BrandKnew March 2016

Branding matters. Because branding matters.

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Dear Friends: As 2016 continues its frenetic onward march, this March issue packs a lot of substance. The shift to brands as media owners is well exemplified in the feature on the same subject. The understanding needed to treat every brand in this day and age as a technology brand has never been more compelling. Luxury brands remain in the top perch building aspiration amongst a lot of people, most of them who never will be their customers.

Their value proposition is well documented on the feature in this issue. Content and context has always been the tweedle dee and tweedle dum of marketing.

In this edition we examine the power and impact of contextual marketing. For all the nay sayers screaming Email marketing is dead, here is a surprise. Email marketing is alive, kicking and more needed than ever.

Read about it in this issue. Communication that brings a smile to your face, remains in memory for a longer time. We dive deep and has put out six of the wittiest graphical campaigns ever. That surely will bring more than a smile to your face, I assure you. If you are very fond of your city, meet a designer who wants to devote a certain font for each city. You will read it very fondly, I can imagine. Savour more in this issue. Till the next,

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Best always

21 Suresh Dinakaran @sureshdinakaran 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, Australia: Norbert D’Souza Country Head, UK: Sagar Patil Regional Directors: Krishna Chugh Regional Directors: Vinit Chugh Country Head, India: Sanjay Kothandaraman Digital/Social Media Marketing: Khaleef Mayowa Junaid Web Specialist: Prasanta Kumar Sahu Online Support: Mahendra Kumar Behera

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CONTENTS

Brands as media owners: can they live up to the hype?

Creativity for good: how to turn creative idle time into something meaningful Luxury brands have a compelling value proposition Brands and the future of contextual content marketing Six of the wittiest graphical marketing campaigns Your City will be very Font of this!!

Why every brand needs to be a technology brand Business of Love: Three Dating App Founders Talk Trends in Online Matchmaking The State of Email Marketing by Industry Are brands playing it too safe on mobile?

New marketing metrics are needed for the age of the customer Course Correction: How Contravent turned failure into boundless success Virtual skis and smart toilets: a journey into the future of branded tech Book, Line & Sinker

Brands as media owners: can they live up to the hype?

By Parry Jones

There has been a huge amount of hype about the potential for brands to be media owners but if they are to be taken seriously as media owners, they need to professionalise their offering.

Online retailers can become bigger media owners than publishers. However most are missing out on serious ad revenue by not taking this opportunity seriously.

We are not talking about customer publishing here, brands have long understood the value of having their own magazine.

We are talking about transactional media, where ads are placed onto consumer websites or into parcel deliveries (eg digital ads on Amazon.com and print ads into Amazon parcels).

Advertisers like Graze, Ocado and Made.com have built their businesses’ using transactional media. The advantages for advertisers is clear, they can reach active online shoppers whilst they have their credit cards in hand.

But not enough brands have woken up to the huge opportunity to add an extra revenue stream to their business… to be a professional media owner.

owners.

To maximise revenue you need a mix of tech and great salespeople. The highest yields, and best brand partnerships, are sold by salespeople. The remnant space is sold via exchange networks.

Get the sales function wrong and you miss out on significant revenue. Get the tech side wrong and you can end up with the wrong ads on your site (competitors/fortune tellers/porn).

Luckily there are businesses out there who manage ad sales for online retailers. i-transact, for example, are a transactional media sales business who work with the likes of House of Fraser, Ocado and HMV in the UK. In the US, Bazaar Voice represent some of the biggest retailers like JC Penny and Kmart.

Can brands do this themselves?

Don’t get me wrong, there are some brands who are nailing it. Amazon and Asda are two huge retailers with the scale and professional approach to making serious revenue. Net A Porter run a really professional offering aimed

The common misconception that ads will ‘negatively affect sales’ or that customers will ‘click away from sites with ads’ has been disproved using tried and tested marketing principles.

According to Hitwise, Amazon were responsible for more than 25% of shopping and classified visits during the Christmas 2015 season. Amazon’s scale means they can employ a dedicated ad revenue team. But other brands must weigh up the costs and hassle involved in recruiting a team of sales and technical people.

Test some site visits with ads and some without. For some reason this simple approach is ignored by many brands who can’t accept that consumers enjoy seeing ads on their sites (and those that don’t use ad blockers). I’ve never seen a brand go through this testing process and not start taking ads!

The worst solution is when brands choose to use internal staff, usually from the marketing department, to sell their inventory part-time. Whilst the staff member may have an unrivalled knowledge of their brand, they are often not trained in selling.

Plus they’re passionate about marketing – not media sales!

So what does it take to be a successful media owner?

So can brands become media owners and live up to the hype?

Yes, but only if they take it seriously.

To be or not to be (a media owner)

The hard bit is already done. Having loads of page impressions from highly engaged shoppers makes retailers perfect media

Parry Jones, director, The Specialist Works

Creativity for good: how to turn creative idle time into something meaningful

By Niek Eijsbouts

Going door to door for fundraising is undoubtedly a thing of the past.

Unless you are a girl scout selling a box of cookies, walking up to a stranger’s door to ask for money is a strange thing to do in this day and age, however charitable the cause may be.

Some NGOs and charities have understood that, embracing the modern world of fundraising and turning their face towards online crowdfunding.

But the charity industry has become immensely competitive as both big and small players are out trying to win hearts and money.

Getting in front of a new audience can be an even tougher one to crack, especially when the audience doesn’t watch TV. As an NGO that’s busy with giving emergency aid in crisis areas and no time for marketing and communication, how can you reach a new audience such as millennials?

That’s where we come in as creative agencies. Our creative idle time – that moment when you’re stuck between four different campaigns and need to wrap your head around something else – is perfect to work on briefs for NGOs. Using creativity and design for a good cause is not exactly new, but it can certainly shine a different light on a crisis and open the window to a different target audience.

A project we’ve worked on recently, called ‘Refugee Emojis’,

does just that: the emoji keyboard, originally created for Medécins Sans Frontières, turns the traditionally shallow language of the Emoji on its head with a set of 36 emojis representing items that refugees actually need. These range from practical items to symbolic ones, each visualised in a language that we use on our phones every day. The new approach and the easy to use way of donating by simply downloading the keyboard made it very popular amongst young people. Already in the first days it raised over a thousand euros with both iOS and Android downloads.

It got picked up by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and a couple of weeks later we launched our version 2.0 for the United States. Things can fly fast if they are fueled by creativity.

Working on a creative brief for an NGO can often allow agencies to take more risk than they would with their own clients, whether that means raising awareness, changing the public opinion or even better: raising funds.

Make it small, keep it easy and build on human behavior Many times, the most simple and effective donation campaigns are also the ones that raise the most free publicity. If it taps in on universal human behavior, a broad spectrum of media are more likely to pick it up. And so it happened with the following campaigns.

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Remember Tap Project for Unicef by Droga5?

A simple way to ask a small amount for a glass of water in a restaurant, something you would normally get for free. It also played on the feeling of going out for a fancy dinner while some of us have nothing.

to use photos taken by animals. Instead of buying a ‘normal’ photo, why not buy the one from an animal and support WWF. The photos and videos are great social and PR content too:

And then there’s the Rag Bag from DDB Stockholm:

Forget about awards

It recently won silver in the design category at the Eurobest festival. Like with the Tap Project, when you’ve bought something for yourself, you’re more likely to give something away too. Especially when they’ve made it super easy to donate.

A whole different way of fundraising, is to do it with stock photos and Animal Copyrights by Cheil Madrid for WWF People searching for stock photography were now triggered

Creating campaigns for good has become infamous for being too much award-focused. But awards should never be the one and only driver for creativity. Great human insights that will solve a problem should. And if we would all stick to that, we would really help any NGO further in their way to raise even more donations or getting new members.

Embrace universal recognized emotions and create for good!

Niek Eijsbouts, CD at creative agency SuperHeroes

Luxury brands have a compelling value proposition Chanel, Hermès rank as top brands worth premium pricing: survey

By Jen King

The popularity of a widely bought brand does not always sync with consumers’ perception of its value and luxury credentials, according to a new survey by the Luxury Institute.

not always associated with the exclusivity of true luxury.

Familiarity and popularity status does not always translate to increased sales, either.

For its Luxury Brand Status Index series, Luxury Institute surveyed affluent women from seven of the world’s wealthiest nations to gain insights on which brands hold the most clout in terms of quality, exclusivity, social status and overall ownership. Consumer opinion is tied to whether she feels the asking price of a premium product is worth it and correlates directly to the brand’s perceived value by those who shop it frequently and those who aspire to do so.

“Luxury and premium brands provide their customers quality and expertly crafted products and deliver them with empathy, trustworthiness and generosity to build client relationships,” said Milton Pedraza, founder and CEO of Luxury Institute.

“The result is a compelling product paired with an experience that cannot be found within the mass market,” he said. “These brands have a compelling value proposition that appeals to affluent women.”

Luxury Institute’s “2016 Global Luxury Brand Status Index (LBSI) – Women’s Fashion” surveyed 3,999 affluent women from the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, China and Japan. The women surveyed gave more than four dozen brands a score of 0-10 based on the following prompts: This brand delivers consistently superior quality; This brand is truly unique and exclusive; This brand is purchased by people who are admired and respected and This brand makes its buyers feel special across the full customer experience.

Flexing credentials The value of a luxury product is not solely based on market retail price, but rather a combination of quality, exclusivity and pride of ownership. If a brand is popular it is not a true representation of its luxury credentials.

For example, U.S. fashion label Calvin Klein is immensely popular among affluent women, with most consumers likely to have purchased from the brand in the past year. However, Calvin Klein’s popularity does not translate to a high LBSI score, with the brand placing at the bottom of Luxury Institute’s overall ratings.

Similarly, the most popular fashion brands among women in the U.S. are Calvin Klein, Polo Ralph Lauren and Michael Kors. While popular and on the lower end of the price spectrum in relation to higher-end brands, these labels are

Michael Kors, resort 2016 While France’s Chanel was the most familiar fashion house among respondents, the atelier only placed second when respondents were asked which brand they plan to purchase from next. Based on next purchase plans, Chanel placed behind Calvin Klein and ahead of Polo Ralph Lauren and Burberry.

If a consumer agrees that a brand is worth premium prices, it is often an indication of the brand’s overall value. As such, affluent women ranked Chanel and French leather goods maker Hermès as the two fashion houses most worth their premium asking prices, followed by Christian Dior, Louis Vuitton and Prada.

To highlight value and justify high price tags, luxury brands often communicate their message of worth through the use of craftsmanship. Chanel most recently took this approach to express the value of its most exclusive collection, its couture offerings.

To do so, Chanel took consumers inside its house to cultivate exclusivity and mystery.

The latest chapter of the ongoing Inside Chanel series focuses on the creation of the brand’s haute couture clothing.

While the reveal will satisfy the modern consumer’s craving for transparency, the breakneck speed of the video and repeated use of Coco Chanel quotes maintains the brand’s more enigmatic aspects.

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and Prada,” he said. “The luxury customer base is open to less recognized brands that are able to provide an exclusive and unique product paired with an exceptional customer experience.

“Brands can no longer rely heavily on their rich heritage and recognition to keep clients loyal as competition increases and customers recognize the value of boutique brands.”

Measures of desire Having an understanding of which brands are most desirable within a particular market can help labels structure strategies in that location.

Exclusivity and desirability go hand in hand for China’s wealthy, with the same brands ranked in the top five for both characteristics in a new study by Promise Consulting and BNP Exane.

Hermès fall/winter 2014 Luxury brands are also adept in customer experience and making the consumer feel special. The LBSI results showed that a mix of well-established and newer brands are wellversed in this area, with Hermès, Temperley London, Chanel, Brunello Cucinelli and Proenza Schouler as the top five.

Despite an increase in digital communications, the luxury space still relies heavily on word of mouth recommendations.

Word of mouth remains as the best measure of satisfaction if a consumer has enjoyed her experience with a brand’s products and services.

Globally, affluent women who partook in the survey are most likely to recommend Loro Piana, Chanel, Hermès, Akris and Brunello Cucinelli to family and close friends.

Smaller, boutique labels proved themselves within the survey responses as well, showing that a brand does not need a rich heritage to resonate with affluent consumers when considering value and standing.

Hermès takes home top prize for exclusivity, which measures the consistent quality of goods, the brand’s prestige, the valuation of the brand’s customers and its ability to justify a high price point. Chinese consumers are generally becoming more sophisticated luxury consumers, making for tougher competition between labels for their attention and affection.

Likewise, an in depth understanding of consumer behavior in different markets is also useful as brands navigate the likes and interests of various demographics.

As the luxury landscape continues to evolve and geopolitical turmoil affects emerging markets, the brands that will come out on top must be able to adapt to the resulting consumer behavior.

On Sept. 29 in New York, part of a 15-city world tour of sorts, Albatross Global Solutions shared insights from its annual research study “The Journey of the Luxury Consumer” to better understand motivators, the purchase journey and the consumer landscape on a global scale. A key finding has been the definition of luxury itself as consumer interest has developed from a desire for exclusivity to wanting ensured craftsmanship from the high-end brands they interact with.

Raising a brand’s standing among the opinions of affluent consumers presents its challenges.

“Brands can only improve their LBSI by improving these factors in a genuine way that resonates with the customer,” Mr. Pedraza said.

Still from Inside Chanel N°13 “It was interesting to see that boutique luxury brands such as Temperley London, Brunello Cucinelli and Proenza Schouler scored nearly as high as well established luxury brands such as Hermès and Chanel,” Mr. Pedraza said.

“Specifically, Proenza Schouler received an overall 7.66 LBSI, higher than luxury veterans such as Louis Vuitton, Dior

“Luxury CEOs tell us that approximately 60 percent of the value derived by the luxury client is in the luxury product, and 40 percent of the value is in the relationship building capabilities,” he said. “Brands need to continue to remain relevant, especially in this challenging environment.”

Jen King is a lead reporter on Luxury Daily. Her beats are consumer electronics, consumer packaged goods, food and beverage, fragrance and personal care, jewelry, media/publishing, software and technology and telecommunications.

Brands and the future of contextual content marketing Uber, Apple and Spotify are shaping the future of contextual content

By San Sharma

Most of us are already familiar with the concept of screens in black taxis playing ads on a loop, whether we want them or not, writes San Sharma, Business and Technology Editor, Wunderman.

Spotify recently launched it’s video streaming service, announced last May. Using the same principles as its music service, Spotify will deliver video that is contextually relevant and based on the type of content its listeners already like.

As captive audiences go, taxi passengers have little else to distract them, other than maybe the rants of the driver.

While both Uber and Spotify are using data to expand their content distribution capabilities, Apple is also making increasing moves into the content market with the announcement that it is bankrolling a new TV series starring Dr Dre, which will likely be distributed via Apple Music.

Those same cab drivers will soon have something else to moan about, and it’s coming from their bête noire – Uber.

Uber makes those ads on screens in black cabs look as increasingly obsolete as the requirement of the drivers to undertake ‘The Knowledge’ The taxi hailing company is launching a service that will let third parties serve up content or ads to users during their trip.

Uber is being careful to position the ‘Trip Experiences’ service as optional and permission-based.

But as a content platform, it certainly makes those ads on screens in black cabs look as increasingly obsolete as the requirement of the drivers to undertake ‘The Knowledge’.

What Uber is particularly able to do with ‘Trip Experiences’ is provide contextual content based on the apps you already use and the data that it has about your trip, like duration and destination.

It’s all part of a wider movement that bears out the mantra that if content is king then distribution is queen.

This isn’t the first time Apple has paid for original content to release on the platform – in December it financed Taylor Swift’s “1989 World Tour Live” concert documentary, which is exclusively available on Apple Music.

Having just announced that it has hit the 11m subscriber mark, Apple Music will be hoping that the exclusive content will continue to drive subscriptions further.

All three of the above examples are clues that in order for branded content to succeed it must exist where consumers are already spending their time - and that’s not necessarily on digital destinations, such as brand websites.

It’s on social platforms, in mobile apps and in the back of Uber cabs. And, unlike taxi screens, tip seats and receipt pads, brands can use these new platforms to serve contextual content based on intelligent data, such as time, location and interest.

This article was first published on marketingmagazine.co.uk

Six of the wittiest graphical marketing campaigns

By Alex Player

The most powerful gift a designer can give a brand is the gift of someone else’s time. Being able to stop someone in their tracks with a powerful message is the gold standard that many strive for but few can achieve. We took a look at six brands that made us do more than a double take with their witty graphical campaigns.

Echoing the old saying from Roy Walker of the UK game show Catchphrase “Say What You See”, in this IBM ad from 1981 Paul Rand was way ahead of the emoji trend, having phonetically illustrated the IBM logo with pictograms, and even encompassing the trademark stripes into the design of the bee.

In 2005, Channel 4’ s in-house agency 4creative had a stroke of genius when it came to announcing that the final episode of Friends was to air on the following Friday.

Another campaign by 4creative but this time promoting Channel 4’s fly-on-the-wall series ‘Seven Dwarves’ involved a minibillboard.

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Anthony Nolan, the blood cancer charity, incorporated the matching of coupled letters into its logo, representing matched donors to recipients - while sporting the tagline ‘Be a match, save a life’.

This smashing window display for Apple was designed for the launch of iPod Hi-Fi, emphasising the power of the sound by simulating the breaking of the glass.

It is hard to miss this towering coffee pot street lamp, errected to highlight a free coffee promotion by McDonald’s.

(Apple window display) Apple, USA, 2006 Credits: photographer Chris Tingom

When it comes to branded vehicle design, Fed-Ed is way ahead of the pack as demonstrated by this creative paint-job depicting the FedEx truck ahead of the competition.

(FedEx truck) Miami Ad School, Germany, 2011 Credits: Art directors Zoe Sys Vogelius, Thomas Ilum

(McDonalds street lamp) Cossette, Canada, 2009 Credits: creative directors Bryan Collins, Rob Sweetman; art director Eric Arnold; writer Michael Milardo; design Dyna Graphics Ltd.; account supervisor Kim Prosser; group account director: Nadine Cole; product: McDonald’s Free Coffee Promotion, client: McDonald’s

The images featured were from “A Smile in the Mind: Witty Thinking in Graphic Design” by Beryl McAlhone, David Stuart, Greg Quinton and Nick Asbury published by Phaidon.

This article was first published on marketingmagazine.co.uk

Your City will be very Font of this!!

By Meg Miller

This Designer Wants To Give Every City Its Own Free Typeface

In 2013, Dutch graphic designer Jarrik Muller was biking along the canal in Amsterdam when he had an idea for a typeface. The font—appropriately named Amsterdam— mimics the Dutch gables on the historic houses that line the water, and it was an instant hit among Muller’s designer friends. He’s since spun the project into a larger endeavor: Citype is a growing collection of city-inspired typefaces, each created by a different designer and available to download for free.

the Argentine capital. Helsinki, on the other hand, is a bit more somber. The Finnish designer and illustrator Jon Arne Berge based it on the typography he found on one of the city’s war memorials. Not all of the designers chose to design for the city where they live: the Berlin-based Hort designed its font after the Norwegian town of Bergen. After the studio’s founder Eike König went there on a business trip, he felt inspired by the lovely seaside city and its perpetually stormy weather.

Muller started out the project by asking his friend and fellow designer Jeffrey Bowman to design a typeface based on the mountainous Norwegian village of Hemsedale, where he lives. The font Bowman created recalls the stacks of Birch tree firewood commonly seen around his hometown in the winter.

From there, Muller either approached designers to participate or they came to him once the project started gaining traction.

Citype now includes nine typefaces (including Amsterdam) for cities as diverse as Montevideo, London, Milan, and Groningen.

Part of the project’s charm comes from how Muller decided to display the typefaces on the Citype website. If you click on a typeface, it reveals thumbnails of images made with the chosen font. Take a closer look and you you’ll recognize that the thumbnails line up in the shape of the city’s skyline. In addition to those materials, Muller also asked the participating designers to write a bit about their favorite places in the city, which he listed at the bottom of each font page.

There’s the Argentine studio Los Caballos’ Buenos Aires font, for example, which captures the chaotic, eclectic nature of

It’s a time-consuming process, Muller will be the first to admit, and as a result it’s been coming along slowly. But the project will continue into the foreseeable future—the end goal is to have as many typefaces as there are cities.

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Meg Miller is an assistant editor at Co.Design covering art, technology, and design.

All Images: via Citype

Why every brand needs to be a technology brand

By Natalie Bell

To prepare for the Internet of Things, all brands can and should be a technology brand, says Manning Gottlieb OMD’s managing director.

Whilst the theme for this year’s Mobile World Congress was unsurprisingly ‘mobile is everything’, there’s an interesting message running throughout it – connectivity. Quite simply, we are now in an era of connecting everyone and everything.

So, whilst Mark Zuckerberg is urging us to focus on the former and ensure wider basic connectivity across the entire globe, there’s a huge tech focus on the latter – the Internet of Things, which will be greater enabled by the increasing capacity in 5G. It’s this vast array of connected objects that have caught my attention this year.

Whilst there was much talk about IoT previously, this is the first year that I’ve seen real consumer application of it in a meaningful and tangible way and it’s really quite exciting.

Large blue chips such as Visa, T-Mobile, Audi, Qualcomm, Ford, Asics, HP and AT&T have all been showing off their connected products and services, for both consumers and enterprise, giving an exciting view of what our connected world could look like in the near future.

Connected cars are a big focus this year, both for near-future

applications as well as longer-term views such as driverless vehicles that are the extension of your home. For nearfuture examples, Visa demoed a connected concept car that automatically parks and then pays for your parking ticket without you having to lift a finger. In fact, other examples showed the smart cars choosing the best route dependant on the best parking options available.

Qualcomm provided insights into their platform that underpins a connected home and in-car network. Their system enables your car to detect your facial features and if it notices your eyes closing and/or head dropping it will take

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steps to prompt you to stay awake, no doubt saving many lives in the near future. There were also solutions for car owners to unlock and start their car using an app rather than a key, as well have their car diagnostics displayed on their app so they can track, manage and report on any issues their car might be having.

decision making on legitimacy of goals or serves.

We were shown how cars will have operating systems, not wildly different to the smartphone operating systems we have today. So rather than having to buy a new car every few years to get access to the latest updates, you’ll be able to simply update your car’s O/S, the same way you do with your phone.

And connected transport applies to bikes too – See.Sense are an interesting exhibitor here from Ireland, who have developed smart bike lights that automatically adjust their brightness and flashing pattern based on the surrounding conditions, as well as alerting you to theft if it goes outside of a certain distance.

All of this will work even harder as part of fully connected future cities.

Meanwhile in more personal IoT, Under Armour are making interesting plays in the connected space – one example being their partnership with HTC Healthbox, a one-stop fitness shop with a wearable fitness band, a set of smart scales and a heart rate monitor.

Beyond the wearables in health and fitness, we’re also seeing broader applications in sport – Asics showed off connected sports footwear that sends a message to your smartphone for corrections to your posture and foot positioning to improve your golf swing or tennis serve. We also saw connected footballs and tennis balls that could transform real-time

So what for brands and for marketing? Following a fantastic IAB talk from BMW, in which they said that connected cars for them meant they are moving from product to services, it struck me that in the new IoT world, all brands are service brands and ultimately any brand can and should be a tech brand. So for any that’s looking ahead to 2020 and beyond, they should be preparing for a world where they can add value to their consumers’ lives by connecting products in a meaningful, useful way and creating truly valuable long-term experiences.

One thing that I’ve learnt from previous years at MWC is that the near future catches up with us very quickly so now is the time to prepare for it.?

This article was first published on campaignlive.co.uk Natalie Bell is the managing director of Manning Gottlieb OMD

Business of Love:

Three Dating App Founders Talk Trends in Online Matchmaking Love is serious business. These entrepreneurs explain why.

By Jonathan Xavier

The eternal search for Mr. or Ms. Right has long been big business, but more of that business is moving online. Nearly 6% of the web’s users currently use a dating app, according to the research firm GlobalWebIndex, and that’s amounted to a roughly $2.2 billion worldwide market.

Yet lucrative markets breed fierce competition. More and more dating apps hit every year, catering to more and more niche groups. There are now dating services for farmers, for Christians, and even for recreational drug users. Consumers are spoiled for choice, and that means dating apps must find ways to stand out from the crush of services promising a simpler route to love.

To find out what it takes to succeed, we spoke with three Stanford GSB alumnae who founded their own dating apps:

Kickoff COO Alanna Phelan, The League CEO Amanda Bradford, and Coffee Meets Bagel COO Dawoon Kang.

Alanna Phelan....

Dating apps have been around almost since the birth of the internet, and new ones crop up every year. Why is this such a hot area of innovation, and why isn’t it a problem that’s been solved yet?

Well, if we could answer that there wouldn’t be so many single people in the world. Everyone has so many nuances, and there’s a magic in meeting someone. It’s hard to know how people are going to connect. The best we can do is facilitate introductions, and make it more straightforward and simple for people to meet.

As to why dating technology continues to serve a purpose,

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well, frankly, there’s a growing number of single people in the world. We see marriage age increasing and marriage rate declining. But that doesn’t mean that people have stopped searching. It just means that they are dating for a longer period of time. I think during that time they need tools to help them meet the types of people they want to meet.

Kickoff launched initially in Brazil, and has expanded through South America. What are the differences between Latin America and the U.S. when it comes to running a successful dating app?

I think we’re solving distinct challenges in emerging markets with our model — matching people with friends of friends. Just using a geographic proximity filter the way some mobile apps do is not a great filter for anyone, in terms of showing you really relevant people who you really want to meet.

But it’s a particularly bad filter in emerging markets, where you have incredibly diverse socioeconomic neighborhoods directly next to each other.

That’s not to be elitist, but the fact is people from these different neighborhoods are very unlikely to match with each other on an app, so they’re not relevant for each other.

Another big difference in Latin America is obviously that we’re also operating in a place with greater safety and trust issues. I think that our model really addresses those trust, safety, and accountability concerns. The fact that people can see who they already know in common means there is more accountability and a more instant sense of trust that I think promotes more honest user behavior.

With so much competition, what does it take to stand out and successfully launch an app in the market these days?

I think it’s really building a quality brand that’s going to attract quality people and keep users engaged.

There are some pretty big dating apps out there that don’t have a strong brand but attract people who download it and quickly desert it because they’re marketing all over the place

and spending millions of dollars a year. They look good on paper but they’re actually not gaining permanent users or real traction.

How do you build a brand that will attract the user base you want?

This is going to sound cliché, but it’s a little bit of everything.

It’s about the ad copy that you have when you are advertising.

It’s about what you focus on when you’re talking to journalists and the press and what they eventually publish. It’s down to details like what does your product really look like? What does your website look like, even if you’re an app rather than a website?

I think all of those things send subtle messages to people about the types of people they’re going to encounter on your app. And at the end of the day, that’s your real product. It’s your network. Who are people going to be able to meet?

Building a brand that can scale is one of the biggest challenges, industry-wide. It sounds so obvious but it just takes a huge network in order to be able to show people the types of people they want to meet. There aren’t great examples out there of a very small, yet viable, dating app.

Amanda Bradford....

Online dating has been around for a long time, and it seems like it’s changed a lot over the years — we’ve moved from personal ads to personality quizzes to personal mobile apps. From your perspective, what’s unique about dating apps in 2016?

I think the big thing is it’s gotten a lot more authentic — people are who they say they are. On The League, for example, we require both Facebook and LinkedIn. We also have a human screen, so we’re really kind of triple-verifying our users.

Because of that, the way people act on dating apps has gotten a lot better. You don’t have people thinking they can say or do whatever they want because they’re hiding behind an alter ego. The Internet has become smaller — it’s pretty easy to find someone’s social profiles, or even their real name or where they go to school. In a sense, there’s less privacy on the Internet now, but I think it’s actually a good thing for online dating.

Has that changed the kind of person who is using dating apps?

Yes, I think so. We’re cracking a whole new demographic of people that even two years ago wouldn’t even dare to consider online dating because there was still a stigma attached to it.

It used to be if you’re online dating, people thought it meant you couldn’t meet people in person so you had to resort to doing it online. I feel like that isn’t true anymore. Nobody’s having to resort to online dating. It’s actually kind of a better way to meet people.

What does it take to launch a dating app these days and succeed?

It’s tough, because it seems like there’s a new one cropping up every day. We’ve had four copycats already just in the year we’ve been in existence.

You definitely need a full-court-press approach to grassrootsstyle PR and marketing. You want to do events, message your users, and get their feedback. We’re asking our users to recommend friends, because getting the community right is important. Your founding users are the ones that are going to go to bat for you and be almost like ambassadors for the company. If you don’t have those, I think it’s really hard to survive.

So having the right initial mix is one of the most important keys to success?

Yes. I always equate it to opening a bar, where your brand is kind of set by your grand opening. That first opening party, people are going to look around and be like, “OK, what kind of bar is this?” Is it a frat boy bar? Is it a hipster bar? Is this a bar where people come and mingle, or is this a bar where you come with friends and nobody really talks to each other?

You kind of expect the place to have a personality, a vibe, a culture really. That culture is what determines whether you’ll be back. Dating apps are exactly like that in online form.

Dawoon Kang....

Coffee Meets Bagel is a dating app that’s focused on meeting the needs of women as the primary users.

What does that mean exactly? What are some of the problems women have with normal dating apps?

Dating apps are basically social networks, and one thing that’s been very well documented is that men and women use social networks differently. For example, one really interesting study that’s been done is to find the most popular activity on Facebook.

And it’s browsing photos, obviously. But what’s interesting is what kind of photos. The number one most popular activity on Facebook is men browsing photos of women they don’t know. Number two is men browsing photos of women they

know. Number three is women browsing photos of women they know, and then number four is women browsing photos of women they don’t know.

I mean, that’s funny, because no one is looking at men, right?

But it also shows guys derive entertainment value out of browsing lots of photos of women, even ones they have no chance of meeting and who aren’t at all relevant to them. Women are different. They don’t get the same kind of joy out of just browsing countless photos of random guys.

What makes dating such a hard problem for a technology company to solve?

I think it’s because it’s very difficult to predict chemistry and it’s very difficult to customize your recommendations to the style of person a user actually wants to date.

Also, I think one of the challenges of dating apps is that dating is probably the only industry where the longer the users use your service, the angrier they get at you. It’s an emotional experience. You’re putting yourself out there, so if you’re not connecting, you feel rejected.

What does it take to succeed in the dating market?

I think that the important part here is when you start off, you need to be very, very narrow about the type of consumer who you’re going to recruit and turn into your brand ambassadors.

Just think about a small group of people that you’re trying to please.

For us, it was young professional women who hate wasting time because they’re just too busy. They’re women who just get so tired of meeting non-quality people that they’ve become kind of jaded and cynical. We really target our communications to them. Then once you get a small group of people to become your champions, they start doing the messaging for you.

I think these days the best way to grow, especially for a dating service, is for your customers to talk to their friends about it.

That’s really critical because a dating service is not the type of product that people are going to post about on Facebook or send invites to everyone they know. You can’t grow the same way Candy Crush does. It’s not like that at all. Rather, it’s something very private. When they do share it, they will be talking about it to their friends, face-to-face. So it’s critical for you to give them something good to talk about.

The State of Email Marketing by Industry

By Ayaz Nanji

Which industries have the highest open, click-to-open, and click-through email rates? How does the use of tactics such as tracking, targeting, and subject line testing vary by vertical?

To find out, GetResponse, Holistic Email Marketing, and Smart Insights surveyed 1,831 global email marketers who work for companies in 15 major industries; most (68%) respondents have senior roles within their organization, holding titles such as CEO, director, owner, department head, or manager of marketing, digital marketing, or e-commerce.

Below, key findings from the report.

Key Metrics by Industry Industries that provide core services, such as utilities and telecommunications firms, have the highest average email open rates.

Online advertising networks, finance/banking/insurance firms, and utilities have the highest average click-to-open rates.

brandknewmag.com

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Email Frequency Marketers across all industries send five emails per month to consumers, on average.

Finance, banking, and insurance marketers send the most emails per month (12.2 on average) of the industries examined.

Evaluation and Tracking Some 15% of marketers surveyed say their company still does not regularly review email opens and clicks; only 23% say they have integrated their website and emails to track what happens after a click.

Targeting Some 42% of marketers across all the industries do not send targeted email messages; only 4% use layered targeting, incorporating behavioral data to send relevant, personalized email messages to their audience.

Optimization Nearly half (47%) of marketers say they sometimes test alternate subject lines to optimize email performance; 18% test different email layouts and templates.

About the research: The report was based on data from a survey of 1,831 global email marketers who work for companies in 15 major industries.

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

Are brands playing it too safe on mobile?

Is a Mobile-First Approach Really Best?

By Maureen Morrison

It’s not exactly clear when the Year of Mobile began for marketing. But after a half decade or more of mobileboosters declaring it so -- and well after consumers made the switch -- it’s here.

actually right for your brand. Here are just some of the things

EMarketer predicts that 2016 will be the year that mobile ad spending eclipses desktop ad spending, and account for nearly a quarter of total media spending to boot. By 2019, the researcher predicts that mobile ad spending will rise to $65.49 billion, or nearly 70% of total digital ad spending and close to 29% of total media spending.

need to have utility; mobile must be regarded as part of a

Now “The Year of Mobile” has given way to another rallying cry: “mobile-first.” But not only is it easier said than done, it’s not always advisable. Putting mobile at the forefront of your strategy bears careful consideration over whether it is

to keep in mind when going mobile-first: The screens are limiting and small; your marketing must be less interruptive and get consumers to opt in; if you’re going with apps, they larger marketing whole; and most of all, your brand must be suited to a mobile-first approach.

What’s a marketer to do?

Working with the giants Many are handing the keys to their mobile efforts to the biggest social platforms that have either adapted successfully to mobile or were born there.

groupisd.com

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Marketers are funneling billions into Facebook, Twitter and, increasingly, Instagram and Snapchat -- platforms that are becoming more sophisticated and data-rich with video and useful attribution models. Facebook (which also owns Instagram) commands almost 20% of the $42 billion in U.S. mobile ad revenue, according to eMarketer; Twitter’s share is another 4%.

Facebook alone boasts more than 1 billion daily active users.

Twitter, for all its Wall Street and user-growth pressures, still boasts 320 million monthly active users. Instagram says it has 400 million monthly active users. Bourgeoning Snapchat counts more than 100 million daily active users and claims that more than 60% of 13-to-34-year-olds in the U.S. are Snapchatters.

U.S. MOBILE AD SPENDING, BY INDUSTRY, 2015 In billions and percentage of total Retail $6.65 (23.2%) Financial services

$3.49 (12.1%)

Automotive $3.43 (12.0%) Telecom $3.27 (11.4%) Travel $2.38 (8.3%) CPG and consumer products

$2.33 (8.1%)

Computing products and consumer electronics

$2.09 (7.3%)

Media $1.73 (6.0%) Entertainment $1.5 (5.2%) Healthcare and pharma

$0.66 (2.3%)

Other $1.20 (4.2%) Note: total mobile ad spending equals $28.72 billion; includes classified, display (banners and other, rich media and video), email, lead generation, messaging-based and search advertising; ad spending on tablets is included; numbers may not add up to total due to rounding.

Source: eMarketer, May 2015

These platforms are obviously prioritizing mobile in their ad products. According to Twitter’s most recent earnings, mobile accounted for 86% of its $641 million in ad revenue.

Facebook’s most recent earnings results showed 80% of its $5.6 billion in ad revenue came from mobile. Most of the executives interviewed for this story said that Facebook’s video ads, rolled out widely in 2014, have given them an opportunity for more branding-style campaigns as opposed to direct-response-style ads that mobile is known for.

But is going all-in on Facebook enough? “There’s a lot of room for mobile strategy, but when all you’re doing is saying, ‘Hey, Facebook, we’d like to buy some ads,’ and they allocate the inventory for you, is that really a mobile strategy?” said Brian Wieser, senior analyst at Pivotal Research Group. “I think that’s how most marketers have allocated most of their mobile spend. At minimum, it solves the check-the-box problem of saying you’re doing mobile. It technically solves the problem, but it’s not really a mobile strategy. It’s certainly

an entry point for a marketer to learn, but there’s so much more to mobile strategy.”

It gets even stickier when you consider messenger apps with massive audiences and strong potential. WhatsApp, WeChat, Facebook Messenger, Kik and Viber, just to name a few, have been growing at a furious clip, but not all have developed ad formats yet (though they surely will). What about the platforms that we haven’t even heard of yet?

The fact is, “we’re in the early innings of mobile,” said Harry Kargman, founder-CEO at Kargo, an ad tech company that develops various ad formats. “Facebook is a phenomenon in terms of the amount of users it has, but there are other platforms that will drive huge amounts of usage in the future, and so we’re at the very beginning of a tectonic shift in terms of where consumers find and absorb content, use social and how they are advertised to.”

To app or not to app Because the mobile screen is smaller, fewer ads can be served than what’s possible on a computer. “On desktop, the thinking was, ‘How many ads can be crammed on the screen?’ But that same idea can’t be applied to mobile,” said Ian Schafer, founder-chairman at Deep Focus. “Mobile is a smaller screen and there’s much more emphasis put on user experience. That just limits the number of ads we see.”

Limiting ads isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Crowding desktop screen space with banners has likely done more harm than good. Limited space may actually prompt agencies and marketers to be smarter about the kinds of ads they serve.

“Mobile has created new pressures for brands that are actually really healthy pressures,” said Chet Gulland, head of strategy at Droga5. “When we’re talking about branding, because mobile is more on consumers’ terms, it makes us ask, ‘Is this a piece of content people will actually like? And is it useful?’ Those two questions have become so much more important.”

Agencies, marketers and planners would do well to think about those questions (even outside of mobile) because if people are using an app full of banners or browsing a mobile site inundated with clunky, annoying ads that slow the site down, that brings them one step closer to downloading an ad blocker. (Another draw for Facebook, Twitter and Instagram: They’re generally safe from ad blockers, and they’ve refined their ad products to make them seem more native.)

Viewability and fraud are also among the big concerns, and organizations like the Media Rating Council are working to develop mobile viewability guidance and measurements.

Even there, a series of issues needs to be resolved before the MRC can issue such guidelines.

With consumers spending 88% of their time on smartphones in mobile apps, according to ComScore, an app might seem attractive.

Mr. Wieser said that for some marketers, apps offer utility that makes people’s lives easier. “Banks have figured out what mobile strategy could be: It’s customer service in a handset,” he said, referring to bank apps that let people cash checks and transfer money, among other things. “That’s a

really good use of taking advantage of mobile for what it is.”

Apple (iAd)

2.5% 2.6% 2.8% 2.9%

Customer service in a handset is great for banks and airlines, but that leaves a lot of other players out of the picture.

Pandora

2.9% 2.4% 2.2% 2.2%

YP

2.7% 2.1% 1.8% 1.8%

LinkedIn

0.3% 0.5% 0.5% 0.5%

Amazon

0.4% 0.4% 0.4% 0.5%

Millenial Media

0.5% 0.3% 0.3% 0.2%

Other

27.7% 32.0% 33.9% 32.5%

Total (billions)

$19.15 $30.45 $42.01 $50.84

“Unless your brand is involved in a category like tech or one that relies on customer service, people won’t really interact with a branded app, so most marketers have moved away from an app strategy,” said Leo Burnett Chief Innovation Officer Mark Renshaw. That, he said, often leaves marketers focusing on the big platforms, especially now that the measurement and data offerings are much more sophisticated than they were two years ago, and Facebook has put such an emphasis on video. “But to be successful on those platforms, you have to understand context.”

Note: net ad revenue after companies pay traffic acquisition costs (TAC) to partner sites; includes display (banners and other, rich media and video), search and messaging-based advertising; a d spending on tablets is

Finding context

included; numbers may not add up to 100% due to rounding.

Clorox does its fair share of Facebook advertising, but has found that context for its brands often leads elsewhere. “A lot of our brands are very functional,” said Ellen Liu, Clorox senior director-media. “So we’ve leaned into how-to and need- based approaches, like when I have a stain, when my kid is sick, when it’s 4 o’clock and you’re looking for a recipe for dinner.” That inevitably leads to search advertising, which Clorox buys “agnostically” regarding platform, she said, but which tends to play out through mobile.

“Brands have to think about their role when they appear on the mobile screen, because mobile is the most personalized screen,” said Ram Krishnan, senior VP-chief marketing officer at PepsiCo. “People are often engaging with friends and family, and brands have to have a clear plan when they interrupt that conversation.”

Mr. Krishnan said Pepsi has moved away from having its own apps, and instead focuses on working with other retail apps and catching customers when they might be looking to purchase. The company often shies away from banner ads in apps and ad units like interstitials, trying to figure out first if such ads are adding value or causing clutter. “We want to answer that before we invest in that,” he said.

Mobile is an “opt-in” screen to Mr. Krishnan, who sees location targeting continuing to grow—a method that could be valuable for companies as they look to grab consumers when they’re shopping. PepsiCo has been experimenting with location-targeted ads on apps like Waze, a Google navigation app. “Our brands are highly impulsive brands, so you need to make sure they’re top of mind for consumers to remind them to make the purchase,” Mr. Krishnan said, adding that “the interesting thing about our category is mobile is the only touchpoint we have with consumers in the stores, and that’s hugely valuable.”

NET U.S. MOBILE AD REVENUE SHARE, BY COMPANY, 2014-2017

2014 2015 2016 2017

Google

36.9% 32.9% 31.7% 31.7%

Facebook

18.5% 19.4% 19.2% 20.3%

Twitter

3.6% 3.8% 4.0% 4.4%

Yahoo

3.3% 2.9% 2.5% 2.4%

Source: company reports; eMarketer, September 2015 Charts by Chen Wu

Does it fit the bigger picture?

People aren’t spending all of their time in apps. There’s an entire world on the mobile web. And that isn’t just a claim made by the thousands of publishers out there trying to make a buck without the help of Facebook.

Google, it should be noted, has a larger share of mobile ad revenue than Facebook. According to eMarketer, the search giant commands 33% of the market. For Google -- and many publishers, for that matter -- the mobile web is key for ad revenue.

But it’s also where consumers are most likely to start launching ad blockers if the experience becomes bloated with ads or slowed by data tracking. That’s one reason why one of Google’s biggest moves in its mobile evolution is Google AMP. The search giant has also invested heavily in mobile search to serve people relevant ads as services like mobile commerce grow.

But the game for Google and its advertisers is ultimately to find consumers across devices.

And that’s a key point for marketers and their agencies to remember. While a Facebook or a Google or even a consumer can be mobile-first, it might not make much sense for a marketer to be -- or about as much sense as starting every marketing initiative from a TV-first approach or a printonly approach.

It’s a confining strategy that primarily benefits the media owners in question.

Clorox spent four years trying to pin down a mobile strategy and ended up going in a different direction. “What we’ve evolved to today is where mobile is integrated into our marketing, communication and media strategies, not completely as an independent entity,” said Ms. Liu. Maureen covers agencies as well as all things mobile, including the carriers, handsets and advertising, for Ad Age out of San Francisco. She previously wrote about the marketing of the fast food industry for Ad Age while also covering the agency world.

Contributing: Jack Neff

New marketing metrics are needed for the age of the customer

By Cindy Diamond

The way that most brands measure their investment returns from marketing and advertising is still largely based on traditional media thinking, and it is falling out of step with the demands of a new era of digital media and empowered customers.

Tried and tested measures of sales conversions and brand awareness are not always aligned with the new needs of a world where consumers are informed, tech-savvy, and have high expectations for personalised engagement from brands.

Through their use of social media and their interactions with digital giants such as Amazon and Uber, South African consumers have learnt that they have a voice and that they are entitled to more personalised brand experiences. Old measures of marketing success such as frequency, reach, and brand awareness don’t tell us enough about how well we’re doing in building customer relationships.

Driven by emotions Diamond says that today’s consumer cares as much about the customer experience as he or she cares about brand, price, and quality. Customer experience encompasses not only the value and worth of the product or service, but also how the consumer feels overall about his or her interactions with the brand.

We’re looking at something quite subjective here — how we appeal to the consumers’ emotions. The question for every marketer today is how do we address the consumer’s needs, wants, and feelings so that we can drive profitable engagement with the brand.

When looking at advertising, marketers today have the benefit of a wealth of demographic and behavioural data from digital channels to help them create emotionally engaging experiences, she adds. The data can tell marketers who consumers are, what they’re doing, and what they are looking for.

The role of creativity It is then up to the creative team to use this data to create messages and campaigns that will resonate with consumers.

Armed with the right information, marketers now also have

the ability to engage with customers with refined and more personalised messaging across targeted channels, says Diamond.

Data from digital channels such as social media, mobile and display are especially powerful when it is combined with the reach of conventional mass media. Many people still have a close relationship with regional radio, for example, and it remains a deeply engaging channel.

By supporting radio with digital channels, brands can extend the consumer experience, build further engagement and get more insight into the success of their customer engagement strategies, says Diamond. Real-world activations are another way to build engagement.

Measuring engagement Engagement is hard to measure, says Diamond, but some ways that companies could benchmark it, include the following: • Use of market research tools such as Net Promoter Scores (NPS) • Tracking the frequency and session length of consumers’ interactions with the brand using its apps and website • Sentiment, activity and advocacy on social media • Customer churn and retention • Trends in the customer’s use of the company’s products and services As marketers, we need to think about customers rather than channels as we build our campaigns. The question isn’t how just to get the best reach and frequency, but how to use a combination of channels to engage with consumers effectively and creating memorable experiences. This is where marketers will find their returns.

With over 18 years of experience in media, Mediamark Group Sales Director Cindy Diamond is one of the most admired women working in broadcast media in South Africa. She is a founder member of Mediamark, one of the country’s leading media solution sales houses jointly owned by two highly respected media operations, Kagiso Media and Lagadere.

Course Correction: How Contravent turned failure into boundless success

By Adva Biton

Like many entrepreneurs, Jay Williams, CEO of advertising agency Contravent, started his company with a dream. After years working for large companies headquartered in New York City, wining and dining customers, and maneuvering through political minefields, Williams felt that he was losing touch with his craft.

“I felt like I’d been doing it wrong,” he says. Williams had the idea of starting his own agency, with advertising focused in the way that Red Bull and other action sports companies do— bringing consumers to an experience, a brand and a product, rather than the other way around.

Williams’ dream included the creation of a digital platform that would more easily bring these experiences to life— something along the lines of vimeo.

The platform would be the core of the company. “We were building software at that time, an over-the-top experience that would be delivering to devices content that would attract an audience,” he explains.

Trouble soon followed. While clients were interested in Contravent’s platform and investors put in money to see the software come to fruition, software developers were hard to find.

Bigger companies were attracting the talent—companies with much deeper pockets than Contravent’s. Unable to get the right team together, and with time and money quickly disappearing, it seemed like Williams’ dream was fading fast.

“We had to make a decision whether to continue to invest in [the platform],” he says. “A year ago, we said, ‘We need to put this down. We’re going to go all in and become a digital agency and build custom experiences, rather than invest in our own intellectual property.’

We exploded. We learned so much from building our own tech that was applicable to all the clients that we

were working with. It fueled growth beyond our expectations.”

After the switch, Contravent grew from its initial 12 employees to 52, and it has grown 680 percent since. While moving forward from his original plan wasn’t easy, Williams says the entire experience was still worthwhile. In fact, the ordeal taught him how to act and what to expect from trials in the future.

Don’t romanticize “I’ll never romanticize being a startup ever again,” says Williams. While the idea of starting Contravent came from a dream solution Williams had for advertising, he says he wasn’t prepared for all the mundane day-today activities that are necessary to start a new business.

“You become such a jack-of-all-trades that you can’t dedicate yourself to that idea you originally wanted to start the startup for,” he says. “You become peanut butter over bread: I’m the guy trying to find a benefits company, I’m the guy emptying the trash. You think you’ll be working the idea you had for the company 100 percent of the time, but in reality you’re going to be doing it so much less than you expect.

About 30 percent of your time you can dedicate to your idea. The other 60 to 70 percent is menial operational things you’ve never done before.”

Learn to let go When it became clear to Williams that Contravent’s platform wasn’t going to materialize, the company had to switch directions and move forward quickly. There was no time to lament the failure—instead, Williams and his team took all of the lessons they had learned from trying to build the platform and utilized them to create meaningful content for their clients.

“We flipped the switch,” says Williams.

“We were burning cash previously—

and then we had to get into a whole new mindset. We thought it was going to be kind of a drag to go back to being that way, but what we learned was … we’d gotten really smart. We had something to say that was relevant and interesting. The value wasn’t the software, the value was the experience we gained from trying to solve its problems. We didn’t have a tangible thing at the end of the investment, but we have a culture built around the digital idea that’s been invaluable to us.”

Be tenacious “I met the founder of another company … he said the difference between companies that make it and the companies that don’t is tenacity and flexibility,” says Williams. “You get so sold on your own vision that it’s hard to make those shifts. It’s hard to recognize we don’t have the team to deliver this at this phase in the company.”

When faced with that reality, Williams says that it’s easy to get bogged down in feelings of failure. But he says he’s learned that having a startup is like being in a movie trilogy. While the startup may stumble, he says, “That’s just film one. Film two will have another story.”

Williams takes comfort in the knowledge that, while it’s difficult to succeed in the digital economy, it just means there’s more opportunity to exercise creativity and fresh ideas. He’s learned that it’s better to invest in a company’s culture and standards. He constantly asks questions of his own and his team’s creations: Is the creation useful or valuable? Is it beautiful? Entertaining?

“We have this other phrase: happy and scrappy. It means be optimistic and be tenacious,” says Williams. “That’s the culture we’re trying to build. That’s the one thing that got us through the last three years—that positive, half-full idea that we’ll succeed no matter what.”

Virtual skis and smart toilets: a journey into the future of branded tech

By Tony Cullingham

Tony Cullingham, the Watford Advertising course leader, imagines the future of technology and brands. ...you levitate above your Hoversofa which X-rays your back and sends the results via Instagram to your doctor... who is in a hammock in the Maldives where he re-calibrates your fridge to add 3 mg of radium to your water supply to destroy the benign tumor he’s just found in your kidney... and he also re-codes your Throbcushions to boost the ultrasound waves to massage your aching limbs... which makes you feel so warm and fuzzy you tune your fibre optic hair transplant and stream a 7D holographic concert... comprising Mahatma Ghandi on guitar Adolf Hitler on drums John Wayne on keyboards Marilyn Monroe on bass and Stalin as backing singer... whilst your Leap Forward Motion Headset detects a heightened level of mosh pit desire in your neocortex and hurls you on stage in your Teletubby onesie to join your personally constructed band so you can Twerk excitedly to Adolf’s jazz inflected drum solos... until your Jawbone beeps that your increased body temperature has risen above the acceptable levels of Tinky Winky... and triggers your all-weather smart ceiling to precipitate a gentle flurry of personalised lime-green and cerulean tainted snowflakes... which cool you down whereupon one Bluetooth snowflake reads your Facebook page and classifies you as a potential skier... and via your Ocular Rift Portal you are immediately whisked away from your Twerking to the top of a gentle blue run in Augmented Reality St Moritz wearing skis made out of potato peelings which your 3D printer has produced by the interface with the recycling bin... and you take a gentle inhalation of cold alpine air from a phial in your headset as The Eye Tribe function in your ski goggles propels you forward to traverse the fluffy white powder and you ski so beautifully and gracefully you instantly

fall in love with the sport... and you purchase a ski chalet with your HSBC Saliva Recognition debit card from the hologram time-share saleswoman at the bottom of the ski slope who has an uncanny resemblance to your favourite actress Sandra Bullock... and after signing the mortgage contract Sandra scans the trace of saliva on your card and recognises that after a virtual ski you are extremely ravenous so she texts the nearest Jamie Oliverbot patrolling your neighbourhood... which glides up to your electrified front door electrified because the paving stones in your street have sensed a rather furtive walk from an unidentified individual with a dodgy beard... so as a precaution your local vigilante officer has switched your front door to taser mode and has granted the Jamie Oliverbot access to post your favourite pizza with Ecuadorian anchovies and Nepalese mushrooms through your wi-fi letterbox... which alerts your Domestic a 6 inch plastic model of Tony Blair with propellers who picks up your evening meal and via the Royal Doulton GPS which is disguised as a malnourished Chinese peasant on your mock willow pattern plate and delivers it to your lap... and shortly after your final gulp your Bowel App says that the pizza will be through your gut in 228 minutes and 16.7 seconds and alerts your toilet to the exact time of fecal deposit so it can self-fragrance with Aux De Ski Instructor just in case you forget to pay your next instalment on the ski chalet you now own... and yawning heavily you make your way to your amniotic pod knowing that every thought you had during the day will be written in to proper sentences by the Literati algorithm in your Microsoft pillow...

Technology is a wonderful thing.

But it’s not as wonderful as a clear campaign strategy for a brand.

This article was first published on campaignlive.co.uk

Book,

&

Line

Sinker

Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul

Airline Visual Identity 19451975

By Howard Schultz, Joanne Gordon

By M.C. Huhne

In this #1 New York Times bestseller, the CEO of Starbucks recounts the story and leadership lessons behind the global coffee company’s comeback. In Onward, he shares this remarkable story, revealing how, during one of the most tumultuous economic periods in American history, Starbucks again achieved profitability and sustainability without sacrificing humanity.

A super stylish journey: The ultimate sourcebook for the best airline graphic design This edition rounds up the most imaginative, influential and surprising designs of the airlines’ commercial art from the “golden age of flying.”

Arguably no other book has been produced with such technical sophistication in recent years.

It provides an unprecedented outline of the development of the visual identities of thirteen pioneering airlines...

Branding Terror: The Logotypes and Iconography of Insurgent Groups and Terrorist Organizations

Branding Typography

By Artur Beifuss, Francesco Trivini Bellini, Steven Heller (Foreword) Terrorist groups are no different from other organizations in their use of branding to promote their ideas and to distinguish themselves from groups that share similar aims. Branding Terror is the first comprehensive survey of the visual identity of the world’s major terrorist organizations, from al-Qaeda and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to the Tamil Tigers.

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...

By Sandu Cultural Media (Author, Editor) Whether hand drawn or vector based, type is a versatile tool in the hands of most designers, creating bold, expressive graphics that extend a brand as the convey information. In the hands of a master, new typefaces become iconic and unforgettable. Branding Typography gathers a selection of the most original type design of recent years, used to promote products and companies through fashion, interiors and packaging. From print materials to three dimensional projects and clothing, the stunning typography in this volume includes the best of type in use...

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.

Logo Life: Life Histories of 100 Famous Logos

Symbol (Mini)

By Ron van der Vlugt

Symbols play an integral role in almost all branding programs. This book explores the visual language of symbols according to their most basic element: form. Over 1,300 symbols from all over the world are included and have been organized into groups and sub-groups according to their visual characteristics. Presented in this unique way, the reader can enjoy them as a pictorial language in their own right, making this an indispensable archive of identity systems for designers and researchers. Now in a compact format.

In Logo Life, you can read the short history of the logo for Apple, Coca-Cola, Nike, and ninetyseven other logos for world-famous brands, seeing all the little steps and great leaps in the visual evolution of these logos as well as some of their most iconic uses in brand advertising.

By Steven Bateman, Angus Hyland

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C/ID: Visual Identity and Branding for the Arts

By Angus Hyland, Emily King

How Brands Become Icons: The Principles of Cultural Branding

Following the explosion of identity design in the arts and the reinvention of the art gallery/ museum as a brand, this book provides a survey of recent and current design work for cultural clients, including galleries, museums, theaters and auditoriums. Thirty international case studies clearly express what good design can do to improve the fortunes and/or images of an institution.

By D. B. Holt

Please Don’t Brand My Public Space

Branding the Nation: The Global Business of National Identity

By Ruedi Baur, Sébastien Thiery

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.

This book is a critical investigation of the visual strategies employed to identify and brand political spaces. Isn’t it about time to look at their often banal images as part of a crisis of political representation? In the context of a revival of xenophobic propaganda on the one hand and the degradation of places into pure marketing products on the other, it is possible to recognize an increasingly theatrical, unquestioned production of public signs and symbols.

By Melissa Aronczyk

Brand Bible: The Complete Guide to Building, Designing, and Sustaining Brands

Brand Spaces: Branded Architecture and the Future of Retail Design

By Debbie Millman

By Sven Ehmann. Sofia Borges

Brand Bible is a comprehensive resource on brand design fundamentals. It looks at the influences of modern design going back through time, delivering a short anatomical overview and examines brand treatments and movements in design. You’ll learn the steps necessary to develop a successful brand system from defining the brand attributes and assessing the competition, to working with materials and vendors, and all the steps in between.

Brand Spaces showcases cutting-edge interior concepts and locations with character that effectively communicate brands in several dimensions at the same time. Decision-makers from leading brands such as Audi, Camper, Aesop, Freitag, Gaggenau, Nike, Nokia, and Starbucks share concepts and strategies that communicate overall brand identity while respecting local specifications.

Designing B2B Brands: Lessons from Deloitte and 195,000 Brand Managers

Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits

By CARLOS MARTINEZ ONAINDIA

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.

Get tactical insight from the top business-tobusiness branding experts and gain a global presence This comprehensive manual lays out the steps necessary for creating an iconic global identity. It uses the lessons and inside knowledge of Deloitte, the world’s largest professional services organization, to help other business-to-business operations deliver a high-impact, value-added brand experience.

The first book-length, critical account of the nation-branding industry. National governments around the world are turning to branding consultants, public relations advisers and strategic communications experts to help them “brand” their jurisdiction. Using the tools, techniques and expertise of commercial branding is believed to help nations articulate more coherent and cohesive identities...

By Debbie Millman, Rob Walker (Foreword)