BrandKnew November 2021

Branding matters. Because branding matters.

Published by 11.21#108

brandknew.groupisd.com brandknewmag.com

Dear friends: The year has moved on full throttle and November has come calling- we also hope that the pandemic is on its last legs while remaining alert and not lowering our guard.

Talking about the pandemic, a lot of brands realised the true calling and relevance of purpose. We give it a shout in this issue. Podcast advertising is striking a new chord with listeners. More power to it. AR has been talked and bandied about far more in the recent past and we ask if brands are willing to take that leap of faith. We wear a new lens and take a look at some new trends that will potentially change the future of marketing. The way branding works today is very different from what we have experienced erstwhile. We investigate. We got into it by design but design can resolve the mess that it created in the first place. Both brands and advertising agencies are now taking a closer look at brand suitability. And that is a welcome sign. B2B Marketing need not be vanilla or cut and dried. Understand how B2B marketing can pack an emotional punch. Language should not be a barrier. On the contrary, language can be a huge asset in marketing. Know more in this edition about it. Innovate or Perish- what brands and organisations should have learned from the pandemic. There is ample more to chew on and soak in. And I leave you all to do just that.

10 12 14 16 18 22 26 30 32

Till the next, my very best.

36 38 Suresh Dinakaran @ISDGlobalDubai

@Brandknewmag

linkd.in/1dsjYaW

isdbranding

bit.ly/1h95tgO

isdglobaldubai

suresh@groupisd.com

40 42 44 46 48

Brand Knew is published by

Brand Consultancy | Advertising | PR | Publishing Digital Media | Film Academy For Advertising Enquiries: engage@groupisd.com or call + 050 6254340 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.brandknew.groupisd.com www.groupisd.com

Managing Editor: Suresh Dinakaran Creative Head/Director Operations: Pravin Ahir Magazine Concept & Design/ New Media Specialist: Mufaddal Joher Chief Strategy Director: Rishi Mohan Business Performance Director: Sunil Vasudevan Brand Engagement and Outreach Specialist: Anuva Madan Chief Country Man, India: Rohit Unni Brand Trends and Research Architect: Meeta Pendse Revenue Growth Architect: Ritu Dey Country Head, Australia: Norbert D’Souza Country Head, UK: Sagar Patil Performance Marketing Architect: Suresh Babu Technology & Web Enabler: Vyanky Charakpalli Social Media Outreach: Pooja Chhabda SEO Advocate: Santhosh Rakonda Content & PR: Nitin Kumar

50 52 54 56 58 60 62

CONTENTS How does branding work today? The answer might surprise you.

Does Language Really Matter in Marketing?

AR is still considered risqué, would your brand take a leap of faith?

How Agencies Can Retain Clients When a New CMO Comes In Purpose: The Modern Brand’s Most Essential Tool How Language Boosts Customer Satisfaction Next in loyalty: Eight levers to turn customers into fans How some agencies and advertisers are considering brand suitability across social platforms Hedonic Treadmill Why Marketing Maturity Needs to Be Top-of-Mind in Today’s Digital Landscape The beauty of contrast How the Subscription Economy is Changing the World of CX ‘Don’t be evil’: Google’s iconic mantra comes into question at labor trial How Your B-to-B Marketing Strategy Can Pack an Emotional Punch Podcast Advertising strikes a chord with listeners Five significant trends that point to marketing’s future Can innovative design get us out of the mess it helped create?

Innovate or Perish: What Businesses Should Learn from the Pandemic What Apple’s big privacy changes mean for the future of marketing Steve Jobs’s real talent wasn’t design—it was seduction Brands asking us to copy and paste messages without personalization, say influencers See the DreamCube, the immersive spectacle that’s like walking into a video game Book, Line & Sinker

How does branding work today? The answer might surprise you.

By Mark Schaefer

I’m a lifelong student of branding. The strategy to build a meaningful and lasting emotional connection to your company is endlessly fascinating! I’ve been thinking a lot about how life in the fast lane of marketing is changing … how does branding work right now?

In my books, I’ve contended that in this world of overwhelming information density, branding is more important than ever (although how we get there is radically different!).

I’ve had a few experiences lately that made me wonder …

Is what we consider “branding best practices” actually in decline? Let’s see what you think …

What’s in a name?

A few years ago, I was in the market for a new suitcase. The choices are overwhelming and I didn’t want to spend the time doing the research, even though the decision represented a critical part of my traveling lifestyle success.

I remembered that a road warrior friend of mine had recently posted about new luggage he purchased. He gushed with an enthusiastic review of the quality and lifetime warranty. I reached out to him, found the brand, and made the purchase within minutes.

Two years later I was telling somebody else about this purchase and could not remember the brand name (I have not been traveling during this pandemic of course!). Literally, I would have to go into a closet and look at the thing to know who made it. There’s an interesting lesson about branding

today in this story.

Changing dynamics of a brand The first point is that there was no amount of “traditional” marketing or advertising that could have influenced my purchase of this very expensive suitcase. My friend was a trusted expert (an influencer to me) and I bought it based on his recommendation alone. The brand name and its marketing strategy didn’t matter, at least to me.

Two-thirds of our marketing occurs without us. This purchase is a perfect example.

After my purchase, I registered the product online, but have not maintained any connection with the brand. No newsletter, no brand content. Honestly, I just want to be left alone. I don’t need any suitcase news.

The suitcase I bought was large, appropriate for a week-long trip. At some point, I will need a day trip bag replacement.

As long as the first suitcase performs, I’ll probably buy the same product in the smaller version, even though I don’t even recall its name. I am buying out of habit, not because of any brand effort necessarily. Of course this how we buy the bulk of our purchases — habit.

In a world where social media posts and reviews disproportionately dominate purchase decisions, branding is something more subtle than huge ad campaigns and jingles.

Where is this going?

groupisd.com

11

How does branding work today?

I’ve seen several opinions lately that our traditional idea of branding is over. Some big brand marketers now claim that our job is to make our product relevant in cultural moments.

What would that look like?

Let’s say there was a viral luggage “fail” on the web — some news story about an unlucky traveler that became a meme.

Could this luggage brand chime in with a funny and human commentary that reminds us that this misfortune would never happen with their products? The timing would have to be impeccable, the language right on target, but this could put the brand back in view for me. It might even build emotion to the product.

I recently wrote about how Ikea jumped on the Bernie Sanders meme in a hilarious and appropriate way. In this little image, Ikea made its product relevant in a cultural moment: The evolution of branding So, let’s get back to the original question: How does branding work right now? This is such a big topic and my thinking is still evolving. But here are a few things that seem certain: 1. A brand used to be what we told you it is. Today, a brand is what people tell each other.

2. Two-thirds of our marketing is occurring without us. The new marketing strategy requires us to consider how we can earn our way into that two-thirds. A whole new

mindset!

3. Branded content is probably only relevant if it moves into the “two-thirds conversation” and is used by fans to spread a relevant brand story. The economic value of content that is not seen and shared is zero.

4. With the demise of advertising (we are in a streaming world!) I believe this idea of brand-building “cultural sparks” instead of setting the traditional “bonfires” has merit. I’m eager to explore this trend.

5. Increasingly the personal brand is the brand. I don’t know who made my suitcase. My friend is the face of the brand.

6. I absolutely believe that branding is more important than ever. But how does branding work? This is going through a transformation, literally month by month right now.

As I said, I’m still reading and learning about how branding works today. I am only sure that “branding” is much different than it was five years ago, and it will be different again five years (months?) from now. Thanks for joining me on this learning journey and please leave your ideas in the comment section below!

He is the author of some of the world’s bestselling digital marketing books and is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant. The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world. Contact Mark to have him speak to your company event or conference soon.

Does Language Really Matter in Marketing?

By Conrad Sturdy

The way in which we communicate in marketing is, mainly, done through language. Yes, non-verbal gestures and sounds can be used to convey ideas and sentiments. However, in general, the words we speak and write will get our messages across. Why then, if language is so important, do many marketers ignore its nuances? Yes, we all understand the importance of syntax, vocabulary, and tone when we’re constructing a marketing campaign; however, the nuances of language don’t stop there.

For maximum impact, you need to think about the culture of a language. Don’t just translate words from one language to another because, as the saying goes, so much can get lost in translation. Indeed, when someone scrolls through a list of online English tutors and their profiles, they want to know if someone is immersed in the culture. In other words, they want a tutor that’s either a native English speaker or someone that lives in an English-speaking country. Indeed, when you sort through thousands of online tutors, you’ll find the ones with the best reviews are, typically, native speakers.

Words Mean Something to Everyone Why? Because native speakers understand the nuances of their language. They understand the culture. Take, for example, the English colloquialism “sick.” The meaning of this word has evolved in recent times to mean something other than ill or vomit. Today, the younger generation are happy to use the word “sick” when something is impressive.

A non-native speaker may not appreciate this subtle shift in meaning. Moreover, someone that’s employed to translate a marketing campaign from English to another language may also miss this secondary meaning. When that happens, the whole message will be thrown off. Thus, when it comes to marketing and language, nuance matters.

However, this issue actually goes much deeper than colloquialisms. The culture we grow up in can shape the way we use language and perceive the world. As noted

by Antonio Benítez-Burraco Ph.D., language, thought, and culture have an unbreakable bond. Each one feeds into the other. For example, in general, Chinese-speaking children learn to count earlier than English speakers. Why? Because numbers are more transparent in Chinese. Take, for instance, the number 11. In English, it’s “eleven.” In Chinese, it’s “ten one.” Describing 11 in this way is more intuitive and, according to Benítez-Burraco, a reason why Chinese children learn to count at an earlier age.

Culture Shapes Language and Language Shapes Culture

To put this another way, the language culture in which Chinese children grow up makes it more likely they’ll understand numbers before English-speaking children. You can take this a step further and compare Australian English to British English. Benítez-Burraco notes how Australians are more likely to say, “the car to the north,” whereas as Brits will say, “that car over there.” This subtle difference suggests that Australian English speakers are more likely to have a more acute appreciation of space and direction. These subtle differences in language and, therefore, culture, have an impact on the way people think. In turn, that means they’ll have different reactions to the way something is spoken or written.

So, let’s say you’re creating a commercial for a candy store. Within the commercial, someone says “hey, look at that candy store over there, let’s go inside.” Based on what Benítez-Burraco says, this message would work well in the UK, but not so well in Australia. Of course, we know that an Australian audience would understand the sentiment.

However, as marketers, we’re aiming to deliver maximum impact with every line. Therefore, by simply understanding the differences in language cultures, the commercial could be tweaked for Aussies. Instead of the original line, it could be “hey, look at that candy store to the west of Baker Street, let’s take a walk.”

Always Use Language in Context Although this is a somewhat simplistic example, it demonstrates the power of language in context. Based on psychology, one line would work better in one country than the other, even though they’re saying the same thing. This is what high-level marketing is all about. Identifying what makes a particularly demographic tick and catering to their preferences. We now live in a world where borders have been dismantled by the internet. However, that doesn’t mean you can abandon subtlety and nuance.

If you want maximum impact, you need to think about the language you’re using. What culture is it steeped in? Which phrases have a universal meaning and which ones don’t?

These are the sorts of questions you need to answer if you want to create an impactful campaign. Moreover, this is an example of why understanding language is such a big part of marketing. Don’t simply throw out words without thinking about their meaning in context. Indeed, if you can master language cultures, you can give your content the best chance of getting noticed in any market.

AR is still considered risqué, would your brand take a leap of faith?

By Marketing Staff

Augmented Reality (AR) is a fast-growing industry and the potential for growth is limitless. The market is estimated to be worth US$225.77 billion by 2026. Should your brand take the leap? Amber Clarke explores with Kara Rubin.

When asking consumers about this technology, they will tell you about the latest Snapchat or Instagram filter, or that they played with a virtual cat. But AR offers us so much more – it can provide an experience that goes beyond entertainment.

AR technology has been around since the late 1960s, however it’s yet to find its ‘sweet spot’. Unlike the now ubiquitous QR code, there’s been no COVID-fueled bubble creating the conditions to make it mainstream.

How AR is changing the consumer experience Uniquely, AR changes the consumer experience by giving them access to something without ever having to leave their home or office – whether a virtual museum visit or a highend flight simulator. With AR starting to find its marketing stride, it’s vital that businesses are prepared for this. Brands, services and companies need to start thinking about what kind of AR-enabled experiences they might want to create.

It’s creating new adventures for consumers. Marketers need to know what changes they’ll need to stay in front.

AR isn’t just ‘exciting’, it’s practical. The potential that AR also brings us is a change in the way people work. AR has been used in advertising to target consumers and create immersive experiences. It has even been used to help people with chronic phobias, PTSD or those with disabilities increase their mobility.

and digital innovation.

JUST Water has used AR to build a link with empowered and educated consumers through smart, AR-enabled packaging.

We know that the more educated our consumers are through these experiences, the more likely they are to make a better choice for the environment.

Making the topic of sustainability relevant and important to consumers, beyond just a better product purchase, can be difficult for brands. Although there are press releases and websites, in this case, the act of purchasing the product meant that consumers were already holding a direct link to the positioning, commitment and purpose to life before their very eyes – the JUST carton.

In addition, there is a QR code on the cartons connecting the consumer directly to both their purchase and the beneficial action, strengthening their role in reaching sustainable goals.

The AR experience brought this to life in a more emotional, immersive manner. Highly personal experiences result in brand loyalty.

Using AR for sustainability

JUST is continually pushing boundaries to share the idea that every small decision can make a positive impact in the world.

Working with AR content we’ve just launched, is yet another example of how we’re attempting to convey that message in an interactive, engaging, unexpected manner.

Increasingly interested in sustainability consumers like knowing where products come from. But, it’s hard to showcase all of that on the packaging. AR means you can put this power into the hands of interested consumers. How? By blending some of AR’s educational capabilities with creativity

AR, although still in its infancy when it comes to fully integrated marketing, is the way forward. In a world that has a mountain of challenges to overcome and connection is more important than ever, how is your industry going to embrace AR in order to stay competitive?

Science is resilient.

It can overcome diseases, create cures, and, yes, even beat pandemics.

It has the methodology and the rigor to withstand even the most arduous scrutiny.

It keeps asking questions and, until there’s a breakthrough, it isn’t done.

That’s why, when the world needs answers, we turn to science.

Because in the end, Science will win.

Breakthroughs that change patients’ lives Learn more at www.pfizer.com

How Agencies Can Retain Clients When a New CMO Comes In

By Jameson Fleming

Execs with longstanding client relationships give advice on withstanding disruption With each passing year, CMO tenures get shorter. According

what’s not, who should work on the account and in some

to the latest Spencer Stuart survey, chief marketing officers

cases whether the account is even worth holding onto.

are staying in their roles for only 40 months and among the top 100 advertisers in the U.S., the median tenure is just 25.5 months. Each new CMO brings new priorities—and often new agency partners.

“When a new CMO comes in, you have to understand the change is coming,” said John Moore, global CEO of

“There’s two mentalities: when it happens, there’s that initial fear or there’s that initial perverse excitement,” said Howie Kleinberg, president of Glow, who has navigated complete C-Suite turnovers at clients, including the Westminster Dog Show—a client of eight years.

Mediahub. But for many of the agency leaders Adweek

“We usually lean toward perverse excitement because, ‘wow,

spoke with for this story, including Moore, a CMO change is

this could be fantastic and an opportunity to build on this

an opportunity for the agency to put itself in a better place.

relationship.’”

Based on that CMO’s history or their directive when they take the reins, a new CMO can almost certainly guarantee an account is going up for review.

When that’s not the case, agency chiefs often see it as an opportunity to reassess the relationship: what’s working and

Here are the steps agency leads take in order to shore up an account to ensure they are irreplaceable: Building a new relationship Ultimately CMOs want to succeed—whether they’re replacing

brandknewmag.com

17

someone who left for a new opportunity or have been hired

the senior leadership at the client, the more worried they can

to usher in new thinking—and so they’re looking for allies,

become,” said Nannette Lafond-Dufour, president, global

said Stacie Boney, president of independent agency Hanson

clients and business leadership at McCann. McCann, which

Dodge. That means embracing the new and learning what

has held onto clients like Nestlé, GM, Coca-Cola and L’Oréal

success looks like to that CMO.

for decades, communicates to employees what the agency

Boney tries to break bread with the new CMO as quickly as possible to not just learn about their goals, but get to know them personally and also understand the CMO’s pet peeves with past agency partners.

Marcus Collins, head of planning for Wieden+Kennedy New York, described it as being “radically empathetic” toward the new CMO. They’re facing the same pressures as the agency,

network is doing across all levels of the company to ensure the relationship is stable so that employees can focus on work and not the politics with an account’s status.

Marcus Collins takes a similar approach, emphasizing the education of junior staffers to help them better understand the realities of the business.

Becoming irreplaceable

so Collins likes to ensure the new CMO that they’re here to support them as a pool of knowledge that he or she can tap

“Brand building is a long term game,” Lafond-Dufour said.

into.

She argues that if a new CMO is considering significant

“By being empathetic, focusing on the business and the CMO, that creates a shared vision we can all subscribe to and those are the things that can fortify a relationship as things change.” Collins said.

Kleinberg stressed the importance of making that first call immediately. He gave an example of a client with many agencies on its roster that experienced executive turnover.

His agency retained the client after the executive team highlighted that not only was it the only agency to prepare a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis for the client, as Kleinberg typically does for new

change, that could mean walking away from an agency that understands the brand’s customers and how to best reach them.

“The contemporary agency relationship is not as transient anymore because it’s not just about a campaign or an idea,” said the CEO of a global agency within one of the major holding companies, asking to remain anonymous. Another way agencies can make themselves indispensable: become the gatekeeper of the brand’s voice instead of letting that role be handled internally. The agency needs to be the brand’s secret sauce, not a cog in the machine.

CMOs he works with, but because it was the only agency to

As marketing functions continue to be elevated in the C-Suite,

reach out to the new leader.

it’s important to build relationships with more than just the

Preparing your agency for what’s next

CMO. Being integrated more deeply in a brand means working closing with the head of sales, the chief revenue

CMOs are often walking into situations where a lot needs to

officer, the chief digital officer and, in many cases, the CEO,

be addressed or undone. Agencies, therefore, have a short

said the New York-based agency executive.

window to show they can drive change to support the new CMO’s agenda and to not be a reflection of the brand’s bad habits.

Mediahub’s John Moore doesn’t stop at holding calls with just the CMO; he hosts periodic check-ins with his clients’ top marketing managers to bolster relationships. “Make sure that

When Mediahub’s Moore experienced a CMO change at a

you show everybody love in the organization, and not just the

client, he said his team made a pact with the corresponding

CMO, because that can come back to haunt you a little bit,”

creative agency to show the client how the two work together.

Moore said.

“CMOs hate when they’re herding cats,” Moore said,

One agency leader Adweek spoke with hammered home

adding that it made it easier for the new CMO to navigate

the importance of building relationships across the team.

the agencies they inherited, but also allowed Mediahub to

For one client, the agency didn’t form strong relationships

show how the two agencies were intertwined together and

with other top members of the marketing team. When the

delivered results for the brand.

CMO, who was able to mitigate those weak bonds, departed

Boney’s approach is to clearly define the situation for her employees. She creates a short doc or presents a keynote to explain opportunities and risks in order to help everyone understand what a new leader at a client could mean for them.

“The farther away the people in the organization get from

the relationship deteriorated under the new CMO and the agency lost the account.

Jameson Fleming is Adweek’s Agencies Editor, focusing on creative and media agencies, account wins and losses and the agency-client relationship with a focus on the future of agencies. Jameson previously served as Adweek’s senior editor of membership, chief of staff and news editor.

Purpose: The Modern Brand’s Most Essential Tool

By Carolyn Hadlock

Passionate case studies from the guests of The Beautiful Thinkers Project Few facets of marketing have evolved as much as “purpose” marketing has over the past five years. What started out as a CSR checkbox from the corporate affairs department has accelerated into a demand from consumers to hear from CEOs and the founders themselves how brands embed purpose at their core and what actions they take. We used to talk about brands with purpose. Now a brand must be purpose-driven to earn the respect of consumers.

Nearly every guest in the most recent season of my podcast, The Beautiful Thinkers Project, brought up purpose during our conversations. And the conversations we had about purpose were not just about moving a business forward.

The topic was a personal one for these leaders. They were passionate about it. And they talked about how consumers and employees alike seek brands that reflect their values.

This sentiment applied to startups like East Fork Pottery and Impossible Foods, to mid-sized brands like New Balance and all the way up to Fortune 100 companies like Unilever and one of its biggest brands, Dove. In fact, Dove serves as one of our greatest case studies of purpose-driven brand success as it is now not just a soap brand. Its Self-Esteem Project

is the largest provider of self-esteem and body confidence education in the world after its 2004 campaign evolved into a worldwide movement.

Purpose can mean creating and contributing to a local community, upskilling employees, creating social equity, or saving the planet. No matter how big or small purpose is, it must demonstrate impact not in what a brand says, but what it does.

Those conversations with brand leaders about infusing purpose into your brand resulted in a few key takeaways: Purpose can make a big impact on a small scale.

East Fork Pottery wants to bring back manufacturing and elevate public perception of a blue collar job by taking a page out of many tech companies’ approach of providing a culture with amenities.

“Offering a good manufacturing job is important to us. We came to this as artists and writers, not businesspeople. So there has to be more to it than just the bottom line. We are motivated to keep offering better pay and better benefits as

brandknewmag.com

19

we grow. We look at how we can make what is typically a blue collar job not feel blue collar all the time. We have a chef that cooks staff meals for everybody in the company twice a week. We’ll do it every day when we can. We want to offer childcare as soon as we can.” —Alex Matisse, founder of East Fork Pottery

to what’s going on in the world and create systemic change.

Alex understands that change doesn’t have to be sweeping to be impactful. They’re focusing on their footprint in North Carolina.

legislation.” —Alessandro Manfredi, EVP of Dove at Unilever

“We have a values team that focuses on who we’re supporting and why we’re supporting them. We like to work with smaller grassroots organizations where the smaller dollars that we’re able to raise go further. We’re not giving away millions of dollars. We’re giving away $25 or $50,000, but that can be a game-changer for a small nonprofit doing really important, big work in their community. It’s part of our DNA at this point.”

engine for business growth.

Purpose should evolve with the brand.

Dove’s engagement with purpose for the past two decades has resulted in credibility so strong that it’s able to respond

“When you have a purpose and you know what you stand for, it’s easier to pivot and change the brand narrative to reflect the current cultural context. After the Black Lives Matter events we expanded our commitment to fight systemic racism via the Crown Coalition to advance anti-hair discrimination

Purpose was once seen as more of a communications tool.

But Dove shows that when executed well, purpose can be the

“At the very beginning, there were not a lot of brands or companies that had a purpose. It was really the projection of the values of a few people. Today, if you say it cynically, it’s a little bit like a marketing tool. But without being cynical, consumers have changed. They require companies and brands to go beyond a profit to have a positive social impact. I like to work on brands that have a social impact, and I believe that you can combine doing good and doing good business. We are proving it now. At Unilever, the brands that have a purpose at the heart of the business model are

growing twice as much as the other brands.”

Purpose must be more than just a brand thing.

In my discussion with Alessandro, we also talked about how brand managers must think differently today about purpose.

Purpose is not a brand asset, it is a brand mission.

“There are people on our team who look at the problem of body confidence less from a business innovation point of view, but more like if they were an NGO. And if you’ve got an NGO, you think of body confidence like a disease, because it actually has been declared as a disease.”

This brand mission can be a powerful driver of employee loyalty as much as it is consumer loyalty. Dove’s commitment to purpose is one reason for Alessandro’s long tenure at Dove; he’s stayed at the company for almost 16 years in an industry where a CMO’s average tenure is 36 months.

“I am quite value-driven, and the company shares my values, especially on purpose, which is absolutely critical.”

Purpose can inspire other people to partner with your brand.

Chris Davis, CMO of New Balance, has seen the lift his brand has experienced by moving from a typical athletic brand sponsorship model towards partnerships with individuals who share their values.

“With every ambassador that New Balance works with globally and partners with globally, we mandate that there’s community integration, whether it’s something global or local. There’s a component where they have to give back to charity with time, or product, or financial resources. It’s absolutely integral into enabling the brand to work in the community in the right way and elevating the partner’s persona in the community the right way.”

“We call this a co-authored approach, meaning we’re expecting a tremendous amount of off-the-court or off-thefield work from our ambassadors. And we will implement a tremendous amount of work in elevating their platform as well.”

This approach can create some discomfort when the brand is challenged to walk the walk.

“Coco Gauff is one of my favorite ambassadors. During all of the moments of social injustice that occurred not only in the United States, but globally, Coco really wanted to utilize her platform, her persona, and her voice to stand up for what she believed was right. And she asked us to partner with her on that. And part of our responsibility as a brand is to amplify the messaging and the voices of our athletes, but also to stand up for what we believe is right. This is an area where Coco challenged us to get better in this field, whereas Jaden Smith challenged us to get better in the field of sustainability.

We accept those challenges and then utilize our platform, our creativity, and our scale to amplify their messages. And it’s really an opportunity for all parties to improve and stand up for what we believe is right.”

Purpose should be a fundamental part of who you are.

New Balance has been active in the community for years without publicly giving itself credit at every turn. Chris is just the latest member of his family to run the company with purpose at its core.

“My mom really embraced the idea of corporate responsibility and corporate giving decades ago before it was a sexy term in our industry. She set up our foundation, which is rooted in combating childhood obesity in underserved communities.

Promoting healthy activity and education on diet is something where we’ve invested literally a hundred million dollars over the last couple decades.”

Purpose provides a pathway for the consumer to become part of your mission.

Impossible Foods has an audacious mission to minimize the environmental impact of the meat industry. Its team was committed to convincing consumers to make different choices without guilting them into changing their behavior.

“We never want to tell someone that they’re doing something wrong. We never want to demonize behavior. It’s about presenting a solution that at scale can result in enormous environmental savings. But we don’t expect the consumer to know or care about that.” —Rebekah Moses, head of impact strategy at Impossible Foods “The private sector has to provide the toolkits for it. It’s not enough to say, ‘okay, well, we’re going to reduce our own emissions.’ Private sector has to do what Impossible Foods has done. Their business is going to be the vehicle for change because there’s only so much you can do in terms of policy without the right toolkit.”

But the private sector can’t do all the work.

“Raising consciousnesses is a really difficult thing. That work is really for NGOs, not for brands or the private sector. What we can do is come up with solutions, really excellent products that achieve the goals that we want without asking anything in terms of education, awareness, or a preconceived notion of what sustainability is.”

Purpose can start now.

What about brands that were not founded on purpose? Is it too late to develop one? Not according to Tom Herbst, former CMO of The North Face, who believes that all brands can find their purpose.

“Purpose lies at the intersection between what you do best as a company and what needs you can serve in the world. If you can find where those two things overlap, that’s your purpose.

And it’s important to add: Not every brand’s purpose needs to save the world.”

Whether you’re saving the environment or propping up your community, purpose can’t be an afterthought and it can’t be a gloss that you apply to your brand to make your product or service more attractive to a consumer. And purpose needs to start on the inside and permeate every corner of the business.

Your brand doesn’t have to save the world, it just has to believe in something and act on it.

Courtney & Stephanie 6RFLDOɥ\ DQG (QWUHSUHQLVWD 0HGLD

Brand Builders

Role Models

Courtney Spritzer and Stephanie Cartin were pioneers when they started their social media business in 2011. Not just because the medium was relatively new, but also because they were one of the few women-owned startups in the industry. That’s why, today, they use their social media savvy to build a support network that inspires female entrepreneurs of all ages. And with Mastercard’s Digital Doors program, these Citi Small Business clients can further amplify their digital presence. So businesses like Courtney & Stephanie’s can thrive in the digital world while they’re busy impacting the real world. Because their business is much more than the services they provide. /HDUQ KRZ 0DVWHUFDUG® LV SUHSDULQJ ORFDO EXVLQHVVHV OLNH 6RFLDOɥ\ DQG (QWUHSUHQLVWD 0HGLD IRU WKH GLJLWDO DJH DW PDVWHUFDUG XV FLWLVPDOOEXVLQHVV

Together, let's Start Something Priceless®

k &LWLJURXS ,QF &LWL &LWL DQG $UF 'HVLJQ DQG RWKHU PDUNV XVHG KHUHLQ DUH VHUYLFH PDUNV RI &LWLJURXS ,QF RU LWV DɸOLDWHV XVHG DQG UHJLVWHUHG WKURXJKRXW WKH ZRUOG Mastercard® DQG 3ULFHOHVV DUH UHJLVWHUHG WUDGHPDUNV DQG 6WDUW 6RPHWKLQJ 3ULFHOHVV DQG WKH FLUFOHV GHVLJQ DUH WUDGHPDUNV RI 0DVWHUFDUG ,QWHUQDWLRQDO ,QFRUSRUDWHG k 0DVWHUFDUG $OO ULJKWV UHVHUYHG

VRFLDOɥ\Q\ FRP

How Language Boosts Customer Satisfaction

By Wharton Staff

Great customer service is the holy grail of sales. When customers feel satisfied, they spend more money and are more likely to come back. Happy customers write positive reviews online and share their experiences through word of mouth. But great customer service is also really hard.

Shoppers complain that sales associates aren’t listening to them or are just going through the motions.

There is a simple and cost-effective way to fix that, and Wharton marketing professor Jonah Berger has new research that explains how. He found that when sales agents use concrete language, they make customers feel seen, heard, and valued. His paper with co-author Grant Packard, a marketing professor at York University’s Schulich School of Business, is titled “How Concrete Language Shapes Customer Satisfaction.” It was published earlier this year in the Journal

brandknewmag.com

23

of Consumer Research.

give us some examples?

Berger joined Knowledge@Wharton to talk about his paper.

(Listen to the podcast above.) An edited transcript of the conversation follows.

Berger: What I love about studying concrete language is the topic is not very concrete. The idea of something being concrete is you can see it, touch it, or feel it. You can experience it. When I talk about being in a car on the way to the airport, you can picture that in your mind. You can see a person in a back seat of a car being on the phone, getting frustrated at the customer service representative.

Knowledge@Wharton: You and your co-author analyzed more than 1,000 customer service interactions that were either recorded phone calls or written correspondence. What were you looking for?

Jonah Berger: This paper actually started with a little bit of a story. A number of years ago, I was on my way to an airport to catch a flight. I got this text message that every traveler dreads: “Your flight has been canceled.” Then two minutes later, I got this note saying, “We rebooked you on a flight tomorrow, 15 hours later, with an extra stop along the way.”

I really needed to get home, so I called customer service and asked them for help.

We’ve all had an experience like this, whether with an airline or with somebody else where the interaction just does not go well. We’re looking for help, they’re following a script and we get really, really frustrated. I get off this call and I’m fuming.

My Uber driver says, “You sound like you’re upset.” And I say, “Yes, I just called customer service. I’m pissed. But it’s got to be so difficult to be a customer service agent. You get yelled at all day by people who are upset. It must be a tough job.”

He goes, “Actually, my daughter is a customer service agent, and she was so good at it that they promoted her to help other agents get better.” I sat there and said, “Wow. Beyond giving a free credit or something, how can you make agents better?” I started to wonder what might you be able to do, besides giving people stuff, to improve customer satisfaction?

“The idea of something being concrete is you can see it, touch it, or feel it.

You can experience it.”

Grant and I wondered whether the language agents use could make interactions better? Could something as simple as the words agents use make customers more satisfied?

Knowledge@Wharton: Did you find that was the case?

Berger: We did. We found that a certain type of language improves customer satisfaction. It doesn’t just make people happier, it causes them to be more likely to come back and buy more in the future. This linguistic feature is called “concreteness,” basically how concrete the language is that people use.

Sometimes we speak in a more abstract way, and sometimes we speak in a more concrete way. We found speaking more concretely, using more concrete language in a variety of customer service or sales interactions, can not only make the customer more satisfied, but also make them more likely to buy in the future.

Knowledge@Wharton: What is concrete language? Can you

When talking to customers, though, employees tend to use language that is pretty abstract. A customer service agent whom you ask for help in a store could say, “Hey, I’ll go look for that. I’ll go look for that top. Or I’ll go look for that T-shirt in gray.” Someone responding to an inquiry about a delivery, “When will my package arrive?” The customer service agent could say, “It’ll arrive there soon.” They could say, “It will arrive at your place. It will arrive at your door.”

We have a sense of what that T-shirt in gray looks like. When you say “that,” though, it’s harder get a mental picture.

I don’t have a picture in my mind of what “that” is. Even words like “refund” versus “money.” I have a sense of what money is. Refund is a bit more abstract. In all these cases, the latter versions are more concrete. It’s either a physical object, it’s something people can see, experience, touch, or have a sense of, and can imagine in their mind. And that concreteness increases customer satisfaction.

Knowledge@Wharton: So, it’s this idea of precision and exactness. You create a visual in the mind, and that has the effect of making people feel like, “This associate is really listening to me. They’re paying attention to my needs.”

Berger: Yes, and this was a side benefit of working with this project. Obviously, many organizations care about customer service. Trillions of dollars are spent on customer service, so it’s clearly relevant to organizations. But both organizations and individuals want to make people feel like we heard them.

Whether we’re trying to sell something or we’re talking to our spouse, people like being listened to. They like feeling like others heard them. How can we communicate that we heard what others are saying? That’s the reason why concrete language is more beneficial.

“Whether we’re trying to sell something or we’re talking to our spouse, people like being listened to.”

A good way to think about it is the following: If you’re a customer service agent, it’s really easy to say, “I’ll help you with that.” Every time someone calls, whether they need help with a flight like I had or whether they’re calling about needing a T-shirt or pants or shoes, “I’ll help you with that” is sort of the Swiss army knife of answers. It works with everything. In that sense, it’s really easy from a customer service side.

From the customer’s standpoint, though, if you say, “I can help you with that,” it feels a little bit boilerplate. It’s not clear that

you actually heard or listened to what they said. Feeling like someone listened to you is about three things. First, paying attention. Second, understanding. But third, it’s about really showing someone you heard them. And that’s what concrete language does. When I don’t just say, “I’ll help you with that,” but, “Sure, I’ll help you get your flight rebooked from Denver to Philadelphia,” it shows you that I heard what you said, that I was listening, that I paid attention, and that I’m more likely to be able to help you in the future. Concreteness works because it makes people feel like you’re listening. But feeling like you’re listening can have a host of other benefits beyond just customer satisfaction.

Knowledge@Wharton: Some of the examples in your paper made me think about the customer service at my favorite restaurant. The wait staff will come to you at the end of the meal and instead of saying, “Can I get you anything else?” or “Are you ready for the check?” they’ll say, “Would you like to try our coffee? It’s really good, and we have these great desserts.”

Berger: Yes, and even take that a step further. When I say something like, “You’ll love our mouth-watering apple pie or our decadent triple chocolate cake with molten lava chocolate oozing out the side,” you can see it in your head. You have a very concrete sense of what I’m talking about. Dessert is less abstract and more concrete than, “Can I get you anything else?” But that mouth-watering chocolate cake is even more concrete. By helping people see what you’re saying, it can make them more likely to purchase things.

Knowledge@Wharton: You mentioned that American companies already spend a lot of money on training and recruiting customer-service employees. What can they take from this research to make that training more effective?

Berger: What I love about this work is that it is so easy to apply. There are a couple of tables in the paper that give simple things that you can do that change the language. As we talked about, saying things like “this, that, and it” is very broad but not very specific. Use more specific language.

Rather than, “I can help you with that,” what is the thing I want to help you with? This can happen in adjectives, pronouns, and nouns, but also adverbs and verbs. We talked about whether the pie is “really good” or “mouth-wateringly good.” Rather than, “We can get that for you,” we can “grab that for you.” Rather than, “I can solve this task,” “I can fix that engine issue that you might have.” Be more specific.

Even if you heard someone, that’s great. But show them that you heard them. Signal to them that you heard what they said. It can be repeating back what they said, but it can even be more specific in showing that you heard and you’re ready to help.

Knowledge@Wharton: One of the things you pointed out in this paper is that doing that is free. It doesn’t add to the cost of existing training programs.

“From the customer’s standpoint, if you say, ‘I can help you with that,’ it feels a little bit boilerplate. It’s

not clear that you actually heard or listened to what they said.”

Berger: This is one thing that is so powerful about language.

As a customer, I used to think that the only thing that firms could do to make me happy was to give me something of value. Customers like getting things of value. It doesn’t necessarily make them feel like you listened, but it did make them feel like they got something, which might make them happy. But on the company’s side, that can be pretty expensive. If every time there’s a flight cancellation, you’re giving away money or other sorts of things, that’s going to make customers happy, but that may be expensive.

Our research finds that, in many cases, language can be similarly effective as free stuff. Not always, and it depends on what you’re giving away. Obviously, the bigger the thing you’re giving away, the more happy people will be.

But language can be an opportunity to make them equally satisfied. And in cases where it’s a sales interaction, where you’re not giving something away, language is a great way to make those things go more effectively.

Knowledge@Wharton: There has been exponential growth in online shopping, especially in the last 18 months, and online customers are going by the descriptions of the products.

Should companies be using more concrete language in how they write these descriptions?

Berger: Certainly. We’ve applied this idea of concrete language since this paper in a variety of domains. Whether we’re talking about online sales interactions and product descriptions, whether we’re talking about written content online, people are more likely to continue reading because they can understand what’s going on. Even in the “help” pages of a website, more concrete language makes you feel like the page is more helpful because it makes it easier to understand. Concrete language can be a great and relatively easy way to improve customer behavior or consumer behavior on a variety of dimensions.

Knowledge@Wharton: Your research often focuses on the psychological and semantic components of marketing. What are you going to bring us next?

Berger: Lots of stuff on language and natural language processing, extracting behavioral insights from textual data.

We’re doing some other work with customer service calls, looking at what’s called paralanguage or pausing. If we’re talking and I pause for a second, you tend to go, “Uh-huh,” because it’s a natural thing to do. You tend to agree with someone when they’re speaking. It’s the polite thing to do.

What we find is that the more the customer service agent pauses in these interactions, the more they give customers an opportunity to assent, to agree, to say, “Uh-huh, yeah, uhhuh.” A lot of research shows that assenting improves liking and interactions, so we find higher customer satisfaction for pauses in social interaction.

Whether it’s the language we’re using, whether it’s paralanguage or other linguistic features, there are lots of interesting things we can extract to improve those interactions and increase beneficial aspects of consumer behavior.

Top brands come to SCAD seeking new ideas, inventions, and business strategies for a changing world. SCADpro delivers.

Tap into our talent bank. scad.edu/scadpro

Next in loyalty: Eight levers to turn customers into fans

By José Carluccio, Oren Eizenman, and Phyllis Rothschild

How do top-performing companies maximize the impact of their loyalty programs in the next normal? By focusing on customer behavior, segment by segment. ince the onset of the pandemic, more than 75 percent of consumers have changed their buying habits. In a historic shift in brand loyalty, 39 percent have either changed brands or retailers, and 79 percent of those intend to continue exploring their options in the next normal.1 Shoppers are increasingly voting with their wallets based on a new set of concerns, according to our consumer research conducted throughout the pandemic. In addition to value and convenience, purpose now drives their decisions. And, unlike pre-pandemic days, consumers across all income groups are willing to trade down to get what they want.

Loyalty programs are an often overlooked area for performance improvement that can help offset the ongoing willingness among consumers to try new brands and retailers.

Our research has found that top-performing loyalty programs can boost revenue from customers who redeem points by 15 to 25 percent annually, by increasing either their purchase frequency or basket size or both.

However, we have observed that around two-thirds of established loyalty programs fail to deliver value, with many actually eroding value. Yet enlarging loyalty-program participation can be a critical key to increasing companywide sales, while creating the data foundation for other valuable initiatives such as data-driven marketing, and also improving the customer experience. Getting more out of a loyalty program, or indeed turning one around, doesn’t have to involve a complete redesign however.

Eight drivers of loyalty-program value Understanding the following eight levers that significantly impact the performance of loyalty programs—regardless of geography, industry, or customer segment—can enable companies to extract the most from their investments in relationship and membership programs.

1. Take advantage of redemption elasticity Many companies fear that offering incentives to redeem loyalty points “devalues” their program currencies. But lowering the price of redemptions can create a significant sales boost, incrementally spiking revenue by activating previously dormant customer loyalty without any negative long-term impact.

In addition, companies that promote deeply earn deeper engagement among a special few brand-loyal customers over time. Often executives will overestimate the negative impact of deep cuts on top- and bottom-line performance, but what may be lost in a single transaction can be more than made up for in repeat visits and greater frequency among those cherishing the original “memorable redemption” (and among consumers in their influence group).

Exhibit 1 illustrates the effect of a small reduction in redemption points on demand for an airline company’s round-trip flights.

The response was –2 for promotional prices, compared with full-price elasticity ranging from –0.2 to –0.5.

brandknewmag.com

27

2. Measure ‘breakage’ by high-value segments All loyalty programs have members who don’t redeem points or don’t even know they exist, and as a result, their points eventually expire. This “breakage” reduces a program’s balance-sheet liability in most cases, which sounds positive for program economics. But that’s not the complete story.

Reasons for breakage can include issues with redeeming points, members forgetting they’re enrolled in a program, unappealing or less relevant rewards, and unachievable or expensive reward thresholds. Whatever the cause, however, breakage represents lost business opportunities, because inactive customers are at its root.

The best loyalty programs achieve their full value potential by reinvigorating members to participate in them, not by depending on breakage to make their economics look successful. The secret is to measure breakage by customer segment to ensure that the programs aren’t alienating any particular group and that high-value segments aren’t breaking too badly.

In parallel, leading companies also do the following: •

make point redemption simple and facilitate the process

•

enhance loyalty programs with special features, challenges, bonuses, and games to increase earning

•

remind customers of their point balances with targeted communications

•

give customers more options to redeem points, such as donating their points to a charity

•

connect core-business promotions and revenuemanagement initiatives to loyalty mechanisms

•

introduce points-plus-cash options to facilitate access to big-ticket rewards

3. Enlist partners to enhance offers and rewards Partnerships are an effective way to monetize a loyalty program and bolster its value, particularly in highly competitive markets. Alliances can provide access to new

consumers or markets, expand benefits, access additional data, increase brand awareness and positive brand halo effects based on the partner, and provide greater earning options that increase both engagement and value.

But partnerships can also backfire in the absence of clear governance around key decisions and a jointly shaped value proposition, creating the following loyalty-program pitfalls: •

redemption catalogs with products or services of no value to customers

•

benefits or discounts that are more readily attainable through other channels

•

a clunky redemption process resulting in customer frustration and disappointment

•

unbalanced perceptions of value delivered by the brand, creating “misplaced loyalty” among valuable customers toward that brand

Avoiding these pitfalls requires establishing clear alliance conditions from the outset, transparently detailing the terms, redemption process, economics, and value exchange. It’s also important to recognize the benefit of this specific partnership in light of other offers in the program to ensure a consistent experience, taking time to understand how customers will interact with a new partnership to ensure the desired impact.

4. Offer points-plus-cash options to make a real difference Many customers are enticed by exciting rewards and benefits in a loyalty program but lack the amount of program currency, or points, to access them. This sense that the rewards are “unattainable” can even discourage them from continuing to accrue points, since the cost of rewards is so high. That’s where offering points plus cash is so powerful.

Allowing members to pay with a combination of their points and cash reduces the redemption threshold and increases the program’s attractiveness, which can motivate inactive customers. The reduced redemption ticket is also a way to create additional price discrimination for loyal customers.

When companies provide a points-plus-cash option, redemptions sometimes increase by 20 to 25 percent. When correctly accounted for, it can be a game changer for overall program profitability.

5. Measure success based on engagement, not just accruals Most loyalty programs are keen to share numbers on their program memberships or spend by members: these are a good reflection of the broad potential universe of members and comparing non-members to members. Members are generally a heterogeneous group that can be split into segments: enrolled, active (based on whatever definition fits best), and redeemers. The most valuable metric to track is redeemers, or fans. While a typical active loyalty-program member spends 10 percent more than someone who is enrolled but not active, redeemer members spend 25 percent more than enrolled but inactive members (Exhibit 2). Currency or point redemption accelerates the virtuous loyalty loop as the customer achieves the reward or benefit and mobilizes to accrue more. That’s why tracking and focusing on increasing redeemers can trigger much greater sales uplift than simply measuring the number of members.

6. Segment customers into groups you can handle Loyalty programs provide unique and valuable data about customers, regardless of the channel through which they engage, the frequency of their interaction, or their specific needs. Leveraging these data to create meaningful, actionable segments that drive a world-class customer experience and maximize the value of all customers has become critical to optimizing a loyalty program. It’s expensive, though, so businesses need to get it right. Segmenting by behavior rather than needs, value, or demographics, ensures that the specific interventions directed to each customer segment are not only rooted in customers’ current behavior, but drive toward the behavior desired from them in the future. Done correctly, a behavioral segmentation becomes the foundation for creating personalized customer experiences. We have seen such initiatives yield increases of 10 to 20 percent in customer acquisition, 10 to 15 percent in long-term value and retention, and 20 to 30 percent in satisfaction and engagement.

7. Personalize test-and-learn across such segments We know loyalty data can create granular segments of customers. Building a rapid A/B testing capability is critical to fully leveraging those groups, allowing marketing organizations to experiment with new ideas, quickly discard those that don’t work, and scale those that add value. A great example is email marketing. It’s not only marketers’ mostused vehicle—88 percent of companies employ it—but it has one of the highest returns on investment, generating an average of $38 for every $1 spent, whether that’s by getting members to redeem, making them aware of new benefits, highlighting partners, or acknowledging recent activity.2 Yet 39 percent of companies don’t apply A/B testing to different segments—a huge missed opportunity. We’ve found that personalized A/B testing elements, such as email tone and language, timing of sending, and imagery, can increase conversion and click-through rates by 15 to 30 percent.3 8. Create a standalone P&L for transparency on returns Accurately measuring the incremental impact of loyalty programs is one of the most difficult challenges for organizations. Unclear key performance indicators (KPIs), complicated ROI calculations, and the need to account for the balance-sheet impact of liabilities all make tracking toward a healthy and sustainable program complex. To top it off, many loyalty programs’ profit-and-loss (P&L) statements are rolled in with other company programs, further complicating measurement.

We’ve found measuring performance around a programspecific P&L assessment helps executives in all areas drive performance, whether they’re in agile marketing teams looking at average basket size or members of the finance function examining the impact of breakage on liabilities.

Measuring a baseline P&L is usually the first step, helping an organization to understand its starting point in order to identify its potential paths forward. Whether the option chosen—a series of campaigns, a new approach to segmentation, or an alliance with a retail partner—connecting it to a single P&L statement and its key levers lays the foundation for performance discussions and adequate budget allocations.

How some agencies and advertisers are considering brand suitability across social platforms

By Facebook

Both brand safety and suitability are essential considerations for brands and agencies as they plan their media strategies.

Because brand safety focuses on defining harmful content that no brand wants to be near and brand suitability encompasses what is aligned to a brand’s values, it’s increasingly important for brands to understand the distinction — and determine what content they are comfortable appearing beside and what they are not.

Given how the industry and ecosystem are evolving, gone are the days where the only options for assurances were inclusion lists and exclusion lists. The approaches available to brands wanting to ensure their advertising appears on the right channels beside their desired types of content are now numerous.

In a recent Digiday and Facebook focus group, a range of brand and agency participants gathered to unpack their brand suitability experiences under Chatham House Rule.

Their conversation highlighted the roles they expect platforms to play, how they’re running social campaigns within everchanging news cycles and how they are under constant pressure to change and adapt as messaging and sensitivities evolve.

By agreement at the start of the roundtable, participants’ names and affiliations are not revealed.

Exploring the brand suitability conversation Amid an industry-wide shift of the conversation from brand safety to suitability, participants in the focus group agreed that defining and clearly understanding brand values is one of the first steps in developing brand suitability strategies.

Some emphasized the essential step of reviewing tactics and ad formats on social media platforms. Agencies, in particular, identified their ability to help clients understand that with different ad formats there come various suitability preferences. And the participants mentioned that working with third parties can help advertisers navigate these waters.

While Facebook has shown alignment through its mapping of policies to GARM and 4A frameworks, it is taking industry and third-party partnerships, our participants said, to work across the spectrum of platforms and formats, assigning specific tolerance rules to different categories of ads, channels and experiences.

Two types of vendors figured largely in the discussion — verification and social targeting. Both put a lens on the same content, but both are working with it from entirely different angles. Participants from the agency space shared experiences about how social targeting vendors have helped them find the best and most brand-suitable content that their partners can trust, while verification vendors have helped evaluate social content for hot spots, to better align advertisers with suitable environments that match their brand values.

Agencies and advertisers are doubling down on anti-risk planning — but nuanced responses matter Agencies are helping their advertising partners apply brand suitability frameworks to provide assurances their ads are appearing near brand appropriate content.

Key steps that agencies are taking, as our roundtable highlighted, include building plans for global crises and conducting risk assessments. The takeaway is that agencies

groupisd.com

31

are doubling down on consultations with their clients as they look to the rest of 2021 and beyond, so they can have a plan in place to ensure their brand partners appear within appropriate content.

While some clients have asked their agencies to keep their advertising out of the news completely, that isn’t the only approach our focus group said some clients have requested.

The advice the focus group landed on was that it’s key to know the brand’s values, have corporate buy-in and understand the content categories they are willing to appear within before approaching the marketplace. Ensuring the brand has different products and targets at the corporate level while having a solid stance on suitability from either corporate or the brand were also high on the list of essential elements to consider with suitability.

Adapting to change and a push to adopt new brand suitability tech A throughline in the conversation was that agencies must be willing to adapt to the changing values of their brand partners. Whether it’s specific topics surfacing in the news, or adapting to shifts in targeting and environments, such as the rise of in-game advertising, knowing what questions to ask the client to ensure they’re targeting the right audience for the right reasons is critical.

Another changing space for agencies and advertisers is video and image recognition technology. As access to video becomes less expensive, and given the massive volume of videos uploaded every minute, the push for third-parties to scale recognition technologies that can help ensure brand

suitability is growing.

The focus group noted that advancements in AI technologies are empowering companies to remove more hate speech from their platforms more of the time. Facebook, for example, has been able to proactively identify approximately 97% of hate speech content, compared to 23.6% in Q4 of 2017.

Brand suitability is a group effort The focus group agreed that the conversations are more commonplace and even more nuanced around safety across social platforms than even a few years ago when GARM, 4A’s and their partners were working together to develop and execute ad placement strategies. Preferences in the digital space are also evolving from a focus on brand safety to brand suitability.

As agencies and advertisers turn to 2022 and all the ways brand associations will evolve in the years to come, what is clear is that the heart of responding and making progress in the brand suitability effort is still the partnership.

From verification and social targeting vendor collaborations to risk planning that keeps a nimble and nuanced approach at its core, to the newest tech to help control what ends up brand adjacent in video and other content across platforms, the drumbeat of the focus group was clearly that no brand or agency can effectively execute suitability preferences alone.

Brand suitability, it became clear, is a cooperative effort. And rightly so, as the roundtable highlighted, in that achieving brand suitability goals is the pathway to a better digital ecosystem for all.

Hedonic Treadmill

By Gregg Vanourek

More ≠ better.

into that new baseline as if nothing had occurred.

Yet our brains fool us into thinking that it is. It’s an unconscious assumption, deep in our brains, that’s nearly impossible to shake.

What causes hedonic adaptation? According to researchers, it’s driven by a couple of things:

It’s the idea that if we get more of the things we think we want, we’ll be happier.

Social comparison (if our neighbors get a nicer car, we feel inferior and feel a pang of envy and desire)

But it’s a lie.

Rising aspirations (if we get a big house, it’s not long before we want a bigger house)*

More what? More of pretty much everything: Money.

Status. Skills. Achievements. Victories. Conquests. Beauty.

Followers. Honors. Devices. Shoes. Goals. Projects. More whatever. You name it.

These dynamics lead to a “hedonic treadmill” in which, like a hamster, we run faster and faster to acquire more things but get nowhere in terms of increasing our happiness. It’s an absurd situation when viewed from a distance.

We’re seduced by the possibility of the next thing. Seduced by the chase.

Wait, there’s more. What often happens is a clever redirect: our desire for more is a distraction, a way of avoiding emotional emptiness or relational distance or pain. Why sit and feel bad about these core foundations of true happiness when we can busy ourselves with yet another chase?

Here’s the thing: We accumulate them as we go, and then what?

We want more.

It’s like a black hole pulling ever-more things into its vortex.

The ambition is never-ending. It can’t be sated—at least not the way we’re trying to sate it.

Yes, we get a temporary hit when we get something we want. The dopamine rush is real. But it’s fleeting. It’s never enough.

What’s Really Happening?

Also, we tend to focus on what’s missing, instead of appreciating what we have. Our evolutionary biology has caused us to focus much more on the negative than the positive. It’s called “negativity bias.”

Our consumer culture, which is excessively material and comparative, also drives our itch for more. It’s about acquiring and consuming things. It may generate corporate and advertising profits, but it doesn’t fill us up.

What’s going on here? How is it possible to want something, get it, and then not be happy?

In this potent environment, we’re inundated with countless messages from others (e.g., family, friends, influencers, social media, ads) about what will make us happy.

One key driver is “hedonic adaptation”: we become rapidly accustomed to changes in our circumstances and then settle

The hard truth: there’s a big difference between what we think will make us happy and what actually makes us happy.

We tend to believe that we must pursue and find happiness, as if it’s “out there.” The logic is that happiness lies in changing our circumstances: “I’ll be happy when…” (… when I’m successful, when I get that promotion, etc.).

The Problem The problem with this way of thinking and living is that it doesn’t work.

Getting more doesn’t fix the underlying problems. The pursuit of more, more, more—while it keeps us occupied and driven, like a rat sniffing cheese—will leave us less happy and fulfilled.

It can make us transactional, mercenary, and cynical. Our hearts harden. We feel accumulation anxiety, and we fill our days with need and busyness instead of love and grace.

“No matter how much value we produce today—whether it’s measured in dollars or sales or goods or widgets—it’s never enough. We run faster, stretch out our arms further, and stay at work longer and later. We’re so busy trying to keep up that we stop noticing we’re in a Sisyphean race we can never win.” –Tony Schwartz, from The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working That’s not to say that our pursuit of more is always bad.

Sometimes we do need more. Sometimes getting more is good for us. Far too many people on this planet and in this country live in poverty, or with economic uncertainty. They live in food deserts, or actual deserts. They lack access to clean water or basic health care, or stable employment or income-generating opportunities. Or they face violence or repression. In the face of such hardships, more security is a godsend.

The problem comes when people are financially secure and comfortable, but caught in a hollow cycle of need, greed, and speed.

Determinants of Happiness Happiness is a slippery fish. It’s hard to pin down, but researchers believe there are a few major determinants of happiness.

First, we have a genetic set point of happiness. Researchers estimate that it comprises about 50% of our overall happiness.

Second, they estimate that about 40% of our happiness comes from intentional activity and our mindset.

Finally, they estimate that only about 10% of our happiness comes from our circumstances.

“Thus the key to happiness lies not in changing our genetic makeup (which is impossible) and not in changing our circumstances (i.e., seeking wealth or attractiveness or better colleagues, which is usually impractical), but in our daily intentional activities.” –Sonja Lyubomirsky, happiness researcher, author, and professor What to Do The mental tricks are deceptive, and the cultural conditioning powerful. What to do about it?

Here are several recommended practices based on research

and experience: First, stop the madness. Resolve to abandon the futile and endless pursuit of more, more, more. We can want happiness (who doesn’t?), but our obsessive chasing of it can backfire because it can lead to an epic ego trip—a narcissistic pursuit that leaves us wanting. Instead, connect with and contribute to others. Get over yourself.

Second, change the default viewpoint from comparison to contribution. Stop falling into the comparison trap and start asking how you can add value to those around you or to causes you care about.

Third, clarify your purpose and values—and live by them as best you can. Not perfectly, as that lies beyond our reach, but in a disciplined pursuit. This will help ensure that you don’t get waylaid, reaching the top of an ambition ladder only to find that it leaves you hollow or has taken you nowhere good, or at too great a cost (and quickly scouting for a new ladder).

Fourth, use your sword and shield. Once you know your purpose and values, use your metaphoric sword (your courage and will) to fight for them. And use your shield to defend against the bombardment of other people’s priorities and societal notions of success that don’t resonate with you besides the tingling of your “lizard brain.”

Fifth, live by your own lights and develop genuine selfworth, separate from your title, role, and possessions. Are you at risk of falling apart if you lose your current role?

Sixth, start simplifying your life by sloughing off the extraneous things that take up time, money, or space (e.g., clothes you never wear, the trinkets in your closet or garage that go untouched for years). Flip the equation from “more is better” to “less is more,” because less is light and free. “Less” has margin. “Less” frees you up to focus on what matters. See the “minimalism” and “essentialism” movements for great insights about how this works and how to start.

Finally, bring back a sense of gratitude for all you have, instead of resenting all the things you don’t have, or all you want or need. Having a gratitude practice can be powerful and effective in increasing our sense of wellbeing.

Note: You can’t do any of this without the presence of mind to lead yourself—to craft your life and work intentionally.

“Accomplishment. Money. Fame. Respect. Piles and piles of them will never make a person feel content.

If you believe there is ever some point where you will feel like you’ve ‘made it,’ when you’ll finally be good, you are in for an unpleasant surprise. Or worse, a sort of Sisyphean torture where just as that feeling appears to be within reach, the goal is moved just a little bit farther up the mountain and out of reach.

You will never feel okay by way of external accomplishments.

Enough comes from the inside. It comes from stepping off the train. From seeing what you already have, what you’ve always had.

If a person can do that, they are richer than any billionaire, more powerful than any sovereign.” –Ryan Holiday, Stillness Is the Key

Why Marketing Maturity Needs to Be Top-of-Mind in Today’s Digital Landscape

By Margaret Wise

For years, B2B brands invested more in sales and product than in brand marketing.

The conventional wisdom was that superior specs and personal relationships would win the day.

If you’re lucky enough to be part of a company that already had digital practices and a digital infrastructure in place, perhaps the industry shift didn’t feel as jarring. Maybe you were able to continue your strategy without missing a beat

and kept engaging with your customers.

However, as the last year and a half has starkly highlighted, not all companies start from the same place of digital

groupisd.com

37

savviness and technology support.

That’s where marketing maturity comes into play. By taking an honest look at that starting point, we can better understand and plan for fully optimized digital operations while creating internal alignment.

To thrive in a post-COVID marketing environment, each business must evaluate where it stands in the marketing maturity model, then take steps to improve its position.

Defining Marketing Maturity In its simplest definition, marketing maturity is the move from a seller-centric to a buyer-centric approach. Marketers who are lower on the maturity spectrum tend to be more projectfocused, whereas those at the higher end of the maturity spectrum are drivers of strategic growth.

Increasing levels of maturity correspond with increasing levels of digital marketing sophistication and expertise.

Marketing maturity frameworks look at the processes, tactics, technology, data, and outcomes of an organization to understand where the company falls on that spectrum.

Marketing maturity is not based on company revenue size, employee count, company age, or how many emails are being sent.

The reasons an organization might choose to employ the marketing maturity model vary widely, but for many it’s simple: It helps educate and align internal teams and management and inform the long-term budget, and it creates an expectation of growth.

Where Your Company Lands The marketing maturity journey has four stages: emerging, aligned, unified, and optimized. In each of those, you will find varying degrees of sophistication in marketing strategy and tactics, as well as adoption of marketing technologies.

Although the marketing maturity journey is fluid, there are definitive indicators and pain points for each stage: •

•

•

•

Emerging. In this stage, a company has no digital strategy or tool integration. An example could be sending one-off email blasts for basic communications with name personalization and conducting one-off data reporting in the email send tool.

Aligned. This stage takes advantage of additional marketing technology, such as automated campaigns to segmented lists and scheduling social posts. Some customer profile data is used for personalizing emails, but the data might not be integrated into a CRM. Data reporting is still siloed and typically done only by email campaign.

Unified. In this stage, email marketing is integrated into a CRM with email analytics and other coordinated social content. Organizations in the unified stage often send targeted multistep email campaigns that lead to a specific action on their website, and they take advantage of real-time analytics—albeit still siloed by source.

Optimized. Here, digital marketing efforts include targeted campaigns and personalized interactions (via chatbot, for example). Brand experience and messaging

are consistent across all digital channels, including email, website, e-commerce, and social media. Data insights from all channels are pulled into one holistic view.

Moving Toward Optimization and Maturity At this point in the article, you might have realized that your company and marketing strategy aren’t where you want them to be. You might also be asking yourself what the next steps are in moving toward optimization.

Ultimately, optimized companies have made significant investments in digital marketing as a way to scale their goto-market strategy with prospects and customers.

If you’re not in the optimized stage of marketing maturity, but would like to be, consider the following to help inform your marketing strategy.

1. Focus on personalization Personalization should be used to align marketing across personas and customer journey stages. Perhaps even more important in the COVID-19 environment, personalization ensures messages cut through all the other noise consumers are bombarded with.

People, including B2B decision-makers, spend more time on social media and email than ever before, so deep personalization is the key to meeting them where they are with impactful and engaging experiences.

2. Create consistent brand experiences Companies that want to optimize their marketing processes should confirm consistent brand experiences and messaging across all digital channels, including email, website, e-commerce, and social media. That consistency boosts brand credibility and bolsters customer confidence.

3. Make data-informed decisions Businesses with optimized marketing maturity regularly use data insights to inform strategy and tactics.

Organizations can do two things to use data effectively: 1. Enrich and cleanse the data 2. Pull it into one holistic view Cleansing and enriching ensure the data is accurate and actionable, whereas compiling it into one holistic view shows the “big picture” of the marketing strategy, including things that are working well and things that could be improved.

Today’s Landscape The pandemic has forced organizations to be adaptable.

As a result, many businesses have developed newfound responsiveness and resiliency. In today’s landscape, that means evaluating marketing strategies to find areas that can be optimized for the benefit of the customer and the bottom line.

Because no business is the same and we’re all starting at different points in the marketing maturity journey, marketers face a unique challenge. Rather than simply survive the pandemic environment, marketers who take active steps toward an optimized digital strategy will prove the most successful long after the pandemic wanes.

The beauty of contrast

By Mark Wilson

For many, shoes are a pain to put on. Our footwear requires some dexterity. And that’s more than just an annoyance for people with disabilities, ranging from arthritis to partial paralysis. Nike’s Go FlyEase is the first sneaker you can slip on without bending over or using your hands at all.

to accommodate disabilities) can actually lead to a product

“It’s improving people’s lives,” says Sarah Reinertsen, the former Paralympian and FlyEase Innovation Team manager.

this away from people, or make this a hard-to-get shoe,”

The design relies on a breakthrough bistable hinge that’s built into the shoe’s bouncy outsole. That hinge essentially splits the shoe in two (Nike designers mocked up the first Go prototype by sawing a shoe in half). When the hinge is open, you can slide your foot into the toe box. Then, by pressing your weight down, the shoe snaps shut on your foot like a molded marshmallow. A tensioner band automatically wraps around the entire shoe to help hold it together.

While Nike never intended artificial scarcity—it supplied tens

The Go FlyEase is proof that universal design (design built

that’s better for everyone. Nike quickly sold out of the Go at launch in February 2021 and faced some criticism from the disabled community as shoe collectors snatched it up, listing it on resale sites for twice the MSRP. “We’re not trying to keep says Reinertsen. “That’s not at all what we want.”

of thousands of pairs for launch—the company will address shortages with significantly more inventory (and colorways) by this holiday season.

Mark Wilson Is A Senior Writer At Fast Company Who Has Written About Design, Technology, And Culture For Almost 15 Years. His Work Has Appeared At Gizmodo, Kotaku, Popmech, Popsci, Esquire, American Photo And Lucky Peach. He Also Started Philanthroper.com, A Simple Way To Give Back Every Day

How the Subscription Economy is Changing the World of CX By subscribed staff

Customer experience (CX) as we know it is coming to an end, but we can all learn from the changes to come.

Over the next year, we will shift further from a physical product-based economy to one that is increasingly digital and subscription-based. Subscription companies have grown where most have contracted, and it’s not just the consumer industry. Platform and software-as-a-service are growing more critical to business operations.

This is exactly why it’s key that businesses are aware and awake to the changes this is having on what customers want and expect from their experience.

A stronger relationship, a larger requirement In this environment, the digital customer experience has never been more important. Customers and clients are becoming accustomed to the convenient, instantaneous nature of digital services. Subscription models provide customers with great flexibility as they can browse various plans, select what suits them best and personalise the offerings. They have greater control over what they use and can alter their service plans as they wish.

In return, businesses enjoy a recurrent revenue stream, easier to plan against. But continuously delivering a satisfying customer experience can prove daunting. Subscription models can lead to deeper, longer customer relationships, but they require more work. A service needs to continuously change to remain relevant to customers. If it can’t keep pace with expectations, it won’t be long before the subscribers have disappeared and gone somewhere else.

Master the back office to win the front office A customer isn’t a static entity, they’re a unique individual

whose needs change daily. So how can a service or business change with them? First, it needs a full view of the customer and the business itself. To achieve this, you need to integrate how your organisation does sales, marketing, customer experience and relationship management.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution. However, organisations should strive for a fully integrated and intelligent infrastructure. An infrastructure that connects the front and back offices through a single, connected data platform. So, when a customer agent needs data on a client, they have it, instantaneously. Because the purpose should always be to empower customer agents and solutions designers, helping them make faster and more successful decisions.

Once – in a not so distant past – back-office functions used to be of little concern to CX leaders. The need to rapidly fetch tech customer data to inform every interaction has changed that. However, many businesses are still stuck in the past. They have separate systems for the front and back offices, which can’t be joined without an expensive third-party integration.

As a result, they can’t manage their inventory, supply chains, or service according to the needs of the customer.

Overcoming customer complexity In today’s economy, it’s safer and more effective for businesses to pay for access to services than build and maintain the infrastructure to supply them. Yet service providers can’t take anything for granted. The subscription and as-a-service space has never been more competitive, and it’s only getting harder to stand out from the crowd. That’s why all businesses that operate or are transitioning to a subscription-based model needs the same one thing: A unified infrastructure.

‘Don’t be evil’: Google’s iconic mantra comes into question at labor trial

By Richard Nieva

Last month, software engineer Kyle Dhillon said during a labor board trial that “Don’t be evil,” Google’s famous corporate mantra, had lured him to the tech giant five years ago.

in turn has prompted a close look at Google’s iconic mantra.

The result has been a public rumination on the company’s North Star set against the backdrop of a high-profile legal forum.

The motto appealed to the Princeton grad because it showed Google was aware of its own power. It underscored, Dhillon said, the delicate work it takes to keep a big company like Google honest.

The tech giant has denied wrongdoing. The trial, which began on Aug. 23, is ongoing. One of the fired employees, Laurence Berland, has privately settled with the company.

“Recognizing ‘Don’t be evil’ as one of its core values shows that it’s aware it’s possible for us to become evil,” Dhillon told a National Labor Relations Board attorney in response to a question about whether the motto played a role in his decision to join the search giant. “And it would be quite natural, in fact.”

The brief exhortation, which Google has deemphasized in recent years, is now a focal point in an NLRB complaint against the company that alleges the tech giant wrongly fired five employees for their labor activism. The employees had protested actions by Google, including its hiring of a consultancy with a history of anti-union efforts and its work with US Customs and Border Protection. Dhillon isn’t one of the fired employees, but he received a final warning from the company that the NLRB contends was illegal.

By untangling Google’s labor policies, the proceedings have shined a light on the tech giant’s famous work culture, which

Google isn’t alone in adopting an unorthodox mantra.

Apple’s grammatically distinctive “Think different” advertising campaign was eventually embraced as a de facto corporate motto. Facebook’s former motto was “Move fast and break things,” an expression evoking permission -- celebration even -- of recklessness. Still, Google’s corporate motto has always been an outlier. It’s simultaneously tongue in cheek, befitting a company that pioneered freewheeling workplace culture with free food and slides in lobbies, yet powerfully solemn.

And so with it came a higher standard, said Irina Raicu, director of the Internet Ethics Program at Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.

“It raised employee expectations that the company would be different,” Raicu said. “It invited a certain kind of employee to join.”

Google didn’t respond to a request for comment.

‘A jab at other companies’

brandknewmag.com

43

Like any piece of great folklore, differing accounts of who coined “Don’t be evil” are told. But credit is usually given to Paul Buchheit and Amit Patel, two early Google employees.

Buchheit, who created Gmail, has said he came up with the slogan during a meeting in early 2000 to define company values.

“I was sitting there trying to think of something that would be really different and not one of these usual ‘Strive for excellence’ type of statements,” Buchheit said in 2007. “It’s also a bit of a jab at a lot of the other companies, especially our competitors, who at the time, in our opinion, were kind of exploiting the users to some extent.”

After the meeting, Patel began writing the phrase on whiteboards around Google’s Mountain View, California, campus, trying to make the slogan stick. It did. The phrase eventually made it into Google’s code of conduct. It’s now one of the best-known corporate slogans in the world.

Buchheit and Patel didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.

“It raised employee expectations that the company would be different. It invited a certain kind of employee to join.”

Irina Raicu, Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics Since its inception, the motto has expanded from a guiding principle for product development and policies to a rallying cry for Google’s critics, some of the toughest being the company’s own workers. Employees say the mantra has served as the linchpin for some of the workforce’s most notable protests. That includes activism regarding nowshuttered plans for a censored Chinese search product, a contract with the Pentagon for tech that could improve the accuracy of drone strikes, and the company’s handling of sexual misconduct claims directed at senior executives. At some demonstrations, workers have held up signs that say “Don’t be evil.”

As Google has grown bigger and increasingly steeped in controversy, its dedication to the mantra has repeatedly come under question. Last week, The New York Times and The Guardian reported that Google knowingly underpaid temp workers, but decided not to fully correct the situation because it feared negative press attention. In response, Google workers wrote an open letter to leadership, including CEO Sundar Pichai, demanding the company fork over the $100 million in back pay it allegedly owes its temps.

“For much of Google’s workforce, ‘Don’t be evil’ is a smokescreen,” the letter says. “It’s a way to reap the financial rewards of unquestioning public faith, by assuring investors, users and government entities that Google is trustworthy and

friendly -- while successfully underpaying and mistreating the majority of their workers.”

‘It’s not enough not to be evil’ In 2004, as Google prepared to go public, co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin expounded on the motto in an interview with Playboy. The interview is excerpted in Google’s prospectus filing.

Brin: As for “Don’t be evil,” we have tried to define precisely what it means to be a force for good—always do the right, ethical thing. Ultimately, “Don’t be evil” seems the easiest way to summarize it.

Page: Apparently people like it better than “Be good.”

Brin: It’s not enough not to be evil. We also actively try to be good.

Waldman said she kept the phrase in mind as she went on with her everyday work of trying to improve search results.

Other employees also talked about the practical applications of the mantra, as opposed to just a pie-in-the-sky ideal.

“It made it sound like the company had somewhat of a conscience,” said Eddie Gryster, a Google software engineer.

“It meant to me that at the time Google was basically saying, ‘Hey, that is good business for us to not be evil,’ and to do the right thing helps us maintain trust with users.”

Some people worry that Google, with its trillion-dollar valuation and headcount of more than 135,000 full-time employees, is moving away from that ethos. In 2015, after Page and Brin created Alphabet, a holding company for Google, the phrase was moved from the beginning of Google’s code of conduct to the end of it. Critics saw it as a demotion of the principle, an afterthought in the last sentence of a 6,500-word document. “And remember… don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up!” the guidelines say.

The broader code of conduct for Alphabet makes no mention of the phrase.

The cynical view is that such a mantra is outdated in modern Silicon Valley, as the industry struggles to contain disinformation, election interference and other abuses. Still, Google employees have taken “Don’t be evil” to heart, as well as the last two words of the revised code of conduct: speak up. They did so by engaging in legally protected actions, the NLRB argues.

So, employees say, the mantra is at the core of why Google is on trial in the first place.

That attitude still resonates with Google’s rank and file today. At the labor board trial, Sophie Waldman, one of the employees who was allegedly wrongfully terminated, said it’s what attracted her to the company in the first place. “That was an important factor,” Waldman testified. “I’ve always cared a lot about making sure my work has a positive, or at the very worst, neutral impact on the world.”

How Your B-to-B Marketing Strategy Can Pack an Emotional Punch

By Vic Vaswani

Gone are the days where b-to-b marketing was all about rationale and numbers. More than ever, business customers are looking for partners they can build a meaningful relationship with, not just a transactional vendor-customer arrangement. In fact, it’s been shown that b-to-b marketing initiatives that tap into people’s emotions are seven times more effective at driving long-term relationships than purely rational messaging.

This shift is only amplified by today’s rapid digital transformation. As 70% of buying decisions are now made through various brand interactions before the customer gets on a call, it’s essential to build trust, respect, and cultivate a meaningful partnership from the beginning.

The good news is that b-to-b marketers can create meaningful experiences with prospective customers by championing the power of both data and creativity. Here’s how.

Make a digital-first connection First thing’s first, marketers who want to emotionally connect must deeply understand their audience to send a message that truly resonates. This means using readily available data to drive customer-centricity, as well as leveraging firmographic segmentation (such as the use of data that factors in

geography, client-size) to support data on individual buyers, to best understand exactly who you are trying to reach.

Once identified, shaping and delivering the right narrative is best achieved with a digital-first approach. This allows brands to digest analytics and gain insights that help personalize content, enabling you to position your organization as a reliable problem solver for your customers’ critical business challenges. Consider that customers are seeking insightful content that they can put into action in real-time, with 80% of business decision-makers preferring information from articles over sponsored ads. In this way, well-built educational content emerges as a key part of any emotionally successful marketing strategy.

In fact, across the board from sales to buyers, b-to-b marketing strategies are significantly improved by digital tools. Sales interactions are going increasingly remote, for example, making digital interactions more important than ever. While previously it was all about competing with your competitors, now, you’re competing with your customer’s last best online experience. Meanwhile, buyers expect a seamless experience from the top of the buying funnel through to becoming a customer.

Outreach is a two-way street

groupisd.com

45

Communicating with your customers via new channels that open spaces for dialogue is another great way to deepen human connection. Twitter chats, virtual coffee breaks, LinkedIn lives or Clubhouse events – each allows audience members to jump in with their thoughts and questions in real-time. Just take Restaurant Brands International (parent company of many top fast-food chains), which successfully leveraged Clubhouse to host a Q&A between consumers and marketing professionals and its top executives.

Social listening can help evaluate which platforms your target audiences are using most and the type of content they’re engaging with. If your customers are tired of webinars, the last thing you want to do is keep giving them webinars. Moreover, with 75% of b-to-b buyers using social media interactions to influence buying decisions, social channels remain a reliable avenue for marketing teams. Being aware and online helps teams optimize their brand presence and continually adapt to customers.

Use creativity to differentiate yourself Finally, don’t be afraid to get creative! It’s an old excuse that b-to-b companies can’t generate an emotional response, and I consistently see creativity in marketing that inspires,

entertains, and motivates the audience. Studies show that creative ads lead to positive effects on consumer response, and are more memorable and recognizable for the viewer, ultimately helping to build a deeper relationship.

One tried and tested method is storytelling. Storytelling provides a fundamental human experience, allowing you to demonstrate the core values you stand for as a brand. It has been proven time and again that highlighting vignettes of use cases and aspirational product experiences motivates trust and builds credibility in those watching, reading, or listening to them.

Of course, achieving an authentic emotional response is no mean feat, but b-to-b marketers simply cannot afford to ignore developing human-to-human connections and cultivating relationships in this new normal. By focusing on personal interactions with customers and finding a way to forge emotional ties, marketers can effectively target business clients in a way that is both personable and unique.

Performance Marketing contributor Vic Vaswani is Head of Growth Marketing at FedTech. Vic leads teams in technology, advertising, entertainment and healthcare. He has previously had marketing roles at Ingram Micro, CloudBlue, Havas Worldwide and Printronix.

Podcast Advertising strikes a chord with listeners

By Ray Schultz

Podcast listeners are likely to buy the products advertised in an audio program, according to a new study by NCSolutions (NCS).

Of listeners polled, 42% have purchased a product featured in the podcast. And among the group identified as power subscribers by NCS, 68% have done so.

Moreover, 29% of podcast listeners and 49% of the power subscribers have used a promotional code.

In addition, 34% of podcast listeners have purchased products two or more times after hearing an advertisement, while 17% have bought products they have heard featured four or more times.

subscribers say podcast advertising is relevant to them.

And, overall, 27% say podcast advertising is enjoyable to listen to, while 26% feel they have learned about unique products they wouldn’t have discovered elsewhere.

Those totals rise to 30% and 32%, respectively, among the power subs.

Of all listeners, 88% have spent as much or more time with podcasts in 2021 as they did in 2020. And 56% of power subscribers have increased their listening. Meanwhile, 34% of listeners are new to the medium as of the start of last year.

Podcast listeners are buying in these categories:

“As their popularity has grown, podcasts have become a new advertising medium for CPG brands,” states Lance Brothers, Chief Revenue Officer, NCSolutions.

Clothing—46%

“Podcast advertising hit a significant tipping point in 2021, with spending expected to reach $1 billion. As CPG brands look to justify further investments in the medium, they will need performance metrics that demonstrate the impact of their brands’ podcast advertising on incremental sales,” he adds.

Beauty/Grooming—35%

That said, 33% of all listeners feel podcast advertising is “a good way for brands to reach me.” That rises to 42% among power subscribers.

In addition, 23% of all listeners and 28% of power

Food/Beverage—42%

Technology—32% Health & wellness—31% “A podcast is a personal medium,” states Linda Dupree, CEO NCSolutions. “Hosts are very influential when in the ears of subscribers and partnering with a podcaster who speaks to your audience can be a very powerful strategy.”

NCSolutions surveyed 2,043 consumers, 52% of whom are podcast listeners, in August 2021.

ADVANCE TOMORROW’S MISSION As a key partner in government innovation, we blend unparalleled mission understanding with emerging technology to help our clients modernize their organizations and integrate, innovate, and dominate at speed.

See our ideas in action at BoozAllen.com.

Five significant trends that point to marketing’s future

By Mark Schaefer

In two years, we won’t recognize our jobs in marketing. I believe the world is changing that fast! I love scanning the horizon for ideas and trends that will shape our lives. There are LOTS of changes in marketing’s future, but here are five that signal new directions for our profession: 1. The Experience Designer Two years ago I observed a trend that the Chief Marketing Officer title has been morphing to Chief Experience Officer, or CXO. I think this is a healthy trend, acknowledging that our marketing success is truly shaped by the 360-degree customer experience. Naturally, the CMO should be responsible for every touchpoint that influences customer perceptions of our organization.

Now, there’s a new job title floating around that takes this development to the next level: Experience Designer. Yes, that’s a real job!

Think about the increasingly difficult challenge of connecting to customers through ads and content. It’s getting tougher and tougher to break through. But customers seek positive, engaging, and entertaining experiences.

I’m energized by the fact that the next iteration of marketing is laser-focused on the total customer experience. That’s the way it should be!

2. Real-time customer connection I’ve stopped considering any research report developed before 2020. It’s almost certainly inaccurate. The pandemic was not an aberration or a bump in the road. This was a re-set in almost every way. March 2020 was the beginning of a new global business dashboard — a complex cocktail of new forces is rapidly shaping consumer views and habits.

This reality is reflected in a McKinsey report declaring that traditional customer surveys are nearly irrelevant. We simply cannot forecast consumer needs based on a snapshot of the recent past. The world is just moving too fast, and a company cannot possibly keep up with the pace of change through traditional surveys.

McKinsey predicts that in marketing’s future, customer experience will be in gaining an ability to constantly and rapidly assess a flow of real-time customer feedback.

This has always been a challenge in marketing — how do

brandknewmag.com

49

we tease out that signal from the noise and the problem will just get worse in the future. Marketing advantage will come to those who figure that out!

3. Relevance in cultural moments About two years ago, I was fascinated by a Pepsi presentation declaring that traditional branding is dead.

The CMO claimed that instead of forcing an image on consumers, marketing’s role is to become relevant within cultural moments.

At the time, I filed that away under “something interesting” … but I didn’t entirely understand what this meant at the time. Since then, I’ve seen more companies adopt this approach. A marketing leader at another company told me that branding used to be about creating bonfires. Now it’s about little sparks created to respond to fleeting cultural moments. Marketers are interpreting the relevance of the brand on the go. Isn’t that fascinating?

My friend Fabio Tamobosi, the CMO for Saucony told me:

“My job is to find the connections that are in the fabric of the community that intersects with our values. Then we give them the brand as a platform and the product as a canvas to amplify their voice.”

That is really next-level thinking that introduces a new expectation of connection and speed to the marketing equation. If a brand embraces and enhances a cultural moment as it is happening, it will be relevant. If it is simply positioning itself to “pile on” and look cool it will be ridiculed.

The pandemic provided an example of this. It was more than a crisis. It was an enduring cultural moment. It has become an era we will always remember and discuss. Most companies were slow to respond and eventually created look-alike ads saying the same thing: “We are with you in these unprecedented times.” Ugh. But the companies that rolled up their sleeves and DID something unique and profound in that moment will be remembered. And isn’t that what great marketing is all about?

Perhaps the best and greatest source of differentiation going forward will be relevance. Relevance in moments of meaning.

4. AI and ethics At the beginning of my book Marketing Rebellion, I provide a little history lesson to show that every time companies abuse consumers (through lies, secrets, interruptions, and privacy violations), the consumers fight back and eventually win.

The next area ripe for corruption is Artificial Intelligence and its ability to rapidly create Deep Fakes — video likenesses that are so real that they are undetectable and utterly

convincing.

Without question, this will unleash an unprecedented era of creativity in marketing’s future. It may rival the beginning of the internet in significance!

But unfortunately in this world, where corruption can occur, corruption will occur. And when it comes to these Deep Fakes and how fast misinformation spreads, I just don’t know how we will be able to fight back unless there is legislation soon that creates stiff penalties for those who use this tech for evil.

I think two years from now AI and deep fakes will dominate our content and our conversations.

5. The most human company wins™ Perhaps you were expecting this from me? What excited me is that the projections I made in Marketing Rebellion are coming true, amplified, and sped up by the pandemic.

Fabio Tambosi recently had another characterization for this: “The kinship economy.”

The world has never been more divided, polarized, alone, afraid, and isolated. Doesn’t it make sense that the companies and brands that can unite, connect, and create true community will win?

Honorable mention: The Metaverse The biggest ideas in tech often lurch into the lexicon before they are truly coherent. Jargon like the internet of things, the sharing economy, the cloud become over-hyped and overused. So let’s be cautious about “metaverse.”

The metaverse refers to a variety of virtual experiences, environments, and assets that gained momentum during the online-everything shift of the pandemic. Together, these new technologies hint at what the internet will become next.

Will we be building our own worlds in marketing’s future?

Will the creator economy run on non-fungible tokens? Will we join Faceook’s vision of virtual reality conference rooms, populated by lifelike avatars? Will we finally live our best lives through the lens of AR glasses?

The answer is, who knows?

Bits and pieces of these developments will certainly come together in meaningful ways but I think the only thing we can project is that 1) it will take longer than the evangelists tell us and 2) these marvelous developments will be mashed up by creative humans in ways we cannot even imagine!

Eventually, most of our business world will have some metaversatality. I just made that word up by the way. But where will it show up and when … a couple of years away to even project right now.

What do you think about marketing’s future? What trends are you watching that will change marketing the most in the coming years?

Mark Schaefer is the executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions. He is the author of several bestselling digital marketing books and is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant. The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world.

Can innovative design get us out of the mess it helped create?

By Carolyn Hadlock

One of the first winners of Fast Company’s Innovation by Design Awards, which launched in 2012, was the BioLite CampStove, a portable device for turning biomass into a heat source that cooks food, charges gadgets, and produces fewer toxic emissions. Another was Uber, which won for reinventing the user experience of hailing a ride. At the time, a juror praised Uber for “hacking the system.”

Two effective designs, two wildly divergent outcomes. BioLite went on to generate more than $25 million in revenue in 2020 and invest proceeds from the CampStove and other consumer products into green energy solutions for families living without access to the grid. To date, BioLite has supplied 2.9 million people in Asia and Africa with clean stoves and lighting. Uber went on to IPO in 2019 with an eye-popping $82.4 billion valuation, but in the process “disrupted” taxi drivers almost out of existence, clogged streets in cities, exacerbated pollution, and helped create a gig economy that frequently exploits workers.

This is what happens when a design ignores the larger ecosystem in which it operates. Effective design isn’t always good design. Good design is always responsible—to users, society, and the planet. Just look at BioLite.

Today, as we honor 10 years of Innovation by Design and welcome an impressive new class of honorees, we have the rare opportunity to look back and celebrate the wins, while reflecting on the mistakes of the past.

And the mistakes are plentiful. As I write this, in early August, the Pacific Northwest is recovering from a disastrous heat wave that killed hundreds of people, California faces severe drought and wildfire conditions, and we’ve already overshot our annual allotment of Earth’s resources (as calculated by the Global Footprint Network). Systemic racism, America’s original sin, still pervades our institutions and poisons our

culture. Vaccine misinformation runs amok on the internet, leaving a trail of dead behind. These are existential problems, and designers who craft the products and experiences we rely on every day have often been complicit—as have been editors celebrating problematic designs.

We must all do better. As Don Norman, author of the seminal book The Design of Everyday Things, tells Fast Company, “If it is design that got us here, design can get us out.”

The 599 honorees of this year’s Innovation by Design Awards point the way. In Oklahoma, a new museum by the experiential design studio Local Projects urges visitors to grapple with the history and lasting legacy of the Tulsa Race Massacre, without tying it up in a tidy bow. In Wisconsin, the architecture firm Studio Gang converted an abandoned coal power plant into a gym and student center, proving that one of the greenest ways to build is to reuse what already exists.

In California, Cue Health removed barriers to COVID-19 testing by developing a handheld device that gives accurate results at home in 20 minutes.

The following pages highlight exemplary design ideas from the 2021 competition. We also reveal where designers have made the biggest strides in the past 10 years, in sustainability, accessibility, and more. Finally, we ask an all-star cast of design experts for predictions about the future—plus how to shape it.

Our not-so-modest hope? To inspire the next 10 years of design innovation.

Suzanne Labarre Is The Editor Of Co.design. Previously, She Was The Online Content Director Of Popular Science And Has Written For The New York Times, The New York Observer, Newsday, I.d. Magazine, And Metropolis.

Innovate or Perish: What Businesses Should Learn from the Pandemic By knowledgewarton

Starbucks was prescient in its pandemic strategy.

The company responded to the upheaval that struck so many businesses last year by rapidly expanding its digital payment app to sign up millions of users. App customers contributed 50% of Starbucks’ U.S. sales in the first quarter this year, which also saw revenue increase by 11% over last year.

It’s a great example of what Wharton professor Serguei Netessine calls “innovate or perish.” He’s not talking about the kind of long-term transformation that requires years of research, development, and testing. This descriptor is specific to businesses that are forced by a crisis to pivot on a dime.

“As we went into the pandemic, it became clear that in order to continue operating, you need to become increasingly digital,” Netessine said, noting the pressure on retailers to respond to a massive surge in online shopping. “All those businesses could continue to operate, but they needed to have online capabilities, which many of them didn’t have.”

Netessine, who is a professor of operations, information and decisions, spoke during a segment of the Wharton Business Daily show on SiriusXM about the pandemic’s lasting lesson for businesses. (Listen to the interview at the top of this page.)

He also wrote an opinion piece on the topic that recently appeared in the Financial Times.

Permanent Changes in Consumer Behavior Starbucks wasn’t alone in its quick adjustment to the pandemic. Netessine praised Target, Best Buy, and others for reacting fast with curbside pickup, QR codes, and a variety

of methods that reduced person-to-person contact for both customers and employees.

The coronavirus vaccine is ushering a slow return to normal, but Netessine and other experts aren’t betting that customers will abandon online ordering in significant numbers.

“A lot of this consumer behavior is very different now. We’re now used to all of this,” he said about digital shopping. “So, I think from the point of the business owner, there is less risk in investing in those capabilities.”

Ramping up digital doesn’t take a lot of investment, Netessine noted. “All you have to do is rent out space on Amazon cloud, and you can be up and running overnight.”

He reminded managers that innovating in times of crisis is easier for firms that maintain a forward-thinking mindset and a culture of experimentation. After all, innovation is risky, fraught with failure, and hard to calculate.

“Experimentation is something that traditional companies just don’t do very well,” Netessine said. “There’s no budget for experimentation.”

The best time to innovate is when everything is going well.

“Paradoxically, most businesses don’t do that because they’re kind of hostages to their success. Why bother if we are making money and the current business model is working just fine?”

But when a sudden disruption hits, there’s no time or money to form and execute a survival plan from scratch.

“Unfortunately, that’s what most businesses do,” Netessine said. “They innovate when it is a time of crisis.”

What Apple’s big privacy changes mean for the future of marketing

By Filip Urban

Apple has done another transparency update. Sabri Suby looks at how this impacts digital marketers.

In April 2021, Apple made an announcement on privacy. This smashed headlong into the way digital marketers track, plan and prove return on investment (ROI) for their campaigns.

The App Tracking Transparency update meant that unless iPhone users dig through their settings menu and actively choose to allow third-party tracking, it’ll be set to ‘denied’ as the default.

What has it previously tracked?

App Privacy Report lets users see how often each app has used the permission they’ve previously granted to access their location, photos, camera, microphone and contacts during the past seven days.

It’s worth noting that for all its claims of privacy, Apple devices are some of the most intrusive in the world. Just go

What are the changes?

Data from app analytics firm Flurry around Apple’s App Tracking Transparency update has revealed that 96 percent of iPhone users in the US have opted out of app tracking on iOS 14.5. It’s a similar story here in Australia. Considering they have to actively make a choice to turn tracking on, it’s not a surprise that most users either don’t even know about

to Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services > Significant Locations on your iPhone to see a list of every single place you’ve ever been. This is complete with what time you arrived, how you got there and how long you were there. When billions of Apple users are sharing their private encrypted details one-on-one with Apple, that’s a hell of a lot of data in one Apple basket.

the option or have chosen to leave it squarely set to ‘off’.

What will that mean for marketers?

The iOS 15 update, which is currently in beta, has taken

Whatever Apple’s true intentions regarding privacy, some of

things even further with updates to mail and app privacy. Mail Privacy Protection stops invisible pixels being used to collect information about the user, preventing senders from knowing when they open an email and masking their IP address so it can’t be linked to other online activity or used to determine their location.

the new updates mean that anyone with an Apple mobile device using iOS 14.5 and up can no longer be tracked via third-party tracking, meaning it’s impossible to find out how effective different ads are. Unsurprisingly, this is a big problem for marketers.

Ever since Apple announced the major changes back in April,

brandknewmag.com

55

digital marketers have been facing a problem: how do we

Conversation API (CAPI). However, this isn’t a perfect solution

prove ROI if we can’t track mobile users? And should brands

just yet.

continue to spend money on ads that they can’t measure?

How do you know what marketing is effective without tracking? As we head into a tricky period where marketers are still figuring out Apple’s tracking ban, marketers need

Facebook will eventually figure out a workaround, but until it does, we’re all stuck in the wilderness without a gun.

What’s the solution for marketers?

to change their mindset until the dust settles on Apple’s new

Thankfully, there are a bunch of different reporting tools

privacy settings.

out there to close the loop on the conversion data, without

Then versus now Facebook has previously relied on its granularity on its audience insights. This includes the ability to track which audiences, demographics and interests are going to convert into leads and sales. Someone click on an ad would previously lead the marketer to be able to see whether that ad led to a sale or a lead.

Facebook’s traffic is 80 percent from a mobile device – more than half of that coming from Apple devices. But with the latest update, tracking this large chunk of audience is no longer possible. Now, when you click on a Facebook ad through the app on a device running iOS 14.5 or above, that lead gets sucked into a black hole. No more tracking, no ability to see which ads led to which sales.

It’s not just marketers and brands at risk: the shift will heavily impact Facebook’s business model until they find a way around it. Facebook is relying on people utilising their

relying on a Facebook pixel. Marketers are able to see where that person first came from, and originate that user back to their first transaction.

Marketers shouldn’t be surprised by these changes – adapting to ever-changing technology is simply the job of any good digital marketer. With Google’s ban on third-party cookies scheduled for 2023, there are even more challenges around the corner. It’s all about survival of the fittest.

The best way to strengthen a brand against these changes is to invest in the things that you can control. As a marketer, the job should be to funnel everyone from social media and get them on email and text message lists. These are platforms that can be controlled.

As has been seen time and time again, the tech giants will do what they want, when they want. For marketers, it’s the job to be prepared, and win back control.

Sabri Suby is the founder of marketing agency King Kong.

Steve Jobs’s real talent wasn’t design—it was seduction

By Michael Hageloh

I worked at Apple for 22 years. Here’s what Jobs taught me about how sex sells.

In the 22 years I worked at Apple, I rarely saw anyone sell anything. As a sales executive in the Higher Education division, it was my job to convince college administrators and students to spend more money on an iMac than a PC. But when Steve Jobs returned in 1997, traditional selling went extinct in our corner of Cupertino. Jobs was a master salesman, but to him, selling wasn’t selling. It was seduction.

Jobs built on the ideas of Apple’s ’70s marketing legend Regis McKenna, who saw before anyone else did that Apple’s early computers could appeal to people who didn’t spend their time disassembling motherboards—to students, teachers, musicians, and other creative people like me, who thought computers could be, you know, fun.

Because of Jobs, Apple’s sales, marketing, and design teams understood consumer psychology better than perhaps any company in history. We knew no one likes to be sold to.

People despise feeling like they’re just one more target a sales rep needs to make his monthly numbers, and who can blame them? That’s why, for me, selling was all about the relationship. When I called on university presidents and deans, I first sold them on me. Then on Apple. Finally, we talked about products.

But even then, we weren’t talking about beige boxes and “speeds and feeds”—salesman-speak for yammering on about processors and memory while the customer starts looking around for sharp objects. Jobs’s genius insight was that what consumers really want technology to do isn’t crunch numbers or store data but transform and transport— to take them somewhere and give them the power to change something about their world.

I was fortunate to represent a brand that placed design and functionality ahead of everything. I’ll never forget a meeting with Jobs where he was asked about the use of technology (computers) and he simply replied, “They are still too hard to use.” With that simple statement, we stopped being Apple Computer and became Apple.

That understanding was the key to Apple’s turnaround. In August of 1997, our company was on the ropes. That year, Microsoft invested $150 million—and supported a version of Office on the Mac—to keep us alive, probably as a favor to Jobs from Bill Gates. Of course, we were lucky to have created a series of epoch-defining products, including the iMac, iPod, and iPhone. But it’s not just the products that made Apple a trillion-dollar business. For us, “Think Different” was more than an advertising slogan. It was a mantra that defined our relationship with customers by inviting them to join us as part of something extraordinary.

The “Think Different” aura enabled us to transform Apple into a luxury brand. We quit worrying about price and focused on delivering value through functionality, design, and a customer experience fine-tuned down to the smallest detail. For example, how many companies at the time would spend thousands of hours creating the perfect unboxing experience? Apple did. Incessant attention to detail is one definition of luxury.

So, how did we seduce our customers? We had a few key tricks up our sleeves, and I’m not talking about some wine and a little Barry White: Music. In my book Live from Cupertino, I argue that Apple is more like a band than a company. How could it not be?

groupisd.com

57

From the earliest days, music was in our DNA. Practically everyone who worked at Apple had a musical background.

Music infused the entire company, from our sales teams to our marketing, so is it any surprise that our first gamechanging product was the iPod, followed by iTunes? We relied on the right words, rhythm, endless rehearsal, and the orchestration of one Mr. Jobs to cast a spell over our customers. Remember those iconic primary-colored iTunes TV spots with young people joyfully dancing in silhouette?

We wanted to convey that Apple was a feeling, and nothing captured that feeling better than music.

Sensuality. Before Apple, computers were boring. IBM, HP, and all the other PC players assumed that performance mattered more to consumers than pleasure or inspiration.

They were wrong. The candy-colored iMacs released in 1998 added a sensual dimension to what was also a powerful (for the time) machine: vibrant colors that provoked smiles, a curvaceous teardrop shape, and that round mouse (okay, we blew it with that one). The iMac was a delight to look at and to use, and people loved it. In the tech world, beauty became as important as speed and power. Littleknown fact: The candy-colored iMac shells became highly contentious in the Higher Education division at Apple. Why? University of Florida (Gator) orange is a slighter different shade than University of Tennessee (Volunteer) orange. As the former president of the University of Florida told me, “It’s Tennessee orange, not Gator orange.”

Tactility. Jobs’s gift was understanding that while consumers would be satisfied with fast, reliable devices, they craved magic, and nothing is more magical than an enchanted object. Where would Harry Potter be without his wand, or Gandalf without his staff? Apple’s products needed to be and feel magical. The tactile experience of using an iPod or iPhone had to be—well, it had to be exactly as you imagined it would be, from the texture of a notebook case to the feel of AirPods in your ears. Even the texture of our boxes and bags had to be just right. We wanted people to be able to

touch and own a little bit of magic.

Emotion. If I asked you to describe what it feels like to use a Windows PC, what would you say? Efficient, maybe? Wow, be still my heart. But the user experience, marketing, and versatility of Apple’s products made our customers feel like geniuses, like the icons in the “Think Different” ads, like people who could remake the world. Jobs and our marketing geniuses saw that while our competitors were utilitarian, Apple could be aspirational. Using an iPhone or MacBook Air, you could work wonders. Apple made people feel like they, too, could think different, and that brought them joy.

Belonging. Perhaps Apple’s greatest achievement was turning loyal customers into something more: a tribe.

People camped outside Apple stores for days to get early versions of the iPhone. That sense that there are two types of people in the world, “Apple people” and everyone else, was the most powerful tool in our sales and branding arsenal. When you were an Apple person, you were part of a family of iconoclasts, artists, and rebels. You belonged to something special. Who doesn’t want to feel like they’re part of a secret society or elite club?

This is high-minded stuff for a company that basically sells computers, phones, and software. I know. But Apple really did change the world in a way that IBM, Microsoft, Dell, HP, and even Facebook and Google haven’t. We did it by turning customers into followers, like how Deadheads used to follow the Grateful Dead. What are music, beauty, sensuality, emotion, and the sense of belonging if not the tools of seduction? The world was seduced by Apple and, despite a few hiccups (iPhone 4’s metal antenna, I’m looking at you), the company has kept the romance going since 1998.

If you want to move your organization beyond selling, find a way to seduce your customers and make them fall in love.

Brands asking us to copy and paste messages without personalization, say influencers

By Shawn Lim

Influencers around the world are being approached by brands with generic, cut and paste style messages, without personalization to them or their platform.

•

Despite the rise of social media talent agencies in the last decade, only 15% of influencers have opted to work with agents.

43% of influencers reported to have never or rarely received a personalized message from a brand tailored to their platform, according to HypeAuditor’s Influencer Outreach Survey.

•

In addition, more than two-thirds (67%) of the influencers surveyed who work with agents and talent agencies prefer to be contacted directly by brands.

•

40% of all influencers questioned stated that they prefer to be contacted directly on their social platform. Email communications remain the preferred method of 51% of influencers surveyed.

•

On average, most influencers (37%) receive one to three messages a month from brands; most inquiries are about free product testings (for 33% influencers), collaboration on sponsor posts (31% influencers), and brand ambassador proposals (for 18% influencers).

•

However, only one to two brand inquiries results in paid collaborations for almost 39% of respondents.

•

A previous survey found 76% of Instagram influencers are burying hashtag advertising disclosures within the small print of their posts.

Alex Frolov, the chief executive of HypeAuditor, says: “We know that the best brand and influencer relationships are based on authenticity and meaning. This research has reinforced that, from an influencer perspective, it is so important for brands to strike the right tone in their communication to influencers, prioritizing personalization and clarity above anything else.”

What did the report find?

• • •

59% of influencers stated they would like to see a clear idea of available budgets and expected deliverables.

61% of influencers want a clear description of the product or service to be advertised.

More than half (51%) asked for information on the company they would be aligning with.

See the DreamCube, the immersive spectacle that’s like walking into a video game

By Mark Wilson

The room is dark. On its floor sits a solitary soccer ball.

Suddenly, a glowing halo envelopes the ball. No matter where it’s kicked, the halo follows like sorcery. And then the

walls light up, becoming giant screens. That’s when I realize this is no ordinary room. It’s a giant video game.

Imagine Guitar Hero . . . but instead of riffing chords, you

groupisd.com

61

kick the soccer ball—and you can kick it as hard as you like, right into the wall of pixels.

crowd, Barton still wonders if our physical environments are the key to VR.

The demo I’m watching is but one of many possible apps built for DreamCube, an enticing new technology and brand that’s already signed deals with the NBA as well as with the Manchester United soccer club. It’s not sci-fi; it’s a real product. A total of 16 DreamCubes are already set up at Manchester United fan centers across China.

“There’s no such thing as a VR blockbuster,” Barton points out. “If the pandemic can’t create that for VR, what the heck is going to? There’s clearly something [bad] about being alone and isolated. Even [sitting] alone in a room, your senses are occluded [by a headset].”

The DreamCube is basically a 256-square-foot virtual reality room. It’s something of an oversize interactive cubicle: You step inside, and you’re in VR—no headset required.

It’s powered by a complex set of motion-tracking cameras and projection mapping hardware. Instead of placing you into a VR headset, this system can move pixels around the DreamCube at 240 frames per second (which is four to eight times the visual smoothness offered by modern-day video game consoles).

It all adds up to a modular, virtual reality box that can be dropped into almost any environment that’s in need of a little interactive entertainment, ranging from giant arenas to small bars. But perhaps the most important aspect of the DreamCube is that it’s only three-sided. The back wall is intentionally left open so that players can watch one another and swap in and out to take turns for a social experience.

“It’s kind of like a mixture of Topgolf, bowling, and karaoke,” says Jake Barton, a co-owner of DreamCube who developed the technology at his firm Local Projects in conjunction with Harves Global Entertainment and the MTM collective.

“We’re also using a lot of VR conventions, but in a way that’s communal but not isolating. It’s a big investment into physical space, and a [mixed reality] platform that doesn’t involve cutting your senses off.”

BUILDING THE DREAM To be fair, many of the core ideas in the DreamCube have been lurking on the fringes of virtual reality R&D for nearly 30 years. In 1992, researchers at the University of Illinois developed the CAVE (which stands for cave automatic immersive environment), ostensibly a bespoke DreamCube with a similar setup of three glowing walls and an interactive floor. In the mid-aughts, Microsoft created a system called Kinect, which could track human bodies in 3D space. Then in 2014, Microsoft Research built the IllumiRoom atop some of that Kinect hardware. The IllumiRoom used projectors to transform any space into a giant, interactive screen.

Barton understands the importance of immersive space more than most people. At Local Projects (which was Fast Company’s 2021 Design Company of the Year), Barton has spearheaded projects like the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, which mixed physical artifacts from 9/11 with all sorts of sounds and visualizations to contextualize the tragedy. More recently, Local Projects led the development of Planet Word, a museum full of magical opportunities, such as the ability to place a paper book onto a table only to have it come to life and tell its own story.

The DreamCube is a way to scale the bespoke interactive experiences that Local Projects developed largely for museums into a mass-produced, self-contained pod that can be dropped almost anywhere. The design of the cube itself is an important point. The technology is all squeezed into the ceiling, while the walls are just ordinary walls. It’s a stark contrast to large-scale spaces like the $30 million Illuminarium, which require a massive retail footprint.

Meanwhile, a DreamCube can fit inside most standard buildings (and it’s actually designed to squeeze perfectly into China’s modern building code).

SCALING DREAMCUBE For now, DreamCube has signed two powerhouse franchises in sports—the NBA and Manchester United. The Manchester United experience includes the aforementioned Guitar Hero soccer game. The NBA experience is yet to be revealed. While the company has a footprint already in China, it’s eyeing the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Africa for expansion.

“The immediate [potential] is fan activations and short-term experiences,” says Francis Person, CEO of DreamCube Innovations. “But this also goes to trends we’ve seen accelerated by COVID. . . . There’s a need for malls and arenas to have properties that are communal, where people go out to shop and spend time.”

These approaches were mostly abandoned. Aside from a few companies that are building giant, interactive entertainment spaces—like Illuminarium—personal electronics have become the name of the game for interactive realities. Today, the HTC Vive and Facebook’s Oculus Quest present a world of VR you wear in a headset, and Microsoft’s HoloLens is a set of glasses that can put holograms into your own environment.

So in the short term, DreamCube will entice partners in live entertainment, like sports and music, filling unused corners of stadiums with another draw aside from the main event itself.

And in places like China, DreamCube will be a way for fans who live abroad to get a small taste of their favorite sports.

But longer term, Barton and Person imagine that DreamCube could scale, getting more and more apps (created in-house or licensed by third parties). While it’s high-tech, the actual social experience of DreamCube would feel a lot like karaoke or bowling does today. People could watch one another play, then step up and take their turn.

Something was lost in this translation. Early digital reality experiments like the CAVE imagined your physical space as the anchor. Our physical environments are comfortable and social by nature, whereas headsets are essentially the opposite. And even while these headsets are technical marvels, receiving decent adoption from an enthusiast

“In any neighborhood suburb, you could throw this in [a bar]. On an NFL Sunday, you could track players, you could have a matrix with different games going on,” Person says.

“You could imagine this tied to fantasy sports . . . [but] you could be watching Jay-Z live in Brooklyn, too! There’s infinite capabilities.”

Book,

&

Line

He Said, She Said: Branding

By Michael Russo In He Said, She Said: Branding, the husband and wife team of Jaci and Michael Russo share what they’ve learned over their combined decades of experience working in branding and with each other. Through their unique voices, you’ll learn about tried-and- true branding best practices and even get an inside look into how their agency has continued to help businesses from coast to coast thrive for the past twenty years.

Brand Storytelling: Put Customers at the Heart of Your Brand Story

By Miri Rodriguez Written by the award-winning storyteller Miri Rodriguez at Microsoft, this actionable guide goes beyond content strategy and, instead, demonstrates how to leverage brand storytelling in the marketing mix to strengthen brand engagement and achieve long-term growth, with advice from brands like Expedia, Coca Cola, McDonalds, Adobe and Google.

The End of Marketing: Humanizing Your Brand in the Age of Social Media and AI

Sinker B.Y.O.B. Building Your Own Brand: Branding for Designers, Brand Strategy, Identity Assets, Logo Design, Blogging & Marketing

By Karan Gupta Who is this book for? This book is tailored for professionals in the fields of graphic design, branding design, visual design, ui/ux, business administration, brand management, public relations, architecture, interior design, content marketing and communication design.

REBRAND: The Ultimate Guide to Personal Branding

By Bernard Kelvin Clive In the midst of this noisy and busy world if you don’t purposely decide to stand-out you will be drowned by competition. This book contains guidelines to help you build an authentic personal brand that will promote your product and services.

Wally Olins: Brand New: The Shape Of Brands To Come

By Wally Olins

By Carlos Gil Social networks are the new norm and traditional marketing is failing in today’s digital, always-on culture. Businesses across the world are having to face up to how they remain relevant in the choppy waters of the digital ocean. In an era where a YouTube star gets more daily impressions than Nike, Coca-Cola and Walmart combined, traditional marketing as we know it is dead.

Wally Olins: Brand New: The Shape Of Brands To Come by Wally Olins is a an interesting presentation of branding and its related terms.

The book is a useful resource for everyone who wants to know everything about branding and how it works in the current world.

The Art of Advertising: George Lois on Mass Communication

Now Try Something Weirder: How to keep having great ideas and survive in the creative business

By Martin Kornberger Brands are a fait accompli: they represent a mountain range of evidence in search of a theory.

They are much exploited, but little explored. In this book, Martin Kornberger sets out to rectify the ratio between exploiting and exploring through sketching out a theory of the Brand Society.

By Michael Johnson Michael Johnson offers the most generous kind of professional advice: insightful but full of enthusiasm. Designers need cunning as well as inspiration.’

Deyan Sudjic OBE, Director of the Design Museum

groupisd.com

63

Logo, revised edition

By Michael Evamy The book contains a vast visual collection of over 1,600 symbols and logotypes, including 300 brand new logos. All the logos are grouped into visual categories such as crosses, stars, crowns, animals and people, and are shown in black and white to further emphasise the visual form. The logos are from a diverse range of companies and includes design masters such as Paul Rand and Saul Bass alongside some of the most exciting work from contemporary designers.

Digital Marketing Strategy: An Integrated Approach to Online Marketing

By Simon Kingsnorth

Social Media Marketing Mastery 2021:3 BOOKS IN 1-How to Build a Brand and Become an Expert Influencer Using Facebook, Twitter, Youtube & Instagram-Top Digital Networking & Personal Branding Strategies

By April Dunford Master Social Media Marketing & become an expert! Get your Social Media Marketing book collection Now!

Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life

By Rory Sutherland

Effectively select, align and manage digital channels and operations using this second edition of the bestselling guide, Digital Marketing Strategy. This accessible, step-by-step framework enables the planning, integration and measurement of each digital platform and technique, all tailored to achieve overarching business objectives.

“Sutherland, the legendary Vice Chairman of Ogilvy, uses his decades of experience to dissect human spending behavior in an insanely entertaining way. Alchemy combines scientific research with hilarious stories and case studies of campaigns for AmEx, Microsoft and the like. This is a must-read.” —Entrepreneur (“Best Books of the Year”)

Digital Branding: A Complete Step-by-Step Guide to Strategy, Tactics, Tools and Measurement

Hook Point: How to Stand Out in a 3-Second World

By Daniel Rowles

Hook Point: How to Stand Out in a 3-Second World, by out of the box thinker Brendan Kane, breaks down the most effective strategies to generate new opportunities, innovate and scale your business, and create a compelling brand— both online and off—so you can thrive in the new micro-attention world in which we live.

Use digital branding to enhance your online identity and learn how to plan, analyze, optimize and measure the tangible results of your digital brand campaigns, with this second edition of the bestselling book by Daniel Rowles - a respected CIM fellow, course leader, and industry thought leader.

The Choice Factory: 25 behavioural biases that influence what we buy

By Richard Shotton Winner of the Sales and Marketing Category at the 2019 Business Book Awards. Voted #1 in the BBH World Cup of Advertising Books, 2018. If you are in the business of influencing decisions, you need to understand what drives them. The Choice Factory is an essential read for anyone who wants to learn.

By Brendan Kane

The Hidden Psychology of Social Networks: How Brands Create Authentic Engagement by Understanding What Motivates Us

By Joe Federer From the former Head of Brand Strategy at Reddit comes a proven and thought-provoking approach to the digital economy and how brands can create authentic engagement that is rooted in the fundamental motivations behind human psychology