Branding matters. Because branding matters.
Scan these QR Codes to download the Brand Knew App
brandknewmag.com
Published by ISD Global
06.14#26
07 09 11 Dear Friends: This issue will surely give you a kick. Pardon my saying so but I guess it’s the World Cup fever that has got everyone abuzz, alive & kicking if you will. That’s why the feature on the FIFA World Cup and branded entertainment will appeal wholesomely. As would the article on how bad grammar has no place in branding. For the legions of Calvin & Hobbes fans, there is an insightful piece on what one can learn from the designers of the classic cartoon series. In these days of everyone being a media owner with a surfeit of information at their disposal, the disintegration of PR is a natural fall out. We also examine the co relation between the colour red and your IQ. Lots more in this issue to play ball with. Till the next, happy reading!
13 15 17 19 21
Suresh Dinakaran @sureshdinakaran
25
linkd.in/1dsjYaW bit.ly/1h95tgO suresh@groupisd.com
Managing Editor: Suresh Dinakaran Creative Head/Director Operations: Pravin Ahir Magazine Concept & Design/ New Media Specialist: Mufaddal Joher Country Head, UK: Sagar Patil Country Head, India: Rohit Unni Digital Marketing Strategist: Mark Cijo Associate: Brand Success: Andre Van Helsdingen Web Specialist: Prasanta Kumar Sahu Online Support: Mahendra Kumar Behera
Brand Knew is published by
For Advertising Enquiries: info@groupisd.com or call + 971 4 386 7728 All Copyright of the content in this issue rests fully & comprehensively with the respective contributors and/or media platforms at all times, as the case may be.
www.brandknewmag.com | www.groupisd.com Download Mobile App from
27 29 31 35 39 41
Will B2B Services Firms Break Out of a Branding Rut?
CONTENTS
Brands Aren’t Dead, But Traditional Branding Tools Are Dying How Brands Can Win At The Sharing Economy How the Information Age Killed Public Relations... and What You Can Do About It Bad Grammar Are Bad for Branding. Why is marketing becoming increasingly illiterate? The Favorite Mobile Brands of Consumers in Emerging Markets ebay Embraces Content Marketing and Finds Its Voice Why The Color Red Revs You Up (But Lowers Your IQ) When A Simple Logo Isn’t The Best Choice 4 Tips On Creativity From The Creator Of Calvin & Hobbes Three Questions Every Brand’s Story Must Answer Branded Entertainment Extends FIFA World Cup Fever Off the Field 6 Branding Lessons from the Pioneers of Weed Design Consumers are fiercely loyal to two brands per category: MasterCard exec Book, Line & Sinker
Will B2B Services Firms Break Out of a Branding Rut? Joe Walsh
It used to be that B2B and professional services firms invested in pioneering brand efforts to earn awareness and stand out. When the recession took hold, we began to see reduced brand activity and sameness. Once creative and compelling, service brands (via websites, advertising and more) seem less visible—both quality and quantity of branding efforts appeared to suffer. Conventional wisdom suggests that in times of recession it’s better to tighten the belt and cut marketing and branding expenditures to focus on sales. But the recession was such a constant in the economy that the short run brand-building cuts became a long term operating practice. The result, the post recession state of professional service branding is like
(look, feel and voice) unique? Do they consider the brand to be innovative? The results are striking: • Only 20% feel their brands are extremely innovative • 69% say the same about their visual brand identity or expression. Marginal uniqueness seems to be the resting point for firms around the world. Yet 95% of CMOs and 92% of CEOs/ Managing Partners believe their brand is moderately or extremely important to success. The fact that only 21% believe their brands are well or perfectly understood by prospects should be a blazing red flag that they could be replaced by the firm down the street—and it’s likely nobody would notice. There is hope on the vast “Plain of Same.” Our survey revealed that 69% of respondents plan to update their brand within the next 3 years. Weigh that against another response: 82% said they never or rarely refresh their brands. This indicates that the “rare” time is upon us, and we hope that when the focus turns to the brand there is a true emphasis on differentiation. Professional services firms that do revisit their brands are choosing the right time to leap off the page, as our research indicates an imminent branding boom. It will be far easier to stand out on the “Plain of Same” by leading the pack than it will be to follow. Indeed, everyone agrees that innovative brands grab attention, and that viewpoint should translate into action during this next wave of rebrands.
living in a bland, empty room. This blandness bothered us. So we polled CMOs and CEOs at law, accounting and consulting firms around the world for their opinions. Respondents included leaders of local, regional, national and international firms with an average size of 382 professionals (full survey results here. One of the most important findings falls in the camp of Brand Distinction. We asked decision makers if their brand promise — the value proposition — is unique. Is the brand expression
Historically, we have seen brands (like Nike) that have increased brand spend during economic hardships come out the other end flourishing and far ahead of the competition. For example, in 1987, Nike tripled their marketing spend during an economic crash and ultimately increased profits by 9x. For those who might not believe in the power of branding, take a look at Nike—Just Do It. Joe Walsh is a life-long professional services marketer who got his start in the field in 1987. He offers clients a wealth of sophisticated brand positioning, market research, creative development and media planning skills.
Brands Aren’t Dead, But Traditional Branding Tools Are Dying Jens Martin Skibsted and Rasmus Bech Hansen Back in the days when the internet was young, many believed that as it grew brands would become a thing of the past. Leading information economy thinkers propagated this view, including Carl Shapiro and Hal R. Varian, who published the highly influential book, Information Rules, in 1999 (Varian is now chief economist at Google). The book predicted that the power of brands would shrink as people had access to more and more free information. This has clearly turned out to be wrong. In fact, the web has become dominated by, yes, a few big brands. Still, the notion that a bigger world wide web means smaller brands is surprisingly resilient. Most recently Stanford professor Itamar Simonsen and author Emanual Rosen have argued in their new book Absolute Value: What Really Influences Customers in the Age of (Nearly) Perfect Information and in their recent blog post here that marketers need to reevaluate the idea that brands are critically important in consumer’s purchasing decisions. They claim: “…brands are less needed when consumers can assess product quality using better sources of information such as reviews from other users, expert opinion, or information from people they know on social media.” The case for the decline of big brands follows a strikingly clear logic: The primary role of a brand is to make it easier for consumers to choose which products to buy. If consumers have immediate access to information that helps them make those decisions such as user reviews and expert opinion, the value of a brand will fall. Proponents of this theory point to the explosive growth of the mobile web as compelling evidence. It’s undeniable that we are not far from a future where most Western consumers have instant access to the accumulated mass reviews of every product that Simonsen and Rosen describe. But this doesn’t make the “death of the brand” theory any truer than it was 15 years ago when Varian and Shapiro put it forward. In fact, the exact opposite is true. As digital disrupts more marketplaces, brands become more important and more valuable. Take a look at the various brand rankings: Digital brands such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, IBM, Intel, and Samsung are in the top 10 of most rankings. This is not because the likes of Coca Cola, McDonalds, and Mercedes have become less valuable. The digital brands have just turbocharged past them. If brands are truly unimportant in a digital world, why is it so brand dominated? Why do so many people choose Google search over Bing when only experts can tell which has the most accurate results? Why has Apple become the most valuable company in the world with overpriced products and inferior functionality?
Because brands still matter immensely. The mistake Simonsen and Rosen make is to confuse the value, role, and meaning of a brand in today’s digital economy with the methods used to build the brand. What sets the Googles and Apples of the world apart from older brands is how they’ve built their brands. Google has hardly spent anything on traditional advertising (although the company wisely, as all its profitable revenue comes from advertising, doesn’t brag about it). Instead, the company has kept the brand meaningful and relevant to people’s lives through free services and cool ideas. Apple relaunched the brand with the ad campaign “Think Different”, but has since withdrawn from imagebuilding ads and kept a much smaller marketing budget than peers, focusing it brand efforts on creating an insanely well-designed, holistic product experience. The company’s advertising is limited to boring product shots. The role of a brand is—and never was—just about solving an information problem. It’s about providing meaning and satisfying emotional needs. These fundamental human needs have not changed. To the contrary as consumers experience information overload, there might be a tendency to gravitate toward what’s known and comforting. Sure, disruptive digital services explode and take over the world in an instant, but to go from being a popular service like Pinterest and Whatsapp to a brand that commands a proper price premium is still a long road. So instead of discussing “brand versus not brand” marketers and executives should ask themselves: How can we strengthen our brand when the traditional tools such as advertising, corporate identity programs, and PR are becoming impotent? Part of the answer is in making the brand more—not less— central. In a hyper-transparent digital world, consumers instantly know the difference between what a company says and what it does. Organizations can no longer draw clear lines between marketing and product development, between communications and services. Brand builders must embed themselves across the customer value chain. Products and services must be able to tell a story and communicate value without an extra advertising layer on top. As information is more and more available and the importance of brands increases, the ability to tell a meaningful story through actions and products, not words, is the only way to win.` 1. Jens Martin Skibsted is a serial entrepreneur, design philosopher and executive design strategy adviser based in Copenhagen. 2. Rasmus Bech Hansen is an independent executive brand adviser and entrepreneur based in London.
HOW BRANDS CAN WIN AT THE SHARING ECONOMY Ana Andjelic The notion of ownership is changing. Consumers, particularly young ones, are more interested in experiences than possessions. That’s led to the explosion of the Sharing Economy, a catchall term for new business models that allow regular people to share property, possessions, skills and knowledge. This sounds amazing for customers, and a nightmare for brands. But it doesn’t have to be that way, so long as brands open themselves up to new ways of thinking, new ways of doing business, and new ideas about what value truly is. The first step is to recognize the sharing economy isn’t going anywhere. Total revenues in the collaborative economy sector were estimated at $3.5 billion in 2013, with growth of 25%, according to Forbes. Rachel Botsman assures us that P2P rental market alone is worth $16 billion. The Economist got so smitten that it proclaimed 2013 “The Year of Collaborative Consumption.” Mary Meeker, the queen of Internet trends, decided that sharing economy was one
of the trends for 2012. Some go as far as to predict that collaborative economy is potentially a $110 billion market. Uber alone is valued at $3.3 billion. This is more than a symptom of venture-capital-inflated Silicon Valley. It is rooted in human behavior. It is a combination of value-seeking, convenience, instant gratification, quality control, and looking for a less-mass, more unique experiences. Brands don’t provide this. They don’t provide this superior experience. They don’t even compete on the basis of customer experience. Their marketing doesn’t concern itself with experience. Their value chain is devoid of it. Traditionally, brands were mediators between producers and consumers, making producers more attractive to consumers and convincing consumers that they will be prettier, stronger, smarter because of products and services that producers create. Today, all we need to make a decision is a review, a photo and a community endorsement.
brandknewmag.com
12
A brand is going to be more valuable to consumers if it creates some sort of new value that did not exist before. This is where digital can help brands. Collaborative economy startups have value chains that optimize a marketplace. Uber created a flexible incentive system for drivers to go out on the road, which created a public backlash, but actually very effectively solved the problem of supply-and-demand in the taxi cab marketplace. A brand’s traditional, legacy business is going to be more valuable to consumers if it adds an existing marketplace to it. TaskRabbit is a marketplace for time, skills and knowledge, and, not accidentally, the most popular task there is assembling Ikea furniture. Many people fear and loathe Ikea manuals. They would rather pay someone to go through the ordeal. Right therein lies an opportunity for Ikea. Ikea should own the “Ikea-assembling skills” marketplace on TaskRabbit. The option of having a TaskRabbit individual should be part of every online and in-store order, all bidding already done by Ikea. The retailer then delivers to your door both the furniture and the person who will assemble it.
those consumers invest their own time and resources in it. In this scenario, consumers define their brand experience by remaking brand product and services more according to their own needs and likes. Big, upscale U.S. retailer Nordstrom partnered with Toms shoes to inspire its customers to design new Toms. Nordstrom attracts affluent customers who are looking for something more than just mass-produced clothes. They seek unique, elevated designs that are going to set them apart from their peers. Intimate knowledge of its customers allowed Nordstrom to come up with the initiative that responds to their needs in the best possible way. Nordstrom inspired its customers both to express their creativity through shoe design (and to own it), and to feel good about being part of a larger, meaningful humanitarian initiative.
All these new branding directions are aimed to one, single-minded goal: amplify customer experience. Make it better. Make it more complete, A to Z. Close the value loop. All these new branding directions are aimed to one, singleminded goal: amplify customer experience. Make it better. Make it more complete, A to Z. Close the value loop. Provide consistent quality. Put customer convenience first. Be useful. Be interesting and stay clear of one-size-fits all experiences. Allow people to share. (People love sharing!) Add value in every customer interaction. Focus on unmet needs, and be one step ahead.
A brand is going to be more valuable to consumers if it creates some sort of new value that did not exist before. New value usually comes out of connecting supply, provided by the brand, with customer demand in some new way. A few years ago, Peugeot unveiled “Mu,” a rental service available in 70 European cities. Peugeot rents its customizable vehicles, along with scooters and bikes. This car manufacturer realized that its customers are engaging in car sharing behavior, with this brand or without it. In a savvy move, it adjusted its supply to its customers’ shifting demands. In a slightly different vein, Patagonia partnered with eBay to create a redistribution market for its pre-owned jackets, fleeces, gear, shoes, sweaters, and other outdoors items. Patagonia customers can sell their ski pants, or buy a ski helmet on eBay, under Patagonia’s brand. By expanding its product offerings into pre-owned goods, Patagonia effectively expanded its market, reached more consumers, and encouraged more economic transactions around its products. Since then, retail brands are starting to embrace the trend: H&M and British retailer Asos created their own online marketplaces. A brand is going to become critically valuable to consumers if
Brands that implement this kind of thinking have nothing to fear in collaborative economy. They already behave according to its principles of generosity, transparency, sustainability, and utility. Marketplace, design, and disruption are the new branding playbook, and with it, collaborative economy can only make your brand grow.
Ana Andjelic is head of digital strategy at Spring Studios.
How the Information Age Killed Public Relations... and What You Can Do About It Lisa Calhoun
groupisd.com
14
Few PR pros know that modern public relations emerged from the propaganda war that raged throughout World War I. Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, the “father of PR,” wondered whether the propaganda model could be applied to the private sector to influence public opinion during peacetime.
This is hugely important for technology producers, as their products are all about personalization. Items such as Google Glass, smartphones, and wearable fitness technology were all created to extend the range of human ability, and today tech companies have a tremendous need to educate potential customers about the joys of using what they have to offer.
The era of conscious media manipulation was born.
A company can take three steps to create and share better stories.
But it’s tough to manipulate (by selling uncertainty, for one) when the truth is only a Web search away. Edward Bernays’s flavor of PR is dying, and we’re in the process of watching a whole new era of marketing rise from the ashes.
Leaving Fear and Uncertainty Behind Since the early 20th century, public relations has relied on a massively disproportionate range of access to information. For example, around the time of the women’s suffrage movement, Bernays was hired by the American Tobacco Company to help it break into new markets (i.e., sell more cigarettes). He saw potential in women, who were essentially culturally forbidden to smoke. He saw an opening in the suffrage movement and staged actresses smoking cigarettes at demonstrations where women were marching to get the vote. His famous “Torches of Freedom” campaign positioned smoking—falsely, by using actresses and fleets of photographers—as a way to express solidarity with women who wanted to vote. It was a massively successful idea, and a whole lot of women took up smoking. Think about how the same sort of campaign would go today. The smart women in charge of the suffrage movement would be taking to social media to say that women don’t need to emulate the bad habits of men to gain independence—that they simply need the right to vote—and blogs would explode with posts about how men are co-opting the movement for financial gain. Today, the average First-World consumer has easy access to an incredible amount of information, and the old PR model that created fiction to influence behavior is losing its effectiveness. In the modern world, there are too many easily recognized angles to a story. Someone is tweeting from the opposition, someone else is launching a boycott over the blogosphere, and media outlets all over the world are speculating in real time about future developments. Simply put, it has become much more difficult to sustain a false mass manipulation.
More Story, Less Spin Today, people who want to make great stories can use technology to influence public perception, rather than shape public perception around a lie. Think of it like this: Consumers no longer buy out of a fear of not having something; they buy because the product has the potential to enhance their personal story. Progressive marketing companies such as SHIFT Communications and TGPR talk more about how we make and share real stories—rather than “tell” them.
1. Forget everything you know about public relations The general public doesn’t like the entire concept behind “public relations” because old PR is a nasty idea. People don’t like to think of themselves as people who follow the herd, and now they have the information available to make informed decisions.
2. Decide what you want people to know Want to make the world a better place? You need to show people how your product is making an actual impact—and back up your claims with real evidence. Maybe you want people to know how your innovative product will simplify their lives. Let them try it for themselves, and they will tell the world for you. Suddenly, “public relations” starts to look a lot like “education”—which old PR, as an industry, has largely abandoned. As humans, telling stories to educate is in our DNA. And with the right words and information, people can be persuaded rather than inculcated. The shift from “telling” something good to “doing” something good is the essential core, and you should start viewing your public communications function more as a broadcaster and your marketing more as privately held media.
3. Think about your legend You no longer have to think about your “hook” or “spin.” Today, your goal should be to think more like a minstrel. Create a legend that incorporates your company’s values and gives people a living, breathing framework. Today’s smarter storyteller has an arsenal of case studies, statistics, founder’s stories, and core values. Although Bernays staged a “Torches of Freedom” march, today’s more authentic legend maker actually does something with his product or service to show its effect. Today’s reputation creator enables real people to have an unbelievable experience and blog about it. It’s authentic, with the story providing a medium to chronicle an actual transformation. All this cannot really be called “public relations” any more. It’s a new incarnation of marketing, where it’s necessary to incorporate a real narrative. That takes mind, not manipulation. Lisa Calhoun is founder of tech public relations firm Write2Market, recently recognized among the Top 100 Agencies in the US. She blogs at How You Rule the World.
Bad Grammar Are Bad for Branding. Why is marketing becoming increasingly illiterate? Robert Klara Just in case you haven’t checked in a while, the English language continues a steady slide into the ditch—and it’s not just texting that’s to blame, it’s marketing. Whether online or on the packaging, brands seem to be forgetting the spelling and grammar we all supposedly learned in grade school. A few weeks ago, for example, U.K. teen Albert Gifford made social media headlines by correcting the syntax on a carton of Tesco orange juice that claimed to be the “most tastiest.” (The chain apologized and fixed the double superlative.) Remember February’s Super Bowl spot for SodaStream? It was the one with Scarlett Johansson enthusing about “Less sugar, less bottles.” (Except that it’s fewer bottles, Scarlett.) In 2011, Old Navy had to send back an entire shipment of sports team T-shirts when the “Lets Go!” lettering omitted the apostrophe before the “s.” Too bad Victoria’s Secret didn’t take a lesson. Last year the clothing brand dropped a needless apostrophe (“You’ve never seen body’s like this!”) into its Secret Body campaign. How is it that mega brands with eight-figure marketing budgets have gotten so careless? Language police blame everything from the hyper informality brought about by social media to the fact that (yes, here it comes) those Gen Y kids entering corporate America simply don’t know how to write. In fact, pre-teens appear to be even worse. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, a mere 32 percent of the nation’s eighth graders are proficient in language skills. More to the point, there’s evidence that slovenly prose affects the bottom line, too. “Being able to write without error, be it grammar or typos, is an important skill for anyone who wishes to be taken seriously in business,” says marketing consultant Debra Murphy. “People form their initial impressions based on what they see online.”
The data back her up. A study conducted late last year by U.K. firm Global Lingo found that 74 percent of consumers pay attention to the correctness of the prose on company Web sites, and 59 percent of respondents said they would avoid doing business with a company that’s made obvious errors. A more recent survey—this one published in March by Standing Dog Interactive—revealed that 58 percent of consumers were either “somewhat” or “very” annoyed by the presence of copy errors, with one respondent volunteering: “If … I see a typo, I’ll leave without buying a thing.” Yikes. Fortunately, such militancy doesn’t appear to include beloved bits of branding that already bend the rules. Nobody’s suggesting that Apple’s “Think Different” should be corrected to read “Think Differently.” And while “Got Milk?” might be flat-out incorrect, “Do You Have Any Milk?” just lacks a certain kick. But still, the long list of famous gaffes really ought to be enough to make companies pay closer attention to that ad copy. What brand wants to suffer the embarrassment that McDonald’s and Hardee’s did when both touted a new “Anus Burger”? Did that Days Inn location that advertised a “Free Wife” instead of free WiFi have to make good? For the record, even President Obama’s reelection campaign, fueled by a billion-dollar budget, apparently had no proofreaders for the banner ad that read: “We’ve come along way…” (Psst! It’s “a long,” Mr. President.) Perhaps the wordsmiths at someecards.com put it best: “Grammar—It’s the difference between knowing your shit and knowing you’re shit.”
Robert Klara is a staff writer for Adweek.com
The Favorite Mobile Brands of Consumers in Emerging Markets Ayaz Nanji Consumers in emerging markets prefer mobile devices made by Apple and Samsung, according to the results of a recent survey conducted by Upstream and Ovum. The poll of 4,504 mobile consumers in Brazil, China, India, Vietnam, and Nigeria found that 32% of respondents would ideally like their next device to come from Apple and 29% would prefer it be made by Samsung. Nokia is the third most-favored brand (13% of respondents), followed far behind by HTC (5.4%), BlackBerry (4.3%), Sony Ericsson (4%), and LG (3.8%). Manufacturer preference varies significantly by country, age, and gender: • Apple’s lead is higher than average in the 16-34 age segment across all markets (36% of respondents favor), as well as with females (34%) and in China (41%). • Samsung fares better in the 45+ age segment (36%), as well as in Brazil and India (36% of respondents in each). • Nokia’s scores better than average in Vietnam (21%) and India (17%), but below average in Nigeria and China.
brandknewmag.com
18
Why Favored • When asked why they prefer certain mobile device brands, 46% respondents cited functionality. • 24% say they like certain brands because of their aspirational qualities. • 12% cited affordability and an equal number said they prefer devices from local brands they trust. • There were very few regional, age, and gender differences in the responses to this question, with only slightly higher than average emphasis by the 45+ age segment on brand trust and affordability, and correspondingly lower emphasis on those two factors within the 16-34 age group.
Mobile Content and Apps • Regarding mobile content and apps, local brands are seen as being more familiar and relevant. • Global brands are seen as providing the best and most up-to-date content in the market.
About the research: The report was based on data from a survey conducted between January 31, 2014 and February 14, 2014 of 4,504 mobile consumers in Brazil, China, India, Vietnam, and Nigeria.
Ayaz Nanji is a digital strategy and content consultant. He is also a research writer for MarketingProfs. His experience includes working as a strategist and producer of digital content for Google/YouTube, the Travel Channel, and AOL.
ebay Embraces Content Marketing and Finds Its Voice Sheila Shayon Storytelling is a brand requirement these days. And as a digital brand with its own oft-repeated creation story—a “corporate myth” about collecting Pez dispensers— eBay is expanding its chops as an original storyteller and content publisher. Turning its homepage into a digital magazine it’s calling eBay Today, the visually-rich digital hub presents a Pinterest-like grid that creates stories out of curated collections and timely themes. Hiring a chief curator and editorial director last fall in “tastemaker-in-chief” in Michael Phillips Moskowitz, eBay is now live on ebay.com, where users can scroll through picture-squares of product and collections, hovering over a headline for a drop-down description. “We’re now in the content business,” explained Devin Wenig, President eBay Marketplace, to The Atlantic. “So, for the first time, eBay has a voice. We’re telling stories. We have an editor. We have curators. And we have writers on-staff. You’ll see that evolve to some longer-form stories, some really beautiful pictures... It’s media-like.” In case you missed the memo, brands are now publishers. Pepsi has Pepsi Pulse, Coca-Cola is on a Journey, Red Bull has RedBull, and now it’s eBay’s turn to produce “the same kind of content that a news organization might want to
publish about the company—data-driven stories about the items people are most searching for, infographics depicting surprising top sellers, and so on,” as the Atlantic put it. For Wenig, former CEO of Thompson Reuters Markets, tailoring content to specific interest-sets comes naturally. “There are very passionate sub-categories on eBay,” he said in the Atlantic. “We want to bring in people from those communities who are influencers, and allow them to begin to tell stories about what they love about eBay, the things that they do, and almost create a community dynamic in some of those verticals.” It’s also part of eBay’s push to improve its mobile experience, where 50% of eBay sales are occurring—including close to 12,000 cars a week, said Wenig. “We’re entering a post-mobile age now. Mobile is so important that it’s almost silly to talk about mobile.” Cultivating a daily mobile habit, where users check-in multiple times a day to see updates on items they desire, eBay is betting that value-added content will sweeten the draw, just as it’s hoping that smart hashtags will promote site users to promote content on social media. It’s also one more finger in the dyke against fierce competitor Amazon, in a post-mobile world where shopping and storytelling never sleep and content still is king.
Why The Color Red Revs You Up (But Lowers Your IQ) SEVEN STUDIES FOR DESIGNERS AND MARKETERS ABOUT THE COMPLEX AND BIZARRE SCIENCE OF THE COLOR RED. Eric Jaffe When people look at the color red, their blood pressure rises. They blink more. Compared to other colors, red triggers measurably more physiological arousal and neural activity. In the area of the monkey brain that processes hue, more neurons cue into red than to any other shade.
RED TIES HURT A JOB CANDIDATE’S CHANCES. The power of red is even more intriguing because it changes with a given situation. Stop signs, fire alarms, bold lipsticks, corrective pens, blushing cheeks, angry eyes--they all put us on alert, but in very different ways. Sometimes red revs us up (men universally find it attractive on women, perhaps because they tend to wear it at peak fertility) and sometimes it cools us down (red ties hurt a job candidate’s chances). Its effect is puzzlingly potent: Sports teams wearing red uniforms win more, and people, when they see red, make a stronger fist. “It seems that red is strongly related to human motivation, and that makes it a powerful cue to initiate basic behavioral tendencies even without being aware of its influence,” Maier says. The color truly shapes our actions at a subconscious level.
Yet the color’s effect on any one individual is curiously variable. “What is really remarkable is the fact that one and the same color can exert opposite behaviors depending on the circumstances under which it is displayed,” psychologist Markus Maier of Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, who has been studying red for years, tells Co.Design. Some of the effects seem innate--one-year-olds behave differently toward red than other colors--while others are clearly learned. However acquired, says Maier, associations with red can shape our actions at a subconscious level.
groupisd.com
22
But because the color wields such erratic force, designers be warned: Incorporate red into your work with caution. In a retail setting, some evidence suggests that a red exterior might attract customers, but that a red interior might repel them. In a conference setting, red might boost bids during an auction but dampen offers at a negotiation. In a school
of University of Durham, in the United Kingdom, analyzed the outcomes of four 2004 Olympics sports events, in which contestants were randomly assigned to wear either blue or red outfits. The red side won significantly more chance would predict across all four sports, 16 of 21 rounds of competition, and 19 of 29 weight classes. Hill and Barton suspect that a
setting, red might help students pay attention to details but may hurt their scores on creativity or IQ tests.
red uniform’s association with aggression and anger might tip the competitive balance “when other factors are fairly equal.” The only question left for Red Sox fans is why the effect took almost a century to kick in.
IN SCHOOLS, RED MIGHT HELP STUDENTS PAY ATTENTION TO DETAILS BUT MAY HURT THEIR SCORES ON CREATIVITY. “Red can mean danger and it can easily mean passion,” says Lauren Labrecque of Loyola University Chicago, who studies the role of color in marketing. Labrecque’s recent research has found that simply changing the color of a fictional logo or package design can influence a brand’s personality. A dark red box of condoms, for instance, was perceived by test participants as more rugged than a light purple box of the identical product--and that, in turn, made participants more likely to buy the red box. And don’t think you’re above being influenced. “Often with these different sensory effects, people think they’re in control-oh, this doesn’t influence me,” she says. “But time and time again we see it does.” To help clarify the uncertain effects for designers, marketers, creative professionals, and sports teams, we sum up seven of the most fascinating, complex, or bizarre red research studies from the past decade.
Athletic Advantage –- Nature (2005) Evolutionary anthropologists Russell Hill and Robert Barton
Test Disadvantage –- Journal of Experimental Psychology: General (2007) In a series of four experiments, researchers (including Maier) found that very subtle color prompts had a measurable effect on testing performance. One study issued part of an IQ test to measure participants’ responses to a cover page that was red, green, or white. They were only briefly exposed to the color, but participants in the red group performed significantly worse than those in the other groups (see below). Researchers believe that in a testing context, red may activate negative emotions (think: alarm or mistakes) and thus could have a negative impact on scores.
Except Tests of Detail –- Science (2009) In light of the 2007 study, researchers Ravi Mehta and Rui Zhu wondered whether red had a negative impact on all cognitive tasks or merely some. Sure enough, a series of experiments found that red sometimes has a positive effect during tests; on a proofreading test comparing names and addresses, for instance, participants who worked at a computer with a red background did better than those with a blue one. Mehta and Zhu suspect that on detail-oriented tasks, red’s association with mistakes might actually heighten attention.
Negative Words –- Emotion (2009) While red may benefit sports teams or proofreaders, we tend to regard the color in a negative light. The terms “in the red,” “code red,” “red-handed,” and “red tape” come to mind. A group of psychologists (including Maier) found that the word red isn’t the only trigger for negativity here--the color itself is, too. In a series of tests, participants took longer to categorize words related to success that appeared in red (compared to green), but took less time to categorize words in red that were related to failure. Hue, they concluded, “can communicate information quickly, subtly, and across barriers of language, age, and even species.”
The Universal Color of Attraction –- Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (2013) Several studies have found that men consider women who are wearing red more attractive, but until last year that work had been confined to Western populations. In an attempt to show universality, Elliot and others tested the influence of red on attractiveness in the African country of Burkina Faso. Despite a generally negative connotation of red there--it represents bad luck, sickness, and death--men found pictures of women more attractive when bordered by red (compared with blue). The researchers call this the first evidence that red may carry an “amorous meaning across cultures.”
Just Not to Potential Employers –Motivation and Emotion (2013)
Stronger Grip –- Emotion (2011) If red truly indicates a threat or an alarm, one might also expect it to prompt a physiological response. Andrew J. Elliot of the University of Rochester, a psychologist and veteran red researcher, tested out that idea a few years back. He and a collaborator gave test participants a hand grip, then showed them the word squeeze--in red for some, and in blue or gray for others. Those in the red group not only squeezed harder, they squeezed harder more quickly. “We suspect that the influence of color on biological and psychological functioning is actually quite pervasive,” they said.
Be careful the next time you get dressed for a job interview. Maier, Elliot, and other researchers recently asked test participants to evaluate job candidates based on appearance. Those wearing red ties were judged as having less earning and leadership potential (compared with blue ties) and rated less likely to be hired (compared with green). The researchers see their findings as an extension of the negative impact that red can have during IQ tests--when intelligence and ability are at stake, they write, “red takes on the meaning of failure and leads to lower perceptions of competence.” Eric Jaffe writes about cities, history, and behavioral science. His latest book is A Curious Madness: An American Combat Psychiatrist, a Japanese War Crimes Suspect, and an Unsolved Mystery from World War II (Scribner, 2014). He lives in New York.
When A Simple Logo Isn’t The Best Choice STRAIGHTFORWARD LOGOS ARE EASY TO LOVE. BUT ARE THEY ALWAYS BETTER? NOT WHEN YOUR BRAND IS COMPLEX. Mark Wilson Betaworks is known as a hip, media-focused company out of New York, which probably made it sting when somebody on Twitter equated the company’s logo to a coffee stain. It was time to rebrand. After months of creative back and forth, when a new logo came in from creative agency Franklyn, it wasn’t love at first sight. “We saw it, and we were like, ‘Oh.’” explains CEO John Borthwick. “It wasn’t, ‘Oh my god, I hate that, that’s terrible!’ It was, “Oh, what is that?” The logo wasn’t an ode to a basic geometric shape, like so many classic logos tend to be. It was a chunky, vague thing with several overlapping components. You could just discern
Old logo (top), new logo (bottom)
an arrow, but aside from that, making logic from its lines was like lying on the grass and staring at a cloud: You could see nothing and anything. “I had a strong reaction to it. Which is different from not liking it!” Borthwick clarifies--maybe hedging a bit in the 20/20 vision of hindsight. “My first observation was that I had a strong reaction, and that’s what pulls me back again to take another look. I wondered ‘What is this reaction I’m having?’ and I sort of worked through ‘Do I like this or do I not like this?” Then he consulted Creative Director James Cooper and “this least likely candidate became the most likely fast.”
brandknewmag.com
26
In parsing this complex design, both Borthwick and Cooper realized that they liked the ineffable visual quality of it. The logo seemed to be built from a puzzle-like stack of shapes, with each shape being derived from a new custom typeface that Franklyn had developed for an accompanying wordmark. What was Betaworks, after all? An investment firm offers seed funding to startups, sure, but it also incubates products and handles design in-house, relaunching Digg as a reimagined media brand, and releasing a hit iPhone game Dots. It’s a strange hybrid of a company existing in an era when technology, software, media, social presence, and financial investment are all tentacles on the same octopus. The philosophy behind this logo--one of embracing a complex design over a simple one--could apply to the rapidly evolving, increasingly multidisciplinary brands beyond Betaworks. Not long ago, Ammunition built a brand identity for a cloud technology company named Mesosphere. Instead of building
The typeface is based upon Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine-what many consider to be the first computer.
one logo, the company created a piece of software that could change the logo’s angles, colors, and even animation. Simple? Not at all. These logos represent big thinking, not simple thinking.
THESE LOGOS REPRESENT BIG THINKING, NOT SIMPLE THINKING
“The more simple things are, the easier it is for you to like it. Your brain says, ‘This makes sense so it’s good!’” Cooper says. “A lot of [the early logo designs we reviewed] were simple, good, clean. They were all perfectly understandable in two seconds. Your gut reaction to that is, ‘That’s nice.’ But we wanted something more than nice. We wanted something that challenges people and makes people think about things.”
Its curves stem directly from this schematic...
Mark Wilson is a writer who started Philanthroper.com, a simple way to give back every day. His work has also appeared at Gizmodo, Kotaku, PopMech, PopSci, Esquire, American Photo and Lucky Peach.
4
Tips On Creativity From The Creator Of Calvin & Hobbes
The famously media-averse cartoonist bill watterson on his work habits, the power of comic strips, and how to create art. Dan Nosowitz Bill Watterson, the creator of the comic strip Calvin & Hobbes, is famously media-averse. He’s given two interviews, total since he retired his strip in 1995. Reporters have staked out his home in Ohio to no avail. The man just prefers not to be a public figure. But in the documentary Stripped (which you can buy or rent on iTunes), Watterson not only gives an interview, he drew the art for the poster--the first Watterson cartoon to be published in nearly 20 years. Stripped features interviews with just about every major cartoonist still alive, including Cathy Guisewite (Cathy), Bill Amend (Foxtrot), Stephan Pastis (Pearls Before Swine), Jim Davis (Garfield), Mort Walker (Beetle Bailey), and a host of web comic artists, including Kate Beaton (Hark, A Vagrant!), Matt Inman (The Oatmeal), and many more. But the coup is assuredly Watterson (even though only his voice is in the movie.)
Watterson is the creator of one of the most beloved pieces of comic art, and most of his fans have probably never heard him speak before. He turns out to be much like you’d expect: thoughtful, articulate, with an artist’s mentality, but extremely firm in his beliefs. Watterson is known for refusing to compromise his vision of his work. He demanded a change to the Sunday page, for example, to make room for larger art. He refused to license his work, which is why you’ve never seen a Calvin & Hobbes movie or even an official Calvin & Hobbes T-shirt. He retired at the height of his popularity, after only 10 years--a short time for comic strip artists (Garfield, for example, has been eating lasagna and hating Mondays for 36 years). His retirement letter to newspaper editors was brief and said, in part, “I believe I’ve done what I can do within the constraints of daily deadlines and small panels. I am eager to work at a more thoughtful pace, with fewer artistic compromises.”
groupisd.com
28
Here are four tips about the creative process that Watterson reveals in the film:
01
You Have To Lose Yourself In Your Work
Create For Yourself
“My comic strip was the way that I explored the world and my own perceptions and thoughts. So to switch off the job I would have had to switch off my head. So, yes, the work was insanely intense, but that was the whole point of doing it.”
02
“Quite honestly I tried to forget that there was an audience. I wanted to keep the strip feeling small and intimate as I did it, so my goal was just to make my wife laugh. After that, I’d put it out, and the public can take it or leave it.”
03
Make It Beautiful
04
Every Medium Has Power
“My advice has always been to draw cartoons for the love of it, and concentrate on the quality and be true to yourself. Also try to remember that people have better things to do than read your work. So for heaven’s sake, try to entice them with some beauty and fun.”
“A comic strip takes just a few seconds to read, but over the years, it creates a surprisingly deep connection with readers. I think that incremental aspect, that unpretentious daily aspect, is a source of power.”
What could be more inconsequential than a comic strip? Four or five static panels, minimal movement, a quick punchline. Yet Watterson (and many other comic strip artists) have managed to create incredible, meaningful worlds, worlds that are genuinely important to the people who read them. There’s no such thing as a small medium.
Dan Nosowitz is a freelance writer and editor who has written for Popular Science, The Awl, Gizmodo, Fast Company, BuzzFeed, and elsewhere. He holds an undergraduate degree from McGill University and currently lives in Brooklyn, because he has a beard and glasses and that’s the law.
Three Questions Every Brand’s Story Must Answer Chad Cipoletti
brandknewmag.com
30
Content marketing is enjoying its moment in the sun. With the expectation—and added pressure—for brands to create more more content, now is a good time to ask a simple question: What’s the content of your content? Here are three types of questions that every brand should answer to give people a clearer sense of who you are, where you’re taking them, and why you matter. (Others, such as author Nancy Duarte and mythologist and writer Joseph Campbell have spoken about storytelling in similar terms.)
1. What does the world look like if you get your way? When Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, he talked for 11 minutes before he mentioned having a dream. It’s known as the “I Have a Dream” speech, however, because of its last five minutes. His vivid description of how the world should be was a guidepost, a rendering of a just society that supporters could work toward building. Great brands paint a similar picture. Tiny Speck’s co-founder Stewart Butterfield put it this way in a memo to his team about Slack, a real-time messaging platform: “We need to make [potential customers] understand what’s at the end of the rainbow if they go with Slack…” When you show people your blueprint for the future, you invite them to help you create it. More of them will apply, join, buy, give, sign up, and sign in when they understand how that action contributes to a larger effort.
athlete. A few years later, another great brand celebrated rebels, misfits, and troublemakers, the ones you can glorify or vilify but never ignore. Its story was very clear on what it would take change the world. We had to think different. People want to associate with brands that share their beliefs. If you don’t tell them what yours are, you never give them the opportunity to agree with you. Example: Everlane’s concept of Radical Transparency encourages customers to ask how, how much, and why.
3. What are you doing right now to make that world a reality? Moleskine makes notebooks, right? Yes, but that’s not the value it creates for customers. As director of Branding and PR Erik Fabian explains, Moleskine creates “platforms and containers for imagination.” In the world Moleskine is building, imagination thrives. To get there, personal expression and organization are critical. Its products provide the answer, so its stories celebrate what people do with those products. Your products and services should be proof of the progress toward the world you’re trying to build. The stories you tell need to demonstrate how your products and services are helping customers get there, too. Example: The films in Siemen’s Answers series show how its technology makes life better through personal examples.
Example: IBM envisions a world that’s more “Instrumented, Intelligent and Interconnected,” so it uses A Smarter Planet to promote that idea.
2. What will it take to get there? In 1988, a new commercial featured 80-year-old Walt Stack running across the Golden Gate Bridge. His voiceover said, “I run 17 miles every morning. People ask me how I keep my teeth from chattering in the wintertime. I leave them in my locker.” Then three words came on the screen for the first time: Just do it. Nike wasn’t selling shoes. The company was celebrating grit, determination, and self-belief. Because that’s what it takes to create a world where everyone is an
*** There’s a second half to Butterfield’s quote above: “We need to make [potential customers] understand what’s at the end of the rainbow if they go with Slack... and then we have to work our butts off in order to ensure they get there.” Stories work well for brands because of what they reveal about those who tell them. The content of your content is really the content of your character. That’s why brands with the most meaningful stories win. Make sure you’re telling them.
Chad Cipoletti is director of content and brand development for Siegel+Gale.
Branded Entertainment Extends FIFA World Cup Fever Off the Field Mark J. Miller In a few days from now, the world’s top soccer players will take to the field and do battle from June 12 to July 13 in soccer’s quadrennial blockbuster event, the FIFA World Cup. Big brands, though, are already tangling and showing their soccer cred in hopes of winning the hearts and minds of the billions that get a glimpse of the World Cup. The Super Bowl is nothing compared with this. With a relationship with FIFA dating back to 1974, and as an official sponsor of the FIFA World Cup since 1978, Coca-Cola is celebrating this year’s event with what it’s billing as the largest marketing campaign in company history, entitled The World’s Cup. Aimed at involving as many consumers as possible, the campaign kicked off in early April with a two-minute short film, called “One World, One Game.” Coke also put some of its marketing dollars toward creating the World Cup’s anthem song, “The World is Ours.”
groupisd.com
32
“We are trying to bring value as a marketing partner to the music industry, but I think even more so we’re trying to bring value to the audience and create content experiences that maybe weren’t accessible to them—to really try to bring the music fans something that they couldn’t find anywhere else,” Coca-Cola’s head of Global Entertainment, Joe Belliotti, told Billboard. “I don’t ever see Coca-Cola becoming a record label. We’re not a record label. We’re a beverage company and we do really good marketing. And I think if we can put that at the service of the music industry and the artists, that’s a good role for us to play.” As its press release notes, the visual identity for “The World’s Cup” campaign (at top) is being “featured on all brand communication during the tournament and represents happiness, togetherness and celebration. For the first time, the design was created in collaboration with a street artist, employing the unique style and talent of Brazilian artist Speto. It features the color and characteristic designs of Brazilian street art with the faces of four young people from Brazil reproduced in Speto’s signature graphic style.” In addition to a major content marketing push that includes a weekly series on YouTube, another way the beverage-maker aims to engage consumers is by asking them to help put together the largest flash mosaic ever created. The Happiness Flag (tagline: “Send your selfie to Brazil”) will be on the field before the first game of the Cup and be made from photos and tweets submitted by fans from across the planet.
Pepsi, while not a sponsor, is tapping into World Cup Fever without ever actually mentioning it. It is also putting forth its largest campaign ever, “Now is What You Make It” (hashtag: #FutbolNow) and it focuses solely on soccer, Ad Age notes. Its short film, below, samples David Bowie’s Heroes and references its Live for Now global tagline: Pepsi’s team of sponsored players are also featured in a cultural collaboration project that involves video, photography and street art, called “The Art of Football”:
Nike, will try to again stamp its name onto a high-profile event without actually sponsoring it, just as it has done (to great acclaim) in the last few Olympic Games. As part of its “Risk Everything” futbol-loving campaign in the lead-up to this year’s World Cup, Nike debuted a slew of soccer gear as well as a short film featuring some of the soccer world’s best talent. The Oregonian notes that Puma is also attempting to leverage the World Cup for sales as well.
Of course, official sponsor adidas gets to kick around a branding platform that none of the others do: the official ball. And it’s apparently putting cameras into the ball so we can all see what it’s like to get kicked around by Xavi. Viewers can be sure to hear the Adidas name from announcers every time a shot from the ball’s perspective is seen—and the Kinks’ iconic tune All Day and All of the Night in the campaign below:
Another official sponsor, AB InBev’s Budweiser, has been running a campaign for the Cup entitled “Rise As One” that shows “moments that unite football fans worldwide,” such as getting prepped for matches,” Ad Age notes. It also “partnered with Vice on a series of digital shorts that document soccer cultures from around the world, including Darfur, Thailand and Texas.”
MillerCoors, on the other hand, hasn’t emptied its wallet to be an official sponsor. Instead, it is putting its money toward “aggressively advertising on Univision,” the Hispanic-skewing broadcaster that bought the U.S. Spanish-language rights to the event.
Who needs the actual games when these off-field engagements are so entertaining?
6 Branding Lessons from the Pioneers of Weed Design Four experts in cannabis culture explain how to brand a high-demand, once-illegal product. Carey Dunne
he marijuana industry never had room for professional design while stuck in the criminal sector. For decades, goofy stoner iconography, such as pot-leaf decals and so much tie-dye, were the de facto brand of marijuana in the popular imagination. Product packaging was limited to cellophane baggies and the tools of commerce (head THE POT INDUSTRY shops, guys on bicycles) IS POISED TO GROW operating discreetly.
FASTER THAN THE
But in the wake of Colorado’s historic SMARTPHONE decision to legalize marijuana for INDUSTRY. recreational use, states are lining up--and so are designers, entrepreneurs, architects, and advertisers. An estimated $2.34 billion worth of legal weed will be sold in 2014. The pot industry is poised to grow faster than the smartphone industry. We’re at the
cusp of a gold rush to commercialize the plant and create products for emerging marijuana markets like health care and luxury accessories. We’re seeing the emergence of everything from diamond-encrusted vaporizers to cannabisinfused pet food. For designers and branding professionals, landing a marijuana account may become as coveted as landing a liquor or car account. So what do designers need to know about this emerging marketplace? Co.Design culled insights on the burgeoning industry from four cannabis industry experts: David Bienenstock, a cannabis consultant and former editor at High Times; Cheryl Shuman, an L.A.-based PR and marketing consultant known as the “Martha Stewart of Marijuana Branding;” James Kennedy, founder of Apothecanna, the first U.S. skincare company licensed to use cannabis flower extracts in its products; and Ryan Mungia, author of Pot Shots, a book about California’s marijuana dispensaries.
brandknewmag.com
36
RESPECT THE HISTORY OF THE MARIJUANA INDUSTRY. Many people spent years in legal battles, fighting for a substance that they believed was wrongly demonized. “There is nothing more important than building trust,” James Kennedy, founder of Apothecanna, tells Co.Design. “This starts by showing respect for the plant, respect for the customer, and respect for those who have fought hard to enable us to have this conversation.”
women buy 85% of all household and consumer products, according to Adweek. Shuman calls these successful working women who smoke pot “stiletto stoners.” But the potential audience for marijuana-laced products is vast. Medicinal users may include ill grandparents and, yes, children with chronic or life-threatening illness. (Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia already have laws on the books concerning medical marijuana.) Shuman, who works as Brand Ambassador for HempMedsPX, a corporate portfolio company of Medical Marijuana, Inc., credits medical marijuana with WOMEN ARE THE helping her through cancer and injuries from two car SECRET TO THIS accidents.
WHOLE THING.
Bienenstock says that marketers will soon realize that they can openly cater to a diverse set of consumers. “When it becomes a fully accepted legal product, like beer, you’re going to see all kinds of branding,” he says, “towards women, towards the health conscious, and towards the people who associate it with being an outlaw herb used for partying.”
That’s good advice for corporate America . To be successful, it’s smart to get schooled in the work of thought leaders and cultural experts who arrived before you. Corporations that think they are going to legitimize marijuana may appear to be “insensitive and dismissive to people who have risked their freedoms and put themselves on the line personally,” Bienenstock says, “the people who built this movement to the point where we can become a legal industry.”
LUXURY ACCESSORIES IN A BERGDORF’S NEAR YOU. There are legions of suit-wearing smokers who are only now coming out of the closet, and this particular constituency will create a market for high-end weed products, whether that means expensive strains of the plant or fancy smoking devices.
Bienenstock points to the company Diego Pellicer as a lesson in what not to do. In May 2013, former Microsoft executive Jamen Shively founded Diego Pellicer, a company he boasted would pioneer “Big Marijuana” and become the “Starbucks of bud.” In a press conference, Shively said Diego Pellicer was already “the most recognized brand in ON THE BLACK an industry that does not MARKET, A GRAM exist yet.”
GOES FOR $10 TO $20. POT-SMOKERS AREN’T FOOLS.
Shively’s remarks earned him widespread criticism from veterans of the marijuana industry, including Bienenstock, who called him “The 40-Year-Old Pot Virgin” in Vice. The industry, Bienenstock points out, has existed in the underground for decades. Shively’s well-meaning but uninformed approach to branding could, Bienenstock says, alienate more experienced smokers. It doesn’t help that he said he’d sell his product for an overpriced $50 a gram--on the black market, a gram goes for $10 to $20. Pot-smokers aren’t fools.
THE TARGET AUDIENCE IS NOT HAROLD AND KUMAR. “Women are the secret to this whole thing,” says L.A.’s Cheryl Shuman, a branding advocate for marijuana products and a pot entrepreneur. “I’m a mom in my fifties, and I try to make products that women want to buy,” she explains. After all,
Shuman plans to capitalize on this. “We’re creating a vaporizer line called the Haute Vape: a 14-karat-gold vaporizer encrusted with diamonds. I see these products being sold at Neiman Marcus or Bloomingdale’s,” Shuman says. Glitzy bongs for Madison Avenue moms might sound like a joke, but Shuman believes luxury marijuana products will be a boom market. Celebrity endorsements of weed brands will also take off once the plant is fully legalized. “I have a lot of celebrity friends who love to use cannabis instead of alcohol--to come home and have a puff instead of a glass of wine,” Shuman says. Pot poster boy Snoop Dogg himself recently designed a line of blinged-out vaporizers, dubbed the G Pen Herbal Double G Series, in partnership with Grenco Science, a high-end vaporizer company. Each sleek $99.95 vape is engraved with Snoop’s signature and printed with a stylized map of his hometown of Long Beach, California.
STORY TELLING AND EDUCATION ARE KEY.
ARCHITECTS SHOULD FOCUS ON THE WELL-DESIGNED DISPENSARY.
Educating inexperienced consumers may constitute the biggest and most delicate hurdle for the new industry. “The marijuana marketplace is extremely confusing territory in regards to the benefits, serving size, and intended use of a product,” Kennedy says. Consumers might not understand dosage measurements, for example, or the differences between various cannibinoids such as THC and CBD. In short, THC, or Tetrahydrocannabinol, is the chemical component of weed that gets you high. CBD, or Cannabidiol, another chemical found in marijuana, has no psychoactive effect, but research has shown that it has powerful medicinal benefits, from inhibiting cancer cell growth to treating anxiety and epilepsy. (Read more about cannibinoids here.) Based in Denver, Kennedy’s company Apothecanna sells topical pain creams and sprays containing CBD, with simple, brightly-colored and informative labels. When he first started his company, Kennedy found that most bud growers selling his products had never heard of pain-relieving topical CBD products. WHEN IT BECOMES
A FULLY ACCEPTED LEGAL PRODUCT, LIKE BEER, YOU’RE GOING TO SEE ALL KINDS OF BRANDING.
“The solution was maintaining a minimal, clinical appearance for the product packaging,” Kennedy says. Apothecanna’s designers focused on clearly conveying the functions of their products’ ingredients. “We tried to keep it as simple as possible so a customer could solve the equation on their own without relying on an expert explanation from someone working at the shop.” His advice is to understand the purpose of the product and to communicate its benefit through an engaging story.
DON’T TREAT IT AS A VICE. Highlighting marijuana’s extensively researched medicinal effects--which enabled its legalization--will boost any branding campaign. “What we’re building is a Whole Foods type of branding,” Shuman says. “It’s not about getting high or stoned or intoxicated--it’s about an overall sense of wellness, healing, and proper nutrition. If we discovered cannabis or hemp in the Amazon jungle today, it would be heralded as the new superfood.” The medical side of the industry is, after all, where many of the most game-changing and promising innovations are cropping up. In August 2013, Mary’s Medicinals released the first transdermal THC patch. The same year, Dr. Bruce Bedrick introduced the MedBox, the world’s first marijuana vending machine. (It doesn’t just pop out joints like bags of chips--it sits behind the counter at dispensaries, accessible only by clerks using fingerprint identification technology, to ensure that the process of filling prescriptions is safe and efficient.
Gone are the days of discrete stores with blacked-out windows. SPARC, a San Francisco dispensary known as the “Apple store of pot” won an American Institute of Architects Award in 2011. Designed by high-end architecture firm Sand Studios, SPARC’s clean, modernist façade and open-shelved interior looks every bit the upscale retail outlet. Ryan Mungia, author of Pot Shots, took a look at the evolving aesthetic of marijuana stores in his book. “As pot continues its shift into the mainstream, I would imagine more dispensaries will utilize architects and designers as a way to offer their customers a sense of legitimacy and cache to what many still consider to be a questionable industry,” he tells Co.Design. The Farmacy in Los Angeles is another example of the direction dispensaries might head. Each of its outposts in the city have a customized logo, and sell a range of products from cold remedies to beauty creams to vegan edibles and acupuncture services. While some outlets will continue to rely on stoner iconography and head shop mentality, others will commission architects and interior designers to create a dispensary aesthetic.
DISPENSARIES WILL UTILIZE ARCHITECTS AND DESIGNERS AS A WAY TO OFFER THEIR CUSTOMERS A SENSE OF LEGITIMACY.
THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS. Imagine whiskey-infused shampoo, or a line of gourmet tobacco cookies, or spritzing your dog’s kibble with tequila. You quickly start to realize how much of an edge cannabis has over the legal vices it’s often compared to. (Yes, companies such as Canna-Cat sell medical cannabis specifically for neurotic pets.) Unlike alcohol and tobacco, the versatile plant can be used medicinally as well as recreationally. It can be woven into clothing or added to skin creams. It can be smoked, ingested, or vaporized, through devices diamond-encrusted or 3-D printed. So, will you take it to the next level and be the first to 3-D print marijuana accessories? It’s a new frontier, and basically anything goes. That said, watch your step as you reach out. Carey Dunne is a Brooklyn-based writer covering art and design.
Consumers
are fiercely loyal to two brands per category: MasterCard exec Sarah Jones MEXICO CITY, Mexico – Consumers only shop with one or two favorite brands per category, turning to them for familiarity and ease, said an executive from MasterCard Advisors May 13 at the FT Business of Luxury Summit. Knowing how this loyal audience is spending, including understanding who else they are shopping with, can help brands understand and better market to these consumers. However, even with the importance of data and customer relationship management, a lot of brands have a CRM
system that is lacking. “Most people’s CRM databases are not very good,” said Sarah Quinlan, senior vice president and group head for market insights at MasterCard Advisors. “Even if you ask me at the counter to give you my email address, I’m not doing it. You have to develop a relationship. “You’re a luxury brand,” she said. “I’m in there taking my time looking at the uniqueness of your goods. So you need to really figure out how to get my details out of me.”
groupisd.com
40
Spending trends Consumers are shopping more on ecommerce sites, with 25.3 percent of sales coming from online. Brands are therefore missing out by not offering an ecommerce platform.
fashion, wanting to have something to pass on to future generations. Seventeen percent of high jewelry sales come through online channels. Overall, consumers are choosing to spend more on experiences than on material objects, favoring travel especially. Airline tickets were the number one spending category this past December.
Women account for 70 percent of shopping and they are looking for ease, since they are typically working, rather than ladies who lunch. Ecommerce allows them to make purchases around 10 p.m., after the day’s obligations have been completed. Ms. Quinlan said that it would be worth it for brands to further ease the shopping experience, giving the example of a brand putting a dress in a window and then featuring the dress as the first thing the consumer sees upon loading the Web site. Then if she has seen it in person when she did not have time to shop, the consumer can easily make the purchase.
Millennials are particularly interested in experiences.
Online channels also give brands better control of their pricing than bricks-and-mortar stores, which often have to discount to compete with neighbors. The online shopper is more interested in convenience and will purchase full price, compared to the in-store consumer, who considers shopping social.
Fiscal policy plays a key role in consumer spending, as do other factors including weather and people’s finances. The slowdown during the winter impacted only climates that were experiencing bad weather, leaving the Pacific and Texas at normal figures.
Brands do not have to discount, and should not. “I think what’s important … is not price-sensitive,” Ms. Quinlan said.
Ms. Quinlan suggests partnering with restaurants, charities or clubs to reach this audience, selling goods in conjunction.
Waves of spending
Other unpredictable factors routinely disrupt shopping. For instance, just as retailers began to push their holiday marketing into full gear, the government shutdown forced marketers to switch up their plans with efforts more tailored towards bargain shoppers who were likely to research prices via their mobile device. The United States’ partial government shutdown Sept. 30 night as a result of Congress’ disagreement on how to fund federal government groups left thousands of consumers unemployed during one of the biggest consumer spend times in the holidays. Marketers expected consumer spending to drop during the holidays and bet on consumers showrooming more in-store (see story). Factors in the global economy can also affect countries on the other side of the world. The slowing of Chinese consumption is affecting the majority of global markets. “I think it’s absolutely devastating,” Ms. Quinlan said. “It is slowing the entire world economy with the exception of the U.S.
Post-recession, U.S. consumers are shopping less in multibrand retailer stores, picking instead to shop with the brand directly. This trend is not seen in other countries, where people still frequent department stores. Consumers are also investing more in jewelry and less in
“They have obviously changed through their policies how they want consumers to spend.” Sarah Jones is editorial assistant on Luxury Daily, New York. Reach her at sarah@napean.com
Book,
&
Line
Sinker
Designing Brand Identity : An Essential Guide for the Whole Branding Team
Emotional Branding: The New Paradigm for Connecting Brands to People
By Alina Wheeler 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, and designers a proven, universal five-phase process for creating and implementing effective brand identity. Enriched by new case studies showcasing successful world-class brands...
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 experts to express the new dynamic...
The Science and Art of Branding
How Brands Become Icons: The Principles of Cultural Branding
By Giep Franzen, Sandra Moriarty This innovative work provides a state-of-the-art 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.
Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits By Debbie Millman, Rob Walker We are now living in a world with over one hundred brands of bottled water. The United States alone is home to over 45,000 shopping malls. And there are more than 19 million customized beverage choices a barista can whip up at your local Starbucks. Whether it’s good or bad, the real question is why we behave this way in the first place. Why do we telegraph our affiliations or our beliefs with symbols, signs, and codes?
Logo Design Love: A Guide to Creating Iconic Brand Identities By David Airey There are a lot of books out there that show collections of logos. But David Airey’s “Logo Design Love” is something different: it’s a guide for designers (and clients) who want to understand what this mysterious business is all about. Written in reader-friendly, concise language, with a minimum of designer jargon, Airey gives a surprisingly clear explanation of the process, using a wide assortment of real-life examples to support his points...
By Jacquelyn Ottman Coca-Cola. Harley-Davidson. Nike. Budweiser. Valued by customers more for what they symbolize than for what they do, products like these are more than brands--they are cultural icons. How do managers create brands that resonate so powerfully with consumers? Based on extensive historical analyses of some of America’s most successful iconic brands, including ESPN, Mountain Dew, Volkswagen...
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...
Designing Brand Experience: Creating Powerful Integrated Brand Solutions By Robin Landa 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...
brandknewmag.com
42
Brand Atlas: Branding Intelligence Made Visible By Alina Wheeler, Joel Katz A company’s brand is its most valuable asset. Wheeler takes the most seminal tools used by a wide variety of thought leaders and practitioners and makes the information understandable, visible, relevant, exportable and applicable. With her best-selling debut book, Designing Brand Identity (Wall Street Journal, Best-Seller, Spotlight 1/23/2011), now in its third edition, Alina Wheeler reinvented the marketing textbook using a straightforward style to help...
Where the Suckers Moon: The Life and Death of an Advertising Campaign By Randall Rothenberg Rothenberg chronicles the brief, turbulent marriage between a recession-plagued auto company and an aggressively hip ad agency (whose creative director despised cars), capturing both the ad world’s tantalizing gossip and the broader significance of its creations. “Simply the best book about advertising I have ever read.”-Neil Postman (Technopoly).
Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself By Erik Deckers, Kyle Lacy 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...
The Power of Cult Branding: How 9 Magnetic Brands Turned Customers into Loyal Followers (and Yours Can, Too!) By Matthew W. Ragas, Bolivar J. Bueno Like religious cults that can attract thousands of devoted disciples, is it possible for company brands to build legions of loyal followers? In a marketer’s dream come true, can certain products—with the right combination of positioning and branding— take on magnetic characteristics and galvanize die-hard customers who become walking...
The End of Advertising as We Know It
The Marketing Mavens
By Sergio Zyman, Armin Brott The controversial marketing guru discusses the revolution in advertising strategy “What can I say about Sergio Zyman? He’s a genius; that’s all.”-Warren Bennis, University Professor and DistinguishedProfessor of BusinessAdministration, USC Marshall School of Business In this follow-up to his bestselling book The End of Marketing As We Know It, Sergio Zyman, CocaCola’s renowned former chief...
The way far too many people at far too many companies think about and execute marketing was born in an era when suppliers-the companies generating products and services-were in the catbird seat. That world is long dead, and customers now occupy that position. In this relentlessly globalizing economy, we live in a world of oversupply and underdemand, with too many suppliers chasing too few customers, offering more goods and services than the market can absorb...
The Brand Gap: How to Bridge the Distance Between Business Strategy and Design
The Secrets of Successful Creative Advertising
By Marty Neumeier THE BRAND GAP is the first book to present a unified theory of brand-building. Whereas most books on branding are weighted toward either a strategic or creative approach, this book shows how both ways of thinking can unite to produce a “charismatic brand”—a brand that customers feel is essential to their lives.
By Noel Capon
By Tom Attea “Tom’s book rocks! It tells you how to create advertising that succeeds - reliably! - and wins creative awards, too. Tom Attea is a genius - and I don’t say that lightly. Read, study, and apply The Secrets of Successful Creative Advertising if you want to create or buy the kind of advertising that gets noticed and makes more money!” - Doug Hall, author of the best-selling marketing book Jump Start Your Brain and founder of the Eureka! Ranch International for training in innovative marketing