BrandKnew November 2018

Branding matters. Because branding matters.

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Dear Friends: It’s that time when you are getting closer to bidding au revoir to the year. Looking back on what transpired, one can safely hazard a guess that the coming times in 2019 will be incredibly exciting for the branding and marketing fraternity. As promised, due to requests from our readers(and some self realisation), we have increased the number of pages in BrandKnew this issue to bring in more actionable intelligence. Such as How Neurology is taking Advertising to great heights. The mercurial Marty Neumeier talks about agile strategy and how to bridge the gap between design thinking and branding in a full blown conversation that our readers would want to soak in and apply in their business and brand eco systems. And, I strongly recommend that you get hold of Marty’s new book ‘Scramble‘- a pulsating, riveting, unputdownable read!! Also in this edition, we give a look in to Augmented Reality(AR) and explore if brands are getting ready for the tipping point. In a related content, we also open a dialogue on how Advertising is betting big on AR. Neen James wields the megaphone very compellingly to tell us that we are in an attention starved world. Dig deep into her thinking and know more in the tete a tete we have featured with Neen in this issue. I am certain you will come out paying more attention to your present. And the next step would be to get hold of her book ‘Attention Pays‘- a book that I urge you to read, re-read! If brands are looking at transcending from good to great, the feature on connected care is a must read. There is ample more to take in and I leave you to dive in, explore, discover. Till the next…

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Suresh Dinakaran

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Managing Editor: Suresh Dinakaran Creative Head/Director Operations: Pravin Ahir Magazine Concept & Design/ New Media Specialist: Mufaddal Joher Chief Business Director: Rishi Mohan Senior Hustler-Digital Marketing & Brand Development: Nikhil Thekkumkoottathil Brand Research & Creative Engagement Specialist: Anushka Kartha Country Head, Australia: Norbert D’Souza Country Head, UK: Sagar Patil Regional Director: Krishna Chugh Country Manager, India: Vinit Chugh Business Development Director, India: Kenneth Extross Video Content Specialist: Mikhaela Cena Content Development Specialist: Abijith Pradeep

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CONTENTS

Connected care – what it takes for brands to go from good to great The brain lies – taking neurology in advertising to new heights Closing the gap between design thinking and branding!

Betting big on AR in Advertising For your kind attention please!

Advertising in Crisis: How the Turmoil Threatens All Media Social media can ruin your creativity. Don’t let it How brand humility can help drive success Hallmarks of the 2018 top growing brands Marketing to Digital Natives: How Brand Loyalty Is Changing Brands need an augmented reality check – preparing for the tipping point Brands need a strong identity to succeed The chief marketing officer as CEO of Marketing Record-breaking brands: how (and why) you should attempt a Guinness World Record Dunkin’, WW and IHOB: When Do Name Changes Pay Off? Book, Line & Sinker

Connected care – what it takes for brands to go from good to great MOST GOOD BRANDS TICK FOUR OUT OF FIVE BOXES REQUIRED FOR GREATNESS. WHAT ARE THEY MISSING? CONNECTED CARE, SAYS LEE NAYLOR.

By Lee Naylor

Recently, we have seen a number of tech businesses facing immense reputation damage to their brand and credibility.

Uber and its lack of diversity, Facebook’s seemingly endless stream of data breaches and Foodora’s reluctance to treat its workers fairly are notable examples.

These problems have been caused by real issues at the very core of these businesses – a focus on fast growth, an obsession with ROI and a debilitating mindset of shorttermism. All factors which have ultimately resulted in a lack of humanity.

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Passionate vision – the brand is a visionary and consistently challenges the status quo.

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Connected care – the brand cares about the people that are actually connected to the business, be it customers, employees or suppliers.

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Active social change – social responsibility echoes everything the brand does and is much more than just lip-service.

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Celebrating origins – the brand applauds originality, is consistent and remains true to its roots.

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Human Inspiration – the brand encourages and enables us to be better humans.

The pursuit of greatness According to The Leading Edge’s recent report, ‘The pursuit of greatness: Building brands for a sustainable future’, when it comes to the brands that Australians perceive as great, there are five distinct qualities that consumers identify as important. These are:

Each of these qualities should be seen as roads to becoming a great brand – each road is a quest and brands can travel the roads concurrently or sequentially. While you can travel

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more than one road, each of them requires time, energy and investment. Crucially, our research highlighted that a brand rarely travels more than two roads successfully, so we recommend choosing one or two roads and ensuring you do them well – which is enough to be seen as ‘great’ in the eyes of Australian consumers.

Putting the passion back into ‘compassion’ The majority of start-ups and innovators are excelling in the ‘passionate vision’, ‘active social change’, ‘celebrating origins’ and ‘human inspiration’ spaces, challenging old ways of doing things and helping to solve the critical issues facing increasingly outdated business models.

An area that we are seeing lag in the technology sector though, is within the brand quality of ‘connected care’.

Given that most industry disruptors like Netflix and Uber are perceived as companies that identify real customer problems and offer original solutions, it is expected that these brands would shine as connected to their customers. However, our research highlights the majority of brands that feature in this category herald from a retail background, with Microsoft being the only tech brand mentioned by consumers.

Retailers such as Aldi and Coles rank high for developing meaningful connections between their brands, their employees and their customers. Brands that demonstrate ‘connected care’ look after their employees and ensure that their staff are happy and proud to work for them. As a result, customers identify with this positive treatment and subconsciously feel as if the company would care about them too.

Consider Aldi: a business known for paying its employees higher than average rates and for consistently offering its customers great value products. With everything becoming increasingly digitised, brands must realise that having a reputation for treating the people you work with – and the people you work for – well, remains important.

Conversely, while it has undoubtedly revolutionised the world’s transport industry, building a heavily responsive and customer-centric platform in the process, Uber struggles to show that it is a caring business through its lack of employee diversity and untimely response to discrimination allegations within the company. Because of this, Uber is considered a good (but not great) brand.

Fusing technology and the customer journey For technology-driven, enterprise-based businesses the pathway to ‘connected care’ is critical. Without this connection to people, businesses fail to differentiate themselves within the market and are vulnerable to being disrupted by the next wave of innovators. The ‘connected care’ pathway ensures that your brand represents more than what it physically offers in the way of products and services. It demonstrates that the business as a whole actually cares about its employees, suppliers, wholesalers, distributors and end users.

Moreover, good brands are more susceptible to competitors whereas great brands endure. This is because a positive perception of great brands ensures the longevity of their businesses. With Uber, for example, we are seeing competitors such as Taxify and Ola moving into Australia’s rideshare market, with Lyft set to enter in a matter of time.

The global ride share company is also a long way from turning a profit, totalling a loss of over US$4.5 billion dollars in 2017 according to Business Insider.

How brands embrace digital transformation and rapid advancements in technology has always shaped which brands win or lose market share. However, becoming a great and enduring brand requires your business to look beyond the ways in which new technology can create efficiencies and generate extra revenue. The focus must shift towards utilising technology, such as chatbots and subscription-based user models, to listen to customers and provide ongoing brand relationships.

There are lessons to take away from this research for tech platforms that are trying to connect their products to customers. It is no longer enough to simply focus on products and services that make your customers’ lives easier. This only allows your brand to be considered good. To become truly great, businesses must think beyond the core ingredients: fusing technology, CX and a sense of connected care to all relevant stakeholders.

Managing director, TLE Sydney. Lee Naylor joined The Leading Edge in December 2010 as global head of disciplines. Previous roles include two years at The Nielsen Company as executive director, Consumer Research Australia, and 11 years as a research director at Research International.

The brain lies – taking neurology in advertising to new heights What Do Eeg, Sailing Meteorologists And The 2016 Election Have To Teach Marketers About Prediction? According To Neuroscientist Haydn Northover, Just Asking Has Never Been Sufficient In Developing Holistic Advertising Predictions.

By Haydn Northover

Predicting the future is hard. Typically, a discussion surrounding neuroscience is couched in its implied superiority to other measures – that rely on asking people, for instance.

Sometimes we think fast, and other times slow (as Daniel Kahneman’s work popularised). Thus it makes sense to measure both fast and slow to predict the effectiveness of advertising creative.

The sailor’s prediction Sailing relies on sound weather predictions. In their quest to wrestle the America’s Cup away from the Americans, predicting weather patterns was paramount for Team New Zealand.

It would so influence all elements of preparation and race day strategy that their meteorologist Dr Roger ‘Clouds’ Badham turned to PredictWind for the most accurate weather predictions possible.

PredictWind understands something fundamental to prediction – each model of prediction is likely to be different in several ways. Each has its own set of parameters, assumptions and model weightings to turn data into a probability for a given event.

And no one model is completely accurate. To minimise the chances of inaccuracy, PredictWind relies on four models.

Weather stations around the globe collect information (many use PredictWind) and separate models are run on this data.

When all predictions align, confidence is high. Multiple data sources (models) with their own individual assumptions and parameters are far more accurate than single sources.

The same applies to understanding decision-making in general including prediction of an upcoming event such as the effectiveness of advertising.

For decades, the research industry relied on self-report data from consumers to determine the effectiveness of advertising.

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It has served us well. We have validated measures to demonstrate links between strong advertising and inmarket effectiveness and weak advertising and no in-market effectiveness.

Are self-reported measures ineffective?

Or more generously – missing some of the picture? Some measures are fruitless to ascertain advertising effectiveness; and asking a respondent to respond to advertising itself is divorced from how most advertising works. This reveals the opportunity for neuroscience to emerge as a measure of advertising effectiveness.

There are various tools in a neuroscientist’s arsenal – fMRI, EEG, skin response and facial coding are all tools that allow a researcher to gauge a response from an individual – and importantly as the respondent views the material in question.

For many researchers, this was the Holy Grail – we could measure the effect of an ad by looking at an individual’s response to that ad – not by asking for their view.

Diversify But like the weather, looking at one source of information is not necessarily definitive. Individuals respond to stimuli in a number of ways.

meaning they took from the creative etc.

Furthermore; what behavioural action they took, would they share it, or in the case of digital creative, did they watch the whole ad or skip as soon as they were able?

For example, Volkswagen’s 2012 Superbowl ad ‘The Dog Strikes Back’ features a slightly overweight dog that realises he needs to lose a few kegs.

After evaluating this creative, we found as people watched, the most engaging scenes were those with the dog getting in shape on the treadmill and dragging weights. Yet, when asked to recount the story of the ad, it was the outcome of this activity that was most recalled – the dog could now chase the new VW Beetle down the road.

The difference between experience and memory in this case is important. Both responses tell us something significant about the creative, neither on their own provides a holistic view of response.

We can further apply the two systems when optimising the advertising creative. For Audi’s ‘Ahab’ creative, we knew when people were engaging with the ad.

But to better understand a branding issue we looked at engagement split by those that said it was ‘poorly’ branded.

This helped identify engagement with key branding moments and allowed course correction. Selectively isolating facial coding based on the System 2 responses gives more depth for optimisation.

Election This is also evident with intuitive responses to Trump and Clinton prior to the 2016 US election. Both System 1 and 2 responses were important to understand here. Our research revealed Trump and Clinton were equally seen as ‘trustworthy’, ‘caring’ and ‘passionate’ – but people applied those attributes faster for Trump than Clinton.

Yes, neurons fire in their brain, their facial expressions alter during certain scenes and sweat glands open ever so slightly when they are interested in material. Yet, there are also other sources – we can collect their considered opinion, how much they say they like it, the scenes they recalled most often, the

That is, they intuitively felt he was more trustworthy, caring and passionate. Unfortunately, Clinton was also intuitively seen as more ‘deceptive’, ‘arrogant’ and ‘secretive’. Both measures were important, but on their own we missed half of the story.

Neuroscience and its application in advertising research is a wonderful tool opening up a new wave of understanding.

However, people have a range of reactions to stimuli (different models) and collecting only one such reaction limits our understanding. System 1 and System 2 imply whole brain thinking and for measurement it is imperative to collect a whole brain response.

P.S: Team New Zealand completed a 7-1 series result over Oracle Team USA. Haydn Northover is the neuroscience lead and senior account director at Kantar Millward Brown Australia

Closing the gap between design thinking and branding!

By Brandknew

Marty Neumeier is an author, designer, and brand adviser whose mission is to bring the principles and processes of design to business. His series of “whiteboard” books includes Zag, named one of the “top hundred business books of all time,” and The Designful Company, a bestselling guide to nonstop innovation. An online presentation of his first book, The Brand Gap, has been viewed more than 22 million times since 2003. A sequel, The Brand Flip, lays out a new process for building brands in the age of social media and customer dominance. His most recent book, Scramble, is a “business thriller” about how to build a brand quickly using “agile strategy.”

Today he serves as Director of Transformation for Liquid Agency in Silicon Valley, and travels extensively as a workshop leader and speaker on the topics of design, brand, and innovation.

He and his wife divide their time between California and southwest France.

BK: Could you share a bit about your growing up days, your family etc?

MN: I grew up the oldest of six kids in a suburb of Los Angeles. Parenting attitudes were different in the 1950s.

Kids were encouraged to explore their surroundings without

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supervision as long as they were back by dinnertime. My father worked four jobs in the early days, while my mother took care of the household. She was an art school graduate, and her drawing skills had a profound effect on my creative ambitions. By the time I was seven, I knew I wanted to be a commercial artist.

BK: What triggered your interest in branding and design apart from what you studied at University?

MN: I came to branding later when I realized that design and advertising were ineffective unless they were bound tightly to significant business outcomes. The real epiphany came when I found that design could not only drive business outcomes, but determine them. Well-designed brands are the connection between business strategy and fanatic customers.

BK: Would you consider it an advantage to begin as a journalist/writer in the sense that it builds up an innate ability to be curious, understand an audience and create narratives that interests, captivates, engages and influences? Apart from the ability to see emerging trends?

MN: I’ve observed, as a rule, writers are naturally more curious and strategic than designers. I started out as a visual designer before adding “verbal design” to my toolkit. Over the years I began to see that writing gave my work more precision. I’m not saying it’s an either/or proposition: I like to combine writing and design, on the principle that one plus one equals three. But I’ve found that many audiences are inspired more by words than pictures, in the same way that movie audiences respond to stories more than cinematography.

BK: Would you say you were ahead of time when you founded Critique, the magazine on Design Thinking in 1996? And, do you see Design Thinking still very much lip service in most organisations?

subject to intense competitive pressures.

BK: To date you have written seven books and all of them have been super successes and importantly respected by theBranding, Marketing, Design fraternity. What do you see as the big trigger points to embark writing a book be it The Brand Gapor your about to be released next month Scramble?

MN: One book inevitably leads to the next. After I wrote The Brand Gap, my workshop participants told me they had trouble wrapping their heads around differentiation. That led to the book Zag, about the importance of being the “only” in your market space. Zag led to The Designful Company, about building a culture around brand strategy. My new book Scramble came out of need to explain what a successful brand culture looks from the inside of fictitious (but realistic) company.

BK: Your new book’s title Scramble- which is subliminally provocative-what are you articulating at the core in this book?

MN: “Subliminally provocative” is an interesting observation.

Storytelling has that ability. When you tell a story through characters and situations, you tap into the deeper emotions of readers. To me, that’s what’s missing in most business books. In trying to be clear and logical, they leave out the factors that can torpedo a well-meaning strategy effort: high emotions, hidden agendas, clashing personalities, and the general difficulty of collaboration. Scramble includes all that messiness as it deals with the “hard problem” of management—company culture.

BK: Words like storytelling and narrative are often used interchangeably- you regard that the story of a brand is best echoed by the customer not by the brand itself- could you elaborate on that line of thought?

MN: When I look back, I think Critique was both ahead of its time and behind its time. It was ahead of its time in embracing design thinking, brand strategy, and creative collaboration; it was behind its time in choosing a deluxe print magazine as the primary vehicle. If I were to do it again, I would have started Critique as an event company with a web magazine to promote the events. The discipline of design thinking is still in its infant stage, and won’t make real progress until it’s taught in every business school and across a number of professional development companies. I’ve jumped into this space with a startup called Level C, in which I plan to personally certify professionals through five levels of brand mastery.

MN: Companies and their brand consultants love the idea of storytelling. It’s true that brands have narratives that play out over time. But the important narrative is not the one told by the company, but by its customers. Customers decide what the brand is. It’s the company’s job to offer the raw materials with which to create the narrative—the products, experiences, and behaviors that customers interpret for themselves. What the customer makes of all this is what we call the brand.

Think of the brand as your reputation among customers.

What do you want your reputation to be? Start there and work backwards.

BK: Tell us a bit about your Neutron days and how the Liquid Agency understanding came about?

BK: Keeping it simple: in an era of surplus choices, deep discounting and perennial promotions, is the concept of ‘ brand loyalty‘ dead?

MN: My experience with Critique showed me that most companies are not equipped to make effective use of design, branding, and strategy. They lack the internal management skills to hire, direct, and coordinate the creative professionals that form a brand community. As a result, they find it difficult to align product design, service design, external communications, internal communications, and company culture with a purposeful strategy. The central question of brand strategy is how to get a complex organization to execute a simple idea. Unless a company can focus on a single differentiating business concept, it will always be

MN: I get that question a lot. Brand loyalty dies as soon as companies stop thinking about how to make their customers heroes. Customers can sense when you don’t care enough about their lives to build compelling products, keep them safe from bad experiences, listen to their emotional needs.

If you’re not loyal to them, why should they be loyal to you?

The history of great companies is the history of customer loyalty: Ford Motors, Procter & Gamble, IBM, Apple, Google, Amazon, and Tesla. Loyalty is not a program. It’s an authentic commitment to customer welfare.

BK: Your title at Liquid: Director of Transformation- it pre supposes that brands need Transformative work and thinking not just transient or transactional – do you think brands have stopped re inventing themselves(or atleast most of them)?

MN: Our company, Liquid Agency, is based in Silicon Valley.

Despite the current criticism of Silicon Valley companies as being callous or deceptive, most are geniuses at reinvention.

Competition for customers drives them to leapfrog each other at a head-spinning rate. The kind of complacency you’re talking about is more likely to occur in settled industries like banking, oil, publishing, and insurance. But even in those industries, disruption eventually knocks on the door.

Most of the incumbents won’t have the necessary mindset to transform themselves, and will end up as disruptees instead of disruptors. Sooner or later, every company is one or the other.

BK: Your blog ‘Steal This Idea‘ is a tongue in cheek titlewhat are we to read between the lines?

MN: “Steal This Idea” means steal this idea. No hidden messages. I long ago realized that there’s no advantage in keeping my assets locked in a vault. If, by giving you a free book, I can get you to read it, I’ll give you a book. If I can share a powerful new idea that makes you more successful, I’ll share it. There will always be more ideas in the future, and I’d rather have you come back to me than look elsewhere. My generosity is purely selfish.

BK: In an attention starved economy, what do you reckon are currently defining content development trends including advertising and where do you see the next level of disruption emerging from?

MN: Disruptive ideas are everywhere. You have to be careful not to trip over them in the morning. The problem isn’t a lack of ideas but a lack of corporate agility. The reason most companies don’t break through the noise is that they don’t have radically different offerings. They’re so busy following the leader that they never become leaders themselves. The best places to look for the next disruption are sectors that are not only commoditized but overpriced. Today these include education, publishing, advertising, fashion, hospitality, and others. An interesting area to look for growth is the contentto-commerce model—online video or VR that lets you buy the products you see by clicking, thereby joining an active affinity group, otherwise known as a brand tribe.

BK: 6 is the new 30. Shorter attention spans, vertical orientation, emerging platforms like IGTV, the potential of UGC(User Generated Content):and, are we moving from the overt to the covert, appealing to the sub conscious rather than the conscious? What is your take on all of these?

MN: IGTV is an exciting direction, so I’ll be interested to see where it leads. Appealing to the subconscious has always been the key to persuasion. Ben Franklin once said, “If you would persuade, you must appeal to interest rather than intellect.” Interest is the realm of the subconscious, of human emotions. Logical arguments are rarely enough, even for customers who believe they’re being logical. The buying decisions we make emotionally happen much faster than those we make intellectually. It’s a shortcut to gratification.

Cognitive scientists say it’s useless for customers to choose

a car based on a comparison features. You’ll drive yourself crazy trying to be rational.

BK: At ISD Global we adopt the 5C Model – Content + Context + Conduit = Customer + Commerce Do you reckon this model will remain as robust and relevant for brands as it once used to?

MN: I find marketing models like 5C too mechanical, not unlike trying to buy a car by comparing features. I use a model I call the Customer Commitment Matrix, which acts as a kind of contract between the company and its customers.

It starts by choosing and understanding the customers you’d like to have, and ends by designing a culture around serving those customers better than competitors. Everything else is secondary.

BK: What makes Marty Neumeier go ‘ Wow, another day at work ‘ ?

MN: Having a project, any project. I’m pretty simple.

BK: What do you enjoy doing most; Consulting, Writing, Speaking?

MN: Consulting and speaking are the ways I get paid, but I have to say I really enjoy book writing. It uses my two favorite skills, visual and verbal design, and requires me to think more deeply about topics. Of course, if I didn’t also talk about my books, they’d sit in warehouses gathering dust. Everything has to be connected.

BK: Which are some the books that have inspired you in your career thus far and which are the ones that you look forward to reading?

MN: Oh, so many books. I’ve been moved by big-idea books like The Medium is the Message (McLuhan), The Third Wave (Toffler), Soul Dust (Humphrey), and What Technology Wants (Kelly), as well as industry books like Confessions of an Advertising Man (Ogilvy), Positioning (Trout and Ries), From Lascaux to Brooklyn (Rand), and The Innovator’s Solution (Christensen). I’ve enjoyed the books of Michael Schrage and Seth Godin, and the brand-related books of Kit Yarrow, Niraj Dawar, Denise Yohn, and Wally Olins. Most of the books on my nightstand are related to our current political crisis, which I find fascinating and alarming in equal measure. Part of this reading informs the background of Scramble, my new business thriller about agile strategy. I won’t give anything away. You’ll have to read it.

Betting big on AR in Advertising SNAPCHAT’S PITCH TO MARKETERS: DON’T UNDERESTIMATE AR

By Michael Bodley

After launching its AR Studio a year ago, Snap is shifting personnel internally to focus on growing its AR business. The company is also hiring additional experts in the space and is pushing its marketers to forge partnerships with additional major-label brands, according to Carolina Arguelles, product marketing lead for Snapchat.

More than 350,000 virtual “experiences” have been created in the past year, said Arguelles, speaking on a panel at The Lead, a New York conference, on Wednesday. Most of these were made by Snapchat users. But brands and retailers have been testing the tool as well, including Nike’s Jordan brand, which sold shoes through the app; BMW, which promoted a new car model; and Amazon, which linked with Snapchat to include Amazon products in visual search results. Adidas, Dominos and Match.com have all run shoppable AR campaigns in the app.

“The camera represents an opportunity to reach your customers,” said Arguelles. “It’s about an opportunity to reach them when their mindset is really attentive. The camera requires action. You’re not just sitting there passively when your camera opens. You’re leaned-in. You’re looking at every

corner of that screen.”

Retailers like Ikea, Williams-Sonoma and Sephora have been using AR on their own platforms to drive sales, in the form of virtual furniture showrooms and makeup applications.

Snapchat wants to serve as a platform partner for retailers, and plans to expand its AR business to more retailers.

Though Arguelles didn’t name specific companies, she said the technology has uses for retailers of all stripes. Snap is exploring several strategies, including selling AR ads, as well as working with retailers to sell products without ever leaving the app.

The Amazon partnership is a play to get more products in front of users when they want to search for them. A user can open up Snapchat wherever they are and take a picture of a product or a barcode, which launches its Amazon product page. The tool complements Amazon’s own in-app visual search tools.

“While the last 10 years have been about something called social media marketing, the next 10 years are going to be about this new thing called ‘camera marketing,’ and this is really about the camera as an ad placement,” said Arguelles.

For your kind attention please!

WE MEAN YOU WILL BE KEEN TO KNOW NEEN

By Brandknew

Boundless energy, quick witted and always gives you her full attention(Surprise??). That is Neen James for you. Author of books like Folding Time and Attention Pays.

Neen brings with her the consummate ability to hold an audience, engage them, influence them and most importantly impact them. In 2013, she was named among one of the Top 30 Leadership Speakers by Global Guru because of her work with the likes of Viacom, Comcast, Abbot Pharmacuetical among other brands.

Here is BrandKnew in a freewheeling conversation with the inimitable Neen James.

BK: Could you share a bit about your growing up days, your family etc.? And the quintessential Aussie legacy? And why/how the move to the US? NJ: I was born in really small town in Australia, with only one traffic light. We moved around and ended up in Sydney, still my favorite city in the world living on the harbor and each day enjoying the Sydney Harbor Bridge and Opera House in our front yard. I miss the water and the activity. My honey was offered an opportunity to work in the US so I closed my business and set up in the US, with no clients, no network ‌ and no money to buy shoes; I built my business one connection at a time.

BK:What triggered your interest in writing? And how you remain laser on Focus and Productivity that seems to be at the fulcrum of all the books you have written thus far?

NJ: When I was in primary school the principle gave our class a picture of a rainforest and asked us to write a story about it to win a competition. I decided to write a list of adjectives to describe

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the picture and see if I could be clever and make it a story, I won! I discovered a love of words very early in life. I have never considered myself a writer but… I do love to share blogs and videos and that’s how my first book was created, a series of blogs bound together. Attention Pays (published

by Wiley) is a message I wanted to share with the world to help leaders understand how attention pays and drives profitability, productivity and accountability. All of my work revolves around focus, productivity and attention because I believe our relationships with time and attention determines our success.

BK: Here’s a clichéd one: of the books you have written Folding Time, Secrets of Super-Productivity, Strategic Networking and Network or Perish and now Attention Pays; which do you deem your most fulfilling and why?

NJ: Easily Attention Pays™. I realized years ago in my career (and writing) you can’t manage time, BUT you can manage your attention. So my work evolved, as I don’t believe in time management. It’s NOT about time management; it’s about attention management.

BK: Just as it is said that the map is not the territory, busy does not equate to productivity. What is your take on this?

NJ: In my work with corporate leaders across the globe (and across all industries) I often see them doing ‘busy’ work but not strategic work. It’s easy to fill our days answering emails, attending meetings and moving paper… that doesn’t progress our goals. We need to be clear on who deserves our attention, what deserves our attention and how we will pay attention in the world. Attention is the key to productivity.

BK: Your most recent book ‘ Attention Pays ‘ comes at a time when there is a high amount of deficit– of time, attention, resources. And surplus of information, goods, services, choice– what was the trigger point that drove you to write the book?

NJ: I have been obsessed with productivity and focus my whole career. When I realized we can’t manage time, we can only manage our attention I started to research this, held focus groups, interviewed CEOs and realized the biggest challenge in business today is distraction and the inability to prioritize. This led \ to finding solutions for my clients; the book Attention Pays™ is the result of all that work.

BK: Greg McKeown had some time back published a work called ESSENTIALISM: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less and trend forecaster James Wallman’s Stuffocation touched upon related areas. What would be your thinking on their work and do you see some co relate between their work and what you have articulated in Attention Pays?

NJ: Both are brilliant writers and their work is important in the world in helping all leaders be more productive and focus on what really matters. That’s the goal of Attention Pays™ to get people to focus on the people, projects and priorities that really matter so they can be more productive, be more accountable and be more profitable.

BK: Amongst multiple demographics where do you see attention being the bigger problem: GenZ, Millennials, GenY, Baby Boomers? Why do you attribute that to?

NJ: Attention is not a generational issue. Younger generations get blamed for their lack attention and I don’t think that’s fair, or correct. They pay attention in a different way than generations before them. I believe we can learn from every generation. The way we communicate might be different across generations, that doesn’t make it better or worse, just different. Older generations (Veterans and some Baby Boomers) love face-to-face meetings. Baby Boomers love to have ‘team meetings’ and copy everyone on an email. Gen X like to work independently and prefer no meetings, just send them an email and they are happy and leave them alone to do their work. Gen Y enjoys shorter communications in text and on social and often in a group. Each generation thinks their way of communicating and paying attention is the right way, and often expects other generations to do the same – that’s not the way the world works. The best leaders I know adapt their style and attention to each situation to stand in service of the people they are with. It also means now that leaders need to be more flexible in the ways they pay attention and communicate and leverage different tools and methodology.

BK: Given that it seems to be getting bigger as an issue across society and straddling SEC, across the globe, do you recommend that attention as a subject gets regimented as curriculum in schools in formative years? As they don’t say “ It’s the taught that counts “.

NJ: That would make my heart so happy if we shared strategies at school to pay attention more intentionally. I’d love that. I also think it would be great if we increased education in listening skills, public speaking and personal presence.

All these important topics are often taught in the workplace and if we could introduce students to these concepts earlier in life they would be able to contribute even more in their schools, church, temple, communities and ultimately in the workplace.

BK: Do you see the Japanese practice of Ikigai help bring Attention to the mainstream since it is at the intersection of your values, things you like to do, and things you are good at? That hopefully will not leave room for much distraction?

What are your views?

NJ: I love that Ikigai is a personal reason to get up in the morning. Everyone has a different reason. If you know your purpose, your motivator, your driver you are more likely to invest your time and attention to achieve your goal. My philosophy is, “I do what I love, with people I love, in places I love”. When people are operating in the world doing the activities they enjoy, surrounded by people they enjoy it’s easier to pay attention and not be distracted. If leaders have teams that are bored or not challenged enough they will find it hard to get them to pay attention.

BK: In a post-truth world, we look certainly to be in an age of ‘ Authenticity Drought ‘- is the malaise stemming from lack of attention?

NJ: Public opinion is being shaped in so many ways with media, social media and private conversations. People might be tempted to only post the BEST version of themselves online with social media and the ‘look at me’ culture. We have never been more connected online, and yet disconnected

a daily reminder that I want to be in awe and wonder of the world in which we live and pay attention.

BK: What does Neen James like doing best: Writing, Speaking, Consulting or spending time with family in Australia?

NJ: All of the above! My favorite thing is to be standing on a stage serving people around the world and giving them strategies to pay attention and get more done. Meeting audience members after a speech, signing books for them, hearing how the message is something they can apply both personally and professionally, that makes my heart full.

BK: Unofficial Champagne taster? Not a bad space to be in. How did this fizz come about?

from each other. Social media can help those who are lonely and it can also magnify the loneliness. A few strategies to help overcome this include putting down devices and looking people in the eye when we talk with them, setting up agreements with people who are important to you to schedule activities and dates, write notes in your calendar to reach out to people who are important to you, restrict your time online and ensure your work is completed before investing significant time on social media. It would also be great if you show the real you on social. I love Instagram stories as it’s a peak behind the curtain of people’s lives (you will see me doing everything from wearing eye patches, working out, to meeting audiences around the globe). It’s a fun platform that is probably my favorite.

BK: You have slightly contrarian views on the conventional concept on ‘ Time Management ‘- do you want to elaborate?

NJ: I don’t believe in time management. You can’t manage time. Time is going to happen whether you like it or not. Time is the great equalizer. We all get 1,440 minutes in a day. Time doesn’t care how long you have been a leader, what you do for your profession, what is your title. Time doesn’t care. You can’t manage time, but you can manage your attention.

We don’t have a time management crisis, we have an attention crisis.

BK: Would you consider it an advantage to begin one’s career as a journalist/writer in the sense that it builds up an innate ability to be curious, dive deep, understand an audience and create narratives that interests, captivates, engages and influences? Apart from the ability to see emerging trends?

NJ: It’s funny you ask, in high school I wanted to study journalism but didn’t get the university entry score needed (I was 20 points short) and in Australia without that score, I couldn’t do the course. The skills journalists develop and their sense of curiously is something we could all benefit from.

These skills are great to teach kids from a young age so they approach the world with a sense of awe and wonder. I have a tattoo inside my right wrist that says ‘Be Ah-Mazing’ – it’s

NJ: Ha! It’s a self-designated title and one I love! Champagne has always been my drink of choice. I love everything about the taste, the bubbles, the glassware, the history, and the sense of celebration. It’s funny because when I moved from Australia to the USA I would always order champagne and often people would ask me “What are you celebrating?” My reply ‘life’. In the US, champagne is a celebratory drink, for me it’s my go-to everyday, every situation drink.

BK: What makes Neen James go ‘Wow, another day at work‘?

NJ: That moment before I walk onto the stage (standing in the wings or at the bottom of the stairs) and I say to myself “I am SO excited, I can’t wait to share this message with them” – it’s the combination of excitement, adrenaline and knowing that part of my calling on this planet is to help the world pay attention to each other so we can deepen relationships with those we care about, so companies can make more money, so leaders can serve their teams more effectively and so we can take care of this planet we live on.

BK: Which are some the books that have inspired you in your career thus far and which are the ones that you look forward to reading?

NJ: My business bible is called Thought Leaders Practice by Matt Church (any book he writes is worth reading, he’s one of the greatest minds I know and his work is always thought provoking and practical). I recently read some great books that I have incorporated into my business including Joey Coleman’s Never Lose a Customer Again and Melissa Agnes Crisis Ready. I would easily have 100+ books on my shelf I still haven’t read, if someone suggests a book, I buy it … the reading pile is huge! I try and read 4 books a month.

BK: What does Neen James do in her spare time?

NJ: When I am not on stage you might find me on the back of a Harley Davidson, zooming around in red cars, planning my next overseas adventure, sipping champagne with people I love, riding my Peloton bike, running around the streets where I live, face-timing with friends and family around the globe… or my ultimate indulgence is reading a magazine cover to cover on my back deck in the sun.

Advertising in Crisis: How the Turmoil Threatens All Media

By Knowledge@Wharton

The ad business today is far from what it once was. The traditional patterns of promoting products have drastically changed in the last decade because of the reliance on smartphones, tablets and other digital devices. The advertising industry and the firms that have created elaborate campaigns for decades have had to change radically as well. Media critic and best-selling author Ken Auletta looks at this dramatic shift in his new book, Frenemies: The Epic Disruption of the Ad Business (and Everything Else). Auletta joined the Knowledge@ Wharton radio show on SiriusXM to talk about his book.

An edited transcript of the conversation follows.

Knowledge@Wharton: You say that the ad industry is in crisis right now. What’s causing it?

Ken Auletta: The title Frenemies is based on two larger points.

One is that traditional ad agencies, as featured in places like [the television show] “Mad Men,” are being disrupted

by people who used to be their friends but are increasingly their competitor. Clients are taking more and more [projects] in-house away from the agencies. But the biggest frenemy, I would argue, is the public, which doesn’t want to be interrupted by advertising, particularly on the dominant device of our age, which is the cellphone.

Knowledge@Wharton: How significant are these issues for the ad industry?

Auletta: Oh, they’re huge. Think about how the world has moved to smartphones, which are really the most personal devices. You don’t lend your smartphone the way you wouldn’t lend your wallet or your purse. Suddenly, to be interrupted by an ad that consumes your battery life, that’s not pleasing to watch on your small screen. We hate prerolls, we hate banner ads, and it’s just annoying. So, the advertising community’s challenge with this was to figure out a way to make an ad feel like it’s not interrupting you, like it’s not a bother to you. What they said is, “We have so much data about you that it won’t feel like an ad. It will feel like a service to you.”

You’re walking along the street, and we know you bought a sport jacket a month ago at Barney’s. We can follow you on

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your GPS. If you’re only two blocks from Barney’s, walk in and we’ll give you 20% off a new sport jacket. How will you feel about that? Will you say, “Hey this is a great service, a great discount.” Or will you say, “This is kind of creepy. How do you know so much about me?”

You’re talking about an industry in turmoil. One of the reasons I wrote this book is because you can see … how newspapers and magazines and television have been disrupted by the Googles and Facebook in the digital world.

Well, who funds all of these media institutions? Who funds 97% of Facebook’s revenue? Advertising. Who funds 90% of Google? Advertising. Who funds newspapers? Advertising.

If advertising is suddenly being hit by the same kind of disruptions that all of these other industries are hit by, then the funding mechanism is threatened. Therefore, all of media is threatened.

Knowledge@Wharton: Advertising has had the use of data for as long as the industry has been in existence. How different is it now because of the volume, accuracy and speed of data collection?

Auletta: The data that we have today because of the digital world is different. Digital takes a fingerprint and has a record of everything you’ve watched, every search you’ve done, everything you’ve read, how “The people who sit much time you spend on Netflix.

Traditionally, [advertisers] didn’t at the head of the have that. [It wasn’t] digitized.

table are the people who have the data.”

Google, Facebook and Amazon have the best data of all. That data is not matched by what the ad agencies have. Increasingly, the people who advertise are saying, “Hey, why shouldn’t I go directly to Facebook and Google, and increasingly Amazon, rather than deal through the agencies?”

Knowledge@Wharton: How have people in the industry evolved over time?

Auletta: In the “Mad Men” days, the creative guy like Don Draper was in charge. He sat at the head of the table. Today, that no longer is true. The creatives don’t sit at the head of the table. The people who sit at the head of the table are the people who have the data. The media agency, the media buyers, the people who buy the ads and shape their strategy and target the ads on particular people — they are the dominant forces at the agency. But increasingly, the agency is being disrupted by other forces. Consulting companies, which used to consult with them or used to be their accountants, are now aggressively getting into the advertising business.

PR agencies are getting into advertising, particularly as newspapers and the traditional publishing platforms are saying, “Wait a second, we can become ad agencies, too.”

The New York Times has a sales force of over 300 people.

One-third of them are bypassing the agency and going directly to clients and the advertiser and saying, “Let us create your ads.” That just creates a tremendous amount of turmoil in the advertising world.

Knowledge@Wharton: Will advertising agencies even be around in 10 or 20 years?

Auletta: They won’t be there the way they were 30 years ago.

The odds are they will be there in some form, but it will be a very different form. They will probably be smaller than they are now; they will probably have to get into other businesses.

Increasingly, they will be challenged by others who weren’t in the ad business 30 years ago — the Facebooks and Googles and publishing platforms who increasingly say they can do it. Or the clients will say, “Why are we spending all of this money on ad agencies? Let’s create our own in-house ad agency.”

The world is changing. But two of the big issues in the future that we can’t know the answer to is, one, the privacy issue.

Will the public at some point say, “You have all of this data and you say you want to use it to target me, but what about my privacy?” Will the public raise that privacy issue as they have, say, in Western Europe, where they have imposed some real changes in the data that can be collected? We don’t know the answer to that.

The second question is, will the government at some point [decide that] Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple are [too] big? Are there monopoly questions? Are there questions of privacy? Are there regulations that we should impose to level the playing field?

You saw that when Mark Zuckerberg was summoned to appear before Congress. Even though many of the questions he was asked were semi-literate, they expressed the concern for privacy and monopolization power that a company like Facebook potentially has. By the way, it’s a bipartisan issue.

I don’t see a cleavage between Republicans and Democrats on this issue; there is a shared concern.

Knowledge@Wharton: Have ad agencies already started to make changes in their operations?

Auletta: There’s no question they have. It’s an insecure industry as any industry is when they are going through tumultuous change. One of the things they have done “The thought that is created these five giant [subscriptions] holding companies, and they are no longer just dominated could substitute for by ad agencies. They now advertising is crazy. It’s have public relations firms not going to happen. they buy, lobbying firms they buy, polling firms and design It’s a false god.” firms.

Increasingly, they are realizing they have to not just rely on advertising, they also have to get into the marketing business.

That has been the change that has taken place over the last 10 years, and it is a profound change. Beyond that, they are asking, “Are we too big? Can we move fast enough? Do we have to get smaller, do we have to slim down?” Those are questions that will haunt them for many, many years.

The other [problem], which they tend not to want to talk about, is that the pay scales in the advertising business are among the lowest of any major industry. If you are someone in college and you are about to graduate, you would much rather go to work at LinkedIn or Facebook or Google than you would for an ad agency, where your salary would be half of what it would be at a digital company.

can’t get through. When you record a program on your DVR, according to Nielsen, 55% of people skip the ads when they watch that program.

People don’t like ads, so what replaces the traditional ads that they don’t like? That’s a fundamental question. We don’t know the answer to that, but among the answers people talk about is the six-second ad. If you had a two-minute ad block and you had six-second ads, that means 20 ads [in that block]. How would you like to be the 10th ad in that twominute block? Not very appealing.

Knowledge@Wharton: How much has the mystique surrounding the industry changed because of the digital shift?

Auletta: Go back to “Mad Men” again — Don Draper, the glamour of the ad business and the so-called three-martini lunch. Graduates saw it as a glamorous business. You had David Ogilvy and these prominent names in the ad business.

It was really a romantic industry. That doesn’t exist the way it once did, and in part it doesn’t exist because the pay scales are so porous.

Knowledge@Wharton: The way people consume the content is changing. For example, you have a lot more subscription services out there now than even five years ago. Does that impact the industry?

Auletta: It does. One of the things I address in my book is that there are people who believe that the way you substitute for ads that may decline is you go to subscription models.

But think about that: The one thing that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton agreed on in the 2016 presidential campaign is that the working class, the middle class, the bulk of the American population hadn’t had an income rise in a decade.

The average subscription cost today for the American home is $280, and that doesn’t include gas and electricity. The thought that [subscriptions] could substitute for advertising is crazy. It’s not going to happen. It’s a false god. Advertising is essential to keep alive so many industries.

Knowledge@Wharton: How then do these new approaches change when you are talking about reaching that next generation? Millennials are driving a lot right now, but Gen Z is right on the cusp of making a significant contribution as well.

Auletta: Think about them watching television on their cellphones. Are you are going to interrupt them with a 30-second ad on their cellphone while they are watching it? No way. It becomes a real “People don’t like challenge. What is the new form that advertising takes that ads, so what replaces will entice Generation Z and the traditional ads millennials to pay attention to that they don’t like? it? Twenty percent of Americans have an ad blocker on their That’s a fundamental cellphone. One-third of Western question.” Europeans do. That means ads

What the ad world has to do, and they are doing it, is throw stuff up against the wall and see what sticks. Try a lot of different things. We don’t yet know what the replacement is, what the future holds. But we know you’ve got to try things, and we also know that advertising is essential to support media. How do you have a free-enterprise system? How does the buyer learn what the seller is selling except through advertising? It’s a fundamental process, as annoying as it often is.

Knowledge@Wharton: The idea of frenemies speaks to the relationship between the ad agency and all of these other entities that can be friendly, but they are rivals as well. Will that relationship continue to get closer, or will the divide grow larger?

Auletta: I think the odds are there will be a bigger divide because people worry about themselves. Let’s say you are The New York Times or NBC and you see your ratings, your audience and your ad revenue shrinking. What other source of revenue can we generate here?

One of the other sources of revenue would be to become an ad agency … and to sell ads. So, everyone in the media world and in the world of industry is constantly saying, “What other new source of revenue can we generate? What are the threats we have to worry about, and what do we do to counter those threats?” As they do that increasingly, it is very hard to imagine how people who have traditionally been partners or friends get closer.

Knowledge@Wharton: If some of those entities, like the newspapers, had taken that approach 10 to 20 years earlier, where would they be sitting now?

Auletta: I think 20 years ago they wouldn’t have done that because they were so heavily reliant on advertising and on ad agencies. And they didn’t see the digital threat coming.

What they should have done 20 years ago is seen the digital threat coming and created digital newspapers. And when they did create digital newspapers, what did they do? They said, “But we can’t post news on it until the next morning after it appears in the newspaper.” Well, that’s insane.

Initially, the other mistake they made was they gave their information away for free. Now, as they charge, newspapers are finding that people won’t pay a subscription for their local newspaper. They won’t pay for digital local newspapers, so havoc is being wreaked on traditional newspapers in smaller cities, and it is a real issue. Papers like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, with deep-pocketed owners, can survive that onslaught. But it is very hard for papers like The Detroit News, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the [New Orleans] Times-Picayune to equally survive.

The ‘safest’ ads are at greatest risk of going unnoticed!

Play Unsafe: Get Attention!

Marketers are prone to this flaw.

There’s a tendency to overestimate people’s interest in our brands.

Perhaps because we’re so interested in the minutiae of our brands, we assume others share that enthusiasm.

Psychologists call this the ‘false consensus effect’, the finding that we overestimate the prevalence of our own behaviours and views.

This overestimation of the level of interest manifests itself in ads being created that take being noticed for granted.

– or advertising copy that fixates on the second-step problem of perfecting its message rather than the first-step problem of grabbing people’s attention.

Get your advertising noticed. Attract attention. Talk to us to see how we can get your brand the attention it seeks and desires!

Call +9714 3867728 or email nikhil@groupisd.com

groupisd.com/story

Social media can ruin your creativity.

Don’t let it FOUR WORKING ARTISTS AND CREATIVES ANSWER THE QUESTION OF THE CENTURY: SHOULD I DELETE MY SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS?

By CO.DESIGN

TAKE A MONTH OFF The artist Taeyoon Choi suggests taking a break and reconnecting in real-world ways: “I’ve had the same questions, then deleted some accounts, eventually remade those accounts, and repeat. Social media products are engineered to be addictive by offering quick psychological rewards. They can also be extremely hurtful and disorienting, and can lead you into a mild or even severe depression. This is the effect of what philosopher Bernard Stiegler calls ‘psychopower,’ or the capture of attention by technological means, in [the article] “Biopower, psychopower and the logic of the scapegoat.” And, although social media

provides easy and instant access to others, the interactions are shallow and constrained. We’ve traded the ‘tradition of solitary, single-minded concentration’ and now act like ‘jugglers’ of attention, as Nicholas Carr explains in The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains.

“If you are feeling like social media is wasting your time and giving you anxiety, I suggest you have a break from all of it for one month and see how you feel. In the meantime, find other ways of connecting with people via direct email, meeting up in real life, and going to events and parties as much as you can. You may find more joy in interacting with people this way, and the experience can make you not miss social media. Also, journaling is a very good alternative to

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posting thoughts on social media. So is sending letters to friends.

“Ideally, you want to be able to enjoy social media for entertainment, socializing, and professional development on your own terms. When you use social media with self control, you can connect with friends far and wide, and get exciting opportunities that you might not be able to find otherwise.

For example, I had a friend who lived in a remote area, far away from any contemporary creative scene. She used social media to learn about what was happening in arts and culture, and also as a way to share what she was working on. For her, social media was a vein for sustaining her creative life.

“I also use social media to share my work progress, ideas, and finished projects. I’ve received some amazing professional opportunities in museums and at festivals thanks to exposure from social media. One rule I keep, though, is that for finished projects, I try to post about them on my professional website first, with all necessary documentation and text before posting on social media. This helps me to prioritize the quality of my work instead of the immediate satisfaction and approval of peers that social media offers. I also post daily photos on the School for Poetic Computation’s social media, because I know it means a lot for our community to see and hear what we are doing. However, it’s very important to have boundaries between work and life, and exposure and intimacy.

“If you are checking social media more than once every hour, for more than a few minutes at a time, it’s clearly become a distraction from being present and engaged in your world.

Your world is more complex, beautiful, and meaningful than

your social media apps so you aren’t responding to their every beckoning chirp. The only notifications I have active on my phone are incoming calls and texts. This way people can still reach me when they need to, but when I’m going to bed, even those notifications go into airplane mode. As a result of not receiving every single ‘like’ as a notification, what happens is that I only check Instagram/Twitter/Reddit when I actually want to. That could mean I won’t see a notification for a few minutes, a few hours, or even a few days. I don’t even have Facebook on my phone anymore, so as a result, I check that even less. I do this because I find the noiseto-signal ratio on Facebook to be the highest for me, and therefore try to stay away as much as I can.

“When I feel that my use of social media is just bringing on more toxic feelings than good, I sometimes completely uninstall all the apps for a while, and ask any friends or family I regularly speak with on those platforms to contact me in another way (like through text or email). Professionally, if I just want to be off social media but still need to stay active, I find the best way is to go on, post what I need to post, and then get off again without looking at the feed, likes, notifications, etc.

“Overall, you don’t have to take an all-or-nothing approach to social media—instead, there are small changes you can make to your habits and alert settings that can make a big difference.”

DEACTIVATION IS YOUR FRIEND Writer Kimberly Harrington describes how she limits herself by deleting apps: “I shudder to think of the actual months—if not entire years—I have wasted scrolling, retweeting, clicking, filtering, posting, editing, and sharing.

I have both made and lost friends, secured paying projects, made incredible connections, fortified longforgotten networks and relationships, and suffered staggering bouts of insecurity and envy all due to social media.

“TL;DR—I feel you.

other people’s worlds represented on social media. It’s your job to cultivate your life, relationships, and practice, and keep social media at arm’s length when necessary.”

CHANGE YOUR SETTINGS Visual artist Addie Wagenknecht points out that you can tweak your phone’s settings: “The first thing I always suggest to anyone feeling this way (and you’re not alone!) is to turn off all the notifications for

“My advice is to look for the gray area between your black-and-white questions. This doesn’t have to be an all (keep everything, don’t change a thing) or nothing (delete every account you have) situation. Think about each platform and what you don’t like about it and how you could change it. The answer might be ‘delete it entirely’ or it might just be ‘unfollow people who make me want to throw myself off a bridge.’ For example, on Twitter I follow mostly comedy writers, authors, journalists, and a few goofballs. I focused on people I wanted to hear from or be entertained by, and incredibly that’s resulted in actually enjoying Twitter. For Facebook, I regularly deactivate my account because I couldn’t take the toxic negative hellscape it’s become and I can barely manage my base-level negative

emotions as it is. On Instagram, I unfollowed anyone who made me feel like shit about my life, whether that meant they had a great summer house I wish I had, a great ass I also wish I had, or a giant pile of money which I definitely still wish I had—no matter how much I might like them personally.

“The difference between a person and ‘their brand’ is real.

And it’s okay to hate the brand and not want it in your life.

Also: I had to start absorbing that my reactions to how other people lived their lives was not their problem but mine. I started to question and work through what triggered me about each of these interactions. What was I insecure about?

What did that person (or image or caption) bring out in me?

My aunt once told me, ‘People are put in your path for a reason,’ and I remember that every time I have an outsize reaction to something I see on social media.

“As long as I’m not traveling, I delete most social apps from my phone so when I’m stuck in a line somewhere or waiting for an appointment I’ll choose to read a book instead of being tempted to scroll until I hate all of humanity. You get the idea. I basically try to alter, change, or focus my access and who I’m listening to, seeing, interacting with. If you find that those adjustments aren’t enough then, yes, leave/deactivate/ delete. Or leave some and not others. Whatever you choose, you will not regret it. You want to make a change (otherwise, why ask for advice?) so find the places where you can do that. You will adjust to it. You will feel better. It will be worth it.

“One last story: A friend of mine hopped off of all social media this past summer. I didn’t notice at first but then I received a handwritten letter (!) congratulating me on my book. I wrote her an email to thank her for, again, writing me AN ACTUAL HANDWRITTEN LETTER (!) and that’s when she texted me a voice memo. We’ve been exchanging these voice memos almost everyday since, even though she’s now back on social media. It’s like a weird one-sided phone call that you can fit into anytime of your day, a 15- or 20-minute self-therapy session where you talk about anything that’s on your mind, and there is nothing to like, see, or comment on.

It’s brought back what I miss most about pre-social media days—the actual social part, the personal connection, the TALKING, the long-form responses to ideas, thoughts, and stories. I bring this up because it’s an idea that deserves to catch on. Our messages have inspired me to look up things she’s mentioned, learn more about projects she’s working on, and ultimately we’ve learned a lot about each other that we would’ve never gleaned from just interacting on social media. It’s just . . . fun.

“Social media isn’t going away anytime soon. Try to find ways it can be more helpful, more satisfying, more entertaining, more truly social, and less of all the other things you don’t like. You know, sort of like life.”

AT THE END OF THE DAY, YOUR CAREER DOESN’T DEPEND ON YOUR VISIBILITY Music journalist Sasha Hecht offers a perspective check: “Social media apps are like an emotionally abusive partner.

They break our trust over and over, each time apologizing and promising it will never happen again. They insist that they only exist as a resource to serve us and enrich our lives, while at the same time reverse-engineering our minds to believe that we would be nothing without them. They deliberately manipulate our emotions to keep us engaged. They control our channels of communication with our friends and loved ones. They hold all of our secrets and know that it’s too late for us to do anything about it.

“So is there a reason to stay? Is social media really making us more informed as to what’s going on in the world? Or are we becoming less media-literate as we tacitly accept that the ‘news of the day’ begins and ends with whatever clickbait headlines we scroll past in our respective information silos?

Are we really becoming more connected to our friends and family? Or are we losing what it means to cultivate, develop, and maintain relationships in exchange for ease and convenience? Does being more visible really make us more ‘relevant’? Or has our foundational understanding of ‘relevance’ (people engaging with our content, presumably) been manipulated by algorithms that reward us by highlighting certain posts depending on how much time/energy/content we contribute to their platforms?

“Deleting your social media can feel like erasing a part of your identity, I get that, but I promise you that there is life afterward. It changes things, for sure, but what’s almost more striking is how much stays the same. Contrary to popular belief, you do not begin to fade into oblivion Marty McFlystyle as soon as you delete your social media. Your family and friends will still care about you, you’ll still be just as much a part of the world (if not more so), and you’ll be totally amazed at what you can get done when you’re forced to focus your attention on literally anything else. So just fucking do it. Download your file/archive from each platform (it’s easy, look it up), delete your social media accounts, and go make something cool. You can always go back, so really, what do you have to lose?”

How brand humility can help drive success

By Kevin Lund

As you’re brainstorming a new content marketing campaign, the word “humble” may not come to mind. Marketing that happens over social media has a heavy emphasis on products and services, and it’s easy for consumers to feel like they are being slammed over the head.

Listen up, marketers. Blatant product plugging doesn’t work like it used to.

If your audience is engaging with you on social media and elsewhere, they want to get to know you and feel like you care (read: be in a relationship with you) before trusting you enough to make a purchase.

This means stepping away from yourself and acknowledging your audience’s human value and needs. It also means admitting you might not have all the answers and adopting a humble approach that simply asks, “How can I help you?” instead of saying “Here’s how I help you.”

As with any conversation marketing campaign, making a sale shouldn’t be your first goal and asking for a sale isn’t your first step. Social media was created to share stories and meet on the same level as your audience, not as a bully pulpit for selling. By adopting the following four approaches that emphasize the value of being humble, you’ll connect with the modern audience that values humility and wants to be part of your story.

Ditch the id Being humble means letting go of your ego. Your “id” makes you feel like showing the world how great you and your products are, and how great your audience is for buying them. Resist the urge.

Think about what it’s like to meet someone at a party. Who would you rather listen to? The person who spends the entire time talking about his or her achievements and how great they are, or the person who asks about you and your interests, and who tells stories that you can relate to? Try to be that second person and stop talking about you in your marketing efforts. Instead, provide insight into what you’ve done to impact your audience’s lives and tell stories that relate with your audience’s experiences.

A social media campaign that uses this approach puts the customers’ product experience first. It tells a story about how an audience benefitted from using a product. This is the kind of story that puts the viewer and their needs first, and it can help set your brand apart from the white noise of product pitching.

Don’t pitch, teach instead Remember that story you read in kindergarten about the little engine that had trouble climbing the hill, but kept repeating “I

think I can” until he eventually succeeded? As a kid, you might have liked the story on its own without seeing it for anything more. As an adult, you see that the story was also a teaching moment, giving children a lesson about the importance of sticking to a goal and accomplishing it through hard work.

Kids might not pay attention if you simply command them to work hard and stick to their goals (something most parents probably already know), but making a story out of a lesson might get you at least partway there.

Though your audience isn’t children (unless you’re selling toys or kids’ clothes, maybe), they still can get more out of a story that teaches them about the value your product brought, rather than hearing a command to buy that they’ll probably tune out. Companies that succeed in marketing today don’t pitch; they teach. Take a look at your product from a 30,000foot view. Are you sharing the importance of your brand’s human value? Are you giving your audience something to talk about that starts a conversation? By telling stories, we humanize ourselves and become memorable, like that little engine we still recall all these years later.

Tell the right story Stepping out of the spotlight, ditching your id and telling stories that teach isn’t enough if you don’t tell the right story.

For instance, if you sell insurance and write a blog post about the difference between term and whole life insurance, with a link to click at the bottom taking the reader to your website, what are you expecting? There are hundreds of similar posts and sites on the internet, and you’re not offering anything that your audience couldn’t get elsewhere. You’re also asking for a sale without trying to emotionally connect with your audience.

A better approach, assuming you’re that insurance company, would be to tell stories about how your specific target audience could benefit from having insurance in the first place. For instance, Farmers Insurance created a website devoted to articles with titles like, “How Life Insurance Helps Your Family During a Divorce” and “How Life Insurance Can Help Provide Stability for Millennials.” Some of these articles don’t even have a “call to action” directing the audience to buy a product. This sort of campaign provides information people actually need and addresses their potential pain points. It’s about them, not the brand. What a great example of a company having the humility to know it’s not all about them or their product.

If your audience sees you as a person who exercises humility and cares enough to apologize in a warm, human way, they’re more likely to give you another chance. A company that fails and remains silent about its failure, on the other hand, is often seen as arrogant and unfeeling. There are few better ways to alienate your audience.

Hallmarks of the 2018

By Interbrand

It’s certainly no coincidence that the Top Growing Brands this year are the ones that have been defining examples of Activating Brave when it comes to making the bold decisions and taking the brave risks necessary in the short-term to achieve sustained growth. Like most of the Best Global Brands, the Top Growing Brands understand the value of their brands and cultivate them with great care. However, they also exhibit some key stand-out characteristics:

Customer as CEO “The customer is king” is a tired phrase. In 2018, one would be hard-pressed to find a successful company that doesn’t put its customer front-and-center. That said, nowadays, there is a significant difference between customer-first and customer-centric. Being truly customer-centric today means going deeper than just offering a product or service that the customer wants, and truly recognizing how customers think, feel and behave, and then delivering the most optimized experience possible across each and every customer touchpoint.

In early 2000—almost 20 years ago—Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said, “We seek to be Earth’s most customer-centric company for four primary customer sets: consumers, sellers, enterprise, and content creators.” Even during the online retailer’s early days, Bezos would go so far as bringing empty chairs into meetings rooms with his employees and saying that each chair represented a customer, which is “the most important person in the room.” Nowadays, one truly couldn’t find a more customer-centric company than Amazon. When people order household goods 24/7 from Amazon Prime, watch Prime TV shows, party at Prime Live Events, order clothes from subscription service Prime Wardrobe, or purchase sustainably-sourced groceries from recently-acquired Whole Foods, the company analyzes consumers’ interaction data, and then uses it to continually customize and enhance the Amazon experience for every single customer.

Another company that has customer-centricity engrained in its brand DNA is Netflix. In fact, Netflix can attribute its rapid transformation from its small beginnings as a mail-order DVD service to becoming the multi-Oscar award-winning media powerhouse that it is today to this very customeroriented approach. Over time, the media juggernaut has tapped into data analytics to develop all-encompassing personal profiles of customer preferences and behaviors to both offer each customer a customized experience and to inform major investments in new media content, like the next Stranger Things or Orange is the New Black seasons.

Culture is strategy, strategy is culture As motivational speaker Jim Rohn once said, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”

Although Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ personal fortune is now estimated at around $120 billion, he got to where he is today because he mobilized a flock of more than 500,000 talented employees to get on the bandwagon to work towards his shared company vision. That can also be said of the way Amazon approaches the people it recruits, having always maintained a high standard when it comes to their caliber.

In its two-decade history, Netflix has invented (and reinvented) its company culture guidelines to align what the media entity aims to achieve in the marketplace to how it operates internally. Last year, the company updated its Netflix Culture manifesto on its website to express its employee empowerment principles, stating, for example: “You say what you think, when it’s in the best interest of Netflix, even if it is uncomfortable. You are willing to be critical of the status quo.

You make tough decisions without agonizing. You take smart risks and are open to possible failure. You question actions inconsistent with our values. You are able to be vulnerable, in search of truth.”

PayPal also differentiates itself in its company culture to the extent that such strong bonds were formed in its founding days that led to the development of most of the post-PayPal unicorn companies like YouTube, LinkedIn, Yelp, Yammer, and Palantir. What’s more, so much of the culture of Silicon Valley as a whole has been modeled off PayPal back in the day, as its founders passed down their wisdom to their employees at PayPal and other companies.

Reinvent yourself before reinventing your industry If there is any company that has truly disrupted itself in order to disrupt the retail industry and beyond, it’s Amazon, through its subscription service Amazon Prime, convenience store concept Amazon Go, ‘try before you buy’ online shopping service Amazon Wardrobe, or even its latest version of the Echo, called Look, that can deliver fashion advice.

Netflix is also a prime example of a company that has turned its business model on its head, from shipping DVDs by mail to streaming movies and TV shows digitally, to becoming one of the world’s most successful content creators, spending a colossal $12 billion on programming in 2018 alone.

Just five years after Adobe’s controversial decision to shift to a subscription service business model, it garnered a record revenue of $2 billion in Q4 of 2017. Tapping into cloudbased intelligence, the company can now deliver product improvements straight to users via cloud-based updates.

Mastercard has also demonstrated a willingness to reinvent itself from the inside-out and outside-in by developing and acquiring several services, and then packaging them together to sell to its customers and stakeholders.

Marketing to Digital Natives: How Brand Loyalty Is Changing

By Knowledge@Wharton

Brand loyalty used to be something companies could rely on to grow and retain their customer base. It was driven in part by cool commercials on network TV and catchy jingles that consumers couldn’t get out of their heads. But younger people, specifically millennials and the Gen Z cohort, aren’t looking at the same media or ads that their parents did.

Companies that were popular in past generations are quickly discovering that they need new strategies if they want their brand to appeal to the next generation of shoppers who can easily click and choose from millions of products from around the globe.

The Knowledge@Wharton radio show on SiriusXM invited two professors to talk about marketing to digital natives and what it means for companies. Americus Reed is a marketing

professor at Wharton, and Erik Gordon is a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. The following are five key points from their conversation. (Listen to the full podcast at the top of this page.)

Fans Are Fickle Gordon wonders whether brand loyalty ever really existed, or if companies simply mistook loyalty for laziness. Perhaps consumers stuck with a brand out of habit, even if the brand wasn’t adding much value to their lives. In the past, that purchasing pattern created a tenuous sense of loyalty.

Now, companies are realizing that the speed of modern communication means their image can change within a

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their products to be enticing to them.

“This word ‘millennials’ gets thrown around a lot, and marketers seem super-hot on this word,” Reed said. “I think the real analysis comes into diving into what are the cultural, what are the political, what are the value-based … kind of ideologies that exist within these generational groups that we can then potentially tap into, and try to make some statement with respect to our brand?”

Gordon said it “drives [him] crazy” when companies use data in unsophisticated ways, such as breaking down customers into the age category of 18 to 35. There’s a lot of variation within that group, he said.

“We used it because that’s the data we had on hand, but it’s also very superficial,” he said. “Is it really that they’re 23? Or is it that their life, their values, their social sense of self is the same? And if you’re an advertiser, if you’re a retailer, what you want to tap into is not that they’re 23, because they’re not going to be 23 five years from now. It’s enduring values or at least more enduring values.”

Repackage, Revitalize, Rebrand Many legacy brands find themselves in the tough position of having to repackage their products to appeal to the next generation of consumers. Some have done so with spectacular success; others have belly-flopped into failure. matter of hours, along with the public’s perception of the brand. Papa John’s Pizza is a recent, powerful example.

Sales dropped about 10% in July and August after reports that founder John Schnatter used a racial slur during a conference call.

“How we relate to the brand can change very quickly,” Gordon said. “One comment from the CEO of a pizza company, and how we relate to the brand instantly changes.”

Reed agreed that companies often think customers are coming back again and again out of loyalty when their purchasing patterns are nothing more than habit. And habits can change.

“Erik’s touching on something that I talk about a lot in my classes, which is the idea of not being fooled into thinking that repeat purchase is the same as loyalty,” Reed said. “Habit is a very different proposition from describing a situation where a loyal consumer feels like their values, generationally speaking or not, somehow align with the brand and then connect them in a deeper way.”

Age Is Just a Number The professors caution against using the catch-all term “millennial” to define youth. From a marketing perspective, each of the younger generations “Cadillac got is distinct and segmented.

Millennials, roughly defined as revitalized, Marlboro those born between 1980 and got revitalized. 1996, hold different values, beliefs Snickers revitalized. and desires from Generation Z behind them. Marketers must But it sure is not easy figure out what resonates with to do.”– Erik Gordon different age groups if they want

Oldsmobile, which is now defunct, is an example of that kind failure on a grand scale. Oldsmobile was a well-known brand of mostly large sedans that were popular with baby boomers who saw the cars as an affordable luxury. By the late 1980s, the manufacturer embarked on a quest to capture Gen Xers who were interested in smaller, sleeker cars. It debuted a commercial in 1989 with the tagline, “This is not your father’s Oldsmobile.”

The problem, Gordon said, is that the first commercials featured older-generation celebrities Ringo Starr and William Shatner.

Younger consumers just didn’t get it.

“But if you actually are doing what you claim you’re doing, and you can get a few influencers on social media to believe that and propagate it, then it’s much more powerful than any ads you can run.”– Erik Gordon

“[The company was] deliberately trying to get folks to see Oldsmobile differently. It didn’t work at all, for a variety of reasons. One, it was illthought out,” he said. “This idea of revitalizing a brand — sometimes it works. Cadillac got revitalized, Marlboro got revitalized. Snickers revitalized. But it sure is not easy to do.”

Campbell’s Soup is another example of failure to re-launch.

At the height of its popularity, canned soup was presented as a nutritious, economical and caring option for a parent to serve a child. The product motto was “Mmm, mmm good.”

But subsequent generations are far more health-conscious and question why anyone would even want to eat soup out of a can.

“Think about it now,” Gordon said. “It’s still convenient, it’s

still frugal. But functionally, is it nourishing or is it just a can of high-fructose corn syrup?”

Reed said re-branding is always a double-edged sword.

When done well, it can reap untold rewards in customer loyalty. But it’s tricky. “The better that you’re able to create a very strong, clear image to people means that you have the likelihood of really connecting with them. However, changing that is very hard because now you’re asking them to believe something different that they have not believed, necessarily, for a very long time. That’s a hard proposition, but all great companies have to do that.”

and disseminated to every corner of the Earth,” Gordon said.

“So, if you think you’re going to control the message, even if it’s kind of a semi-phony message, social media is going to kill you. But if you actually are doing what you claim you’re doing, and you can get a few influencers on social media to believe that and propagate it, then it’s much more powerful than any ads you can run.”

Taking Up Space Another challenge with rebranding is the ability for a product to take up mental space in the heads of consumers.

Companies need consumers to have strong, positive associations with a product, like a comforting can of Campbell’s soup warming on the stove during a cold winter afternoon.

A Gen Xer may have that memory, but the imagery doesn’t connect with a millennial or a member of Gen Z.

Stop, Collaborate and Listen

“A younger consumer is like, ‘I don’t have any of that in my brain. What now? If you’re going to tell me soup, I may not even believe that soup should be in a can.’ Now, you have a big problem,” Reed said.

The professor said marketers need to pay closer attention to what’s important to younger consumers and pivot accordingly. That means listening and adapting rather than dictating trends and hoping they catch on.

Gordon said it’s helpful to think about brands as the space they take up in the mind. Consumers may not allow IHOP, for example, to take up space in the hamburger category if the restaurant has always been associated with pancakes. It’s the same reason why Toyota, Honda and Hyundai gave entirely different names to their luxury lines, creating a disassociation with their lower-priced cars.

Reed said if companies want to connect with next-generation consumers, they must respect their role as brand collaborators.

But there is a way brands can push a modern mindset shift: social media. With the right kind of messaging, a brand can gain street credibility with younger audiences. Wendy’s Twitter account is a good example, the professors say. The messaging is humorous and engaging, sometimes satirical, which builds a fan base on social media. People want to be mentioned, recognized and even roasted by Wendy’s online.

“I think what social media does is potentially a nice mitigating factor for what Erik is pointing out here,” Reed said. “If we can be on these platforms and be relevant and be authentic and interesting and not gimmicky, “Consumers see maybe that’s a way that we can themselves now as make [customers] feel that we can occupy that space in their co-creators of the minds, because we’re speaking brand, not just active their language in terms of them being digital natives.”

listeners who are told something, and that something is either believed or not.”

– Americus Reed

Authenticity is key, however.

“If you do it and you’re phony, it’s discovered in about 30 seconds

“Consumers see themselves now as co-creators of the brand, not just active listeners who are told something, and that something is either believed or not,” he said. “Now, they are part of creating what that brand stands for in terms of how they reinforce those sorts of things over social media, etc. They expect to be kind of in the C-suite with you and giving you feedback, reinforcing what you’re doing, helping you understand where you should course-correct and where you should keep doing things well. It’s going to be kind of a collaboration more than an end-consumer sort of relationship.”

Gordon thinks that’s a smart strategy because a consumer who identifies as a co-creator will defend the brand, making the company’s effort to build loyalty much easier.

“A co-owner of the brand will set you straight early on because they want the brand to succeed, and that’s what you want,” he said. “Contrast it to the ‘Mad Men’ days, where folks ran focus groups and they brought people in for an afternoon and talked to them and debated about stuff, and they thought they understood the customers. Now, we have this endless, 24/7 focus group. And it’s even better because we don’t control it with our notebook full of agenda and questions. To get the people to co-create things with us and to co-own it with us, that’s wonderful. That’s how you create something that’s really powerful and really enduring.”

Brands need an augmented reality check – preparing for the tipping point THE AUGMENTED REALITY WE SEE TODAY IS MERELY THE TIP OF A FORTHCOMING ICEBERG, ACCORDING TO MICHAEL RIDLAND. WITH APPLE’S HEAVY INVESTMENT IN THE TECHNOLOGY, BRANDS SHOULD PREPARE NOW FOR AN AR-DOMINATED FUTURE.

By Michael Ridland

This year at Apple’s developers’ conference (WWDC) it became clear that Apple’s investment in augmented reality (AR) is serious, casting a new light on the mainstream adoption of the technology.

What is augmented reality? The word augmented means to create something greater or more intense, and this is precisely what augmented reality does, by overlaying virtual objects in a real world environment.

This overlaying effect gives technology the chance to enhance the world with digital objects. AR applications have made it possible for customers to not only visualise a product but to

feel like they own it before making a purchase.

Many developers are now creating augmented reality apps, which has opened up the technology to a much broader audience. The most obvious and vivid example is Pokemon Go, which saw millions of people all over the world chasing virtual creatures with their smartphones.

Apple is betting on augmented reality big time. Apple’s AR software ARKit has recently seen a major update with new features like image tracking, shared AR experiences and 3D object detection. These features allow for more advanced augmented reality scenarios such as:

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• Bringing business cards to life with image tracking,

• building multiplayer shared experiences such as Apple’s Swift Shot augmented reality game, • measuring objects using virtual tape measures and automatically detecting measurements of known shapes, and

• customising objects and viewing them in the real life environment such as this Tesla Model 3 driveable or Ikea’s Place app.

However, while it’s interesting to see what we can do with AR in iOS 12 on our mobile devices, this is not the bigger picture.

Apple knows that augmented reality experiences on a phone are less than ideal because nobody wants to be holding a phone in front of them all day.

In recent years Apple has been acquiring AR device startups, including companies such as Akonia Holographics which makes lenses for augmented reality glasses and Vrvana which makes augmented reality headsets.

It’s clear to me that with the amount of investment Apple has made in ARKit, it has a bigger picture in mind. There’s no chance Apple would have built such an advanced AR system just for phones, this system has been designed for a new type of device. A device we are yet to see, most likely to be some type of AR glasses.

Apple insiders have hinted that 2020 is the year that Apple

will release AR glasses, but the technical/mass production challenges are hard to solve, so nobody can really say.

It’s exciting to imagine a world with AR glasses. Imagine a world without a smart phone: you walk up to a bus stop and the map becomes alive, or you receive a message and you don’t need to look down.

In this video we envision how a user would interact with their new glass devices combined with a watch.

How can companies take advantage of the AR tipping point?

The best part of ARKit is that companies can deliver experiences to their customers right now, but also have a first mover advantage when the new wave of devices become mainstream overnight.

Brands will need to consider how to adopt AR as a core part of their business strategy and to make it the point of difference that enhances their customer experience.

Not all AR experiences will add value to customers – brands need to take an augmented reality check. The key is to find a way to respond to business challenges using the technology.

Essentially, AR should make it easier for people to interact with brands so that they can enjoy exceptional customer experiences in meaningful ways.

At the moment AR may seem like all gimmick, but this is going to change overnight. One day soon a device is going to be released that’s the right price and that people love.

It will be the device that cracks the market. It will play out similar to the iPhone, this is the AR tipping point.

In the end companies who start investing in augmented reality now, learning lessons and iterating are going to be in a much better position when this shift happens.

Michael Ridland is founder and director at XAM Consulting

Brands need a strong identity to succeed SAVVY STARTUPS LIKE CASPER AND BRANDLESS ARE INVESTING IN BRAND IMAGE FIRST -- AND YOU SHOULD, TOO

By Leonard Sherman

Suppose you’ve got an idea for a great new thingamajig.

It could be anything -- a luxury candle, affordable college education or a product to prevent male pattern baldness.

You can’t get the concept out of your head. You have to bring it to life. But you have no prototypes, and no experience with the intricacies of industrial design. No understanding of production and distribution. No web design experience. No detailed market projections. No money.

In this moment, logic would advise against obsessing over brand strategy -- and it would definitely advise against hiring a pricey agency to help you do it. And yet, a growing number of startups are doing just that, seeing great success as a result.

Only a few years ago, product was king. Founders focused on getting a minimum viable product to market, fast -- iteration could fix shortcomings. Brand strategy was a back-burner issue, one to address when time and budget allowed.

But today’s tech tools make it easier for founders to, well, produce a product. With design sprints, rapid wireframe and product prototyping, contract manufacturing, fulfillmentas-a-service, web-store design and hosting services, some entrepreneurs can go from concept to first paying customer in a matter of weeks.

That’s a double-edged sword. Those tools that make it easy to rush a product to market? They’re available to everyone, and have resulted in unprecedented competition in the

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startup world. (According to Crunchbase, VCs closed more than 22,500 global funding rounds last year, continuing a multiyear trend of increasing deal flow and sizes.) Countless entrepreneurs are discovering that their supposedly gamechanging idea has already been launched by others, or at best is being copied by nimble competitors.

Take Casper, a name that has become synonymous with the boxed-mattress category. Casper wasn’t first to market -- that honor goes to BedInABox, which launched in 2006. Tuft & Needle followed in 2012. Casper didn’t launch until 2014.

Today, there are more than 100 digitally native mattress companies fighting for a share of the market.

Still, you hear “bed in a box” and you think of Casper.

That’s because in 2013, Casper’s co-founders made a smart decision. They had a solid understanding of the company they hoped to build but faced challenging conditions: Industry sales were slow, the retail landscape was saturated with nearly 10,000 specialty mattress stores, and virtually no one was buying mattresses online. So the entrepreneurs enlisted help from New York branding agency Red Antler.

“We meet lots of founders who can passionately ramble on for five minutes about the innovative aspects of their unique concept,” says J.B. Osborne, co-founder and CEO of Red Antler. “Our job is to capture the essence of the company’s purpose in one sentence.”

And they did. In formative discussions with Red Antler, it was revealed that Casper’s end goal was to become a sleepproducts company committed to helping customers get a better night’s sleep. The team came up with the tagline “Live a life well-slept,” which gave Casper room to grow beyond mattresses with pillows, bedding and more lifestyle products. From there, its purpose and desired image guided myriad decisions on product design, business policies, marketing communications and the consumer experience.

With Instagrammable packaging, thoughtful user manuals designed to look like a bedtime storybook and customer-­ friendly policies, Casper started to win over consumers. It upped the ante with guerrilla marketing initiatives that included a traveling Casper napmobile and a Labor Day “Sail,” rewarding early customers in five North American cities with a daylong booze cruise.

Have brands copied elements of Casper’s playbook? You bet. But copycat tactics lack cohesion and authenticity.

Casper stands out thanks to its holistic strategy and earned consumer trust.

Think about established brands like Nike, JetBlue and Apple.

Yes, they all have great products. But their lasting success derives from their commitment to a corporate purpose that guides their market-­facing activities. From the outset, each of these companies clearly identified their target customers’ unmet needs, committed to a core idea that speaks to that need and made sure every single consumer touchpoint reinforced their brand promise.

To wit, Nike has inspired generations of loyal customers by aligning its corporate activities to celebrate personal achievement and performance. JetBlue’s brand promise to

bring humanity back to air travel has guided every element of its service offering, including its signature Terra Chips, onboard entertainment systems, user-friendly website and warm customer service. The same codetermination of brand and business strategy holds for Apple, whose founding CEO recognized that great products are defined not only by technical merit but by their ability to enhance consumers’ lifestyles with a high aesthetic standard.

Many entrepreneurs conflate brand strategy with marketing, considering both to be costs associated with promoting a product after it’s been launched. But such a view ignores the far more integral role that brand strategy should play during the concept-to-market stage of an entrepreneurial endeavor.

In short, branding should be the forcing function to make defining decisions about every aspect of a company’s launch strategy. Hard calls need to be made on the appropriate target markets, pricing, positioning, branding, product, packaging and digital design, sales channel focus, customer support, messaging, marketing and media placement.

These collectively lay the groundwork for an enduring brand persona.

Osborne points to Brandless as another successful startup that invested in its brand up front. (It paid off: In July, the company announced a $240 million funding round.) When co-founder and CEO Tina Sharkey first approached Red Antler, she saw the irony of seeking branding help for a company named Brandless. The concept was to sell a wide array of direct-toconsumer products -- food, kitchen supplies, personal care -- each for the unit price of $3. By eliminating the “brand tax” built into most goods to cover advertising and retail, Brandless could deliver high-quality, affordable products.

The theory was sound, but questions around execution remained. Traditional consumer product brands cloak themselves in marketing claims (“Extra Whitener!”; “30 Percent Less Fat!”), complicated further by an endless stream of price promotions. And generic brands tend to emphasize low price at the expense of quality. Against this backdrop, Brandless wanted to build a distinct identity rooted in quality, value and trust.

Working with Red Antler, Brandless concluded it needed a unified system that allowed each product to shine on its own.

The solution was to package each item in a single color with a minimalist white label, listing key attributes of importance and relevance -- the word Brandless is the very last on that list, the only place the name appears. The product, as a result, speaks for itself while reinforcing the brand’s values and promise.

Having a great concept will always be a requirement for a successful venture. But in today’s dynamic and intensely competitive environment, entrepreneurs need to recognize branding as a critical asset -- not only in its own right, but to help guide the hundreds of decisions founders will make on their way to profitable scale. Crafting a meaningful message early on will lead to enduring rewards, long after launch.

Leonard Sherman is adjunct professor at Columbia Business School and the author of If You’re in a Dogfish, Become a Cat! Strategies for LongTerm Growth.

The chief marketing officer as CEO of Marketing

By Amy Radin

This year’s Russell Reynolds survey and study of CMO leadership reported that there are record levels of turnover and volatility in the head of marketing role, with increasing expectations for impact on company performance.

This is both good news and a challenge.

The good news: Marketing is being seen as an important contributor to moving business model levers and is increasingly critical to the demands all executives are experiencing to lead through the change, ambiguity and uncertainty of today’s marketplace. Marketing brings a lot to any innovation effort.

The challenge: The function is on a roller coaster ride of disruption and reinvention, and often the role is not well understood, empowered or armed with the resources, capabilities and talent to perform at the level of what is possible when the conditions are right.

Ensuring the CMO can operate at full potential is a goal within reach of any CEO and the CMO’s colleagues, willing to reframe their view of what marketing is, and support the CMO who has the skill and will to be the CEO of Marketing.

The CMO position is a made-to-order role for the change maker -- those who like hairball challenges and who want to make a difference. They are energized about anticipating and adapting to the expectations of the connected user, mastering an accelerating digital learning curve, and negotiating a new role and relationship to the CEO and other c-suite colleagues.

The CMO must move well beyond being the executive overseeing a communications, research and media-buying cost center, and negotiating what attribution assumptions to bake into the budget. What’s needed now?

•

The role: The CMO must be an executive with authority over the business model levers to attract and engage customers.

•

The wiring: Their mindset must be to orchestrate and

lead, not to control.

•

The goal: To deliver on brand positioning 100% of the time, and not just as a communications exercise, but, rather, through every aspect of the business model that affects users, buyers and influencers of the brand.

The CMO is asked to be a superhero -- one who speedily turns customer-centricity into P&L results, uses technology and data analytics to drive performance, delivers marketing ROI, drives leads to sales channels and advances capabilities to keep up with marketplace opportunities. They are leaders who are asked to get way beyond intellectualizing the need for change, and quickly make change happen.

Being data-driven is core to the wiring of the new CMO who can accomplish all of this. Being a member of the millennial generation may be a sufficient credential too, but based on what I have heard in dozens of conversations as I researched The Change Maker’s Playbook, a profile based upon demographics is at best insufficient and at worst misguided.

From startups to Fortune 500 leaders who have a modern vision of what the role can be, the quest is on for a CMO who is: • Purpose-driven all the way through to daily execution, decisions and direction • A seeker, seeder and scaler of innovation • An assembler of the enabling mix of analytical, technical, logical and creative capabilities • A connector, especially of customer insights to financial drivers, and of how to execute for results • A collaborator who can motivate, include, influence and engage others -- on their team, across their peer group and the entire organization and through their external network

This is a tall-order profile. To find your CEO of Marketing: Reframe what marketing can mean. Marketing can be the discipline that connects brand to customers to create growth. For those who have defined marketing as the advertising, promotions and research function, this suggests a much-expanded view.

Maximize the CMO’s potential by envisioning a function that can: • Be immersed in customers’ lives to champion their needs.

• Surface, synthesize and apply market insight and data across many decisions, beyond those traditionally associated with the function.

• Test and learn -- acquiring and applying insights and data to get better.

• Have a financial focus on how to drive purchases, recommendations and the other customer behaviors that move your business.

• Be a collaborator with colleagues – product, technology, data, service, risk management and all other functions whose daily choices have opportunity to align more closely with the brand purpose and positioning.

Look to the CMO to embrace the mature methodologies that matter, and meld these with what technology and data now make possible.

Segmentation, A/B testing and positioning methodologies work and are essential in an environment of channel proliferation and media fragmentation. Apply these alongside customer-journey mapping, AI, machine-learning capabilities and the best social, mobile, community and other connection tactics to strengthen customer engagement.

Hold the marketing function accountable for concrete metrics that make sense. The best marketing

metrics focus on the drivers of prospect and customer behavior that affect the business model. While awareness, intent to buy and volume of qualified leads are on the list, other metrics linked to P&L outcomes also belong on the marketing scorecard -- accounts opened, sales closed, evidence of loyalty such as repeat purchase and recommendation to others. But be aware of the dependencies beyond marketing to move these levers, and make sure all colleagues upon whom the CMO is dependent have a stake. Otherwise, the CMO will be set up to fail.

Provide sponsorship and support. The marketing function will continue to transform, irrespective of the size or maturity stage of the business. The CMO’s success increases in a culture of where purpose and insights matter, and where leaders keep the customer at the center of decisions.

Chances are your CMO will be mortal. So, how will they succeed? CMOs who rise to become the CEO of their function will: • Operate with a relentless focus on purpose and customer.

• Achieve differentiation that matters to the people whom the brand wants to serve.

• Build and motivate a diverse team of collaborators.

• Lead with openness and trust, clarity of vision and connection to execution and business model drivers.

• Have the authority, empowerment, alignment and support to deliver on the high expectations for which they are being held accountable.

Amy Radin

Record-breaking brands: how (and why) you should attempt a Guinness World Record IT’S IN OUR NATURE TO BE INTRIGUED AND EXCITED BY EXTRAORDINARY ACHIEVEMENTS, SAYS DOUG MALE OF GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS, AND BRANDS CAN LEVERAGE THIS CURIOSITY IN A NUMBER OF WAYS. HE TELLS MARKETING ABOUT GREAT RECORD ATTEMPTS BY BRANDS, AND THE CONTENT CAMPAIGNS THAT INVOLVED THEM.

By Ben Ice

Marketing: What’s the process for a business attempting a Guinness World Record?

Doug Male, head of PR, EMEA APAC, Guinness World Records: It’s as easy as contacting a Guinness World Records account manager by filling out an online campaign briefing form. From there, our account managers will help brands develop their creative strategy, help decide what record they should attempt and organise a Guinness World Records adjudicator to judge the attempt. Not only that, a whole record-breaking campaign can be built to address your campaign objectives.

However, before any brand applies for a Guinness World Records attempt, a definitive plan should be considered, this includes: • The overall campaign goal, objectives and measurement of success: At the end of the day, it’s not only about whether you successfully set a new record title, success should be measured based on your objectives. For example, were the participants of your record attempt satisfied with your product or service, did the positive sentiment towards your brand increase or did your employee satisfaction rating increase?

• Determine who your target market will be and tailor the record attempt around their interests, while still ensuring it’s in line with your brand/the campaigns theme and objective.

• Plan out your content calendar and schedule in key milestones such as when you will announce the record attempt and whether it’s internal or external. Ensure there’s enough time and resources to capture content throughout the entire process.

Why should brands attempt a title?

It is human nature to be intrigued or excited by extraordinary achievements. The feeling of achieving something great and being inspired unites people and communities. If you look at world records from a sales-oriented perspective, you have to ask yourself why companies and brands do not use this form of playful competition more intensively for their product positioning and communication.

Marketing campaigns live on content. The registration process, the preparation and finally the actual attempt to set a new Guinness World Records title or to break an existing one offers many opportunities to create relevant, versatile and engaging content. Whether it’s a new product launch, celebrating a company’s anniversary or making a corporate event that tad bit interesting, attempting a Guinness World Records gives brands endless choices to gain cut-through and create newsworthiness within their respective industries.

Should brands attempt to break old records, or come up with new ones? Why? It depends on the brand’s campaign objectives and goal.

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There are thousands of existing records to choose from, however brands can work with our campaign specialists to determine whether they should create a new record or break an existing one. We draw up a number of rules for each record title, and creating a new title can require exhaustive research to ensure that is measurable and can be standardised.

What do good brand attempts have in common?

Great titles by brands are those that can transform the everyday into extraordinary. To make what was once mundane into something worth talking about, worth watching and worth sharing. LG Electronics did this brilliantly by using the power of storytelling to get audiences engaged and keep them at the edge of their seat for the launch of its Centum System washing machine. To demonstrate the new product has significantly reduced vibrations, LG teamed up with professional card stacker and multiple Guinness World Records title holder Bryan Berg to break the Guinness World Records title for the tallest house of cards built in 12 hours, which was built on top of the new washing machine, while it was running at 1,000 RPM. The masterpiece was 3.3 metres tall and comprised of 48 levels, it attracted more than 100 million global views of its record attempt and scooped two industry awards– a bronze in the Brand Film Festival in London and at the Advertising and Marketing Effectiveness Awards in New York.

thousands were disqualified for not taking part in the display correctly within the record guidelines.

What are some common mistakes they make?

I’d say ordinarily it would be misinterpreting a rule, but with our account managed service, the chance of that happening is greatly diminished.

What are some unlikely brands that have made attempts?

We’ve had title attempts from all corners of the world and businesses and industries from different ends of the spectrum.

A couple of brands and companies that transformed the view of their business from something that might have been traditionally seen as ‘boring’ or ‘serious’ to exciting and inclusive are: • When PWC US launched its ‘Earn Your Future’ campaign to address youth education with a focus on financial literacy, it wanted to show its commitment to corporate social responsibility by creating a memorable and unique event that would excite and engage PwC staff, as well as impact youth. After calling on hundreds of its partners and staff across southwestern US, PwC successfully set a new Guinness World Records title for the largest financial literacy lesson at multiple venues, with eight elementary schools and 5,624 participants in the lesson.

Brands that include an experiential element are also great as it allows them to immerse their audience and create a unique experience for them. This is why mass participation attempts are popular. They spark thousands of people to do something related to the brand at the same time to create a united community all working towards the same goal. A great example of this is The National Assembly Taekwondo Federation’s huge attempt for the Largest Taekwondo display which included 8,212 people.

The martial arts display was to promote the sport and to encourage peace between neighbouring nations where both young and old attended the event. The enjoyment and determination was evident as only 150 people out of the

• Another unusual company to attempt a Guinness World Records title is Dubai Police. Dubai Police wanted to implement its strategy to make Dubai a safe city by hosting events that would engage the community, celebrate the spirit of the nation, promote unity and keep residents happy. Since 2010, Dubai Police has broken 11 Guinness World Records titles, with their most recent taking place in March this year. To position Dubai as a smart city and aiming to be the smartest the world, the first unmanned smart police station was inaugurated.

Dunkin’, WW and IHOB: When Do Name Changes Pay Off? FORMER NIKE DESIGNER D’WAYNE EDWARDS SAYS BRUCE LEE HAS IMPACTED HIS CAREER AND DESIGN.

By Knowledge@Wharton

What’s in a name? A lot if you’re an established brand like Dunkin’ Donuts, which operates more than 12,000 franchises in 46 countries. Yet the legacy company announced in September that it is dropping the second half of the name it’s had since 1950, when a hot cup of joe sold for a dime and a tasty doughnut could be had for a nickel. Although the rebranded Dunkin’ still sells baked goods, the name change reflects shifting consumer tastes – beverages now account for 60% of the restaurant’s sales. “By simplifying and modernizing our name, while still paying homage to our heritage, we have an opportunity to create an incredible new energy for Dunkin’, both in and outside our stores,” chief marketing officer Tony Weisman said in a statement.

Dunkin’ isn’t the only brand to rename itself recently. Weight Watchers announced that it is going with WW to emphasize its new slogan, “Wellness that works,” and IHOP temporarily adopted the moniker IHOB to put customer focus on its burgers. The summertime switch drew widespread ridicule across social media, a reminder that rebranding doesn’t always work.

The decision to rename your company is a tricky proposition, but businesses continue to do it with varying degrees of success. The Knowledge@Wharton radio show on Sirius XM invited Wharton marketing professors Americus Reed and Patti Williams to run down the reasons why companies would take such a risk. Following are five takeaways from their conversation.

To Modernize Your Company The biggest reason for a rebrand is to stay current. Kentucky Fried Chicken is the quintessential example of that. In 1991, the restaurant chain switched to KFC in order to drop “fried” from the name at a time when Americans were becoming extra health conscious.

Williams views Weight Watchers’ name change in a similar light.

“Weight Watchers is a 55-year-old brand. Definitions of health and wellness have changed a lot since the post-war era,” she said. “What it means to be fit in today’s environment, to be healthy in today’s environment — fundamentally different.

They were the diet plan for your mom, and they don’t want to be your mom’s diet plan anymore.”

A name change is also a chance to freshen the brand and show consumers that the company is keeping up with the times. Often, a name change simply aligns the company with language already being used by customers. Starbucks, for example, is no longer called Starbucks Coffee, a name that its customers truncated long ago.

“I think the perspective of trying to reinvent yourself, trying to refresh what you’re doing is an important aspect,” Reed said.

“It’s also kind of a double-edged sword because oftentimes we have nostalgia wrapped up in these brands.”

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To Attract Next-generation Customers Aging brands and legacy companies are well aware that, if they want to survive and sell to the next generation of customers, they need to rebrand. Williams offered an example from the food industry: prunes.

“You’re struggling with the idea of, ‘I have this core group of consumers that has a certain idea about what I’m doing, and now I’ve got to talk to new consumers.’”

- Americus Reed

“A few years ago, the California Prune Board decided that young people didn’t want to eat prunes,” she said. “Prunes are for old people, and therefore [they are for] a health condition I might not want to think I have yet. So, they decided they were going to be ‘dried plums.’ Years of research go into whether or not ‘dried plums’ is a more attractive name.”

The board spent about two years deliberating the change, which turned out to be simple but effective. Prunes became synonymous with healthy eating, were positioned as an alternative to boring bran, and sales spiked.

“A lot of legacy brands are really struggling in a bunch of ways,” Williams said. “They’re struggling against disruptors — people outside their industry who are coming in and have implications for the way they compete. They look oldfashioned, so they’re rebranding in that way. And they’re also struggling with young people demanding a lot more from brands than brands had to stand for 20 or 30 years ago.”

Reed said legacy companies have to tread carefully when catering to new clients so that they don’t alienate old ones.

“Memories are there, these emotions are there,” he said.

“You’re struggling with the idea of, ‘I have this core group of consumers that has a certain idea about what I’m doing, and now I’ve got to talk to new consumers.’”

To Distance Your Company from Disaster Name changes are often forced by disaster. Something terrible happens that brings negative publicity to the brand, and the only way a company can escape the bad press is to walk away from its old image and create an entirely new one.

Accenture used to be Andersen Consulting, which was linked to the Enron scandal. And ValuJet changed to AirTran shortly after a 1996 crash into the Florida Everglades that killed all 100 passengers on board.

“I think that there is a consideration sometimes when you’re trying to create a psychological distance between something that has happened. There’s been a brand crisis,” Reed said.

“It makes sense to do that a little bit more quickly, perhaps, and to dive right into the pool.”

To Communicate Your Values Whether it’s one product category or an entire image overhaul, rebranding can help communicate a different message to consumers in an era when the message matters.

The professors said younger consumers, in particular, are

conscientious about spending their money with companies that align with their own values. They want an emotional connection.

“I think consumers are now demanding that they be a part of the brand-creation process,” Reed said. “They are demanding, because of … companies like Amazon, that when you go to a retail outlet, you better have more there than just assortments of products.

You’d better have something to “Consumers really experience that consumers can expect that brands, latch onto.”

Williams said younger consumers also care about how companies create their products – such as whether they are ethically sourced or sustainable – and how they treat their employees.

like people, are going to have values that they live up to and that they try to enact every single day.”

“Consumers really expect that - Patti Williams brands, like people, are going to have values that they live up to and that they try to enact every single day,” she said. “I think [this expectation is] only getting bigger. In fact, I think it affects every consumer of every age these days. Everybody wants brands to stand for something — so that I can purchase them and feel good about the purchase I’m making.”

Reed said Amazon’s recent decision to raise its minimum wage makes a statement about how the company views its workers. “That’s part of their brand,” he said. Added Williams: “Employees who are happy deliver customers who are happy. That’s what it comes down to.”

To Tweak Your Brand Sometimes companies don’t seek a total image makeover, but they want to tweak some of their products. That’s when rebranding goes small, like when McDonald’s announced it would stop using preservatives in its hamburgers to appeal to health-conscious consumers, or when British Petroleum changed its lettering and logo to a shield to convey strength and protection.

Reed said small changes are advisable for companies wanting to keep loyal customers who are used to things the way they are while still attracting new buyers.

“There’s something called ‘just noticeable difference,’ where you’re just trying to make these little, tiny changes and not shocking consumers because they’re using these cues that identify you,” he said. “To know where you are and to see from an awareness perspective — you’ve got to be a little bit careful about that.”

Williams recalled how Walmart switched its name from allcapital letters to lower-case letters and placed more emphasis on its star logo.

“It went from trying to say it was this dominating retailer to this warm, friendly retailer,” she said. “There wasn’t really a big rebranding effort in terms of what the brand stood for or how it was pursuing its strategy, but it adopted a different kind of personality. It’s an opportunity to get [consumers] to think differently about you.”

Book,

&

Line

Sinker

Agency: Starting a Creative Firm in the Age of Digital Marketing (Advertising Age) 2015th Edition

11 Seconds to Success: The Queen of Snapchat on Living Your Dreams and Ruling Social Media

By Rick Webb

By Cyrene Quiamco, Shaun McBride (Foreword)

This book is for young startups and entrepreneurs in the advertising, marketing, and digital services space. It’s an A-to-Z guide for young advertising firms, full of advice that ranges from getting funding to how to value the company and sell it to how to hire your first employee.

Social media success story: Here’s a living your dreams story that should inspire everyone ─ the living your dreams story of CyreneQ, a modern Cinderella fairy tale. (See: “Here’s how a 26 year-old is making up to $30,000 per Snap on Snapchat”, by Morgan Linton, co-founder of Fashion Metric, November 30, 2016)

Blue Ocean Shift: Beyond Competing - Proven Steps to Inspire Confidence and Seize New Growth

Email Marketing Rules: Checklists, Frameworks, and 150 Best Practices for Business Success Kindle Edition

By W. Chan Kim, Renée Mauborgne

By Chad S. White

BLUE OCEAN SHIFT is the essential follow up to Blue Ocean Strategy, the classic and 3.6 million copy global bestseller by world-renowned professors W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne.

Drawing on more than a decade of new work, Kim and Mauborgne show you how to move beyond competing, inspire your people’s confidence...

Email Marketing Rules demystifies this vital channel, taking you step by step through 150 best practices, providing extensive tactical checklists, and giving you strategic frameworks for long-term success.

Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable

The 7 Critical Principles of Effective Digital Marketing Kindle Edition

By Seth Godin What if you see a black and white cow after only ever seeing brown cows? It stands out. But what happens when you keep seeing more and more black and white cows? What stands out then? It would take a purple cow. That’s the basic premise of Godin’s seminal book on transforming your business, and your advertising, into something remarkable. Stand out, be amazing, or blend in and go unnoticed.

Own Your Niche: Hype-Free Internet Marketing Tactics to Establish Authority in Your Field and Promote Your Service-Based Business Kindle Edition

By Stephanie Chandler Manipulative sales tactics, long sales letters with big and bold headlines, and spammy emails aren’t the only way to get visibility and capture sales online.

By Kasim Aslam The 7 Critical Principles of Effective Digital Marketing is an attempt at establishing a baseline for one of the most tumultuous and changeridden industries in existence. It takes a step back from the strategies and tactics that most digital marketing approaches start with and, instead, establishes a core and foundational structure from which all digital marketing initiatives can and should operate.

Non-Obvious 2018 Edition: How To Predict Trends And Win The Future (Non-Obvious Series)

By Rohit Bhargava In this all-new eighth edition, discover what more than a million readers already have: how to use the power of non-obvious thinking to grow your business and make a bigger impact in the world.

In total, the Non-Obvious 2018 Edition features 15 all-new trends across 5 categories including Culture & Consumer Behavior, Marketing & Social Media, Media & Education, Technology & Design plus Economics & Entrepreneurship.

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The Four Step Marketing Blueprint: The Marketing Guide Your Competition Hopes You’ll Never Find Kindle Edition

Data Driven: Harnessing Data and AI to Reinvent Customer Engagement

By Matt Law,‎FSMC Community

The indispensable guide to data-powered marketing from the team behind the data management platform that helps fuel Salesforce the #1 customer relationship management (CRM) company in the world

This short book outlines the four critical components of every successful marketing strategy. As you read, you’ll suddenly realize there are businesses all around you applying these principles. They’re quietly dominating their industries and are expanding at breakneck speed.

Retention Point: The Single Biggest Secret to Membership and Subscription Growth for Associations, SAAS, Publishers, Digital Access, Subscription ...

Membership and SubscriptionBased Businesses

By Robert Skrob Revealing more than 25 years of membership growth experience in this new book called Retention Point.

Friction: Passion Brands in the Age of Disruption

By Jeff Rosenblum, Jordan Berg

By Tom Chavez, Chris O’Hara, Vivek Vaidya

Digital Marketing For Dummies Kindle Edition

By Ryan Deiss, Russ Henneberry Written with the marketer’s best interests in mind, this friendly, down-to-earth guide shows you how to use proven digital marketing strategies and tactics to expand the reach of your brand, increase audience engagement, and acquire and monetize customers. From current best practices in SEO and SEM to the latest ways to effectively use content marketing and influencer marketing—and everything in between—Digital Marketing For Dummies helps you get the most out of all your digital marketing efforts.

BrandED: Tell Your Story, Build Relationships, and Empower Learning

Friction argues that brands don’t simply need clever messages or new, shiny technologies. They need a fundamental change in strategy. Friction provides a system for embracing transparency, engaging audiences, creating evangelists, and unleashing unprecedented growth. The authors of Friction have worked on some of the industry’s most innovative assignments for the world’s most successful brands.

By Eric Sheninger, Trish Rubin

Marketing Playbook for Social Media: Using Social Media to Drive Sales and Build Brand

Essential AdWords: The Quick and Dirty Guide (Including Tricks Google WON’T Tell You) 2018 EDITION Kindle Edition

By Mr Mark W Lamplugh Jr This book contains helpful information about how to use social media to promote your business and boost your sales! The information in this book will help you to create and grow a strong social media presence for your business that will allow you to obtain the all the potential that social media has to offer.

A brand is built around three key elements: image, promise, and result. The power of a brand to communicate all three elements is undeniable, and in today’s digitally connected, social society, schools and school districts have a lot to gain by developing and promoting their own brand identities. BrandED is the groundbreaking guidebook for educators who want to enhance communicatio...

By Kyle Sulerud Essential AdWords: Narrow Your Focus & Instantly Improve Your ROI. If you’re interested in learning about AdWords – There are thousands of books and resources out there to choose from. However, if you want to maximize your profits in the shortest time possible… This is the most important book you’ll ever read!