BrandKnew November 2016

Branding matters. Because branding matters.

Scan these QR Codes to download the Brand Knew App IOS

Android

brandknewmag.com

Published by

11.16#52

07 Dear Friends: Do you have a spring in your step this autumn? Is the end of the year coming as bringing good tidings? Well, we have tried our best to make sure you are ending the year on a high. This issue is packed with quality content that you as branding and marketing professionals would cherish. Like, what you can learn from Apple’s marketing. Or the debate on which is the greatest logo of all times? Snapchat’s change of name (to Snap) is a master stroke of genius. How did it come about? Know more here! There are a lot of annoying things that brands do on Social Media. Understand the do’s and dont’s. Also, you will relish the feature on what ‘Pokemon Go‘ can teach Advertisers. You maybe a BtoB brand but it is time to offer a BtoC experience. Also, the lessons from Samsung and how to handle a brand crisis. OOH (Out of Home) Advertising is witnessing a renaissance.

Understand more of that in this issue. There is bagfuls more for you to soak in and be enriched by. Till the next issue, enjoy…

Best

09 11 13 15 17 21 25

Suresh Dinakaran @sureshdinakaran

@Brandknewmag

linkd.in/1dsjYaW

isdbranding

bit.ly/1h95tgO

isdglobaldubai

suresh@groupisd.com Managing Editor: Suresh Dinakaran Creative Head/Director Operations: Pravin Ahir Magazine Concept & Design/ New Media Specialist: Mufaddal Joher Country Head, Australia: Norbert D’Souza Country Head, UK: Sagar Patil Regional Director: Krishna Chugh Country Manager, India: Vinit Chugh Digital Marketing Advisor: Brand & Revenue Development: Sreejish Lal Digital Outreach & Engagement Specialist: Khaleef Mayowa Junaid Web Specialist: Prasanta Kumar Sahu Online Support: Mahendra Kumar Behera

Brand Knew is published by

For Advertising Enquiries: info@groupisd.com or call + 971 4 386 7728 All Copyright of the content in this issue rests fully & comprehensively with the respective contributors and/or media platforms at all times, as the case may be.

www.brandknew.groupisd.com | www.groupisd.com Download Mobile App from

27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41

CONTENTS

Take Note of Samsung: Tips for a Brand Crisis The Power of Cohesive Branding: Why Apple Wins What ‘Pokemon Go‘ can teach advertisers Brand experience drives up loyalty The Age of the Wordless Logo Out-Of-Home Advertising Experiencing A Renaissance What’s The Greatest Logo Of All Time?

The case for reward-based advertising Why B2B Marketers Must Offer Customers a B2C Expaerience Is marketing’s ‘cauldron of innovation and chaos’ a ladder to success?: A report from IAB Mixx The Most Annoying Things Brands Do on Social Media Brands see potential in virtual reality advertising The Marketing Genius Behind Snapchat’s Name Change Social Success for the CMO: Four Signs You’re Doing It Right 10 Things You Need to Learn From Apple’s Marketing Book, Line & Sinker

Take Note of Samsung: Tips for a Brand Crisis

By Lindsay Stein

brandknewmag.com

08

It’s every marketer’s worst nightmare—your product suddenly presents a danger to consumers. It could be Chipotle’s E. coli, Blue Bell Creameries’ listeria, or General Motors’ faulty ignition switches. And yes, it can happen to you. Just ask Samsung, which is now facing $2.3 billion in losses from its fire-catching Galaxy Note 7 smartphone.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission recalled the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 last month. Amid escalating headlines, the Federal Aviation Administration banned them from flights. But once the replacements started having the same problems, Samsung had to shut down production entirely. The decision is expected to shrink the company’s third-quarter profit by a third, but the long-term brand damage is incalculable.

In a worst-case scenario, what are the best steps to take if your brand gets enmeshed in a similar crisis?

We asked the experts.

Be

open

with

words without action are meaningless, he said. In Samsung’s case, communication has been largely confined to its web page, last updated Oct. 13.

Halt all marketing. Wait until after the crisis is no longer in the spotlight to do marketing; before then, even ads for other products will remind consumers of your problems. “Take the money you’ve withheld from marketing for a few months and do extra marketing when you’re coming out; otherwise, you’re wasting your money,” Mr. Grabowski said. People close to the situation said that Samsung has pushed back its network TV buys until later this quarter.

If you must advertise, do so carefully. Maybe you have a big launch of another product line that can’t wait. That could apply to Samsung’s Gear VR headset, which uses a phone to operate and was predicted to be a hot holiday seller. Tech publications last week reported that Oculus, a partner on Gear VR, has added a software update that disables support for Note 7. Samsung added a hard-to-find notation about the update on its web page but could not be reached for comment at press time on marketing support for its VR device. Katie Sprehe, director-reputation research at APCO Worldwide, advises marketers in similar situations that if you need to advertise, make sure your marketing doesn’t ignore the crisis at hand.

Put a face on your company. Samsung “seems like a faceless company,” said Ms. Sprehe. “They need someone to speak with authority,” she said. Having a visible spokesperson will help instill more confidence in the brand among consumers, shareholders and employees. In its early communications, Samsung put forward Samsung America President-Chief Operating Officer Tim Baxter. He apologized in a video posted Sept. 16, but also said the replacement phones were safe—obviously before the company discontinued the Note 7 altogether.

consumers, media, regulators, shareholders.

That means not allowing corporate culture to get in the way. Gene Grabowski, partner at Washington, D.C.based public affairs firm Kglobal, advises having “true conversations” with your brand’s audiences even if that flies in the face of established practice. “[You] have to be very transparent, which can be difficult for a company like Samsung that is large, complicated and layered and is also working within a Korean mindset and culture where it’s more traditional,” said Mr. Grabowski.

Follow through on promises and explain progress. For each step, show “progress milestones” to consumers and customers, said Howard Fencl, VP at Hennes Communications. “You have to tell anything you know when you know it” because

Be first with the news. Don’t let someone else control your narrative. Samsung was slow in updating the public and posting on social media, which caused the company to “withdraw from the reputation bank that it’s been building up over all these years,” said Mr. Fencl. Being first to share information is critical, especially since “the first news cycle includes social media.”

Share as much as possible about internal procedures.

Samsung’s internal processes “are under a microscope” right now, said Ms. Sprehe, especially after The New York Times reported that hundreds of engineers testing the Note 7 at the company weren’t allowed to email findings due to management’s fear of lawsuits. Balance internal controls with the public good. While Samsung may not be able to share a lot right now about what’s going on internally, it should try to give a little bit of information so it doesn’t seem like it’s being purposely nontransparent.

The Power of Cohesive Branding:

Why Apple Wins

By Adrianne Pasquarelli

The days of just selling stuff are long gone. Today, in the race for consumers, marketers need to create entire, cohesive ecosystems in order to provide the most value. Brand consultancy Interbrand recently released its 2016 Best Global Brands report, ranking the top 100 most valuable brands for the 17th time. For the fourth year in a row, Apple and Google snagged the top spots—Apple’s brand value rose 5% to $178,1 million, and Google’s grew 11% to $133.3 million, Interbrand found.

But the report found that a big part of what makes brands like Apple valuable is their cohesiveness as a connected business

system. Apple communicates with its customers through its hardware, software, and retail stores to deliver one consistent narrative or ecosystem, said Josh Feldmeth, chief executive, North America at Interbrand.

“These companies are growing because they’re building ecosystems around human beings and natural behavior—it’s about adding a set of products and services that are relevant but doing it in a connected way,” he said, noting that the issue has risen in importance in recent years with the increase in digital and social media. “With brands like Apple and

Amazon, or any of these amazing ecosystems, the deeper you go or the longer you stay, the more value you receive as a customer, and that’s how they’re driving growth.”

Car companies are also trying to evolve their technology to offer more solutions to shoppers.

According to an Interbrand chart, the most cohesive brands are Apple, Colgate, and Adobe. Google is a little less cohesive, and Xerox, is in the least cohesive realm. Mr. Feldmeth noted that being cohesive can be challenging for marketers.

“In a more linear model, marketers could operate more or less independently,” he said, noting they were under pressure from C-suite colleagues but that was it. Today, they need to “integrate functionally around the customer,” which requires collaboration, interdisciplinary skill sets and technology fluency, he said.

Interbrand found that, in addition to Apple and Google, the top five most-valuable brands included Coca Cola, Microsoft and Toyota. Tesla and Dior made the list for the first time this year.

What ‘Pokemon Go‘ can teach advertisers A FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN NEED FOR COMMUNITY MAY BE THE NEXT BIG OPPORTUNITY FOR MARKETERS

By Lisa Lacy

According to Adam Bain, chief operating officer of Twitter, at the recent IAB Mixx event in New York, the first two weeks of Thursday Night Football livestreams on Twitter saw an average of 2.35m viewers.

And that’s in part because “the audience isn’t just connected to devices, but to each other,” he said.

Consumers today indeed want to feel connected – and fulfilling that need will present an opportunity for brands and marketers in the years ahead. That was according to another IAB Mixx speaker, Kevin Slavin, who is founder of Playful

Systems at the MIT Media Lab. Slavin said the Pokemon Go phenomenon is a good example of this concept in action.

“Pokemon Go is bigger than anything that you or I will ever do,” Slavin said.

It took just 19 days to reach 50 million downloads – and had 500 million downloads within 70 days. It also earns about $10 million a day and was played by one out of every 16 people on earth at its height – or what Slavin called “an America and a half worth of people.”

groupisd.com

12

And, as a result of the Pokemon phenomenon, Slavin said he has seen countless new pitches for companies that want to do location-based games now, too.

But, per Slavin, it’s the brands and marketers that provide new types of experiences that actually mean something to people that will be rewarded as consumers will spend time with them. In Japan, for example, McDonald’s locations are PokeStops and PokeGyms and the brand has seen a 19 per cent spike in sales for those 3000 locations.

“They knew what was possible and what people wanted.

That’s why this happening,” Slavin said. “We knew people wanted to feel reconnected to the places they live when cities become theme park versions of themselves. It conspires to make people hungry.”

And, he said, location-based games address a fundamental human need as a result of becoming disconnected.

“We look for ways to re-enchant the places we go – they become so routine and small,” he added.

And so, as a result, brands and marketers need to think about what they have that brings back the feeling people had when Mash was on and 125 million Americans were doing the same thing at the same time, Slavin said.

“None of us have that anymore — of actually feeling in sync, of feeling the same thing at the same time,” Slavin said. “It’s not how Twitter, Instagram or TV function. All of these things have desynchronized. It’s about how to make it feel like we’re part of one another’s lives again.”

In other words, Slavin said, what people are looking for is other people.

“There’s a totally unmet demand for feeling present with other people,” Slavin said. “I don’t mean connected to them.

You know what is happening in their life. I mean to feel they are there. We don’t really have anything built for that.

Things that happen from time to time — like Red Bull with the stratosphere jump — there were 10 million people who engaged with that and not just the jump. They were engaging one another…there was promise [with] platforms like Twitter, but they have come up short. It’s about how to engage those so they feel like what you feel in this room when we saw that Wrigley’s ad. It’s different to see it together than to watch on your phone and alone. That phenomenon is under-explored, but the technology exists. That’s the next big thing, but I don’t know what it looks like.”

For his part, Lars Bastholm, global chief creative officer at Google, agreed technology changes, but fundamentally people do not. In other words, marketers will inevitably find new ways to connect.

“VR is at the stage where the Web was in ‘95/’96,” Bastholm said. “We kind of know this will be really, really, really big, but we don’t know what parts.”

Bastholm also pointed to Project Soli, or what he called a remote control for the world, as real-life magic.

“[They’ve] actually developed magic. It’s a series of hand gestures that impact the physical world. That’s what this is,” Bastholm said. “Now we have to figure out how to apply magic, but I am so deeply fascinated by what we can do with this and where we can go. The combination of voice and gestures can control the world.”

Lauren Wiener, president of buyer platforms at Tremor Video, also said we’re about to see AR/VR move from gimmick to mainstream.

“As more immersive experiences emerge to capture [consumers’] imaginations, I believe gaming is the petri dish to watch,” she added.

And, again, she said that’s in part because of a tribal sense of belonging consumers want and need, like the communal pleasures of the movie theater. Lockheed Martin’s Trip to Mars is a good example of one such experience.

Bryan Wiener, executive chairman of 360i, also noted consumers want to feel connected, but his solution was earning consumers’ attention via storytelling.

“The Internet was supposed to be the death of advertising,” he added. “We are flooded by so much information our brains are fried. We’re seeking emotional connections with people.

The products we consume and the underlying companies that provide them -- we care about their values. And how do you connect with people in digitally led environment? Stories.”

This can include classic ascending storytelling in which storytellers build up to a climax or modern descending storytelling, which is much more like the inverted pyramid in journalism in which the most important part of the story is in the headline and the first paragraph.

“Journalists have a few seconds to get your attention,” he said. “And even if you decide not [to read the whole story], you will get the gist.”

Geico’s pre-roll ad on YouTube that jokes about ad skipping is a good example of descendent storytelling.

“The completion rates were amazing and even if [consumers] did skip it, the message was given [in the first five seconds],” Wiener said.

Agencies/campaigns of the future will also have to be channel agnostic, he said.

One example of this concept in action is Canon’s Photo Coach, which used social listening to identify the most photographed areas of New York and captured real-time data to deliver tips to allow consumers to take the best possible pictures.

“It shows how to deploy data in marketing programs and illustrates a program that couldn’t be done if relegated to one channel,” Wiener added.

Lisa Lacy Senior Reporter @TheDrum. Contributor @CMO_com. @WTFSEO’s #1 fan. My favorite letter is L.

Brand experience drives up loyalty

By Warc staff

Brands can increase customer loyalty while also boosting the likelihood of repeat business and brand advocacy if they can offer an emotional connection with consumers, a new study has found.

According to creative agency Rufus Leonard, loyalty to a brand does not hinge solely on customer satisfaction and experience, but also on whether a brand can engage with consumers across five key touchpoints.

For its inaugural Brand Experience Index, Rufus Leonard identified these five facets of experience that consumers have when interacting with a brand as “think”, “sense”, “feel”, “do” and “connect”.

It then tested these touchpoints on 2,000 UK adults with regard to 30 brands across the retail, telecoms and airline sectors, Marketing Week reported.

Within each sector, Rufus Leonard selected 10 brands, five established brands and five challenger brands, based on longevity and revenue, and assigned a score with 140 at the top end of the scale and 20 the lowest.

While this is all good news for Singapore Airlines, there are broader lessons for all brands because the study claimed a direct correlation between a strong Brand Experience Index score and brand loyalty and advocacy.

According to the methodology, Singapore Airlines topped the rankings with 96 points, closely followed by Lycamobile (94), giffgaff, the UK mobile operator (92), IKEA (91) and Emirates, the Dubai-based airline (90).

It said every 10-point increase gives a 13% rise in agreement with the statement “this brand will be my first choice in the future”, a 9% increase in agreement with “I will be loyal to this brand in the future”, and a 17-point rise in the Net Promoter Score.

The report said the airline sector fared well, although Ryanair, the budget Irish carrier, performed the worst with a Brand Experience Index of 66.

Rufus Leonard noted that Singapore Airlines achieved a “think” metric 20% higher than all other airlines in the study while its “connect” score was 17% higher than the sector average, which was attributed to its successful frequent-flyer programme.

Singapore Airlines also scored 18% higher on the “do” metric, which the report attributed to the company’s digital innovations, such as an app that helps passengers to review and control their in-flight entertainment from their phone.

Commenting on the findings, Laurence Parkes, Chief Strategy Officer at Rufus Leonard, said: “Because of the fragmentation of marketing, you have agencies that focus on particular areas – the experiential agency focusing on ‘sense’, the ad agency looking at ‘feel’ and ‘think’ and the social agency looking at ‘connect’.

“The challenge is to pull those elements together and say that a brand should be thinking about all five areas if it wants to create a deep connection with customers.”

Data sourced from Marketing Week; additional content by Warc staff

The Age of the Wordless Logo “CONSUMERS ARE JADED ABOUT ADVERTISING IN A WAY THEY WEREN’T SEVERAL DECADES AGO.”

By Kalle Oskari Mattila

MasterCard unveiled its new logo earlier this summer, and as far as rebrandings go, the tweaks were subtle: The company kept its overlapping red and yellow balls intact, and moved its name, which was previously front and center, to beneath the balls, while making the text lowercase. With increasing frequency, MasterCard said, it would do away with using its name in the logo entirely. The focus would be more on the symbol than the words.

MasterCard’s move reflects a wider shift among some of the most widely recognized global brands to de-emphasize the text in their logos, or remove it altogether. Nike was among the first brands to do this, in 1995, when its swoosh began to appear with the words “Just Do It,” and then without any words at all. Apple, McDonald’s, and other brands followed a similar trajectory, gravitating toward entirely textless symbols after a period of transition with logos that had taglines like “Think Different” or “I’m lovin’ it.”

This shift is ostensibly in accordance with a more streamlined approach to design, as well as certain features of the modern economy: Symbols work better than long names on computer screens and apps, and they allow for greater flexibility if a company wants to dabble in multiple industries at once.

For instance, names like Starbucks Coffee and MasterCard are tied to specific products in ways that symbols are not, which can be a disadvantage at a time when it’s perfectly plausible for a company that makes phones to make cars too. Additionally, visual cues can travel across borders more easily, because they eliminate the need for translation.

The evolution of MasterCard’s logo (MasterCard / The Atlantic)

brandknewmag.com

16

But perhaps the most powerful impetus for these slimmeddown logos is that it’s increasingly more difficult to reach buyers when so many of them are skeptical of big corporations. A recent survey by the public-relations firm Cohn & Wolfe found that four-fifths of global consumers now consider brands neither open nor honest. “Consumers are jaded about advertising in a way they weren’t several decades ago,” says Adam Alter, an associate professor of marketing at New York University’s Stern School of Business, via email.

“It is harder to appeal to them than it used to be, and they tend to see through overt marketing pitches.” That has in turn led to a new arsenal of branding tactics. “Companies have had to learn subtlety,” Alter says.

The evolution of McDonald’s logos (McDonald’s / The Atlantic)

Among that arsenal is what’s called “debranding” or “decorporatizing”—a strategy based on paring down that can only be deployed by the most identifiable of brands. Some marketers believe that debranding can make global brands appear “less corporate” and “more personal” to consumers.

Nameless logos can evoke more personal and immediate reactions—which is important in a media environment with plenty of possible distractions and diversions. “Researchers have demonstrated that the use of visual imagery (vs. verbal imagery) in advertising increases consumers’ attention and challenges them to interpret and understand the ad’s message in a more active manner than words do,” wrote Jill J. Avery, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, in an email.

“This process of interpretation or ‘elaboration’ produces a higher quantity of mental images and, in many cases, a more personalized understanding of the ad’s message.” In short, it is easier to make associations based on two bright, primarycolored balls than it is with the word MasterCard.

Cups with Starbucks’s logos from (from left) 1971, 1987, 1992, and 2011 (Starbucks)

The need to get personal and friendly is particularly germane to young people, the target market of many global consumer-product enterprises. It’s likely that this factored into MasterCard’s decision to rebrand. As an increasing number of consumers—especially younger ones—prefer to make transactions on their phones rather than using cash or cards, and shy away from racking up credit-card debt, one worry for MasterCard’s investors is that the company hasn’t fully broken into the mobile-payments market yet. By contrast, PayPal—another brand that carried out a visual refresh a few years ago in which it de-emphasized its name on its logo— enjoys a substantial Millennial user base, a good portion of which is loyal to Venmo, a popular mobile-payment app it acquired.

The benefits of debranding can be huge. One of the most successful executions of it has been the “Share a Coke” promotion, for which Coca-Cola replaced its name on bottles with people’s first names, like Sarah and David, and other everyday monikers, like Mom and Dad. The campaign increased Coca-Cola’s U.S. sales by more than 2 percent and, in doing so, helped reverse more than 10 years of decline in Coke consumption in the U.S.

The evolution of Shell’s logo (Shell)

The advertising industry likes to call this type of marketing “authentic.” Cohn & Wolfe compiles an annual list of the “world’s most authentic brands,” drawing on surveys of nearly 12,000 consumers in 14 countries. This year’s Top 20 includes Paypal and MasterCard, as well as Coca-Cola. Authenticity, of course, is a funny thing when it comes to marketing: Asserting one’s authenticity feels, well, inauthentic. At a time when consumers are placing more and more importance on companies that feel genuine rather than corporate, it makes all too much sense that marketers would start trying to make it more difficult to distinguish between the two.

Kalle Oskari Mattila is a graduate student in the nonfiction MFA writing program at Columbia University.

Out-Of-Home Advertising Experiencing A Renaissance

By Lisa Lacy

When the Detroit Red Wings want to sell more tickets, celebrate marquee moments, or thank fans, the ice-hockey team turns to digital billboards.

According to Rob Mattina, vice president of marketing for the Red Wings, these out-of-home (OOH) assets play an important role in the Red Wings’ marketing mix because the brand can easily change messaging to accommodate needs.

“Sports isn’t a consistent product,” Mattina told CMO.com.

“It changes on a daily basis, and you can’t predict winning or losing streaks.”

And while digital billboards give the Red Wings flexibility, they also illustrate how OOH assets broadly–and billboards, specifically–are evolving.

A Brief History According to OOH trade organization Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA), OOH has a storied history that can be traced to obelisks in Egypt, but also includes circus posters in the 19th century and a holiday campaign from Coca-Cola in the early 20th century that gave rise to our modern interpretation of Santa.

Insiders now say these once static assets are undergoing profound change, which means OOH is poised to thrive in an era of data, analytics, and micro-moments. In fact, according to OAAA, OOH revenue was up 4.6% in 2015 from the previous year for a total of $7.3 billion, which marks an all-time high after 23 quarters of growth.

Miko Rahming, senior vice president of innovation and creative at media and tech company Intersection, went as far as calling the evolution underway a “renaissance.”

“The physical world is becoming more and more connected, and as digital screens, mobile devices, free high-speed Wi-Fi, proximity networks, and so on continue to become ubiquitous, your journey through the world will become more and more like a web browsing experience, with access to information and opportunity based on

groupisd.com

18

OOH is the only medium consumers have to interact with as soon as they go outdoors, said Arthur Ceria, CEO of digital marketing and media relations firm CreativeFeed.

“There is a choice about whether or not to check your phone, go online, or hop on social media, but an OOH ad will just be there–displayed next to you at a bus stop [or] on a billboard while you wait for the traffic light to change,” Ceria said.

3. Billboards and digital/social/ mobile are better together:

time, place, and contextual data,” Rahming told CMO.com.

“Just like the virtual online experience, this means brands will find incredible new ways to engage the public in meaningful ways.”

‘Renaissance’ At Play Here’s a closer look at how experts told us this socalled renaissance is playing out–and why the seemingly underappreciated OOH sector is more relevant than ever.

1. Until teleportation is an option, consumers will go outside: Unlike mediums like TV, radio, and newspapers, which have seen drastic changes in consumption, OOH will endure because consumers–unless they have reality-show-caliber phobias–are never going to stay home 24 hours a day, said Jeff Tan, vice president of strategy at OOH communications agency Posterscope, in an interview with CMO.com.

“We are creatures of habit. We drive down the same highways, we take the same trains, and we pass the same billboards,” Tan said.

2. Consumers can try to ignore billboards, but they’re always there:

New media channels don’t tend to replace older ones, but, rather, they find “a happy form of co-existence,” said Mark Mulhern, president of the East region at digital marketing agency iCrossing.

Indeed, the integration of data and technology means advertisers can tap into OOH like never before. “And it’s really shifting into bringing back the things that digital has kind of lost–the sensory experiences, feelings, and interactions,” Ceria added.

And with the rise of connected and driverless cars, expect to see much more interaction between physical outdoor assets and mobile devices. In fact, said Dan Hight, senior vice president of channel partnerships at mobile location platform xAd, marketers can extend the reach of OOH placements by geofencing place-based ads and delivering display ads on mobile phones when consumers are in proximity to a given billboard.

“We call it the ‘priming effect’–the power of the billboard plus a mobile ad [yields] higher performance of the ad than a mobile ad alone, and being able to have an ad that is reinforced by mobile is producing higher results than the industry average,” Hight told CMO.com.

4. Advertisers are getting really creative–and including some truly whiz-bang features: Take the Xbox Survival billboard, for example, in which eight Lara Craft fans attempted to outlast each other on a billboard while exposed to extreme conditions.

Other memorable executions in recent history include BA’s Look Up campaign, which displayed real-time information about flights overhead, and Coke Zero’s drinkable billboard at the 2015 Final Four.

Examples also include an increasing number of contextually relevant executions from brands such as Dannon Yogurt, which is adjusting its messaging on billboards in Toronto and Montreal based on real-time traffic. What’s more, earlier this year, Posterscope worked with Chevrolet on billboards in Dallas, Chicago, and New Jersey for its Malibu model, which used vehicle-recognition technology to identify the front grills of oncoming cars from 1,000 feet and to display conquesting messaging when it identified a Nissan Altima, Toyota Camry, Honda Accord, or Hyundai Sonata.

enables marketers to tap into mobile data to monitor how many people walk by a given location, as well as how frequently they do so–and even what types of phones they have–can be folded into brand experiences, said Manolo Almagro, senior managing director of retail technology and innovation at marketing agency TPN. This also allows marketers to deliver better messages than simply erecting a billboard based on a theoretical number of eyeballs.

“We needed a way to stand out from the crowd,” Posterscope’s Tan said. “Think about the midsize sedan market: It’s pretty crowded and competitive. We needed to win in key markets ... [and delivered] a personalized dynamic message, like ... comparing their car’s safety record or ... a message comparing fuel efficiency.”

According to Tan’s figures, an ensuing measurement study found consumers were 50% more likely to recall the ad as a result of this quasi-personalization.

“It has to be more than that,” Almagro told CMO.com. “People are used to the multisensory experiences they can get with their phones. It’s all about what they’re interested in versus what you want them to see, so it’s turning the tables to become more of a ‘talking to you because I understand your mindset in this location’ scenario.”

Indeed, consumers have certain expectations when it comes to personalization in marketing, and OOH is no exception, said Wade Forst, senior director of emerging experiences at interactive agency Razorfish. Ergo, advertisers may not be able to get as one-to-one with a billboard as, say, an email, but they can still use OOH data to speak to demographics, time of day, or events to deliver memorable content.

6. With data comes measurement and optimization:

Ian Dallimore, director of digital innovation and sales strategy at outdoor advertising company Lamar Advertising, agreed that contextually relevant creative helps break through the clutter. It can be as simple as weather-triggered messaging for raincoats from the Gap when it starts to drizzle or heated steering wheels for GM when it’s cold outside, he told CMO. com.

“It’s using innovations and technology to be a part of a consumer’s life pattern,” Dallimore added.

5. OOH can tap into data now, too: According to Tan, billboards are only getting smarter thanks, in large part, to audience data derived from on- and offline sources, such as the websites a consumer visits, where he or she is likely to live, and social sentiment.

“OOH has always been treated as the redheaded stepchild of media because it was not measurable in many ways,” xAd’s Hight added. “But we’re now ... getting some intelligent data around physical location [and] we can ... build real profiles rather than say, ‘Buy this billboard at this intersection.’”

To that end, insight generated by proximity technology, which

While measurement and attribution have lagged in OOH, Cindy Gustafson, chief strategy officer at media and marketing services firm Mindshare, noted partnerships between OOH asset providers such as Clear Channel and measurement companies such as Placed or PlaceIQ allow marketers to explore behavior after consumers have been exposed to certain messages.

For its part, Tan said Posterscope also partners with mobile panel providers, which, in turn, incentivize consumers to download apps that share information about their whereabouts. This enables Posterscope to track who is driving by its billboards as well as what content is displayed at that precise moment–or what Tan called “the OOH industry’s version of a viewed impression.”

7. Programmatic is coming: Further, Tan said, OOH is catching up in terms of how it buys inventory in real time, like its online cousins. However, OOH has a long way to go, in part because the supply of physical assets is finite, but also because the industry does not have audience data integrated with available offerings, and it lacks a common set of standards, he noted.

Indeed, Andrew Sriubas, executive vice president of strategic planning and development at OOH media company Outfront Media, said his company’s billboards can be bought in an automated fashion, although not necessarily with real-time bidding just yet.

What’s The Greatest Logo Of All Time?

FROM IBM TO I LOVE NY, DESIGNERS AT PENTAGRAM, MOVING BRANDS, UNDER CONSIDERATION, AND MORE PICK THEIR FAVORITES.

By John Brownlee

A logo is meant to be a brand’s most enduring symbol, a graphic totem that distills a company’s essence down into a single graphical mark that is beautiful, flexible, and memorable. Crafting such a deceptively simple symbol is a massive undertaking, so it’s no surprise that the majority of the world’s logos are so disposable. But when a logo achieves those lofty goals? It’s the design equivalent of what Robert Frost once wrote about great poetry: You never get over it.

Of course, what’s immortal for one person might be boring to another, and that goes double for designers, who tend to be opinionated on the subject. With that in mind, we set out to discover what some of the most talented graphic designers working today believe is the best logo ever made. Their responses range from surprising to provocative, spanning the world’s oldest trademark to a famously accidental logo. These are the logos

that speak to them, again and again.

The ones that, as Frost might say, they just can’t get over.

I ❤ NY: “AN N.Y.C. LANDMARK IN AND OF ITSELF” Designed by Milton Glaser for the New York State Department of Commerce, this classic mark has fronted T-shirts and bumper stickers since 1977. In execution, it’s simplicity itself: a slab serif font designed to look like it’s fresh copy right off a typewriter, mixed with a red, bubbly proto-emoji for love. But that simplicity is what makes it so inclusive and adaptable: Everyone can understand and love I

❤ NY.

That’s why Min Lew and Thierry Brunfant, partners at Base, give it their vote for the greatest of all time. “It’s not only a

brandknewmag.com

22

logo, it’s a sentence,” they write. “It’s inclusive. It can be appropriated by everyone. And it was! It’s a noncommercial icon that became commercial because of its emotional strength, which is why it has become the graphic icon of N.Y.C. In fact, along with the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty, I ❤ NY has become an N.Y.C. landmark in and of itself. Can you name another logo that achieved this status for a city?”

BASS ALE: IT’S “HARD TO BEAT” THE FIRST TRADEMARKED LOGO When we asked Pentagram partner Eddie Opara to name his favorite logo, he picked one that’s almost 150 years old— and was designed by a person whose name has long been lost to history. His choice, the Bass Ale logo, is an utterly simple and iconic red triangle created in 1875; it has the distinction of being the world’s first registered trademark.

“I’m not going to say Coca-Cola, IBM, or McDonald’s, which have used their monetary power in product marketing to elevate their brands,” Opara writes. “What I’m interested in is that you don’t have to be a ubiquitous corporation to have the greatest mark.” Bass Ale isn’t as big as those massive brands, but in Opara’s eyes, its logo easily beats those larger corporations. “I see the Bass logo as standing out through its reductive, iconic nature,” he says. “Through simplicity, it relays its character. It’s a classic, the first, and hard to beat.”

IBM: A LOGO BUILT TO LAST “AS LONG AS CIVILIZATION EXISTS”

Not every graphic designer we asked ignored the big boys, though. Armin Vit, the prolific logo critic and cofounder of graphic design firm Under Consideration, gave Paul Rand’s iconic IBM logo the nod for world’s greatest.

Designed in 1972, Rand’s eight-bar logo has been synonymous with Big Blue for almost 45 years now. That’s an eternity, in an era when tech companies seem to rebrand every year, but Vit credits Rand with creating something timeless. “In terms of longevity, this is one of the few logos that can go on for as long as civilization exists,” he writes. “Saying that a logo is timeless is a cliché, but this one literally is timeless in that it manages to convey technology without being dated to a specific advancement or moment in time.”

“The lines can be continually interpreted in any way whatsoever, and they take on the meaning of whatever IBM decides to push at any given time, whether that’s Watson or cloud services. It’s an amazing bit of typography that can be made into a huge sign for a building or a tiny bug on a screen, without sacrificing recognizability. And this doesn’t even begin to cover the amazing alternate version of Eye Bee M.”

THE 1968 OLYMPICS: IT CAPTURED “A SPECIFIC TIME AND PLACE IN HISTORY”

Not content with naming just one logo as the world’s greatest, Vit cast a second vote: the logo designed for Mexico’s 1968 Olympic Games by American graphic designer Lance Wyman.

In a way, this mark is similar to the IBM logo, using repetitive geometry to create typography. “[This logo] was the perfect visual manifestation of a specific time and place in history, capturing the exuberance of the 1960s, the culture of Mexico, and the fledgling rise of corporate identity programs,” Vit explains. It also almost perfectly integrates the Olympics rings “into a very distinct visual language that created a powerful, unified graphic between the place (Mexico), the time (’68), and the event (the Olympics).”

The logo is polarizing among designers. For example, Milton Glaser has said that it has a tendency toward illegibility, and Vit admits that the slightly convoluted nature of the design

would have it be inappropriate for longer-term use. Still, he argues that Wyman’s design is easily an all-time great. “On its own, it was a great logo, but the fact that it exploded into some of the most amazing identity applications in the history of graphic design is a testament to how strong this logo was a seed for everything that grew out of it,” he adds.

London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, often abbreviated as the V&A, is the world’s largest museum of decorative arts and design, with a collection that includes a staggering 4.5 million objects. With credibility like that, you’d expect the V&A to have a good logo. According to Jonny Naismith—design director at Moving Brands—it’s more than just good.

“It’s just a perfect balance of elegance and intrigue,” Naismith writes of the the ingenious design by Pentagram’s Alan Fletcher, which blends the “A” and ampersand into a striking optical illusion. “It has a lovely reductive purity, even with the visual trick. I find myself drawn to the serifs, something that particularly today seems a harder and harder sell.”

MICKEY MOUSE: THE GREATEST LOGO “THAT WAS NEVER MEANT TO BE A LOGO” Everyone knows the Disney logo: Uncle Walt’s iconic signature traced across the turreted silhouette of Sleeping Beauty’s castle. It would be an understandable pick for world’s greatest logo.

FERRARI: “POWER, GLAMOR, SPEED, COMPETITION” How do you symbolize the luxury of one of the most powerful cars on Earth? If you’re Enzo Ferrari, founder of the eponymous luxury car brand, you borrow it from the side of daredevil World War 1 fighter pilot Francesco Baracca. Even without that bit of trivia attached, Toby Southgate, worldwide CEO of Brand Union, thinks that the Ferrari logo—a prancing horse on a yellow shield—is the world’s greatest logo.

“Signor Enzo Ferrari’s favorite prancing horse, this icon connotes power, glamor, speed, competition and is immediately associated with the Ferrari brand,” Southgate writes. “It doesn’t need to lock together with the equally famous typographic wordmark; most of the time, it doesn’t exist in that format.

It’s exclusive and aspirational, bastardized only slightly by its placement on caps and shoes and luggage by the licensing partners Ferrari (mostly) chooses to engage with.”

But it’s not the Disney logo John Paolini, partner and executive creative director at Sullivan, chose. Instead, he picked “the world’s greatest logo that was never meant to be a logo:” the triple-orbed profile of Mickey Mouse, as seen on millions of T-shirts and hats around the world.

“The intersection of three circles has become a launching pad for decades for designers within the Disney creative sphere,” Paolini explains. “It has created the ‘Hidden Mickey Syndrome’: Intentional or not, when you see that combination of three circles anywhere in the world regardless of expression or medium, you’re reminded of Disney, and immediately you’ve entered into a cross-gender, cross-generational, cross-anything community.”

THE V&A MUSEUM: THE “PERFECT BALANCE OF ELEGANCE AND INTRIGUE”

John Brownlee is a writer who lives in Somerville, Massachusetts with two irate parakeets and his wife, who has more exquisite plumage. His work has appeared at Wired, Playboy, PopMech, CNN, Boing Boing, Gizmodo, and more.

The case for reward-based

advertising

By Adam Cohen-Aslatei

Your ads are not as great as you think they are. Every day, consumers are developing better and more sophisticated ways to avoid them. You can praise native ads all you want, but it is not a silver bullet. You can say that brands are becoming publishers until you are blue in the face, but the fact is that the vast majority of digital ads are still intrusive, irritating and, increasingly, creepy.

Value mean

So how does the industry make digital advertising work?

The answer is actually quite simple. Instead of fighting with consumers, respect them. Give them autonomy and freedom.

Give them something in return for their time.

Foremost, consumers love it because it puts them in control.

No pop-ups, no interstitials, no blinking banners.

Value exchange, or reward-based advertising “incentives” – is about to take center stage.

–

aka

Value exchange placements let people actively choose to engage with a brand in exchange for entertainment, points, Wi-Fi or digital content such as articles or music.

Previously derided as bribery, value exchange is suddenly taking off for all the right reasons.

Advertisers appreciate value exchange for different reasons.

Value exchange units are always viewable, they are resistant to fraud, and they represent an elegant and much-needed solution to ad blocking.

groupisd.com

26

Additionally, the units create new inventory.

Value exchange ads can be found on entertainment properties such as Pandora and Hulu. They also run on hyper-popular games and leading editorial sites. And, most importantly, value exchange ads consistently deliver the best results in the industry, especially on mobile.

A recent study showed that users who previously never made an in-app purchase are 4x more likely to make a purchase after engaging in a value exchange video.

A separate study showed 86 percent greater brand awareness with value exchange, compared with Vizu benchmarks.

Yet another study by Woobi proved that rewarded audiences are twice as likely to interact with brands as compared to live television. Performance does not lie and value exchange continues to deliver time and time again.

So why the resistance? The answer may be inertia.

Block and tackle We have been interrupting people ever since the industry started, and this method is not going away overnight.

Additionally, the quid pro quo concept rubs some advertisers the wrong way. We are simply not used to partnering with our consumers.

When Google reports that more than 46 percent of digital video ads go unviewed, and eMarketer reports that in 2017 more than 86 million Americans will use an ad blocker – an increase of 32 percent over 2016 – it is overdue for some important changes.

Upon further thought, the value exchange concept is not new.

Television ads, radio ads and even pre-roll are all incentivized – we sit through them to get to the content. The only difference with modern value exchange is that we give people a choice.

And that is key.

Value exchange delivers an active and engaged audience that just is not possible with interruptive media.

Users of value exchange products have experienced video completion rates of up to 99 percent, with engagement rates that are more than 2x that of industry benchmarks. And value exchange solves the ad-blocking quandary.

More than 25 percent of U.S. consumers use ad blocking technology today, costing publishers upwards of $22 billion in lost revenue globally.

According to a recent Interactive Advertising Bureau study, the number one reason for disabling ad blockers was to gain access to content.

Apps, on the contrary, largely avoid ad blockers due to the nature of their design. And audiences that engage with value exchange, in general, are less likely to use ad blockers because they are aware of the value transaction, and opting in to gain access to content and rewards on their own terms.

Birds of a feather Even large players such as Google, News Corp and Viacom are adopting value exchange formats.

For example, with Google’s consumer survey app, users can take survey questions to earn Google Play credits.

Publishers such as The Daily Globe and The Los Angeles Times use value exchange to help monetize their content without paywalls. Here, people choose to engage with an ad in exchange for a premium article.

Other major publishers such as Angry Birds creator Rovio, Kik Messenger and AT&T use value exchange and reach millions of individuals in brand-safe environments. And brands such as Honda, Pizza Hut, Disney, AngelSoft, Dos Equis and Samsung have all used value exchange to engage with their consumers.

Value exchange has its origins in the digital gaming space, and companies that produce top games such as Kim Kardashian’s Hollywood, FarmVille and The Sims made value exchange units a key part of their products because they work, and because users prefer them.

According to Unity Technologies, 71 percent of users said watching video ads is their preferred way to access ingame content, and 66 percent of respondents want more opportunities to earn rewards through ads.

Seventy-one percent of in-app gamers prefer games with opt-in ads to games without. And89 percent of gamers recall value exchange ads, which is roughly twice that of TV viewers.

NAYSAYERS WILL likely continue to resist value exchange, just as they did with display ads, pre-roll ads and mobile ads in the past. It will not matter.

Advertiser demands for greater transparency and effectiveness, coupled with consumers’ increasing power of choice, will inevitably make the units more popular.

In other words, get ready to see sweeping changes in ad tech, brought to you by an unexpected underdog: value exchange.

Adam Cohen-Aslatei is senior director of marketing at Jun Group, New York.

Why B2B Marketers Must Offer Customers a B2C Experience

By Yariv Drori

Digital has raised the bar for everyone in B2B marketing.

Today, the same people who bank online, book travel on their smartphone, and shop from their digital tablet are also B2B buyers. So when they look for a product or service in your category, these people bring incredibly high consumer expectations with them.

Consider the results of a recent survey about purchasing a data-management platform, a B2B product applicable to every type of business in the age of Big Data. Two-thirds of buyers cited reputation as the primary factor in choosing a vendor, according to Forrester. But over the previous decade, haven’t we become accustomed to gauging the value of a product or service based on the brand’s online presence and customer experience?

through, it’s important to highlight that the underlying reason for a website is discoverability.

To be discoverable, you must address the information that prospective buyers need on their journey. Your website should be a one-stop-shop for anyone interested in the product or services you sell. But it’s not enough to be comprehensive.

A B2B website must be as compelling as any B2C website.

Unfortunately, most B2B websites are somewhat lacking in quality. Some common problems are...

• A static Web 1.0 design • Out-of-date material

Of course, we have. Digital has reset our expectations.

• Broken links

So, how can B2B marketers meet those increasingly sophisticated expectations?

• Limited mobile capabilities (Most B2B marketers waited until 2016 to optimize for mobile, and some are still waiting to do so.)

Know your website is being judged Marketers have been evangelizing about the need for a website for decades. Though that message has gotten

• Poor navigation • A shortage of rich content

brandknewmag.com

28

A solution is to find relevant B2C websites that can serve as comparison points. What attributes make those websites great? How would you rate your site’s performance in those specific categories?

Obviously, the content won’t be as appealing as what draws you to your favorite consumer website, but the experience should be just as compelling. B2C websites view quality as a driver of discoverability. B2B marketers need to think about their websites in the same way.

Great content is the key to content marketing Content marketing can take numerous forms, but it always has the same objective—to help the buyer through their journey. By educating the customer with relevant content, you build brand recognition and equity.

Relevance is only the minimum threshold for content. The best content marketing should be as useful as it is compelling.

B2B marketers dedicate about 28% of their budget to content marketing, according to the most recent survey from The Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs. But according to the same survey, the “most effective/sophisticated” B2B marketers allocate nearly half of their budget to content marketing.

Why is it that the most effective B2B marketers dedicate more of their budgets to content?

In a nutshell, it’s about quality. The content has to be compelling, or it won’t help the buyer engage, learn about, and choose your brand. You have to be able to say, “I would click on this.”

If you wouldn’t click, whatever information is on the other side of that link will go undiscovered.

For example, your infographic can’t just teach; it also has to look compelling enough that your audience wants to study it, take its lessons to heart, and pass that wisdom on via social media. The video of a conference presentation can’t feature low-quality footage, crummy audio and great information; it must be something the buyer wants to watch and learn from.

Media professionals have a phrase for this: production value.

And quality doesn’t have to break the bank. Survey your team to see which production skills you have in-house. Engage online job boards to hire freelance artists, designers, and videographers. And when you evaluate creative, put on your consumer hat.

Research and decision-making tools move buyers down funnel toward purchase Who among us hasn’t killed time on BuzzFeed taking a quiz to find out which television character we’re most similar to?

Those quizzes are purely for entertainment value, but their appeal speaks to the larger power of interactive online tools.

For example, financial services sites can offer tools geared toward asking you questions that can then be turned into

financial advice. Likewise, car and travel sites can help you figure out what to drive and where to go on vacation.

Unfortunately, those kind of research and decision-making tools are largely absent from B2B websites. But you don’t have to think too hard to see how a manufacturer might use a quiz to help a customer figure out which product is right for them. You can get a lot of brand mileage out of creating a tool that meets a specific industry need.

The real win comes when you think about utility as an experience, not just a result. Consider mortgage calculators.

They all do about the same thing, but in a crowded field, the mortgage calculators that deliver the best consumer experience win the most attention.

Quick and easy support builds customer loyalty In today’s digital world, we expect help almost as soon as we ask for it. Likewise, our customers bring this expectation with them from the B2C world to the B2B space. In the same way that a website is essential for B2C and B2B brands alike, so is a social media presence.

The key for B2B isn’t to mimic B2C support, however. The goal is to offer the same level of communication and transparency.

Tell customers when a phone call will reach a live person. Set a policy of responding to emails within 24 hours and stick to it. Use online forums to address common issues.

Consumers want to know who vouches for your brand Today, we’ve blurred the lines between digital and real life, and more importantly, our world has become much more transparent. On LinkedIn, our professional network holds us accountable for the veracity of our resume. On Facebook, our friends validate our identities. And in business, dissatisfied customers often turn to Twitter or Yelp.

What those trends should tell you is that the brand is paramount.

Historically, B2B marketers have been skeptical of branding.

But in a crowded marketplace where the competition is a click away, identity and name recognition can make the difference between a site visit and more significant action like an inbound call. Endorsements and references validate a B2B brand in much the same way that a mutual friend on Facebook validates a third party.

Like everything you do to raise your B2B brand to meet B2C expectations, endorsements and references are about planting subtle and effective clues in your customers’ mind.

B2Bs don’t announce, “We’re raising the bar,” but when they do elevate their game, customers notice.

Yariv Drori is vice-president of Programmatic Ad Operations at MultiView, a provider of digital publishing solutions for associations and digital marketing solutions for B2B marketers.

Is marketing’s ‘cauldron of innovation and chaos’ a ladder to success?: A report from IAB Mixx

By Lisa Lacy

groupisd.com

30

The official theme of this year’s IAB Mixx event in New York was advertising’s new world order, but it could just as easily have been how to grapple with chaos. In fact, in his opening remarks, Randall Rothenberg, president and CEO of the IAB, described the market as “a cauldron of innovation and chaos.”

Ditto Steve King, CEO of Publicis Media, who said the turning point marketers are facing could even be considered a fourth industrial revolution.

And, according to Lars Bastholm, global chief creative officer at Google, marketers have an obligation to create things consumers find useful, usable and delightful – but to not bombard them with messaging or we’ll end up with a truly crazed reality. He also advised marketers put away their business strategy books and start reading science fiction as writers of the latter are dreaming up the innovations engineers will read about and eventually build.

Karin Timpone, global marketing officer at Marriott International, too, cited the unprecedented era of change in which we find ourselves and advised scientists cultivate art and artists learn science in order to drive their brands and careers forward.

And Andrew Bosworth, vice president of ads and business platform at Facebook, told brands not to be bound by their identities today, but to rather see opportunity in change and glory in crisis.

But it was Bryan Wiener, executive chairman of 360i, who likely had one of the most quoted moments of the conference in citing Game of Thrones’ Lord Baelish and imploring marketers to, like Baelish, look at chaos as a ladder.

“That’s how you have to approach it,” Wiener said. “Your competitors do not have a manual any more than you do.

Those of us who have the right partners and are organized effectively can gain market share more quickly. I believe if you choose the right agencies and manage them well, you can be instrumental in doing this.”

In other words, the market is in a state of flux, but there’s reason for optimism for marketers.

In fact, Wiener noted platforms like Instagram and Snapchat have arisen in recent years – and more will inevitably come, opening opportunities that don’t exist today.

“Consumer behavior will change. Platforms will rise and fall. I don’t think anyone is smart enough to understand what [platform will dominate] in six years,” Wiener said.

“Marketing capabilities will emerge out of nowhere. In 2010, no one was talking about influencer marketing as mission critical. We have to talk about how we plan to adapt.”

Within this chaotic environment, savvy brands and marketers will figure out how to turn vulnerabilities into assets, like Dollar Shave Club did when it challenged the pre-existing distribution model for razors – prompting Unilever to pay $1bn for it.

“I’m a huge believer of the adage that marketers over the long term get the work they deserve and great clients get great work,” Wiener said. “I have no doubt the future will be messy, but the marketers that assemble the right teams and have the right frameworks are going to have amazing success.”

For her part, Deborah Wahl, senior vice president and CMO at McDonald’s, agreed, “All of us as marketers are at a pivotal point in the industry.”

As a result, marketers have to listen to consumers or they will tune out, she said. At the same time, the shift of power in which consumers have gained control over messaging means brands and consumers can have a much more genuine relationship, she added.

“The shift has us grappling with a new world order – we have to think, plan and act differently,” Wahl said. “Small changes don’t work, old approaches can’t work. We need a new way.”

And that means putting consumers at the center of everything brands do, which has been McDonald’s goal in a number of recent changes — which, of course, includes all-day breakfast.

“It’s amazing what happens when you listen to people and respond – you become more relevant,” she added.

But change of any kind is no small feat for a brand mentioned once every two seconds online in the US. “We need new labels to describe how to interact,” she said.

“It’s not about screen, it’s about context…understanding the occasion makes all the difference in forging meaningful relationships.”

Lisa Lacy Senior Reporter @TheDrum. Contributor @CMO_com. @WTFSEO’s #1 fan. My favorite letter is L.

The Most Annoying Things Brands Do on Social Media

By Ayaz Nanji

Consumers say posting too often is the most annoying thing that brands do on social media, according to recent research from Sprout Social.

The report was based on data from a survey conducted in July 2016 of 1,022 social media users in the United States.

Survey respondents say the most annoying actions that companies take on social media are sharing too many posts/promotions (57.5% cite), using slang/jargon (38.4%), not having any personality (34.7%), trying to be funny when they’re not (32.3%), and not replying to messages (24.7%).

Consumers say the top reasons they follow brands on social media are because they’re interested in the products/services (73.4% cite), they’re interested in offers/promotions (58.8%), and they find the companies entertaining (51.3%).

brandknewmag.com

32

Respondents say the top reasons they unfollow brands on social media are because the companies post too many posts/ promotions (73.4% cite) and because the content shared is not relevant (41.1%).

About the research: The report was based on data from a survey conducted in July 2016 of 1,022 social media users in the United States.

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

Brands see potential in virtual reality advertising THE INTERACTIVE ADVERTISING BUREAU SAYS VIRTUAL REALITY OFFERS NEW POSSIBILITIES BEYOND THE REALM OF CONVENTIONAL ADVERTISING.

By Patrick Kulp

The digital ad industry’s biggest trade group says consumers want to see more commercials they can immerse themselves within — as long as they’re done right.

A new report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau on Monday pointed to substantial growth potential in the nascent world of virtual reality advertising, despite some marketers’ concerns that the technology is destined to stay a niche offering.

The IAB reached its conclusion through dozens of interviews with key people in the publishing and advertising industries as well as software and hardware firms.

“It’s becoming increasingly important and more and more talked about,” says Anna Bager, the IAB’s SVP of mobile and video. “We have to learn here. It’s a completely new virtual world.”

Successful virtual reality projects from publishers like the New York Times, Vice and Fox Sports have paved the way for sponsorship opportunities, product placement and interspersed immersive ads, the report says.

But there are also opportunities beyond conventional advertising for marketers willing to think outside the box.

Auto or real-estate showrooms, travel brochures-cometo-life and virtual e-commerce storefronts are all ways in which marketers can use VR or augmented reality to provide something of use to consumers.

Offerings like these — content that isn’t necessarily advertising per say but is backed by a brand — could further blur the line between traditional ads and consumer media.

“It’s not necessarily about ads,” Bager says. “It’s about helping media companies create great content or specific

content for your customers. That’s really where the bigger opportunity lies.”

Of course, there are drawbacks for brands looking to invest in such a fledgling technology. VR hardware is still expensive, and consumers have high expectations that, if not met initially, could turn them off of the experience. There’s also the issue of motion sickness with some viewers and the social stigma that comes along with such a closed-off experience, the report says.

For those reasons and more, branded efforts must be particularly well-crafted and respectful towards consumers in order to succeed. Brands that treat the technology as a public relations gimmick or take the viewer’s attention for granted are not likely to be able to build the type of longer term following necessary to make the ads effective.

That said, the majority of professionals interviewed seemed optimistic that VR has the potential to become more than the passing fad or enthusiast medium that some had written it off as. The IAB’s research indicates that digital tech departments across Madison Avenue are taking virtual reality’s future seriously.

“Publishers are very interested in it, and brands are almost even more engaged so there’s a lot of interest around this marketplace, which usually means there’s actually a ‘there’ there,” Bager said.

Patrick Kulp is a Business Reporter at Mashable. Patrick covers brands, advertising and ad technology. A graduate of UC Santa Barbara with a degree in political science and economics, he previously worked at the Pacific Coast Business Times.

IMAGE: GETTY IMAGES/BENJAMIN TORODE

The Marketing Genius Behind Snapchat’s Name Change

By Jayson DeMers

groupisd.com

36

When a company makes a major change to its brand or image, any number of things can happen. Loyal users may reject the change -- as happened when Coca-Cola tried to introduce “New Coke” in one of the worst marketing disasters in history. People may scarcely notice the change, as when Google stealthily changed its name to Alphabet with seemingly no major corresponding changes to its products lineup.

Or, a company making such a change may well inspire excitement and positive attention from loyal users and potential new customers alike.

The latter seems to be the case for the company previously known as Snapchat, which renamed itself “Snap Inc.” and introduced a new product to go along with the change just days ago. Already, the company is getting positive reception and excitement from its announcement.

So, what exactly did it do to generate that kind of response?

Two changes from Snapchat -- I mean ‘Snap’ Let’s take a look at what Snap actually announced. There are two items here -- a new hardware product, and the company name change itself.

• Spectacles. First, Snap released a video snippet to Business Insider, demonstrating its new “Spectacles” product. The product is a pair of wearable glasses that function as a camera; simply tapping a button on the side of the product will record up to 10 seconds of video via a camera that mimics the first-person perspective.

The videos will be recorded in a circular format, and can play back on any device. At the end of the promotional video, Spectacles the product is introduced by “Snap, Inc.,” which in turn introduces the company’s new name.

• Snap Inc. Hours after the release of the promotional video, Snap confirmed the name change and provided more details about the product (including its price, $129) to the Wall Street Journal. The company also made a detailed announcement about each change on its news page, where chief executive Evan Spiegel explained the new name as a logical decision: Since Snap is now making actual products that go beyond the chat-centric app, it only made sense, he said. Spiegel also insisted that the fun, familiar character of the brand would remain intact, joking that the change was more for the “Wall Street crowd” than anybody else.

What they did right So, why is Snap’s unveiling getting such a warm, interested reception? What can we all take away from this?

1. Audience timing First, Snap nailed the timing. Growing, expanding and changing your business are all difficult maneuvers. Try to do

something too soon, and you could wind up alienating an audience that’s still getting used to your brand. For example, if you expand too quickly and start selling products outside your original niche, you could wind up losing new and old customers alike. On the other hand, if you wait too long to make a change -- as did Yahoo with some of its recent rebranding and misguided new product developments -- it could be too late to change users’ impressions of your brand.

Snapchat hit the timing perfectly, catering to a committed audience without waiting too long to transition.

2. Proactive announcement and control Next, Snap cleverly teased out the details of its new features.

First, it staged a “leak” of a video, generating viral visibility by sheer virtue of the fact that this video wasn’t meant to be seen. It then almost immediately followed up with a major news reveal, giving out specific details before users could be left to their own speculative devices. Not long after that, the company made some formal announcements on its website, catering to its most loyal fans and adhering to its signature brand voice.

3. Gentle rebranding.

“Snapchat” to “Snap” isn’t a major change, and its Spectacles product, while a unique offer from the company, still caters to the brand’s primary goal of telling visual stories. In some ways, this is a massive step forward for the brand, but in others, it’s the same brand you’ve always known. This move will make loyal users even more loyal, and help reaffirm the brand’s image in new users’ eyes.

4. Curiosity.

Finally, Snap is intentionally piquing curiosity among its users; the name change is slightly mysterious, and Evan Spiegel has alluded to even more developments to come. On top of a $1.81 billion dollar fund-raising round earlier this year, I think we can all expect to see some interesting things coming from Snap in the near future.

On the surface, a change like “Snapchat” to “Snap” may not seem like a big deal, and in some ways, it isn’t. But in other ways, it’s a dramatic overhaul that’s being cleverly introduced as a subtle transformation.

Snap is walking the branding and marketing line carefully, catering to its existing audience while simultaneously charging forward as a leader and forward-thinker in the social media industry. And those are strong steps by a strong company.

Jayson DeMers is founder and CEO of AudienceBloom, a Seattle-based SEO agency. He also started Crackerize.com, a lyrics-humor website. He’s the author of the ebook, “The Definitive Guide to Marketing Your Business Online.”

Social Success for the CMO: Four Signs You’re Doing It Right

By Will McInnes

Social intelligence is a vital component of a CMO’s toolkit.

Any modern, innovative CMO knows that to be successful he or she must integrate multiple data streams to glean valuable and actionable information for Marketing, Sales, and the wider business. Social insights provide vital support for a brand’s marketing efforts.

must lose the outdated assumption that social listening value can’t be measured because we can’t attach or attribute hard numbers to it. Because we can. CMOs just need to know where to look to evaluate how successful they are in their quest to effectively harness insights to support broader marketing efforts.

I’ve previously explored why CMOs should be factoring social into their overall agenda; developing an understanding for how the benefits of social listening can reach beyond just the marketing and sales departments; and knowing how to start using social insights and campaign measurement/ROI.

Although there are numerous key performance indicators (KPIs) that any CMO can use to measure social success, the following four are the most surefire for telling whether you’re executing a successful social strategy:

In this installment, I will further explore that last piece: how CMOs can tell whether their social listening efforts are actually having an impact on their business.

First, CMOs (and other consumer insights professionals)

• Content engagement levels • Consumer sentiment • Consumer market insights • Business impact on non-marketing departments

brandknewmag.com

38

Content Engagement Content engagement is a great way to evaluate whether you are actually reaching consumers with the blogs, case studies, and bespoke branded content you are amplifying on social.

It’s a noisy world, especially when trying to gain share of mind and voice on social media, and most people don’t care about most of the content you or I, or anyone else, publishes.

So one way to check the effectiveness of your content is by measuring social engagement.

Simply look back at historical data around previous engagement. Did you run content around a similar topic or scope last year? If so, you can do a comparative analysis between past and current content, measuring the number of shares, untagged mentions or links, and social interactions that occurred during both efforts.

CMOs should also be measuring click-through rates of both earned and owned social content. If click-through rates are on the incline, that’s a major indicator that your content (and your brand) is winning on social.

Finally, tools like Facebook Insights and Twitter Analytics allow you to actually track how successful a specific post was—a great way for deciphering which campaigns or materials are most engaging and causing users to react well to.

Sentiment Another powerful measurement to determine success for social listening efforts is to evaluate overall consumer sentiment.

Has consumer sentiment become even more positive since executing active social listening—or has it fallen?

“Opinion mining”, as we call it, is a critical tool to measure the level of success of any social campaign or content push.

It’s also a success indicator that should be consistently monitored. For example, being able to discover a sudden shift or drop in positive sentiment can be critical information to your brand.

Opinion mining is an incredible indicator of where you stand with you customers, allowing you to detect shifts in consumer attitudes toward your brand, to become privy to the positive and negative feedback about your products, to signal customer service issues, and to help you compare your brand perception against your competitors. Such mining doesn’t have to be done manually; there are, actual technologies to help your team garner insights on audience sentiment—and to collect that data in real time.

Consumer Market Insights Consumer market insights are another measure of how successfully you’ve harnessed insights from social listening.

First, do you actually have solid and new insights about your

consumers? A great indication of success is whether you and your marketing team have been able to make use of insights to connect with your target audience on a deeper and more personalized level.

An untapped resource is the “white space conversation” on social media; those are the discussions that don’t directly mention a particular brand or product, but they can hold a world of information about consumer preferences, opinions, and ideas.

Consumer market insights drawn from social media conversations through active and deep social listening can be analyzed to create better content, and to develop a tone and language that matches that of a brand’s audience. You can uncover unsung advocates, or influential dissenters, to engage with, and engage them accordingly to ensure you’re a presence to be contended with—as much if not more so than the competition.

Business Impact Finally, it’s important that CMOs measure the overall business impact in relation to their social efforts. Social data can reveal pertinent and helpful information—from brand trust issues to customer service complaints to changing attitudes toward product features.

Those insights are the foundation upon which any brand can totally transform itself in order to maintain relevance with the modern consumer. For example, social insights can help a company monetize customer complaints in real-time by providing the opportunity for brands to turn a resentful customer into a loyal one.

Social done right can also help the research & development and product management teams gauge the effectiveness of their products and messaging and assess buying patterns. *** As a CMO, you need to ask yourself whether your social insights are being used in a way that is actually moving the needle for your company.

Is it resulting in real revenue? Is it being used in every capacity to influence positive and success-driven change, such as revamping product design, changing the tone or language of brand content, or any other array of use cases?

If the answer is “yes,” you’re well on your way to success as a “social CMO. Will McInnes is CMO of social intelligence platform Brandwatch. He’s also a board member of the Big Boulder Initiative, the mission of which is to establish the foundation for the long-term success of the social data industry.

10 Things You Need to Learn From Apple’s Marketing YOU’VE NEVER SEEN APPLE ENGAGE IN A PRICE WAR, HAVE YOU? FIND OUT WHY.

By Chirag Kulkarni

Steve Jobs didn’t have a master’s degree, and he certainly wasn’t an engineer, but he excelled at marketing. Those marketing skills propelled Apple into the top spot and turned the company around from near bankruptcy.

message.

Apple’s marketing has become a benchmark for other companies that want to reach similar heights of recognition and revenue. Whether you are a top tier content marketing agency or a SaaS (software as a service) product, you can learn a thing or two from Apple. Here are 10 big lessons:

2. Use product placement.

1. Keep it simple.

Customers and prospects don’t need complex marketing campaigns that overwhelm them with information. Apple understood this concept early on and made sure that their marketing was as simple as possible. They took out product feature lists, price, voice-overs and special effects.

In Apple marketing, there isn’t typically any information on where and how to buy their products. Instead, the ads and other marketing messages are very straightforward -typically showing the product and letting it speak for itself.

Leave out the flashy noise, strip down the content to the bare minimum, and display simple graphics that translate your

There is no need for jargon or technical terms that take away from what you are really offering your audience.

Apple has the budget to get its devices on television shows and movies, but it’s fine to start smaller too. Any marketer can place a product with an influencer who can then share it on their social media sites like Instagram or Snapchat. Once an influencer shares your product and shows their followers how beneficial it is, the seed is planted and leads are made.

3. Leverage reviews.

Apple has done well getting reviews from its customers -and you can too. A free trial or sample can be offered in exchange for a testimonial or a review that appears on social media or a review website. Many times, customers are happy to give a review if you just ask them. A coupon or some other exclusive deal is icing on the cake.

Make sure each testimonial has the person’s name and image or avatar. If it’s a B2B relationship, be sure to add a link back to their website for further credibility.

groupisd.com

40

4. Focus on unique value proposition rather than price.

8. Develop an aura and mystery around what you are doing.

A big part of Apple’s marketing strategy is that they never get involved in price wars. They stick to their pricing albeit it is often much higher than any of the competition. They can do this because they focus on touting their unique value proposition that no other competitor has been able to emulate -- beautiful products that work straight from the box.

The best marketing approach Apple has used is to create mystery about what they are doing next with product launches and announcements that keep what they are up to under wraps until the big unveiling.

Apple also focuses on providing a great user experience with cool features and extensive applications that put it in a product class by itself. Whatever device Apple is offering, they make sure the customer feels like it’s worth paying the higher price. This method of thought can be used to market any product or service environment. Just focus on what sets you apart from the rest of the market.

5. Stand for something.

Customers want to know that you represent something -- core values that they can see in action in order to feel comfortable buying and using your products. This stand goes beyond just the product. It must be apparent in everything else connected to it -- the packaging, retail appearance and marketing collateral. The messages must repeat those values throughout all platforms.

Messaging consistency reinforces the beliefs of your audience; that your brand can always be counted on to deliver what they stand for. You need to look at everything related to your marketing efforts and make sure there is a unified look and feel.

6. Create experiences, not just products.

Anyone can make a product, but not many can create an experience for the customer that is memorable and entices them to come back again and again. From product launches that feel like going to a rock concert, to movie-style ads, to stores and online shops that revolutionize the shopping experience -- Apple invented the idea of customer experiences.

Part of creating an experience that customers will remember is to use the art of storytelling to generate the experience and add sensory dimensions to the overall delivery. This immerses the customer in what they are doing, making it feel less like just shopping for a product. Instead, Apple has made looking for and buying computers, tablets and other devices exciting.

7. Speak to audience using their language.

Because Apple has studied their customers intently, they know how to speak to them in their own language, which creates a deeper bond and encourages more sales.

By avoiding terms and explanations that only serve to confuse and overwhelm, Apple has found a way to reach customers on a new level that the competition still has not figured out.

Focus on studying your customer, how they interact and talk on social media, and speak to those aspects of your product or service that they are most interested in, and use the words they would use.

This turns customers into rabid fans and gets them pumped up in a way that has them buying whatever it is rather than stopping to think if they even need what Apple is introducing.

However, Apple has gone even farther by leaking certain information and starting rumors to further stir the mystique around a product introduction, They really know how to stir up the audience.

Usually, marketers tell their customers everything about a product, but Apple creates more excitement by withholding information and making everyone speculate.

9. Appeal to emotions.

Apple has created evangelists out of their customers primarily because they have been able to reach and hold on to them at an emotional level. Apple’s ads show happy people having a great time with their iPads and iPods rather than focusing on memory size or battery life.

The more their visual content appeals to emotions like happiness, enjoyment and inclusion, the more likely that content will be shared with others and generate the viral movement that Apple has leveraged. This can be emulated by any business niche or company through strong visuals, emotionally charged language and a positive tone as the basis for all content.

Pick It Up: The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience by Carmine Gallo | Amazon | Indigo.ca | Barnes & Noble

10. Use visuals.

We live in a world of content where people are bombarded with words all the time. That’s why videos have become so popular. There’s far fewer words and more images that can make a greater impact upon the customer experience.

Apple even had ads with only 10 words because they understand that the words, especially the excess of words, is not what resonates with customers and prospects. When creating marketing campaigns, fewer words mean more to the audience, especially when they are given images that resonate on a deeper emotional level.

Apple has a marketing strategy that continues to drive growing sales throughout the globe. Any company can do the same if they apply these lessons within their marketing strategy, and continue to use these tactics for both new and existing products and services.

Chirag Kulkarni is a serial entrepreneur and advisor.

He is the CEO of Insightfully, which is using AI to discover what employees skills and passions are to reallocate human capital within the enterprise. He has also spoken at Accenture, Infosys and MIT.

Book,

&

Line

Hello, My Name Is Awesome: How to Create Brand Names That Stick

By Alexandra Watkins Every year, 6 million companies and more than 100,000 products are launched. They all need an awesome name, but many (such as Xobni, Svbtle, and Doostang) look like the results of a drunken Scrabble game. In this entertaining and engaging book, ace naming consultant Alexandra Watkins explains how anyone—even noncreative types— can create memorable and buzz-worthy brand names...

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

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

Branding Typography

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

Archetypes in Branding: A Toolkit for Creatives and Strategists

By Margaret Hartwell, Joshua C. Chen Archetypes in Branding: A Toolkit for Creatives and Strategists offers a highly participatory approach to brand development. Combined with a companion deck of sixty original archetype cards, this kit will give you a practical tool to: Reveal your brand’s motivations, how it moves in the world, what its trigger points are and why it attracts certain customers.

Forge relationships with the myriad stakeholders that affect your business...

Sinker Unconscious Branding

By Douglas Van Praet In this blog, I’ve repeatedly written about the practical application of neuroscience to make you a better manager and salesperson. This book goes way beyond this sort of tactical application and explains what happens in customers’ minds when they’re exposed to media, visuals, textual content... and virtually everything that goes into making a brand successful. It’s a must read.

The Culture Engine: A Framework for Driving Results, Inspiring Your Employees, and Transforming Your Workplace

By S. Chris Edmonds An organizational “North Star,” codifying valued behaviors for optimal performance. The Culture Engine shows leaders how to create a high performing, values aligned culture through the creation of an organizational constitution. With practical step-by-step guidance, readers learn how to define their organization’s culture, delineate the behaviors that contribute to greater performance...

The Hero and the Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes

By Margaret Mark, Carol Pearson, Carol S. Pearson Written by best-selling author Carol S. Pearson (The Hero Within) and branding guru Margaret Mark, this groundbreaking book provides the illusive and compelling answer. Using studies drawn from the experiences of Nike, Marlboro, Ivory and similar brands, the authors show that the most successful brands are those that most effectively correspond to fundamental patterns in the unconscious mind known as archetypes.

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

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

brandknewmag.com

42

C/ID: Visual Identity and Branding for the Arts

By Angus Hyland, Emily King

How Brands Become Icons: The Principles of Cultural Branding

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

By D. B. Holt

Logo Design Love: A Guide to Creating Iconic Brand Identities

Branding the Nation: The Global Business of National Identity

By David Airey In Logo Design Love, David shows you how to develop an iconic brand identity from start to finish, using client case studies from renowned designers. In the process, he reveals how designers create effective briefs, generate ideas, charge for their work, and collaborate with clients.

David not only shares his personal experiences working on identity projects - including sketches and final results of his own successful designs.

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

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

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

Brand Spaces: Branded Architecture and the Future of Retail Design

By Debbie Millman

By Sven Ehmann. Sofia Borges

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

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

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

Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits

By CARLOS MARTINEZ ONAINDIA

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

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

By Debbie Millman, Rob Walker (Foreword)