BrandKnew July 2016 by Brand Knew

Branding matters. Because branding matters.

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Dear Friends: We are done with half of the year and Brexit has left many an unanswered question and heaps of apprehensions for brands engaging with the continent. Is the future of branding, de branding? Find out more in this issue. The don is at it again- yes I am referring to Martin Lindstrom and his incisive synopsis on branding that we feature in the issue will stimulate many a marketing mind. Personal branding has been taken to a completely new level with the ‘social’ invasion/intrusion whatever you may want to call it. Know how to build your personal brand by investing time in reading the feature we have carried. Copyright is a very sensitive issue for marketers and brands and here we address the 10 Most Critical Questions on the subject you will ever have. Marketing to Women is both art and science and for assured product growth it is important for brands to know at what life stage they are at which we share in this edition. Often it’s asked, what’s in a name? Now, it’s time to ask, “What’s in the sound of a brand name?”. Am certain that you will enjoy the healthy debate on Programmatic Marketing V/s Programmatic Advertising in this July issue. There is heaps more to ponder and savor in this edition, so go ahead and get your fill. Thank you for putting your nose into the edition of BrandKnew month after month. Until next issue…

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CONTENTS

Marketers must tap their consumer’s passion points Why Character is a Branding Essential 9 Huge Branding Fails From Your Favorite Companies The Future Of Branding Is Debranding Building a brand, the Lindstrom way How Two Industrial Design Titans Are Helping Brands Simplify Tech How well do travel & leisure brands use social media? No ‘fish handshakes,’ please: How not to mess up your next ad agency interview Marketing To Women by Life-Stage Brings Opportunity For Product Growth Marketers’ 10 Most Common Copyright Questions... Answered! Why The Sound Of A Brand Name Matters Making a strong case for personal branding Why Marketers Need To Adopt A Programmatic Marketing, Vs. Programmatic Advertising, Mindset Game, set, match! Book, Line & Sinker

Jamie Gutfreund

Marketers must tap their consumer’s passion points By Nadia Cameron

Today’s increasingly influential Generation Z not only demands consistency from brands, they also expect marketers to know who they are, their passion points, interests and values – then reflect these accurately, Wunderman’s global CMO claims. Speaking to CMO during the recent Marketo Marketing Nation Summit, the agency’s marketing leader, Jamie Gutfreund, said the biggest shift in marketing today is the accessibility of data. But it’s consumer expectations of how brands use data to make their experience more efficient and interesting that’s the important thing for marketers to realise, she said. And with Gen Z, it’s the key to any sort of engagement. “Younger consumers have an expectation of perfection and efficiency that other generations don’t have,” Gutfreund said of the emerging Generation Z, most commonly defined as those born in the mid-1990s and following Millennials. “As a Gen X, I don’t expect anything to work – I expect to buy something and have the price cheaper somewhere else because that’s how it was when we grew up. “Younger consumers are growing up in an era of almost perfect information. Yes they’re digital natives, but the insight is they’re growing up with the world at their fingertips, and they control how and when they are going to engage with brands. They also control the content they consume, the ads they see but also the ones they block. That’s a huge new twist in marketing because they’re in control.” Younger consumers see very little advertising unless they choose to, Gutfreund said, a power first exercised by millennials as teenagers, but something that’s instinctive to Gen Z. This is seeing the nature of campaigns shift from passive interactions to participatory ones. “The nature of campaigns has always been about mass reach, mass frequency. Then on the other side you had direct marketing, and that was about sending a piece of paper to your zipcode,” Gutfreund continued. “Both assumed you could buy attention. They also assumed the information you had about the person you’re trying to reach was enough to

capture their attention, and if you had a good jingle and good creative, that was plenty. “Today the bar is much higher. You still need reach and frequency – I don’t buy TV is dead – but you need to balance it, accentuate it, have a laser focus in some places, and you need to adapt your creative. Your channels are so different and they’ll become even more different.”

Talking about my generation Gutfreund was appointed CMO at Wunderman last September, and previously with the Deep Focus agency. For many years she also ran the Intelligence Group, which put together the Cassandra Report, a leading research study initially on Generation X that moved to millennials, and is now focused on Gen Z. “I’ve always been fascinated with the connection between how people are impacted and influenced by digital, and how that translates to how marketers can talk to them in different ways,” she said of her work and area of expertise. “If you understand why people behave the way they do, it’s like a secret weapon, you just have to use your powers for good not for equal.” One huge shift with consumers today is the significant impact of word of mouth – both in terms of what it means today, and its power on brand perceptions. Gutfreund labelled these types of connections ‘elationships’. Tied to this is the need for a consumer’s passions to take centre stage when developing content and brand messaging as consumers seek brands to better understand who they are, not just what they represent. “I might be passionate about food, so I’m going to find all sorts of content around food and develop relationships with people I don’t know, but I feel I do because we share this passion,” Gutfreund explained. “When those people tell me about a food or restaurant I should try, that recommendation is going to be very powerful. That’s a campaign and where influencers come in for marketers, as well as understanding the medium.”

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During her presentation, Gutfreund outlined fresh research conducted by Wunderman in partnership with Berggruen Institute and conducted by Penn Schoen Berland, which showed 84 per cent of Gen Z respondents are pessimistic about the way the world is going. They’re also more selfsufficient and realistic. The study reported Gen Z now represents 25 per cent of the US population. “They have no confidence in government, politicians or brands,” Gutfreund said. “They have confirmation bias and that’s having a lot of impact – they’re relying on themselves more, they’re more practical. When it comes to brand, they expect consistency and realism, not authenticity.”

Purpose vs hyper-realism While Gutfreund agreed brands gaining more corporate social responsibility and purpose is an important trend, what she believed younger consumers expect to see from brands is their world reflected the ad world. This could include a variety of body types, ethnicities, people who come from different economic groups and gender persuasions.

“What will start to happen is a new skillset among employees and talent that is part analytics and story. They can get an insight and then tell a story from it.” As an example of Wunderman’s work on the data insights front, Gutfreund described a project around the US March Madness basketball series, using the agency’s Zipline DMP offering. The initiative saw Wunderman undertake social listening and discover 2 million March Madness fans. “We put them into the DMP and looked at their behaviour and we had a real insight,” Gutfreund said. “You’d think March madness is mainly about men, so from an advertising point of view, you’d position beer, trucks, insurance. But actually this group of men’s biggest purchases were of Barbies, Disney, Huggies – they’re big family spenders. That was a fascinating insight. A similar brand could get a real advantage in advertising because there are none of those brands marketing to that audience.” But Gutfreund is quick to point out building such insights from data is still in its infancy for most brands.

“Gen Z want truth and realism, they don’t want perfection,” she said. “They expect marketing to reflect the world they’re living in, as opposed to a model getting out of a car, putting on lipstick with her hair blowing in a cornfield.

At the same time, marketers must understand the business rationale for their organisation’s products and services in customer terms, and make ensure consumer experiences are consistent internally and externally.

“For younger consumers, that is how it has to be because that is what they see. I don’t think it’s because – at least from a younger’s perspective – they want brands to be crusaders. They do believe brands have a better chance of making the world better than politicians or government, but it’s more about consistency. Why would you make it look one way when the world is like this? That’s the filter for brands to apply. This is a generation that wants hyper realism. They’re so attuned to being lied to, or sold to.”

“Younger consumers can sense that and they want it to all be consistent. If it’s not, that company isn’t going to feel like a company they’re going to support,” Gutfreund said. “It’s not what they said in the financial report, it’s more about the experience.”

The trick is that there’s a fine line between relevant and creepy, Gutfreund said, adding that younger generations are very sensitive to their data.

“You used to have a scope, and it used to be very black and white. Now it has to be more discovery and partner,” she said. “Opportunities pop up or needs you didn’t anticipate and it requires a lot of conversation. We have to be really smart about our clients’ businesses, we need to understand what the revenue goals are plus communication goals, and how to get things done.”

“They view themselves as investors, not as consumers. I’m not just buying a product, I’m investing in your brand, so if you don’t know I bought something from you, it’s disrespectful. That’s a key thing,” she said. “What’s interesting is that they’re aware of the fact they have huge data footprints, and a lot of it is not their fault. You need to know more than what they are, and more than the fact that someone is 15 years old, a white male, or living in Las Vegas. You need to know who I am, what’s important to me, my values and passions, then you need to communicate with me in a way that makes me feel like you get the whole package.” As a result, part of the skillset for marketers over the next couple of years is to become “part lion tamer, part magician”, Gutfreund said. “Give me all the data that you have, but you also have to make it so it’s relevant, do it in real time. It’s really challenging,” she said, noting organisational silos as the biggest enemy of marketers wanting to execute successful campaigns today. “At the moment, so many organisations have data in silos – your analytics here, social listening over there, customer data in another place and none of these are talking to each other.

Through all of this, brands and agencies are going to have to work in a much more collaborative partnership, Gutfreund said. One common request from clients now is that Wunderman staff become embedded in their offices.

Gutfreund’s top attributes for the CMO: Curiosity: “This is the best job for people who are curious,” she commented. “You don’t know where your next idea is going to come from, who you’ll learn from. I talk to everybody in as many industries I can and read as much as I can that’s not obvious.” Bravery: CMOs also have to be brave. “If you’re trying to do something different, you have to try and find ways you haven’t done things before,” Gutfreund said. “You have to be OK with things not always being successful.” Sense of humour: And don’t forget to have humility and laugh at yourself, Gutfreund said. “Especially as the worlds of data and creative collide, there are these vend diagrams of information that nobody knows.” Nadia Cameron attended Marketo Marketing Nation Summit as a guest of Marketo.

Why Character is a Branding Essential By Ayesha Mathews-Wadhwa

Russel Davies, a leading ad executive from the UK, is quoted as saying that a brand’s first job is to be interesting. While that is true, there is more than one objective when it comes to building a brand. I contend that brands also must deliver on their promises. We’ve seen plenty examples of bad branding, but a brand approach doesn’t have to be poor for the outcome to be weak. Even great branding can lead to a less-than-wonderful outcome if the brand doesn’t convey what it has to offer. I’m talking about brands like Vaseline, Xerox and Kleenex. In these cases, the brand may have hit the jackpot because people say things like “pass the Kleenex” instead of “pass the tissues.” That’s brand recognition, right? But it’s also brand ubiquity. When a brand gets to the point of being omnipresent, it kind of fades into the background. Though Xerox and Kleenex both made the Forbes list of top brands last year, these brands do very little to stand out. They have very little character.

Dig deeper—and ask more of your brand— to build character How can you build character, or brand personality? It involves more than just visual appeal, it requires thinking about human characteristics. Will your brand be a Puffs, which is known for soft-as-a-cloud texture and beyond-soothing moisture that really comforts congested consumers, or will it be a Kleenex that simply lets them blow their noses? Some questions brands need to ask themselves in order to identify and formulate their personalities include: • What do you want your audience to see or feel when they connect with your brand? • If your brand were a car/magazine/public personality/ music genre, what would it be? • What colors, textures and visual components do you connect strongly with when you think of your brand?

Making the case for character

• What is your brand’s sweet spot?

When a brand faces ubiquity, that means it is vital more than ever to inject some personality into the platform. Between logos, taglines and color palettes, companies invest a lot in their brands, yet many ignore the quality of character. That charisma is precisely what transforms a brand into an icon.

• What are some of the words that come to mind when people think/ see your brand?

In many ways, the name Xerox is very popular and everyone knows what a “Xerox machine” is—even if it is, in fact, a Canon. On the flip side, though, no one knows what the character is of the Xerox brand, it’s just become another name for copy machine! The brand doesn’t deliver—how can it effectively compete in today’s crowded marketplace?

Beyond unique

And for fun, does your brand pass this personality test? Think about brands that have an edge, then pinpoint the characteristics of that personality. I like how Open Sky’s model manages to stay fresh in a world of e-commerce, or how Nike inspires us go be adventurous—even if we don’t buy their sneakers. How does your brand connect with consumers in a way that ensures it will never fade into gray? What can it do to add another layer of color?

How do brands avoid landing in the black hole of ubiquity? They have to differentiate themselves and show how they deliver. We wouldn’t dare confuse an Apple with a computer because Apple computers stand in a league of their own for performance and aesthetics—they are not necessarily better than other products, but they do have their own edge. No one ever says, “I have a Mac” when in fact they have a PC. You expect a superior Apple product that offers innovative features—and you get it. (Apple topped Forbes list of World’s Most Powerful Brands in 2012…it’s so easy to reference this particular brand because it’s a glowing example of good branding.) Even when you go to Best Buy to shop for an Apple product, the brand has differentiated itself with spacious, modern sleek display areas—while the rest of the computers are lumped together on standard store shelves. It shows how it delivers something special. You step inside a world of Apple, even though you can just as quickly step back out into an aisle in the store. This is just one way that Apple stands out and has infused character into its brand. That personality is more than just an appearance; it’s an experience.

Ayesha Mathews-Wadhwa is Founder + Creative Director at PixInk, a San Francisco-based Digital Branding microagency serving a macro niche: The 20 trillion dollar female economy.

9 Huge Branding Fails From Your Favorite Companies By Lindsey Wiltse

Branding can be a delicate beast. On one hand, it makes up a large core of your business that it absolutely cannot be ignored. On the other, if branding is done incorrectly, you may find yourself in a situation you need to dig out of. In order to help ensure that you never find yourself in a situation where your branding makes anyone groan, we’ve compiled a list of some of the largest branding fails we’ve seen.

1. Colgate Begins Developing Food What do you use Colgate for? Most likely, it’s brushing your teeth with their range of dental hygiene-related products. In 1982, Colgate introduced Colgate Kitchen Entrees, a line of frozen food products. Reasoning that their teeth cleaning products were so well known that the connection between food and teeth should be a natural next step, Colgate experienced a steep decline in their profits after introducing this failed endeavor.

2. SyFy Renaming Reminiscent of Something Different The channel formerly known as Sci Fi decided to reach out to a younger, tech-savvy crowd when renaming and rebranding in 2009. Heralding the rise of texting culture, the company decided to use this as inspiration. However, what should have been caught in the process is that “syfy” is a slang word for the sexually transmitted disease syphilis. The name switch has served to alienate many fans outside of the brand’s new target age-range and has been considered across the board as an awfu branding move.

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3. Burger King Sells Low-Calorie French Fries Many people eat at fast food chains due to the affordability of the products, not necessarily the nutritional value of the products. To compete with lower-calorie options in other restaurants, Burger King developed a lower-calorie fry. What sounds like a move to make the chain a healthier option failed as customer’s didn’t know what Satisfries were or why they should choose them over regular fries. Most chains stopped selling this product less than a year after they were introduced.

4. Amazon Fire Launches Too Late Time is truly of the essence. Amazon launched their Fire Phone years after the iPhone and Android models first came out, and priced their product at the industry standard, even though the technology did not match the other smartphone models at that time for the price. The phone also was not available in the ways that people typically purchase their electronics. Overall, the product was poorly timed and ill-researched, leading to its failure.

5. HSBC Gets Lost in Translation It is relatively common for companies to rebrand, update slogans, and publish marketing campaigns as needed. HSBC made a very expensive branding mistake when the launched a 2009 “Assume Nothing” tagline. Unfortunately, when translated into other languages, “Assume Nothing” became “Do Nothing”. Not quite the message that any bank wants to promote! $10 million dollars down the drain and international shame followed this mistake.

6. London’s Olympics Marred By Terrible Logo Design

When London won the bid to host the Olympics in 2012, they went right ahead and began designing the iconic logo for the games. The designers for the London Olympics logo went in a very different direction, completely rejecting the traditional rings and steeping the logo with modernity. Officially, they noted that the new logo:”Our emblem is simple, distinct, bold and buzzing with energy.... It feels young in spirit... Not afraid to shake things up, to challenge the accepted. To change things.” Everyone else disagreed. For $800,000 the logo was seen as disrespectful to London and the Olympics.

7. Tropicana Orange Juice Goes Generic PepsiCo decided to rebrand a few of their product offerings, including their signature logo, Mountain Dew soda, and Tropicana orange juice. Tropicana is known for their boxes depicting a straw sticking out from an orange, but the rebrand included a plain white box with orange liquid across of it. After sales plummeted 20%, PepsiCo realized their rebrand made the product look like a generic version of the original. After $130 million were lost in sales, Tropicana’s packaging was reversed to reflect the original.

8. Smith & Wesson Targets ….Bikes? Smith & Wesson is a well-known manufacturer of firearms in the United States, especially those associated with police and armed forces. The company commissioned a study and learned that consumers of their products said they would use the company for other products. Since they were already creating bicycles for public servants, they decided to release these to the public at large. While consumers expressed brand loyalty to Smith & Wesson, the bicycles never took off, proving the unrelated product offerings are not usually as well off as it may seem.

9. PepsiCo’s Endless Cycle of Rebrands In the soft drink world, there are two giants: Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. Coca-Cola has barely edited their logo, while PepsiCo alters the brand identity around once every decade. This last rebrand has been considered their most underwhelming. At a cost of one million dollars, the logo and all associated branding documents are largely seen as pointless. The new logo is a circle surrounded by white and Pepsi’s red, white, and blue colors, but the white stripe is tilted upwards and intended to look like a smile. Overall, the constant rebranding undertaken by PepsiCo is less of a boon and more of a burden.

Lessons to Avoid Branding Failures • Talk to people unrelated to your product or service about your idea and ask for advice. • Prevent moving away from core brand values when launching a new product or service. Consider using a different name if your product is drastically different than what you’re known for. • Keep customers informed with fun initiatives when you offer a new product, service, or even post a new blog! • Consider using influencers, or a few well-placed spokespeople to herald the launch of the new product (doesn’t need to be someone famous- someone respected in your community can help!). • Rebranding can be great...if done properly. Make sure your brand’s core values remain at the forefront. • Timing is key! Consider how something may be framed from all angles, and prepare how to respond in these situations. • Making something “modern” doesn’t mean it will be well-received. There’s something to be said about tradition! • Keep product offerings and services as related as possible.

The Future Of Branding Is Debranding BRANDED CONTENT CAMOUFLAGES WHAT COMPANIES HAVE BEEN TRYING TO DO SINCE TIME IMMEMORIAL: SELL YOU STUFF. HERE’S A BETTER IDEA. By Jasmine De Bruycker

Instead of brands, real people and real tones of voice will become the interface between consumers and products.

As digital media blunts the impact of advertising, brands are looking for new ways to lure consumers. The latest, buzziest effort has been to publish stories that look and feel journalistic. The key strategy of branded content or “native advertising” is to hide the commercial imperative, and even the brand altogether, so that readers think they’re consuming a familiar newspaper or magazine. This is supposed to make brands seem more reliable, familiar, and indispensable. But it’s a sham—a shortsighted attempt to trick consumers into opening their wallets. What businesses need to do is debrand.

HOW WE GOT HERE Since the ‘90s, there has been a significant backlash against overt advertising—resistance to Coca-Cola sponsoring sports events at schools; to children designing Nike shoes in class; to toddlers singing along with Bumba, a clown who also happens to sell industrial cookies and cheap plastic toys. Social media has only made it more treacherous for brands that try too hard. Just ask DiGiorno Pizza. So brands started to adopt subtler tactics. With native advertising, brands tell stories on popular platforms—and tell them in a way that is nearly indistinguishable from the stories readers already consume. By matching the message to the platform, brands can draw loyal customers and maybe even make their content go viral. Or so the thinking goes.

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BRANDED CONTENT: A SHORTSIGHTED CON But branded content isn’t a long game. There are several reasons why. The first issue is intent. The essence of branded content is deliberately blurring the line between editorial content and advertising. Hiding your true colors is never a good idea. Another issue is the logic behind branded content itself. It’s misleading to use a totally different set of qualities— good stories—to sell a product that has intrinsically nothing to do with these qualities. Hiring a top filmmaker won’t improve the quality of your energy drink. Brands cannot deliver what they advertise. Shoes or coffee can never live up to their brands’ promises—they are just shoes and coffee. You could even say that the better the stories, the more dishonest the companies are being. A camouflage strategy also complicates an already too complex world driven by hidden agendas. Even well-informed people who are able to both enjoy branded content and take it with a grain of salt will subliminally become accustomed to the new branded content standard—not to mention more

vulnerable groups such as kids and adolescents. And what about the stories no one wants to hear, stories incapable of selling something? People are more likely to follow a happy, undemanding brand instead of bonding with real people and real-world problems. A brand will never ask you for help. It won’t confront you with difficulties or opposing views.

A MOVE TO NETWORK THINKING The only way to be truly subversive is to buy less stuff. Turn purchasing power into the power to leave untouched what you don’t need. We’ve reached the saturation point, we are unhappy—we are stuffocated. But just as consumption became a way of life, so too can non-consumption. Here’s where debranding comes into play. As branding is, fundamentally, just a form of communication, it will never disappear. And it shouldn’t. But the focus will shift. It will shift from branded products to branded places: stores and their owners who select and sell the products they like.

Facebook. The brand that screams the loudest no longer commands the most attention; the one that offers something genuinely useful does.

THE FUTURE OF DEBRANDING In our debranded future, consumers won’t necessarily spend less—but they will buy less. They will buy fewer throwaway clones and spend more on only a few quality essentials against a fair-trade price. The shift among brands from investing in marketing to investing in product development should also allow less fortunate people to buy pure, simple, quality products. Prices will reflect real value, not the conceptual value branding magically bestows. Products will be stripped of branding codes and constructed imaginary worlds. The only information on packaging will be features such as origin, the intentions of the maker, the production process, and the environmental impact. Maybe makers will find a way to subtly brand their product by adding their signature to the product itself, omitting packaging altogether. All of this will of course be a kind of branding as well, but stripped to its core.

Many of these places—take the Berlin-based store Original Unverpackt—will eschew packaging and advertising. Back to the traditional shopkeeper responsible for measuring bulk food and acting as an advocate for his products. Back to the real Dr. Browns, Uncle Bens, and Aunt Jemimas. Instead of brands, real people and real tones of voice will become the interface between consumers and products again. That’s the heart of debranding.

And it is totally in line with today’s networked society. Traditionally, branding is based on the idea of what differentiates a company from competitors. A brand grows by billing itself as different, by isolating itself from others (Apple took that quite literally with “Think different” to great success). But increasingly in the Internet age, consumers are comfortable with the idea that everything is interconnected. So what distinguishes brands is less important than what brings things and people together—whether your iPhone can talk to your Prius, for instance, or whether you can read articles from disparate sources in one place, like on

Debranding shouldn’t be confused with visual debranding, something Comme des Garçons did years ago, and Viceland does nowadays. Such visual identities could be the result of debranding, but they are not the end goal. The real goal is a well-made product. So if you’re a company, take heed: Instead of throwing money at yet another branded content campaign, go back to the original notion of a brand. Fine-tune your product’s quality, design, and its durability. Become a producer of shoes again

instead of surrogate spirituality. It will make your life, and consumers’ lives, simpler. Don’t throw a new product on the market if it’s not intrinsically better and more durable than what already exists. We don’t need more branding; we need fewer, better-quality products. People will find you.

Jasmine De Bruycker is a creative strategist, researcher, and content provider at Base Design. She has a background in bio-engineering, environmental sciences, video journalism, documentary making, and philosophy.

BUILDING A BRAND, THE LINDSTROM WAY A NINE-POINT GUIDE OR THE HOLISTIC SELLING PROPOSITION DEVISED BY THE CONSULTANT FOR BUILDING WORLD-CLASS BRANDS ANYWHERE By Outlook Business

1. A CLEAR VISION This is the cornerstone of a successful brand. A clear vision cannot just guide but also drive a brand. For Instance, take L’Oreal mission: “We sell hope.” Or Apple 1982 brand vision: “Man is the creator of change in this world. As such he should be above systems and structures, and not subordinate to them.” In both these cases, companies used the underlying vision to build products that took the brand forward.

them alive for millennia. Just as every hymn, icon, and stained-glass window in a church links to a story, brands have the potential to build holistic identities through storytelling.

6. GRANDEUR It’s all about thinking big, really big. Consider the fifth Avenue Apple Store in New York, the latest Prada store in Tokyo, or Burj Al Arab, the world’s first seven-star hotel.

2. A SENSE OF BELONGING

7. EVANGELISM

What do Harley Davidson, Lego and Apple have in common? They’re all based on communities. Considering Lego’s considerable brand equity, you might think that the company has a marketing budget running into billions. Not so. In fact, Lego’s marketing budget is so modest that if I were to say it out loud, you would probably think it was a typo. Lego doesn’t do its own talking; it lets Lego maniacs do it.

Today’s evangelism is just as likely to take place through chat rooms and viral videos as it is through personal conversions. Word-of-mouth marketing is powerful, trusted and cheap. Brands must make use of this inclination of consumers to be persuaded by friends. Consider Brazilian cosmetics brand Natura, which deploys a direct-sales force of more than 718,000. By knocking on doors, it has established a vibrant network of brand supporters.

3. AN ENEMY Imagine Pepsi without Coke. Impossible, right? A competitor is a valuable foil that unites a company from within and pushes the brand’s boundaries. The enemy shapes the brand.

4. SENSORY APPEAL If you were to close your eyes and walk into a place of worship, the sounds and smells would help you make your way: the ringing bells, license, rumble of a massive organ. Most brands lack such sensory stimuli. A visit to the local supermarket or retail chain will yield a lot of visual stimulus, but it’s unlikely that other senses will be engaged.

5. STORYTELLING The world’s holy texts are built on ancient oral traditions. Storytelling has driven faith and religious practice, keeping

8. SYMBOLS Imagine a smashed stained-glass window, a page torn from a Bible, or a snippet of choral singing. You would still recognize its religious roots, wouldn’t you? In 1915, CocaCola designed a bottle so unique that if it were smashed into thousands of pieces, from a single shard of glass you’d still be able recognize the brand. We call such a device a ‘smashable’. It can be anything from color to sound,, from a pattern to a smell to an icon.

9. RITUALS Rituals build brands. Placing a wedge of lime in the neck of a corona bottle helps sell beers. And where did that ritual come from? One story has it that two bartenders in California were curious how fast a ritual could spread. Astonishingly fast, they discovered. Extracted from Outlook Business where this was originally featured

How Two Industrial Design Titans Are Helping Brands Simplify Tech FUTURE FACILITY, A SPIN-OFF OF THE BRITISH FIRM INDUSTRIAL FACILITY, WANTS TO MAKE NETWORKED PRODUCTS WORK FOR US, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND. By Diana Budds

Kim Colin and Sam Hecht, founders of the Londonbased industrial design studio Industrial Facility, have helped a number of large companies work through thorny design problems. Herman Miller tapped their expertise when it was in the middle of reconsidering its business strategy, and Muji has frequently collaborated with the firm for additions to its product line. In the last few years, Colin and Hecht started to notice that their clients were coming to them with the same problem: how to respond to tech trends. So this year, Colin and Hecht launched a spin-off of their design studio and consultancy called Future Facility, which aims to help companies rethink how they approach connected products. “We came to a realization that every product with a button will become connected to the Internet—it’s an inevitability and will become an overcomplicated situation,” Hecht says. “If that is a reality, there are two routes you can take as a designer. One is to completely ignore it and say, ‘That’s not for me, I’ll stick to furniture design.’ Or you could say, ‘There’s a bit of a beauty and an important part a designer can play as an editor and a form-giver for digital content.’ We felt compelled by that second option.” Today, sensors have become so small and inexpensive that it’s possible to hitch them onto nearly any product. The raft

of products touting themselves as “smart” is almost a parody, which has led to a bubble of dumb, connected devices. Brands are aggressively eager to adopt this technology, even if it doesn’t make absolute sense. This technological “keeping up with the Joneses” mentality runs the risk of sacrificing user benefits. Future Facility is abiding by the mantra of just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. Here’s how they’re helping brands hit reset.

TAKING OUT THE “RUBBISH” TECH When Colin and Hecht founded Industrial Facility 15 years ago, the problem facing many consumer brands were analog products saturated with features. The new and improved, triple-action, streamlined, “insert action here” attributes weren’t about providing benefits to customers. Rather, they were gimmicks intended to compel consumers to pay more, thinking they’re getting more out of the purchase. Case in point? The ballooning number of blades on a razor. “You might have a product with 20 buttons, but you may only need two,” Hecht says. “Products were ‘featured’ beyond what was necessary and the market was determining it, not the customer.”

“Do you want to live in a home where each of your products is shouting about what it can do?”

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“A toothbrush is already loaded with guilt, that you’re not doing it properly or enough,” Colin says. “The companies weren’t thinking about the customers’ experience. They were thinking about the toothbrush the same way you would an athletic activity tracker, that it records and processes information.”

Their industrial design work for brands, like Muji, centered around “removing the rubbish,” as Hecht describes it, and paring down a product to the essential traits it needs to be livable, functional, and beautiful. This is the same approach they’re taking with technology.

Instead of adding to a user’s neurosis about brushing, Colin and Hecht wanted to give them less to worry about. The two features they decided would be most useful were around charging the toothbrush and ordering replacement heads. At home, the toothbrush charges on a dock through induction but also comes equipped with a USB hookup for use on the road. The other problem to tackle was ordering replacement heads. You notice that the brush is worn down when you use it, but often forget to order a replacement after you leave the bathroom. To solve that problem, the designers built an app that the toothbrush connects to via Bluetooth. Pressing a button on the brush sends a reminder notification to your phone to buy replacements. “We’re curators of technology and looking for what’s realistic and what’s pleasurable and beneficial to users,” Colin says of the philosophy guiding their design decisions.

BRINGING “BLUE SKY THINKING” DOWN TO EARTH

“When networking came, we saw the repeat of the same mistakes,” Hecht says. “The difference is it’s now digital. You have a fridge telling you what you’ve got and haven’t got and advice on recipes. It’s this silliness of data and information which leads to these pseudo features—things that are good for sales brochures but meaningless when you’re using them on a day-to-day basis.” Colin frames the problem more bluntly: “In the end, do you want to live in a home where each of your products is shouting about what it can do?” When Braun and Oral-B enlisted Colin and Hecht to help them come up with an IoT electric toothbrush, the manufacturers initially wanted to develop a sophisticated data-tracking tool that could sense how well users were brushing each and every tooth, tell them about their gum sensitivity, and play music. The designers convinced them to instead think about how additional technology could solve a couple of really big frustrations with the product.

One of Future Facility’s biggest tasks is helping tech companies—which often have prolific research and development departments—translate their proprietary knowledge into consumer-facing products. “We’re interested in how to make technology every day and easy to reach as opposed to engineers thinking about a ‘blue sky’ [scenario],” Colin says. “Our job is to make them ready for right now.” One of Future Facility’s earliest projects in this realm was for Blackberry, which had just acquired the automotive operating system company QNX. The brief involved creating an interface between a smartphone and a car using the QNX platform in order to better connect the driver with the vehicle’s machinery. A scenario that Colin and Hecht used as a jumping-off point was car rentals and car sharing—situations where drivers are often placed in a vehicle that they aren’t comfortable with and whose features are not immediately apparent. This becomes especially challenging—and worrisome— when “check engine” lights flash. The app Colin and Hecht

developed would tell users what the problem is and how to fix it. For example, if the car needed more windshield wiper fluid, an augmented-reality feature in the app tells people where exactly the reservoir is. You pop the hood, pass the phone over the engine area, and it signals where to look. To Future Facility, the definition of a good connected product is one that can do everything a non-connected product can do but also communicate what state it’s in and, if it’s in trouble, what that problem is and how to address it. “It has a self-awareness that generic products don’t,” Colin says. With this project, Future Facility wasn’t inventing any new technology or knowledge—it already existed within Blackberry and QNX. Rather, it was finding a way to make it apply better to drivers. Hecht and Colin think that companies tend to take on futuristic, conceptual projects because they’re less risky than trying to apply that thinking to a marketable product today.

Some companies approach Colin and Hecht because they think they “have” to participate in the networked products trend. Colin’s advice? Sometimes you just have to say no. “Don’t be led by the sugar cube down the path,” she says. “There are lots of ways you can think about [connected products] . . . It’s about helping companies develop a natural sensibility for themselves as they move forward.”

“As a designer, if you come into a project with a premise and an idea that could be implemented immediately, it can be very threatening to a company because they don’t know how to execute it or if it’s going to be beneficial,” Hecht says. “When you discuss it as a conceptual concept—as something that’s potentially part of the future—then it’s not threatening and their guard is lowered as a company and they’re more willing to engage in a relaxed manner. We don’t invent ideas that don’t exist already—we’re almost giving an idea of what the future can be when it’s informed by today.”

One of the companies that fell into this camp is Wästberg, a small eight-year-old Swedish lighting brand. Because of its work with LEDs, which are packed with electronics, the company felt compelled to make an IoT product. Instead of making a connected product for the brand—which would have required significant investment—Future Facility suggested a product that supports the connected devices many of us already carry. Colin and Hecht noticed that you often need a power source at the same time as a light source in work spaces, hotels, airports, and at home. The w152 lamp resulted from the collaboration and features three USB ports that can charge tablets, phones, and laptops without an additional adapter.

SAYING NO

The Internet of Things industry is at a crossroads. The “smart home revolution” that has been marketed to death hasn’t come to fruition for various complex reasons. One of them is that consumers are skeptical of living in a home laden with sensors, data tracking, and surveillance—and the onus is on companies, Colin and Hecht say, to come up with more userfriendly solutions. “I think there’s a lot of room to improve the relationship between businesses and consumers,” Colin says. “Technology can’t work for one side of the equation. It has to work for both and we have to balance it better.”

Diana Budds is a New York–based writer covering design and the built environment. She’s a staunch defender of Brutalism.

All Photos: via Future Facility

How well do travel & leisure brands use social media? By Jon Young

Why and how do users of travel and leisure (T&L) products interact on social media? Are particular T&L businesses better at converting social media interactions into brand use? And what factors turn a social media interaction into usage of the brand? A new report (BDRC Continental’s Social Media Impact ‘Freemium Report’) looks at a range of T&L businesses: airlines, hotels, railway companies, coffee shops, online travel agents, car rental companies, airports and visitors attractions, to answer some of these questions. Some 40 brands fall under its scrutiny and come from many points on the T&L spectrum and include Alton Towers, Booking.com, British Airways, Caffè Nero, Heathrow Airport, Hotels.com, Starbucks, Travelodge and Virgin Trains. BDRC Continental conducted initial interviews in Spring 2015 to produce a nationally representative sample of 1,007 people who had all used social media to interact with a T&L organisation in the previous six months. This means the survey was conducted among active social media users in the context of travel and leisure brands. An interaction was defined as: “any contact including a follow, a like, a share, a retweet, a check-in, asking a question, expressing an opinion, viewing pictures or reading posts”.

Motivations and needs The Social Media Impact report found 46% of Britons had interacted with a T&L brand on social media within the sixmonth timeframe. There were four motivations for doing this. First, was the aim of learning about a brand and its products (the Learners) and this accounted for 41% of those surveyed. Then came the Proactives (25%), meaning people who

interacted to ask questions, express dissatisfaction, endorse a brand, share a brand experience, enter a competition or get a discount. Watchers accounted for 24%; they were the people who simply watch a brand’s information updates or engage in a brand’s social media campaigns. Finally there were the Connectors (10%), those who interact to connect to a cause or subject that is important to them. Consumers can interact in all sorts of ways on social media. The most common activity in this survey is to ‘like’ a social media post or mark it as a ‘favourite’ (11%), while 8% clicked on adverts or web links. Social media provides a forum for asking questions (14%) with half doing this publicly and half by private message. Social media also offers a de facto complaints channel and in this survey 6% expressed dissatisfaction directly through the brand’s social media page.

Top social media platforms and their varying roles Facebook trumped all others with 98% of respondents saying they use this site generally, with 59% saying it was the platform for their T&L interactions over the past six months. YouTube and Twitter were important with general usage of 73% and 55% respectively, although specific T&L brand interaction was much lower at 11% (YouTube) and 16% (Twitter). LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr commanded less T&L brand engagement at just 5%, 4%, 4% and 2% respectively. Jon Young, associate director with BDRC Continental, comments: “The survey shows that Facebook is driving

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around four times as much T&L brand engagement as Twitter, five times as much as YouTube and 50 times as much as Tumblr. So for T&L brands, not all social media platforms are equal.” The social media platforms naturally have different roles too. People felt Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram are good for learning purposes and staying updated, but Facebook was singled out as a good platform for entering a competition while Twitter was the channel for endorsing an organisation or asking questions. “There are varying degrees of engagement and reasons for use across different platforms,” says Jon Young. “Facebook attracts the highest proportion of Learners, Pintrest the highest proportion of Watchers, Instagram draws Proactives while Tumblr attracts the Connectors. Awareness of the roles each platform plays will allow organisations to modify their content and tone on social media accordingly.”

Social media and actual brand usage But does social media do more than help with learning and staying updated? When the survey moved onto the issues of actually using a brand, there were some interesting results. Jon Young notes: “The most important finding in our survey is that social media interactions lead to brand use. Around 1 in 5 social media interactions (22%) with a leisure organisation in the last six months attributed ‘a lot’ of influence on the decision to use or physically visit this brand. And 70% said that the interaction had at least some influence. This is a positive endorsement of the leisure industry’s social media performance. Social media plays a vital role in driving custom.” The survey also looked at how social media shaped the resulting sense of satisfaction with the brand. A total of 75% said social media interactions had exercised at least ‘some’ influence. Jon Young adds: “It was also clear that there was an “information first, emotion second” dynamic at work. Our key driver analysis shows that providing ‘useful’ and ‘interesting’ information are the two biggest drivers of converting social media use to purchases and brand satisfaction. The next most important drivers are posts that are ‘entertaining’ and ‘inspiring’. To maximise effectiveness, leisure organisations should ensure their content contains useful information as well as emotional triggers. The most effective organisations offer a combination of the two.”

Generation Y loves to connect Were younger respondents the ones using social media most? Yes, the survey showed this clearly. The survey divided the 46% (who had had social media interaction with a T&L brand in the past six months) into three tiers: Generation Y, Generation X and Baby Boomers. It was no surprise that 66% of Generation Y (ages 18 to 34) had interacted with T&L brands in the stated time frame, while for Generation X (3554) it was 50% and for the Baby Boomers (55+) it was much lower at 35%. Generation Y want to belong. They are the age group most

likely to interact with leisure brands on social media and to be converted to purchases ‘offline’. They are the age group with the lowest proportion of ‘learners’ (35%) – this compares to 46% for Baby Boomers and 47% for Generation X. Generation Y are also most likely to be ‘Connectors’ (25%). The Generation X age band mostly comprises ‘learners’ (47%) for whom finding ‘useful information’ is the key activity. Baby Boomers are least likely to use social media to interact with leisure brands – only 6% described themselves as ‘Connectors’ – half of the 12% seen for Generation Y.

Top T&L sectors The survey showed clearly that car rental companies are getting the best out of social media. BDRC covered Avis, Europcar, Enterprise, Sixt and Hertz. They generate the highest levels of satisfaction (85%) and the highest brand usage conversion (83%) as a result of social media interaction. This is driven by their provision of a good balance of useful content and inspiring or entertaining updates. So it is in the car rental sector you’ll find the highest likelihood of using a brand as a result of social media interactions (and the highest degree of brand satisfaction arising from the social media experience). In fact, in the case of car rental companies, 26% said social media posts exercised ‘a lot of influence’ and directly prompted them to use the product. This was higher than any other T&L business category. “We were initially surprised with the success of car rental companies but when we looked at their Facebook pages we saw some really inspiring posts,” says Jon Young. “Rather than focus on the transaction, they talk about the romance of travel and the open road. Car rental companies demonstrate how a fairly dry transaction can be made into so much more with interesting and inspiring social media content.” But visitor attractions do well too. The likelihood to use a brand (or make a physical visit) as a result of social media interaction is 74% while 80% said the interaction had ‘at least some’ influence on personal satisfaction with the brand. Online travel agents scored the same ‘likelihood to use’ (74%), but a lower score (76%) for ‘at least some’ influence on satisfaction. The survey found that online travel agents with the most influence in driving use were Lastminute.com (31%), Hotels.com (25%), Booking.com (20%) and Expedia. com (14%). Airlines scored 73% ‘likelihood to use’ and 72% ‘at least some’ influence on satisfaction. There were weaker results for hotels, with 65% agreeing there was a likelihood of using a brand as a result of social media interactions. Again with hotels, 69% said ‘at least some’ satisfaction with the brand was driven by their social media experience with it. The survey showed people are motivated to read social media posts right across the eight T&L categories. In fact, reading posts was the ‘main reason’ for a recent social media interaction. Visitor attractions did best in this respect, scoring 44%, with airports (42%) and railway companies (41%) close behind. Jon Young is research director with BDRC Continental. BDRC Continental’s Social Media Impact ‘Freemium Report’ is on sale now.

No ‘fish handshakes,’ please: How not to mess up your next ad agency interview By Tanya Dua

Want to land that agency gig? You think you may have done your homework but, with one inadvertent error, you may end up completely blowing your chances.

smart enough to lie to me. And that’s the worst part.

We asked top agency execs to share their ad agency interivew tips — and some not-so-pleasant memories interviewing prospective employees, both for starting level and senior positions. Tl;dr: Have confident body language, don’t be too self-absorbed, and for crying out loud no dead-fish handshakes.

I find it pretty unsettling when a candidate posts that he or she was the person responsible for winning a pitch or bringing in a bunch of business. I had this one candidate that said he had won two big pieces of business — he spoke like absolutely no one else was involved — and that somehow it was all him. Obviously, I’m looking for people to take ownership, but come on. What we do is not an individual sport. Hiring for me has as much to do with character as it does with talent. I want people to share and build, not self-promote and divide.

Here’s what not to do at your next agency interview: Helene De Vries, global head of talent acquisition, Wunderman The No. 1 thing for me that immediately gives the wrong impression is the “fish handshake.” Regardless of whether or not the role you are interviewing for is client-facing, a bad handshake is an awful indicator of presence and personal pride. I definitely pass “fishy handshakers” along to other hiring managers after I meet them, but more often than not, they have a similar reaction and express the same concern. I try to be as honest with candidates throughout the process as I can and often provide blunt feedback as I walk them out. Many times I give them the same handshake back to emphasize the point — and you can see the “a-ha” moment on their faces. It’s my way of doing them, and everyone they meet from that moment forward, a public service. A firm handshake is an opportunity to make a really strong first impression. Rachel Spiegelman, president, Pitch There have been countless times when I have sat down with what seems like a bright, young and eager candidate and asked why they wanted to join Pitch. More than three times candidates have answered with “I’m looking for a better commute.” Now, I know we are based in L.A., but if you think that I would ever hire anyone to be a part of our culture who is coming to us because of convenience, because of the pin we have on Waze, then you are certainly not as bright as we thought. But mostly, you’re not even

Robert Riccardi, CEO, Argonaut

Nick Godfrey, COO, Rain I hate it when the candidate doesn’t want to get to know you personally. “Where do you live? Do you have kids?” — that sort of thing. We are in advertising, which means long hours and, at times, a more informal culture. We need to be friends. I also hate it when a candidate comes into my office and is not passionate about the role they are interviewing for. Be firm and confident that this is the job you want. Come to the table with good and thorough questions about the agency. Do some research ahead of time. Kathy Delaney, global CCO, Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness Don’t show up late. Don’t forget your resume. Don’t forget examples of your creative work. Don’t forget to research the company. Don’t forget to (slightly) stalk your interviewer on LinkedIn. Don’t forget to follow-up. I recently conducted an interview with a junior creative prospect where all of this happened. But the best — or rather the worst — part was when she came in with a laundry list of what she thought the job should be. I wish I had been recording it. We like to hear about goals for the future, but when you start an interview outlining what you don’t want to do, you’re not going to get hired. It’s about exhibiting a willingness to take the jump into the job to prove yourself.

Jean-Rene Zetrenne, chief officer, Ogilvy & Mather America

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I spend quite a bit of my time interviewing very senior people. I’m often dumbfounded by the less than mediocre preparation that applicants seem to conduct prior to an interview. Some have little perspective on what’s happening in the marketplace and our industry. Others know so little about our agency, our clients or the work we do. One thing in particular that irks me is when senior people heartily congratulate me about work they think we’ve done but actually haven’t. I often find myself saying, “That is a great creative or strategic idea, but we didn’t do it.” Do your homework. Have a point of view. Know what clients we work with and what we’ve done for them. I certainly don’t expect applicants to know everything about us, but I want to feel that you’ve done some real homework and preparation for our discussion. Michael Lebowitz, founder and CEO, Big Spaceship A few years back, I was hiring for a very senior position. I asked the question I ask anyone who’s coming into any kind of a managerial role, which is, “What does your first month look like?” This guy started talking about a whole list of things he would change, remove or break down at the agency. He had an agenda even before he’d learned anything, met other people at the agency, listened and learned and asked any questions. You’re coming to an established organization, and while it can be improved, don’t come with a laundry list. Anyone who thinks they know the answer before they know the questions is very suspect. Needless to say, I didn’t subject him to the rest of my team, and he didn’t get the job. It might not have been malicious, but it just felt arrogant.

Tanya Dua, Brands Reporter

Marketing To Women by LifeStage Brings Opportunity For Product Growth By Patricia West Doyle

Marketers tend to focus much attention on various cohorts — Baby Boomers, Gen X, and Millennials being the primary groups on everyone’s radar today. Yet, another important element of deeply understanding your target consumer is an understanding of their life-stage. Understanding the underlying needs of a consumer during different life stages greatly impacts how you communicate the benefits of your product, from advertising to all product design cues, and may uncover new audiences for your products. Life-stage differs from age bracket or cohort in that lifestages are dependent on life events. While life events often correspond to age, there are many events that are more age independent, especially with the diversity in modern lifestyles. This difference between age and life stage became apparent to me in talking with mothers of toddlers. Take this example: • 20-year-old working woman with a primary care of a two-year old (cohort Millennial) • 32-year-old working woman with a primary care of a two-year old (cohort Gen X) • 55-year-old working woman with primary care of a twoyear old (cohort Baby Boomer; yes, many have primary care of grandchildren)

These three women actually have more life needs in common than basic age breaks or cohort analysis would indicate. Let’s examine some of the main life stages of adult women.

Self-Discovery In Self-Discovery, life is in the present with a sense of invincibility and the belief all things are possible: “I can do or be anything.” This stage is about independence; completing the separation from parents, yet bonding with other females. There can be a sense of wildness (counter-culture beliefs/ dress, figuring out gender and partnerships) and/or the challenge of body image. Modern women in this stage are tech savvy, globally aware and have a desire to challenge the status quo, yet still view either family, the search for a mate or their career as the primary determinant in their first life structure. Transition into the next life stage happens when children appear and/or a high focus is placed on career advancement.

Busy Years During the Busy Years, most women are having children, so this is predominantly a “mom” life stage. Career-only focused women do have a bit of the busy-year life stage as they often put their nurturing into work creations, extended

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families, and/or volunteering. The Busy Years woman is balancing significant responsibility: parenthood, career development and household management. In today’s world, kids are a full-time job, so mom has limited or no time for self. Time management is her primary life need. Transition to the next stage coincides with children gaining independence or personally hitting a career level.

Holding On/Holding Off This next life-stage is primarily about maintaining power. This life stage has recognition of body betrayal and wanting to overpower sins of the past; to reclaim past (missed) glory and hold off the decline: “I want my old life back.” There might still be responsibilities (mid-life leadership positions, un-launched children, aging parents), but there is more time for “me.” While a bit cliché, there is a reality of mid-life — everything from anti-aging and weight management, to divorce and career changes, to find “my real self.” Transition to the next stage often comes with menopause, retirement, grandchildren, or a major illness wake-up call.

Re-Discovery This life-stage has always been around, but now so many

more people are in it for a longer time with the increased life expectancy and size of the Baby Boomer cohort. This lifestage has been called the “use it or lose it” stage and is one of wisdom, vitality and re-invention. A key element of this stage is the dichotomy of recognition of physical changes with an awareness of still moving forward with more years to experience: “I know things have changed but I want to do whatever I can.” There is an increased health focus and an amazing zest for life — a desire for continued independence, continued learning, and comfort. This is not the original concept of retirement years. Transition to next stage comes with loss of independence due to physical or mental decline.

Acceptance This life-stage is more synonymous with the old concept of retirement. In this stage of life, one comes to terms with approaching death, often managing through declining health and immune system failure. There is spiritual preparation and life simplification. Because of declining health, women are often more sedentary and dependent (cared for). As marketers dig into deep consumer understanding, it’s helpful to determine what life-stages they are targeting. Is there growth opportunity in your consumer product category to target different or multiple life-stages?

Marketers’ 10 Most Common Copyright Questions... Answered! By Kerry O’Shea Gorgone

As an attorney, I regularly get asked legal questions by my friends. Of particular concern among marketers and PR professionals are copyright and fair use, because those concepts apply to content marketing strategy. I get asked some variation of the same 10 questions on a regular basis, so I’m going to answer them here.

1. Can I use someone else’s content (text, image, video, music) on my website if I give them credit? Not unless they’ve given you written permission to use their material, OR you’re willing to spend the money to present

a “fair use” defense if the creator sues you for copyright infringement. (It’s nearly impossible to know in advance whether the court will ultimately find that your use was “fair.”)

2. But what if I’m not making any money off my blog? Can I use someone else’s content then? No. Using someone else’s work without permission is still copyright infringement, whether you make money from it or not. It might, however, influence whether what you did is considered “fair use” by a court, or how much money the court awards in damages.

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3. But what if I only use a little bit of someone else’s content, like a few seconds of video or a paragraph of their whitepaper? There is no “safe amount” of someone else’s copyrighted material you can use without permission. Not 30 seconds, not 10, not 5. Zero.

4. But isn’t that ridiculous? In some cases, yes, but as much as I think copyright law needs to be reformed to reflect modern attitudes and technological capabilities, the current situation is what it is, and the risk of liability is substantial for anyone using someone else’s copyrighted work.

5. How do I know if another work is subject to someone else’s copyright? You should assume every work is subject to copyright. Did you create the work? No? Then don’t use it without permission from the person who did. In some cases, the content creators might release their work pursuant to a Creative Commons license. If that’s the case, confirm that it is in fact their work (and that they didn’t upload someone else’s work to YouTube or wherever), and that the use you’re planning fits within the terms of the specific creative commons license they chose. For instance, some licenses allow you to use the work, but not to change it. Some allow you to do most anything, but don’t allow commercial uses. Others permit commercial use. The onus is on you to find out!

6. I just got a cease and desist letter from Getty Images (or some other company) demanding I pay them a lot of money for unauthorized use of one of their images. Do I have to pay? Depends. Do you have a lawyer on retainer and are you willing to fight the matter in court? If not, you’ll probably have to pay—unless you can prove that you purchased a license to use the stock image in question. You might be able to negotiate the payment down, but those big companies play hardball. The little guy almost never wins. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news!

7. What if I downloaded the image from a different site that said it was free to use? I didn’t know that whoever uploaded the picture (or video) wasn’t actually the copyright holder! Unfortunately, copyright infringement is what’s known as a “strict liability” offense: You used someone else’s copyrighted work without permission, period. You might be able to shift liability to the site you got the image from, but you’ll still have to show up in court if the owner sues.

8. So what can I use without worrying about liability? You can use your own work: articles you’ve written, pictures you’ve taken, videos you yourself recorded, etc. You can

also use creative works for which you’ve received written permission from the author (and you’ve confirmed that the person giving permission actually holds the copyright). That last bit can be tricky: Parties sometimes assign copyright, as in a work-for-hire agreement, or someone you know might have created a work in the course of his or her employment. In that case, someone other than the creator owns the copyright, and that entity would have to give you permission for your use to be legal.

9. Does a work have to be registered to be subject to copyright? No, copyright protection applies as soon as a creative work is “fixed in a tangible medium.” In other words, the creators own copyright as soon as they save their document, finish their sketch on a cocktail napkin, record a song into their iPhone recording app, etc. Registration offers additional benefits to copyright holders, but it’s not required for copyright to apply.

10. What can I do if someone else is using my content? Quite a bit, actually! 1. First, register your creative works with the US Copyright Office. It might not be worth it for you to register every single blog post, but register the works you’ve put a lot of time and effort into, like whitepapers, infographics, videos, or even very thorough well-researched articles. You could even register a group of blog posts as a compilation. 2. Registration will afford you some additional benefits in the event someone uses your work without permission. One big benefit: you can sue them. Another, if you register a creative work within three months of publication: you can sue for “statutory damages,” meaning you don’t have to prove that you actually lost a specific amount of money as the result of someone else’s using your work, which is tough for most people to prove. 3. Contact the person using your work and ask him or her to stop. That is typically my first step, since so many people genuinely have no idea that what they’re doing is illegal. 4. Issue a “cease and desist” letter detailing their unauthorized use and demanding that they take down any infringing content or you’ll be forced to sue them. 5. If the infringement happens on Facebook or Twitter, report the infringer to that site. A lot of this information will bum people out. I apologize in advance, but unpleasant truths are still truths. Just trying to keep you out of trouble! Kerry O’Shea Gorgone is senior program manager, enterprise learning, at MarketingProfs. She’s also a speaker, writer, attorney, and educator. She hosts and produces the weekly Marketing Smarts podcast.

Why The Sound Of A Brand Name Matters BRAND NAMES REVEAL A LOT MORE THAN YOU THINK, AS THE FASCINATING SCIENCE OF “SOUND SYMBOLISM” SUGGESTS.

By Annie Sneed

The sound of a word like “knife” or “truck” seems totally arbitrary—it’s just a random sound we’ve assigned to a thing, right? But for several decades, scientists have found good evidence that the sound of words have meaning in a very real way. Sound can convey subtle information about traits such as size, shape, smoothness, and also, according to a new study in Cognition, distance. This suggests that while the sound of company and product names—Lyft, Smuckers, Nike—may seem meaningless, it may actually quietly shape consumers’ perceptions.

Over the decades, researchers have verified and added to what Sapir discovered in his study, that certain speech sounds have meaning, separate from the definition of a word itself. They’ve found links between word sounds and concepts for all sorts of characteristics, including size, shape, speed, weight, sharpness, and creaminess. “Sound symbolism says that people have this intuition, that there are right words for certain things,” explains Sam Maglio, one of the authors of the new Cognition study and an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Toronto Scarborough.

This is what’s called “sound symbolism”—the theory that there’s an intrinsic meaning we unknowingly attach to certain speech sounds. Sound symbolism is probably best illustrated by a well-known study from 1929 by the renowned linguist and anthropologist Edward Sapir. In his experiment, Sapir had people assign two fake words—”mil” and “mal”—to either a larger or smaller table. And what he found was pretty astonishing: The majority of participants called the smaller table “mil” and the larger table “mal.” Since Sapir made up the words “mil” and “mal,” he concluded that people inferred word meaning from the sound.

These associations aren’t limited to English—scientists have found them across many different languages. For example, most languages use a front-vowel sound (like “ee” in feet) for words that mean something is little—tiny, petit, piccolo, klein. And for words that indicate something large, languages tend to use back-vowel sounds, (like “oo” in food or “ah” in bought), like grand or grande—just like Sapir found with the mil and mal tables. “This is an automatic judgment that people make—they’re doing it non-consciously,” explains Eric Yorkston, an associate professor of marketing at Texas Christian University, who wasn’t involved in the Cognition study. His own research on sound symbolism has shown, for

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names, researchers then asked subjects to estimate how far away it was. They found that people consistently said the object with back-vowel names was farther away than with front-vowel names.

instance, that when people hear the brand name of a food, it changes how it tastes. He found in a study that people who were told an ice cream is named “frish” think it tastes lighter and has fewer calories, while an ice cream called “frosh” tastes creamier, smoother, and richer (even though the ice cream people tasted was actually the same). Now, the new study by Maglio and researchers from several other universities has found a connection between speech sounds and distance. In five experiments, Maglio and his team looked at how people associated front- and back-vowel sounds (like “ee” vs. “oo”) with whether something is near or far away. They found a strong pattern: People consistently link back-vowel sounds to something far and front-vowel sounds with something close. For example, in one trial, they recruited 55 people from New York University and gave them one of two New York state city names, “Fleen” and “Floon,” (which are fake names), then asked them to estimate how many miles away from New York City Fleen or Floon was located. The researchers discovered that a significant number of people thought Floon (back-vowel sound) was farther away from New York City than Fleen (front-vowel sound).

In another of their experiments, Maglio and his team rounded up 114 people in Washington Square Park. The researchers then placed an unfamiliar object—a multicolored dog toy they had spray painted—in the park and had people stand 30 feet away. Researchers alternated fake names for the object with front- and back-vowel sounds (“deeb,” “nep,” and “keev” vs. “doab,” “noop,” and “koov”) throughout the experiment. After describing the object by one of its fake

Maglio and his team, as well as other sound symbolism researchers, haven’t figured out yet why humans seem to have universal word sound-concept connections. “When it comes to something like language, which has been around forever, it’s really hard to get at what the origin was,” says Maglio. One theory is that these associations resulted from synesthesia—a cross-wiring of human visual and audio senses—in our ancestors a long time ago. “I think the answer at that basic level is probably a neurological one, one that has to do with our evolutionary history,” explains Cristina Rabaglia, one of the study authors.

But even if we don’t know why these connections exist, Maglio thinks they can still be incredibly useful to companies and brand designers. “It might be especially compelling to consumers when there’s a fit between the type of offering and the vowels in its name,” says Maglio. “Or on the flip side, it might be a deterrent for consumers to interact with a brand name that has a mismatch.” Tina Lowrey, an outside expert and professor of marketing at HEC Paris, has a similar opinion. “There are a lot of elements behind a brand’s success, and a name is just one part of that,” she says. “But if you’re looking for a new name, you might as well pick a name that helps customers make sense of your brand.” That can apply specifically to Maglio’s findings on distance and sound—he says that a company or a product that deals in distances might benefit from a sound-concept match. For instance, think of the long-distance airline Lufthansa compared to Spirit Airlines, or a company like U-Haul. “Anyone in the business of dealing in distances,” he says, “can possibly tell their customer something ever so subtly through sounds in their brand name about the type of thing that they’re best at.” Annie Sneed is a San Francisco-based science journalist. She writes stories on topics ranging from beer microbiology to infectious diseases to the science of design for Fast Company, Wired, and Scientific American.

Making a strong case for personal branding THE MOST DEFENSIBLE THING YOU CAN DO FOR YOUR CAREER: BUILD AN AUDIENCE By Sean Blanda

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Tell me if this has ever happened to you: A well-known person in your field loses their job with impressive company X. Deep, deep inside you feel a vague sense of guilty satisfaction. They weren’t that talented anyway, you tell yourself. This will clear room for more up-and-coming talent, you say. But then weeks later when you’ve already mentally moved on, you read that well-known person has landed on their feet, yet again, with a new job at impressive company Y. No schadenfreude for you. So what is that well-known person’s secret? It’s not (always) talent. No, the thing that keeps creative people employed and in full control of their destiny, isn’t some hidden genius. It is the ability to build and serve an audience. Cynically, it’s much harder to quietly let someone go if their 4,000 Twitter followers will hear about it. But practically for those of us whose who operate behind the scenes or aren’t the “face” of our department or company, an audience is the best job insurance possible. Consider the plight of the person hiring creative talent. Or the person hiring anyone, really. They have a marketing campaign for a client meant to build customers. Or maybe they are responsible for While the job a team that does not have a ton of headcount market is risky, those to work with. While the market is risky, those doing the hiring are job doing the hiring are risk averse—VERY risk averse—VERY risk averse.

risk averse.

The known commodity is always safer. People are more likely to hire their friends or people they’ve worked with before. This, of course, is the genesis for the well-trodden aphorism, “It’s not what you know but it’s who you know.” Well, those job candidates with an audience experience this “known commodity bonus” but at a significant multiplier. Now it’s not the just the hiring manager that knows about the creative with an audience. It’s others in the industry. Other known commodities know about this known commodity. Consider the super-talented person with no audience. Let’s call her Sarah. Sarah is technically skilled and does great work, but her work is often behind the scenes. Sarah’s team knows about her talent and she’s always proud of the end product. To her, that’s usually enough. In a perfect world, it should be. But in a Machiavellian way, All of these situations this leaves Sarah extremely vulnerable.

happen every day, and will likely, at least once in our lives, happen to us.

Let’s say Sarah’s division folds because her parent company is downsizing. Or suddenly, her expertise in interface design on Android devices isn’t in demand any more. Or worse, she gets a new manager who decides that it’s time for a change. All of these factors are out of Sarah’s control. All of these factors are decoupled from Sarah’s ability to do her job. All have negative impact on Sarah’s career. All of these situations happen every day, and will likely, at least once in our lives, happen to us.

Sarah is now looking for work and everyone that knows she did a good job, every one that liked working with her is still at the old company. All of the people that know how good she is can’t hire her, and Sarah is left depending on her old team to put in a good word for her. This sometimes works out. Oftentimes it does not. This is why building an audience is job insurance. There’s a reason the creative crowd flocks to Medium and Twitter. The “premium” for this job insurance isn’t money. It’s being transparent in your process, having resolute beliefs, and sharing these both with the world and doing so regularly. Usually, though not always, this means writing. But it can also mean capturing email addresses of those who like your work. Or posting case studies of everything you work on. Or directing people to follow you on a specific network (we suggest Behance, but we’re biased). Too often, creatives do this after the fact, only when they are in need of a new gig. Imagine if Sarah had written about her thoughts on design throughout her career. Sometimes, she was right. Other times, she was wrong. But more importantly she attracted a group of like-minded people that kept track of her work (and as a bonus, exposed her to varying viewpoints that forced her to get better). Imagine she told these people to follow her on Twitter or to sign up for her Tiny Letter. Even if this group is “only” 40 people, that’s 40 people that are looking out for Sarah now. It’s 40 people that know Sarah’s work and respect her thinking. Left unchecked, your natural instinct is to please your internal audience. After all, you see those folks every day and the feedback loop is strong. But you can’t take your internal audience with you if you move to the next gig. Communicate often with those folks, they are important. But don’t neglect the possibility that you have something to add to the broader conversation in your field.

I don’t know the

I don’t know the industry you work in. But what I do know industry you work in. is that your industry needs But what I do know your voice. More people than those in the room with is that your industry you each day deserve to see your take on things that needs your voice. matter. Especially if you find yourself complaining the “thought leaders” are the same tired faces getting all of the notice. Let’s jump back to Sarah’s doomsday scenario. The one where Sarah’s job prospects change because her company downsizes. Now, let’s pretend you’re Sarah. Bummer. But now you can ask your audience of 40 strong. In this case, one single person made the choice to downsize your position. You were exposed, the victim of a power play or an incompetent manager. It only takes one person in the right position to knock us off of our career path. But no one person can take your audience.

Sean is the Editor-in-Chief and Director of 99U.

Why Marketers Need To Adopt A Programmatic Marketing, Vs. Programmatic Advertising, Mindset By Tobi Elkin

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A new white paper from The CMO Club in partnership with MediaMath makes the point that CMOs are increasingly adopting a programmatic marketing mindset vs. a programmatic advertising one. What does that mean? The paper suggests that while programmatic media buying has been around for nearly a decade, marketers have yet to reach its full potential. Programmatic media can be tapped for 100% of media budgets and used to enable more sophisticated audience management and analytics. In other words, it’s much more than a mere line item on media plans. The white paper defined programmatic as that which “leverages technology to automate and optimize the planning, purchasing, execution and analysis of digital marketing across channels, [and] is empowering CMOs to connect their technology decisions with real business results.” The growing convergence of ad and marketing tech, driven by automated systems on both sides of the equation, plus the cornucopia of available data, has the ability to make ads more targeted across paid and owned media. Marketers and publishers need to expand their range of vision where programmatic is concerned to include more channels and functions. “The future of programmatic is looking at other mediums. Currently, programmatic is being used in video and mobile, but TV is just dabbling in this space. What about the Internet of Things?” asked Sean Cheyney, VP, audience extension sales, Triad Retail Media. Thinking about programmatic marketing more broadly requires the ability to incorporate programmatic best practices across a brand’s entire marketing strategy, the white paper notes. That’s a sensible approach. Integrating programmatic strategies makes sense throughout the entire media planning process.

advertising strategy can be a critical asset for CMOs,” he said. Taking a slightly different view, Matt Nespoli, digital media supervisor at Butler/Till, stated: “The agency of the future is going to be full of consultants. They will be strategic thinkers and bring new technologies and approaches to their clients. When you’re not always in the weeds, you can think more strategically—and that’s why agencies will always be around. We’re doing this and finding ourselves in that consultative role, which allows us to be proactive instead of reactive.” The survey of more than 70 CMOs at brands and agencies revealed that marketers still want to work with their agencies on programmatic strategies, but they want to approach things differently. Brands are leaning on their agencies and ad-tech/mar-tech vendors to interact with one another and have a relationship. Among the findings: • 68% of those surveyed said that adding a technology partner to their agency relationship would help maximize marketing ROI. • 59.38% said audience insights and optimization best practices are the most valuable contributions agencies provide CMOs to help educate their brand. • 34.85% said their agency has access to some of their firstparty data, while 27.27% said their agency has access to all of their first-party data. • 30.3% said that excellent agency support means a relationship based on complete transparency. • When it comes to audience management, 62% of The CMO Club survey respondents said their agency is accessing and activating at least some of their first-party data for advertising efforts.

While agencies can serve as the lead partner with brands on programmatic, they also need to connect clients to the best media buying, data management and measurement approaches across different channels. Frequently, these approaches are actually vendors in their own “preferred partner” network, but agencies need to facilitate other relationships where they make sense to ensure brands have all the right partners in place. This is where an agency can add more value, since the converging ad-tech and mar-tech landscape is such a confusing jumble—the technology itself changes week-to-week, product offerings are constantly iterating and partnerships are multiplying.

• Where transparency is concerned, 30% identified it as a top priority for their agency relationships. Some defined transparency as “fees,” while others said it meant communication between agency and brand.

“CMOs and agencies need to be on the same page for a successful partnership to work,” Cheyney told RTBlog via email. “Programmatic can help advance business and marketing objectives, but in order for it to work it needs to be part of the strategy, not just be a tactic.”

The findings revealed that 70% of CMOs surveyed ranked the partnership between marketing technology providers and agencies as “very important” to their success. Marketers’ embrace of programmatic has created a new dynamic between brands and agencies.

Cheyney said that CMOs are relying even more on agency partners to help make sense of data. “Agencies are most effective when they can help their partners understand how to harness the data to drive business objectives. Agencies that understand programmatic and its place within the overall

Tobi Elkin is the Editor of MediaPost’s Real-Time Daily and the RTBlog.

Robin Thomas, director of media and social for Chili’s Grill & Bar, is focused on transparency as it relates to how the media-buying process is being executed, in addition to what happens on the technology platform. “The biggest challenges initially for us were staying on top of the transparency in the buy and the back-end actualization, auditing of the buy, and using a programmatic platform,” she stated.

Game, set, match! PLAYING MATCHMAKER: CLIO MUSIC JUROR CAMILLE HACKNEY ON THE POWER OF BRAND-ARTIST PARTNERSHIPS By Clio Staff

A commercial catches your ear—suddenly you have a new favorite song, or you do a happy dance to hear an oldie but goodie. Such brand-artist collaborations don’t happen magically. Behind the scenes, Camille Hackney, EVP of Brand Partnerships & Commercial Licensing for Atlantic Records and Head of Global Brand Partnerships Council for Warner Music Group, has the wheels turning as to what celeb and campaign make the perfect marriage (case in point: singer Janelle Monae, a CLIO Music juror in 2015, jamming her way through not just one but two successful Pepsi campaigns). We spoke with Hackney, a 2016 CLIO Music juror, about fine-tuning such collaborations beyond the traditional.

When you’re in matchmaker mode, what are some signals that clue you in to a good match? The first clue is that both sides are fans of each other’s work! Whenever we sign a new artist, we typically ask them questions about which brands they use and which campaigns they like. This gives us a good target list of brands to approach for each artist. We try to work with brands that the artist already has an affinity for—that just makes all of the deal’s deliverables that much easier to execute.

Can you share any behindthe-scenes details on the

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NFL-Bruno Mars deals? We were highly involved in orchestrating his first appearance at Super Bowl Halftime 48. Back then, he was not quite the global superstar that he is now, but he has always been a superstar showman and performer, which is why the NFL worked with him only having had two albums out. Every bit of that performance was Bruno’s creation (in collaboration with an amazing director, Hamish Hamilton). From the timing of the dancers and the pyro to the close-up shots, Bruno knows how to create a dynamic and memorable performance. He is truly a remarkable talent in many disciplines.

What defines the most successful or powerful brand-artist partnerships? The testament to a successful and powerful partnership is if both parties work together again. I think of our artist Janelle Monae who has worked with Pepsi on two, high-profile campaigns within the last four years—one for soccer around the World Cup in 2014, and then this past year for Super Bowl 50. They were two very different campaigns, but Pepsi chose to work with her again given her love for the brand and the great relationship that we were able to form with them. I also believe that a great partnership is defined by the things each side does for the other, which are not in the contract. When a brand decides to support an artist’s philanthropic initiatives, works with them on a passion project or helps the artist when they are going through a hard time, I think that is the sign of true partnership and loyalty.

What do you think are some of the most epic brand-artist partnerships of all time? This is an old one, but a partnership that defined the category was the Pepsi/Michael Jackson partnership. It really defined what a music/brand pairing could look like. Another oldie but goodie was when Converse gathered a trio of super-hip, uber-cool artists—Santigold, Pharrell and Julian Casablancas from The Strokes—for their “Three Artists X One Song” campaign. I think it was a great way to engage artists who are wildly creative and who would not typically engage with brands (at least not at that time), and get them to collaborate on a new song that is made for a brand. The other that is more current that we make reference to often is the Amex Unstaged platform. I think that was a brilliant way for a brand to deliver real value to labels and artists during a critical time of a project (the week of album launch), allowing the artist to express their creativity through a live performance in collaboration with a top director with whom they would likely never have worked with in such a manner.

What are some misperceptions brands may have about this process? The most common misperception is that when a brand does a partnership deal that they “own” the artist and can dictate what the artist can, should or will do or say in all aspects of their life. “Brands with a brain” have strong opinions, feelings, habits (good and bad) and most of all, are expressive by nature and trade. Anyone who represents “human brands,” like artists and other celebrities, should be honest about the fact that having 100-percent control or influence over them is a fallacy. Sometimes artists are going to do what they want to do, period. Smart brand executives should assess their risk tolerance for dealing with a celebrity and do their homework on the artist to gauge the potential upside or downside of the partnership. I always encourage brand executives to execute deals with trustworthy partners who won’t go silent on them in a crisis. Legitimately, there are numerous individuals within the artist sphere who can execute a deal with the brand on behalf of the artist. It is up to the brand executive to determine who they think can deliver the best results.

What are some misperceptions on the artist side? The biggest misperception is that brands are banks, and are willing to give them money with no expectation of deliverables. A savvy artist will take the time to understand the brand executives’ goals and objectives (and it’s my job to articulate that to the artist and their team) and be willing to help them achieve success. That’s how you engender loyalty and commitment from a brand over the course of several campaigns.

As a CLIO Music juror, what kinds of work will you be looking for? What does winning work mean to you? I am looking for something that goes beyond the traditional deal or artist/brand transaction. Something innovative and hopefully something that serves as a reference for other brand deals that come after it.

Why do you think it’s important to celebrate and recognize excellence in music and advertising? Selfishly, it is what I have spent many years doing and trying to master. It is wonderful to have been a part of the artist/brand partnership and commercial synch business since its infancy. It feels good to see the discipline get the recognition that it deserves.

Book,

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Create, Connect, Convince By Jorg Dietzel Create, Connect, Convince is for people who are interested in a career in Advertising or those who have to deal with Advertising matters as part of their work scope, whether they sit on the agency or client fence. The author examines 10 international brands, and how media and stunning ideas helped to get the message across. Also featured are observations from 10 agency practitioners in Asia and beyond, such as Sir John Hegarty, founder of Bartle Boyle Hegarty, the immensely successful London-based agency...

Brand Atlas: Branding Intelligence Made Visible By Alina Wheeler, Joel Katz

Sinker Emotional Branding: The New Paradigm for Connecting Brands to People By Marc Gobe Emotional Branding is the best selling revolutionary business book that has created a movement in branding circles by shifting the focus from products to people. The “10 Commandments of Emotional Branding” have become a new benchmark for marketing and creative professionals, emotional branding has become a coined term by many top industry...

StoryBranding: Creating StandOut Brands Through The Power of Story

Brand Atlas follows the recent YouTube-iPhonePecha Kucha era trend toward fast-paced visual instruction by neglecting needless jargon and combining vivid, full-color images and easyto-follow diagrams to break down branding principles into basic step-by-step concepts that can be immediately applied. This handy reference: • Speaks to a broad range of stakeholders in the branding process—from CEOs to designers to brand managers...

By Jim Signorelli

What Great Brands Do. The Seven Brand-Building Principles That Separate the Best From the Rest

Viral-Marketing Professor: The Best Marketing Is Education!

By Denise Lee Yohn As a general rule, I’m not always sure that small businesses benefit from studying the branding strategies of the behemoths. That being said, this particular book makes a real effort to present those strategies in a way that can be applied in more typical business and branding scenarios.

Designing Brand Identity: An Essential Guide for the Whole Branding Team, 4th Edition By Alina Wheeler A revised new edition of the bestselling toolkit for creating, building, and maintaining a strong brand From research and analysis through brand strategy, design development through application design, and identity standards through launch and governance, Designing Brand Identity, Fourth Edition offers brand managers, marketers...

Having worked on many famous brands as an advertising executive, Jim Signorelli has found that today, in order for advertising to be truly effective, the brand being promoted must work the way a good story works. Many brands continue to get in their own way with an over-reliance on editorialized benefits. ‘’Today, that’s a deathwish,’’ says Signorelli. ‘’To remain competitive, brands must provide consumers with story...

By Nylus Stanton Viral-Marketing Professor is a marketing book that should be read by everyone on your marketing team and hidden from competing new and small business owners! It’s loaded with direct and concise instructions for effectively executing the most critical and profitable methods of successfully marketing and branding your products or service globally, via the Internet.

Logo Design Love: A Guide to Creating Iconic Brand Identities By David Airey In Logo Design Love, David shows you how to develop an iconic brand identity from start to finish, using client case studies from renowned designers. In the process, he reveals how designers create effective briefs, generate ideas, charge for their work, and collaborate with clients. David not only shares his personal experiences working on identity projects - including sketches and final results of his own successful designs.

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Truth, Lies, and Advertising: The Art of Account Planning 1st Edition

How Brands Become Icons: The Principles of Cultural Branding

By Jon Steel

By D. B. Holt

“Account planning exists for the sole purpose of creating advertising that truly connects with consumers. While many in the industry are still dissecting consumer behavior, extrapolating demographic trends, developing complex behavioral models, and measuring Pavlovian salivary responses, Steel advocates an approach to consumer research that is based on simplicity, common sense, and creativity--an approach...

Based on extensive historical analyses of some of America’s most successful iconic brands, including ESPN, Mountain Dew, Volkswagen, Budweiser, and Harley-Davidson, this book presents the first systematic model to explain how brands become icons. Douglas B. Holt shows how iconic brands create “identity myths” that, through powerful symbolism, soothe collective anxieties resulting from acute social change.

The Brand Gap: How to Bridge the Distance Between Business Strategy and Design

Cutting Edge Advertising: How to Create the World’s Best for Brands in the 21st Century

By Marty Neumeier

By Jim Aitchison, Neil French

THE BRAND GAP is the first book to present a unified theory of brand-building. Whereas most books on branding are weighted toward either a strategic or creative approach, this book shows how both ways of thinking can unite to produce a “charismatic brand”—a brand that customers feel is essential to their lives.

In Cutting Edge Advertising, one of the world’s leading creatives offers a step-by-step plan for creating outstanding 21st century print advertising. Along the way, he presents more than 300 of the world’s best ads -- each discussed, analyzed and critiqued, frankly and provocatively, by the brilliant creatives responsible for them. Globally-respected names like David Abbott, Tim Delaney, John Hegarty, Gary Goldsmith...

Designing Brand Experience

Branding Yourself

By Robin Landa

By Erik Deckers, Kyle Lacy

In today’s competitive marketplace, establishing a creative and comprehensive branding program is crucial to achieving business success. This dynamic new book from best-selling author Robin Landa is an all-inclusive guide to generating ideas and creating brand applications that resonate with an audience. A highly visual examination of each phase of the branding process includes comprehensive coverage of the key brand applications of graphic design and advertising.

Want a new job or career? Need to demonstrate more value to customers or employers? Use today’s hottest social media platforms to build the powerful personal brand that gets you what you want! In this completely updated book, Erik Deckers and Kyle Lacy help you use social media to attract new business and job opportunities you’ll never find any other way. From Facebook to Pinterest to video sharing, this book is packed with new techniques and ideas that are practical, easy, and effective.

The Science and Art of Branding

Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits

By Giep Franzen, Sandra Moriarty

By Debbie Millman, Rob Walker (Foreword)

This innovative work provides a state-of-theart overview of current thinking about the development of brand strategy. Unlike other books on branding, it approaches successful brand strategy from both the producer and consumer perspectives. “The Science and Art of Branding” makes clear distinctions among the producer’s intentions, external brand realities, and consumer’s brand perceptions - and explains how to fit them all together to build successful brands.

This book elevates the discussion to the level of revelation. Each chapter is an extensive dialogue between Debbie Millman, herself a design visionary, and a different leader in the field. By asking questions deeply informed by her own expertise, Millman coaxes lucid, prescient answers from twenty-two interview subjects, among them Malcolm Gladwell, Tom Peters, Seth Godin, and godfather of modern branding Wally Olins.