amassed large followings -- to post photos to their own accounts on a brand’s behalf.

There are pros and cons to each approach. Instagram ads are an easy, if expensive, way to reach a lot of the 300 million-plus people who check out the Facebookowned photo-sharing app each month and measure how many people actually saw the brands’ post. But it can be an inelegant solution considering the brands are basically forcing themselves in front of people.

Influencer-created branded posts can be cheaper and more likely to resonate with the intended audience. But brands -which can measure impressions for their own paid and organic posts if they become Instagram advertisers -currently have no way of knowing how many people actually saw an influencer’s branded post.

“It speaks to how the viewability issue is working its way through social and mobile. Most of the time when we talk about viewability and standards, we’re talking about display and desktop. But when you look at a platform like Instagram, there are still pretty big viewability questions that are wide open,” said MEC’s head of social for North America Noah Mallin.

Instagram declined to comment for this article.

The average Instagram influencer-created branded post reaches about 70% of the influencer’s followers, according to estimates from Instagram brand-influencer matchmaker theAmplify. That figure is based on the more than 1,500 branded posts the firm has facilitated over the last 15 months between brands and influencers like Joey Graceffa who has 2.1 million followers on Instagram.

TheAmplify did some back-of-the-envelope math to gauge what share of an influencer’s followers likely see a branded post. It’s “a best-guess assumption of viewability” based on

But for all the talk around ad viewability, agency execs say being blind to these branded posts’ impression counts has yet to become a big deal to clients. Mr. Mallin said Instagram is “a compelling enough platform right now from a creative and reach standpoint that [brands] want to be on it.”

Besides, advertisers have ways to sidestep the impression issue.

“We usually encourage our clients to prioritize engagement rate over reach or impressions,” Mr. Wurst said. 360i operates its own influencer program for clients, and Mr. Wurst said rates are based on three factors: the number of people that follow an influencer, the average engagement rate for the influencer’s posts and the influencer’s unique creative skillset or audience niche.

Laundry Service also manages its own influencer network and negotiates influencer campaigns for clients based on engagement rates, said CEO Jason Stein, adding that the average price is around $1 per engagement, such as a favorite or comment.

“If reach is important, an Instagram ad buy is the best thing you can do from a brand recall and brand reach basis. Then you can supplement it with an influencer campaign. ... All of our big influencer campaigns are around the ad buy,” Mr. Stein said.

Maybe that’s how Instagram -- which has no plans to release impression rates for influencers’ branded posts and doesn’t make any money from those deals -- would like to keep things.

Tim Peterson covers digital media for Advertising Age out of the publication’s San Francisco bureau. He previously reported on social media and ad tech for Adweek and worked as a reporter handling the digital marketing beat at Direct Marketing News.

Book,

&

Line Crossing the Chasm

Sinker The Life of PT Barnum

By Geoffrey Moore

By 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.

Selling the Invisible

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

By Harry Beckwith 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.

By Robert B. Cialdini

Positioning

Buy-ology

By Al Ries, Jack Trout

By Martin Lindstrom

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.

Permission Marketing

Guerilla Marketing

By Seth Godin 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.

By Jay Conrad Levinson

Influence, the classic book on persuasion, explains the psychology of why people say “yes”—and how to apply these understandings. Dr. Robert Cialdini is the seminal expert in the rapidly expanding field of influence and persuasion. His thirty-five years of rigorous, evidence-based research along with a three-year program of study on what moves people to change behavior has resulted in this highly acclaimed book.

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.”

groupisd.com

42

The Long Tail

By Chris Anderson 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.

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

By Charles Mackay 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.

Non-Obvious: How to Think Different, Curate Ideas & Predict The Future

Branding Basics for Small Business

By Rohit Bhargava

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

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

It’s a must read because it covers the trends and topics that are HOT HOT HOT in our culture today.

Bhargava has curated 15 trends to be aware of as you build your business and your brand. You don’t have to use all of them, select the top 3 that you feel most closely resonate with your brand, read up on them, start following them and most importantly craft a point-of-view for your brand that will connect with your ideal customer.

The Step-By-Step Guide to Build Your Brand

By Sheralyn Pratt

By Maria Ross

Heavyweight Marketing: Knockout Strategies for Building Champion Brands

If you’re looking for a basic step-by-step guide through the branding process, this is the book for you. It will take you from the 30,000 ft. view of what branding is, all the way down to the 3o pixel view of choosing a color palette for your logo and everything in between. This book is far more focused on the design and image component of branding and helping you to give direction to someone who is helping you with design.

By Nikolas Allen

Captivology: The Science of Capturing People’s Attention

Brand Famous

By Ben Parr

Another of our favourite books from the 2014/2015 book season — “Brand Famous”.

We loved this book because the author is sassy and a little brash and offers a lot of smart branding advice and exercises that will help you get straight to the heart of your brand and help you to communicate in your very own brand voice. Boyd works with a lot of big brands, but her advice in this book is all about the scrappy small business owner.

The entire purpose of branding is to create this “wormhole” effect that connects your ideal customer to you in seconds instead of years. To accomplish this, you’re going to need to grab their attention. And if you want to learn to do that like a “Boss” as they say, you’ll want to grab a copy of “Captivology”. This is a tasty bit of writing by Ben Parr (a journalist) who will astound and amaze you with how wondrous our brains are at managing what gets our attention. You’ll get fantastic ideas on how to make small tweaks that grab big attention.

This is one of our favourite branding books for 2015 for main street business owners. If you’re a startup and have limited to no marketing or branding done, or if you’re a marketing mess, you’ll want to check this one out. Nikolas Allen is truly the marketing guy next door who has taken is “in-the-ring” daily branding work with small business owners just like you and slapped it into this practical book.

By Linzi Boyd