Branding matters. Because branding matters.
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07 09 11 Dear Friends: Content is dead. Long live storytelling. Both brands and agencies need to reconcile to this new reality to deliver better for each other and for their respective constituencies. Am sure this feature will be an eye opener for many in the branding and advertising fraternity as would be the article on how to position like Don Draper, a name that needs no further articulation. We also uncover how social brands can learn from the biggest social media icon of the day; Lady Gaga and how brands can reach out to customers in the digital age. We bring to you this issue the much revered and eagerly awaited Interbrand’s Best Global Brands 2013 Report which see some shifts in the pecking order and some of the usual suspects losing out. This is worth a keep for true brand connoisseurs. Discover the very essence of subliminal branding in the feature on ‘How GE branded by Unborn Baby‘. The piece on how brands can create lasting connections with customers is a testament to ISD Global’s CLAP (Customer Love Affair Plan) concept and not to forget Saatchi’s Lovemarks… Best.
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CONTENTS
How To Position A Product Like Don Draper How Yahoo Picked a New Look For An 18-Year-Old Brand What social brands can learn from Lady Gaga Brand Love for the Long Haul: Five Tips for Lasting Connections With Customers The Best Global Brands 2013 Why Agencies and Brands Need to Embrace True Storytelling How GE Branded My Unborn Baby What happens when brand fandoms go wrong?! 10 Lessons For Design-Driven Success Is your brand’s social media persona spot-on? Brand Marketing: How To Reach Customers In The Digital Age Rethink Sales and Marketing: You’re Really Doing Commerce Brands can learn a thing or two from media companies Five Ways to Realize Greater Value From Programmatic Advertising Infographic: what annoys us most about your brand on social media? Book, Line & Sinker
How To Position A Product Like Don Draper Rohit Bhargava
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08 The marketing team for Viagra doesn’t use email newsletters. You can probably guess why – but I have often thought for some time that anyone who can figure out a good marketing strategy for a product like that could probably promote anything. If that person existed in real life, he or she would probably resemble the character of Don Draper from the popular AMC show Mad Men about the wildly creative, alcoholic and chauvinistic advertising industry in the 1960s. In the pilot episode for the entire show, Draper is confronted with the challenge of building an advertising strategy for the Viagra of his time … big tobacco. At the time, the tobacco industry faced growing evidence from medical studies that their product was actually dangerous and deadly. In response, the FDA took the relatively minor step of banning tobacco c o m p a n i e s from promoting healthy messages under threat of big fines. Claiming that more doctors smoked a certain brand cigarette was (thankfully) no longer acceptable. So Draper is faced with the impossible task of repositioning cigarettes. His solution, in a moment of inspiration, is to change the message to focus on a small part of the drying and curing process involved in making cigarettes; toasting the tobacco leaves. His two word tagline: “It’s Toasted.” The client shares that all their competitor’s cigarettes are toasted as well – to which Draper replies, “no, yours are toasted. Theirs are poisonous.” That’s the power of positioning. The best recent modern example of the same principle in action is the growth of Coors Light in contrast with their biggest competitors. Struggling in what MillerCoors CMO Andrew England called a “relatively nondifferentiated segment,” the beer took over the #2 spot in the US behind Bud Light – the first time in two decades that anyone other than Bud and Bud Light were #1 and #2. How did they do it? For the past six years, the entire strategy for positioning the beer has been a single word: cold. The beer features images of snow capped mountains on the packaging and uses advertising filled with images of mountain climbers and people surrounded by ice. The reality, as a recent Fast Company piece uncovered, is that a Coors Light is only as cold as the fridge you put it in … and usually sits next to other equally cold beers from other producers. Yet logic falls behind emotion when it comes to how men choose their beers (and many other things), and the cold “frost brewed” messaging of Coors has been working. Clearly the art of positioning (as opposed to actually changing
your product) can work for tobacco on a TV show and for “nondifferentiated” beer in real life. So the real question is, how can you put the principle into action for your own brand? Here are three tips:
1. Own something first. In the classic marketing book Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind by Al Ries and Jack Trout, the authors share that the easiest way to get into someone’s mind is to be first. What Don Draper would probably tell you about this advice is sometimes it doesn’t actually matter WHAT you own first. Being a cigarette that is toasted, for example, may work perfectly well for positioning – because ultimately the first important goal of positioning is to separate yourself from your competitors.
2. Tell a better story. Just being first, though, won’t be enough to succeed in the longer term if it isn’t something that people care about. The way to take being first and turn it into a true advantage is by wrapping it in a powerful story. When Coors decided to own the idea of being a colder beer, it wasn’t enough to run a few 30 second spots about it. They actually consulted with “experts” on cold technology and even developed their own special brand of fridge that bars or even homeowners could use to store their beer at an optimal cold temperature more chilled than the typical fridge.
3. Reposition the competition instead. In one of the most powerful chapters of Ries and Trout’s book, they talk about the power of repositioning your competition. When Stolichnaya Vodka needed to promote its Russian heritage, they did it by exposing Smirnoff and their other competitors as being made in America and not in Russia. Scope did the same thing by repositioning Listerine’s heritage as a powerful mouthwash as giving you “medicine breath.” Both were examples of brands that succeeding in positioning their products as desirable simply by repositioning their competition as less desirable. There is a good reason that Positioning is considered the book that “sparked a marketing revolution.” The idea of positioning has done that for the past several decades in real life AND on television. There are no shortage of ideas for who might add that last P to the traditional 4 P’s description of marketing (product, price, place, and promotion). I even added my own fifth P with my first book on why brands need to have a personality. Despite my belief in the power of personality, I have to admit that positioning is a more likely choice to be the true “fifth P” of marketing. And Don Draper would probably agree.
How Yahoo Picked a New Look For An 18-Year-Old Brand Tim Peterson
Portal’s Design Team Created New Typeface for Company’s Mark Yahoo has refreshed its 18-year-old logo to match the nearly two-decade-old portal’s ongoing makeover under CEO Marissa Mayer. Capping a thirty-day campaign leading up to the official unveiling, Yahoo pinned the first major redesign of its logo since 1995 to the site’s homepage early Thursday morning. But here’s the punchline: the new logo was not among the 30 teased over the past month. Created exclusively by Yahoo’s in-house brand design group and product designers, the new logo retains much of its predecessor’s qualities -- the purple, the exclamation point, the varying letter sizes meant to represent a yodel’s sound waves -- but simultaneously modernizes it and applies a classical aesthetic. “This represents a significant evolution of the logo,” said Yahoo CMO Kathy Savitt, who joined the company in September of last year. She outlined how characteristics inherited from the
old logo have been tweaked. The purple is “far richer, deeper.” The exclamation point has taken on a slender, rounder shape and will animate for three seconds (“half a yodel,” per Ms. Savitt) after someone initially navigates to a Yahoo site. Yahoo SVP-brand creative Bob Stohrer said the design team’s aim was to create a logo that was “sophisticated with a wink.” Those animations are not dissimilar from the Google Doodles of Ms. Mayer’s former employer, but not static. “It might be an exclamation riding on a Segway, or riding on a pogo stick or swinging on a Tarzan vine. It’s a hat tip to the traditional whimsy our users have loved and will continue to love,” Ms. Savitt said. But the starkest departure from Yahoo’s old logo is the font. That should surprise no one who paid any attention to the ones Yahoo teased each day for the last thirty days. Those new logos were criticized for being little more than font changes and less impressive than the Doodles Google semi-regularly rolls out.
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Yahoo’s test logos
What Designers Are Saying “Honestly some of them could have used a random font generator. There’s not a lot of discipline behind what they’re doing from a design perspective. You can tell different designers are involved in the making of them,” said Kevin Farnham, CEO of design firm Method. Mr. Farnham designed the new logo’s predecessor alongside Geoff Katz while the two worked as art director and executive creative director, respectively, at San Francisco-based digital agency Organic. And Luke Wroblewski -- Yahoo’s former chief design architect who worked on the 2009 tweak that changed the color of Mssrs. Farnham’s and Katz’s design from red to purple -concurred with Mr. Farnham that a number of the 30-day campaign’s candidates are throwaways. However both Mr. Farnham and Mr. Wroblewski agreed that Yahoo’s outgoing logo was ready to retire. While Ms. Savitt received questions about a potential logo redesign soon after joining Yahoo last year from Lockerz, the impetus for the refresh came after Yahoo redesigned its home page in February. Through the company’s own customer service channels and on social networks it analyzed, people pointed out the old logo didn’t fit with Yahoo products’ new look. Yahoo then surveyed its 12,000-plus employees, 87% of whom responded that it was time for a new logo. The consensus may hold that a new Yahoo logo is in order, but that doesn’t guarantee people will like the replacement. Mr. Wroblewski’s Hot or Not-style polling app Polar solicited people on which they prefer between each day’s new Yahoo logo and the old one and had tallied more than 115,000 votes as of midday Wednesday. Only one of the new logos -- Day 10 -- ousted the old one, and that new logo garnered
more votes than the second and third most-favored new logos combined (neither of which received more votes than the old logo). “Each of the typefaces surfaced [during the campaign] represented in some way a facet of the design principles we were testing as part of the original design thesis” to redesign the logo without discarding it entirely, Ms. Savitt said.
Proprietary Font The new typeface is one unique to Yahoo. “We always knew that we wanted to develop our own proprietary font, and that this would be intellectual property that would come from Yahoo, from our design team,” Ms. Savitt said. And so they did (though Yahoo’s new font doesn’t yet have its own name). Despite the design world’s ongoing “flat” trend propelled by the look of Apple’s new mobile operating system, Yahoo went classical for its typeface. The font would look at home on the banner of renaissance-era jouster or a British soccer, er, football club. That could invoke the larger renaissance Ms. Mayer is trying to incite at Yahoo and reinforce the company’s hope to become a solid business like it once was. “When you want to create an image of stability, for something to be taken seriously as a business, you tend to go toward more classical tropes,” said Hunter Tura, president of Bruce Mau Design. Said Ms. Savitt: “You’ll notice a chisel to our logo that’s very architectural. What we’re saying is our logo is the foundation upon which our brand and products and user experience will continue to be built.”
Yahoo will have to wait to see whether consumers, advertisers and shareholders get the message.
What social brands can learn from
Lady Gaga
Seth Porges
Pity the big brands. No matter how much money they toss at digital-this and social-media-that, it’s rare that even the biggest and most beloved get a fraction of the traction of the Gagas and Biebers of the world.
celebrity brand feel realistic. This is especially true when communication trickles down from social media strategists— or even interns—who may not have direct lines to the personas they are representing on social media.
Of course, this is pretty predictable: Celebrities have personalities. They’re relatable. They’re people. They’re engaging.
“You have to create and be something that is believable,” Michelsen says. “If Lady Gaga tried to promote camping gear or tractors, it’s just not believable. It has to be authentic, it has to be real, it has to feel like her.”
Isn’t this what every company wants? To exhibit personality? To be engaging? Surely there’s some lessons that big brands can crib from social media-savvy celebrities in order to drum up user engagement? To dig in, I called up Matt Michelsen, founder and CEO of Backplane, a company that produces the social backend used by celebrities such as Lady Gaga to build their online communities (Backplane powers her popular Littlemonsters. com site, and recently announced deals to bring their platform to Coke, Nike, and Cirque de Soleil.) My simple question for Michelsen: When it comes to building community and engaging audiences, what can big brands learn from social-media savvy celebrities?
Personality Matters With celebrities, it’s often easy to nail down just what their personality is—after all, they are living, breathing humans who live very public lives. With brands, the idea of a “personality” is often overlooked— but no less important in terms of driving engagement. “When Lady Gaga is talking to her fans, she leads by example,” Michelsen says. “Her fans connect with her persona. They feel like they know her, they relate to her, and want to emulate her. When she tells her fans that it’s important for them to be kind to each other, they take that to heart. She’s anti-bullying so they’re anti-bullying too. Brands can learn a lot from that. It’s important that a brand or an organization has a personality, and that everything they do is tied to that personality.”
“Authenticity” May Be A Meaningless Word… But It Totally Matters Building off the need for personality, it’s important that any nudges given by a corporate or
Understand The Shortcomings Of Social Networks Facebook and Twitter give brands lots of useful data, but they’re shortcomings make it difficult for brands to engage with individual users. “Brands pay a lot of money to build social communities, but then they aren’t able to directly reconnect with those members,” Michelsen says. “So if they want to target users, they have to pay social networks to segment, target, and engage them. They can’t actually go into the backend of the platform to target users for a call to action. Instead, they are posting to social networks, and hoping that a user will see the post in the stream.”
Converse, Don’t Sell. One reason it is so hard for brands to engage consumers: The second people see a logo, they assume they’re going to get a hard sell, increasing the odds that they’ll either tune out or run away. “Don’t sell—have a conversation,” Michelsen says. “You’ll sell more by engaging users around topics and interests that they care about than if you just tell them to buy a product.” Because celebrities are, in essence, selling themselves and their personalities, engagement for the sake of engagement tends to be a more organic process. And one with a major longterm payoffs. There’s no reason brands can’t also engage customers for the sake of engagement. Loyalty and sales will follow.
Brand Love for the Long Haul: Five Tips for Lasting Connections With Customers Christina Papale
The exhilarating rush of new love often feels like it will last forever. But anyone in a long-term relationship knows that love’s initial flames often die down, replaced by a more stable bond that needs some juicing to stay healthy for the long haul. Brand relationships are no different. Keeping a fiery connection takes some work. To unlock long-term love for our brands and set the stage for strong lasting connections, one simply has to look at and apply basic human relationship principles. Here are five ways you can keep the spark alive and forge a devoted, lasting connection to consumers.
1. Spend quality time together Companies work really hard and spend a lot of time marketing brands. But you can also spend one-on-one active time with your own brand to understand and experience its core behaviors, benefits, and experiences. As a result, you’ll truly feel its value and make sure it hasn’t lost its way. Whether your category is technology, CPG, or retail, sit with your products, experiences, and expressions and bring an open, objective eye. Reality show Undercover Boss puts senior management in the trenches to understand the day-to-day realities of experiences they provide, and the people who manage those experiences. Fast food giants are known for putting management boots on the ground. Domino’s CEO and franchise leaders created major waves
of change after eating a lot of pizza (and commercialized the transformation) while McDonald’s regularly sends corporate staffers into the field to serve. It’s never a loss; the time you spend can reveal strengths and weaknesses you never new you had.
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2. Delight with novelty Brands tend to have the same routines. Changing things up a bit and adding a little variety to your world can really spice things up: a seasonal play, a promotional “wow,” an event that’s out of the ordinary—what might seem like a gimmick is actually a good thing, as long as it’s on brand—to make the bond even stronger.
On the flip side, the owners of Amy’s Baking Company in Arizona missed an opportunity to use constructive criticism to their benefit—and possibly led to the demise of their own company—when they engaged in a social media war with critics of the brand on Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit. Tuning in to your audience through modern marketing tools is more than a box to check in a media plan. It is a way to validate what consumers experience and to make a connection that much stronger.
4. Create surprise that’s emotionally relevant When is the last time your brand did something surprising that reactivated a relationship or brought consumers back into the franchise through emotional depth? An unexpected move can be disruptive, but it can also lengthen an emotional bond to become lasting. Dove’s recent beauty social experiment was a wow that hit an emotional cord and sealed the deal that Dove owns empathetic female empowerment. Starbucks consistently takes the holiday season to a whole new level by creating expectations around an extended theme; everything from product offerings to design gets a merry lift. Brillo recently went back in time and featured Warholinspired packaging to mark its 100th anniversary. The retrocool design made a splash and reminded us that Brillo offers something beyond products for daily chores: post-modern art—and a connection to our own pasts.
3. Know when to over-communicate and when to listen (genuinely) Brands believe they have an ear to ground via Facebook and Twitter, but successful engagement requires open, two-way communication. Have a robust, transparent dialogue with your consumers to showcase how good you are at listening and at being emotionally honest. Tropicana’s famous packaging redo a few years ago not only brought the power of the consumer voice front and center but also solidified the new two-way street in brand relationships. Oreo’s “Dunk in the dark” real-time response to the Super Bowl blackout, using social media outlets such as Twitter and Facebook, showed that it not only listens to culture but also has finely tuned brand behavior reflexes to prove it is present in and part of, the customer’s life.
Huggies has developed a sensor device called the Huggies Tweet Pee that attaches to baby’s diaper to notify parents via text or Twitter that it’s time for a change. It’s an innovation that understands how 21st century parents relie on technology to connect them to parenting basics and creates all-too-real empathetic understanding of how busy parents are. Let your brand surprise with product innovation or commercial ingenuity that keeps communication fresh, relevant and empathetic.
5. Embrace companion love In brand love, there’s nothing like true loyalists. They get deeply and emotionally involved with your brand, and they spread the word; and, even if passion dies, the promise of companionship remains. Don’t take loyalists for granted! Reward or harness that connection to further advance the bonds of love—and more deeply. Maker’s Mark created its famous brand ambassador program not to reward long-term companions with custom batch bourbon (which it does) but to keep positive vibes going strong. Recently, Disney’s Star Wars Weekends campaign used 3D printing so hardcore Star Wars fans can have their face on a life-size Stormtrooper figurine. It’s a super-smart transfer of Star Wars loyalty to the Disney brand. These kinds of fans invest their time and energy and become deeply vested in the relationship. Focusing on those who love you deeply can grow more of those who love you deeply. Nobody would possibly wish that their bond with consumers become fractured over time. But should your brand hit a bump in the road (as all good relationships do at some point), you can take a step back and look at it from a human perspective. Making it work is work—but fun work. So crack open the bubbly, put on a little Marvin Gaye, and get ready to woo your consumers as if you were falling in love all over again.
The Best Global
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Brands 2013
Why Agencies and Brands Need to Embrace True Storytelling Jon Hamm
To build on the opportunities that today’s hyperconnected and social consumer as well as new distribution platforms offer, agencies and brands need to move away from thinking about branded content and embrace true storytelling. The difference? Stories rely on the intended audience to develop their own imagery and detail to complete and, most importantly, to co-create, whereas content does not. Content is primarily created in the internal mind of the content originator, with no heed to the mind or to the context of the audience. The truly great storytellers have long embraced the fact that the most powerful stories happen in the mind of the audience, m a k i n g each and e v e r y story unique and personal for the individual. They also understand that stories are important because they are inherent to the human experience. Stories are how we pass on our accumulated wisdom, beliefs and values. They are the process through which we describe and explain the world around us, and our role and purpose in it. Audiences have always known this and asked for stories—they’ve never asked for content. As the German literary scholar Wolfgang Iser noted: “No tale can ever be told in its entirety.” His reader-response theory “recognizes the reader as an active agent who imparts ‘real existence’ to the work and completes its meaning through interpretation.” It is this acceptance of the concept that we cannot—nor should we try to—tell any story in its entirety, and the subsequent embrace of the mind of the audience in co-creating our story that is the vital step we need to make if we are to truly resonate emotionally with our audience. But why does it really matter? There is little hesitation in knowing we operate in a cultural and technological world where consumers know everything about a brand, from who owns it to where and how products are manufactured and sold. As a result of this, companies are now evaluated by much more than their products. We are in a world where a brand’s values and the emotions they evoke are narrative material. This presents marketers with an amazing opportunity, as the most powerful way to persuade someone of your idea is by
uniting the idea with an emotion. It’s indisputable that the best way to do that is by telling a compelling story. But we need to recognize that it demands insight and skill to present an idea that packs enough emotional power. A couple of examples—one old and one new—of great storytelling. The legendary Steve Frankfurt, who is credited with creating the tagline “In space no one can hear you scream” for the 1979 movie Alien, clearly understood the role of co-creation in telling stories. This line created a world for the imagination to populate. It allowed the audience to put themselves in the story and co-create its own sense of claustrophobia, fear and isolation. It was simple and comprehensible yet gave clear direction and meaning. It perfectly captured the idea of the brand (or in this case, movie), teasing us as to what the film would deliver and at the same time aligning perfectly with the experience of it. It was a story in its own right. More recently was Intel’s The Beauty Inside, a “social movie” that centered on a guy named Alex who wakes up every day with a new face and body. While there were many reasons to applaud this work, it was the central notion itself that drove its success. As director Drake Doremus says, “The story was exciting to me. The idea of waking up in somebody else’s skin every day but being the same person on the inside … was some territory I was interested in exploring.” This is equally true of the audience. When we start to program a brand, we need to understand its full narrative and which parts of the story we need to create, which to co-create with the audience and which to leave to allow the audience to impart and complete their own meaning. Despite the great work mentioned here, I don’t believe this subtle yet vital shift is one that the majority of people in our business clearly understand. How we embrace this difference between content and stories and then bring true storytellers into our world will be the key to the future success of our industry.
Content is dead. Long live storytelling.
How GE Branded My Unborn Baby Mark Wilson
A TINY LOGO HIDDEN ON ULTRASOUNDS COULD BE COAXING NEW PARENTS TO BUY GE’S FLEET OF HOME APPLIANCES. 238,900 miles from Earth, I see my unborn child for the first time. My view is a grainy black-and-white image on a 10-inch screen, unremarkable and indistinguishable in every way, save for the tiniest of bubbles. It’s the great unknown. It’s my moon. I never cared about an ultrasound before my wife’s, before that grainy black-and-white image was our crystallizing future, before the radioscopic pulse of the diagnostic sound waves transitioned seamlessly into a heartbeat. The cadence was impossibly confident for an entity so small and distant. It was the sound of life itself. It wasn’t until hours later, staring at a snapshot in a trance, that I realized how intensely we’d been manipulated by a higher power. Because right beside the fetus were two letters that glowed like a star against the black background: GE. My child was but a bundle of organized cells just a few weeks in development, yet he or she had already been enlisted as a soldier in the $4.6 billion ultrasound market war. My baby had been branded before birth, and I’d never look at GE’s microwaves, light bulbs, and wind turbines the same way again.
THE POWER OF UNCONSCIOUS BRANDING A few weeks later, I hop on the phone with Douglas Van Praet, Fast Company contributor and author of the book Unconscious Branding, which explores how advertisers use powerful psychology to pull a consumer’s strings at the limbic level. And I ask Van Praet what he thinks about corporate logos finding their way on ultrasounds beside developing children. “It’s primal branding at its best,” Van Praet concedes as he flips through a folder of ultrasound shots I’d sent him, one after another, brand after brand, that each mark embryos
with a GE, Philips, or Siemens logo. “You’ll never, ever feel a connection more deeply to anyone than your child.” On my end, I experience a sort of Pavlovian association, he explains. In a moment of awe, GE peeks its face into the frame. And as I look at this image more, every time rekindling a moment of joyous discovery, GE can gently associate itself with positivity. Now that’s not just a bunch of Freudian philosophy about the nature of consciousness. This powerful brand association has actually been proven in labs. Researchers at University of Toronto have shown test subjects fictional brands, each associated with positive and negative imagery. By the end of the test, subjects couldn’t consciously remember any of the good/bad associations, but when asked how they felt about those fictional brands, the imagery had left a strongly correlative aftertaste in their mouths--an “I like it, but I don’t know why’ effect” and the exact opposite. We call this aftertaste “intuition.” “It’s certainly conceivable that you’d pick up the GE brand on the unconscious level because it’s so subtle,” Van Praet explains. And in GE’s case, the brand is leveraging a particularly powerful trigger--my child--whose importance sinks all the way down to the deepest parts of my brain and my basest instinct to reproduce. (It’s the same reason Michelin ads feature babies sitting in tires.) It’s an all-around branding coup. But there are still rules of engagement when deploying these sly branding maneuvers.
IT’S PRIMAL BRANDING AT ITS BEST.
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RULES OF MANIPULATION Researcher Dr. Patrali Chatterjee, of Montclair State University, has spent her career exploring how brands work their way into our unconscious and has shown how tools like online ads that we believe we ignore can sear their way into our preferences. When I show her a few ultrasounds, she’s intrigued. “The positive warm glow you feel for your baby probably transfers to the [GE] logo,” she says without much hesitation-which is particularly useful in my situation, she points out, as new parents make a lot of domestic purchases (purchases that include refrigerators and dishwashers stamped with the GE logo). That halo effect can be so powerful, she continues, that someone in my situation could even pay more attention to GE commercials they see on TV.
FOR A LOGO TO HIJACK OUR BRAINS, WE REQUIRE MULTIPLE EXPOSURES. But there are rules to the way these manipulations work, she explains. For a logo to hijack our brains and hearts through pre-attentive processing (those things we see in the corner of our eye), we require multiple exposures to the stimulus. Chatterjee has found this unconscious, positive association to occur within 23 exposures, but she believes it could probably happen in even fewer. “When consumers process any stimulus--a logo is a brand stimulus--implicitly it only creates a weak memory trace. The weak memory trace by itself can’t really change behavior,” Chatterjee explains. “But over multiple exposures, those weak memory traces start to become stronger.” “The consumer is unaware that those memory traces exist. Let’s take John and Jane Doe looking at an ultrasound. They’re looking at a picture, they’re oohing and ahhing, showing it to their friends, talking about it, putting it in a
scrapbook. They’re focusing on the baby. They may not even know it’s an ultrasound made by a GE machine, but they see it multiple times.” “Then, maybe they’re buying a new house, and so they’re buying appliances, they go to a big-box store, they’re looking at multiple brands. It is quite conceivable they will be more attracted to the GE brands.” Now for this long con to work, the logo has to be identical everywhere I see it. That means their main logo in the corner of the ultrasound is probably quite powerful, while the tiny GE typed next to the baby--the one that got me so worked up in the first place--is a relative waste, Chatterjee would argue.
THE RISK OF CONSUMER PUSHBACK The other catch, maybe the most important catch of all when working in unconscious branding, is that the consumer can’t recognize they’re being manipulated, or very bad things happen. “The thing about unconscious branding is that when you become cognizant that your buttons are being pushed, you’ll reject the advertisers,” Van Praet says. (Indeed. You may, for instance, find yourself writing an article about it on Fast Company!) Van Praet cites canned laughter as a perfect example of this rejection phenomenon. Canned laughter can actually make television shows seem funnier, subtly encouraging your social self to laugh out loud even if you’re sitting alone on the couch. But as soon as you notice the construct, it hits you in the gut that you’ve been had, and within moments you’ll find yourself watching the eerily silent scenes of The Big Bang Theory on YouTube. And that’s where I am now, feeling manipulated and even a bit betrayed by a piece of medical equipment that’s probed my spouse to slap a brand on my baby. So I do what any future father would do in this situation: abuse my limited powers of influence, call GE’s ultrasound department, and get some answers.
GE’S RESPONSE: WE ACTUALLY MEANT TO MANIPULATE SOMEONE ELSE GE’s spokespeople, of course, are so exceedingly nice that my conspiracy theory is equal parts diffused and emboldened by the time we wrap up with the pleasantries. They’ve connected me with Barbara Del Prince, global marketing manager for GE’s Women’s Health Ultrasound, who talks all things baby
Essentially, this branding allows doctors to sell GE ultrasound machines and other medical equipment to other doctors. That logo serves as an endorsement just like the swoosh on a Tiger Woods Nike golf ball. But what about my wife and I, and all the other couples out there, seeing a pregnancy for the first time? Wasn’t there some beneficial halo effect, stemming from ultrasounds and reaching across the greater GE brand, at play?
with such an approachable clinical proficiency that I think if she weren’t representing a $2 billion a year business and GE’s largest product in health care, she’d make a hell of a doula.
“I definitely see the benefits of that,” Del Prince finally concedes. “[But] I don’t know that its actively anything we’ve sought after.”
Of course, she’s more than agile at answering my big question. The typed GE that sits beside the baby is actually a functional tool on the ultrasound screen, she explains. It’s like a cursor for the ultrasound probe that signals its position to the doctor. And that’s why it’s right next to the image, so a doctor can reference the probe’s position in relation to the fetus.
INTENTIONAL OR NOT, MY BABY IS STILL BRANDED
But remember what Dr Chatterjee told me--that the typed GE probably doesn’t matter as much as the clearer GE logo in the corner. When I point out that the main GE logo in the corner is the largest added component on the ultrasound-larger than any piece of diagnostic information on the page--Del Prince just laughs. “Is it?” she asks, mid-chuckle. The tacit implication seems to be that GE is at least a bit guilty-as-charged for the subtle self-promotion. But that selfpromotion is less for winning over parents than for winning over doctors, Del Prince insists. “It comes in handy during trade-show presentations, because a lot of times, as other physicians are going to the experts, learning what they do, they want to see what tech they were using,” Del Prince says. “This way they aren’t stopping a physician every five feet.”
And that is the big answer we’ll never know, whether there’s a Jack Donaghy within GE plucking at our heart strings to truly love their international brand, or whether the GE probe cursor and the larger accompanying logo was nothing more than an impulsive decision of one of GE’s 200+ ultrasound developers on staff, something that an employee could point to if a middle manager asked why Siemens had one more logo on their ultrasound than GE. “I don’t know if GE is doing this purposefully, if this is a deliberate attempt to influence new parents,” Chatterjee tells me, “but the way it looks to me, when I look at this ultrasound, is that even if they don’t intend it, even if it’s a coincidence, it can act toward driving brand preferences toward GE products.” So ultimately, as thousands of new parents make their own voyages to the moon each day, the GE brand is stamping itself into their mushy hearts along the way. That is, so long as those new parents don’t spot the tactic ... so long as those new parents aren’t reading this article right now.
What happens when brand fandoms go wrong?! Chris Quigley
The power of social media and user-generated content can have a massive impact on brand perception, so it’s not surprising to see marketers increasingly trying to leverage the viral influence of their followers. But cultivating a fandom is a tricky thing. Consumers are a fickle bunch and finding the right mix of exclusivity and public appeal, (not to mention the coveted ‘cool’ status) is a delicate balancing act. For those lucky few that manage to achieve it, fandoms can foster an incredible sense of community and loyalty, but they’re certainly not with out their pitfalls. In fact, the cultural
stereotypes generated by fans can end up actively turning consumers away from a company. The problem being, that unfortunately brands can’t always control the direction that a fan following takes and once the ball starts rolling down that hill, companies can end up spending big bucks trying to rein it in again! We can probably all think of some examples where brands have become associated with fans in a way that ultimately detracts from the message they are trying to convey. Sometimes advertisers can work hard to turn those stereotypes around. Burberry makes a nice case in point with its recent rebranding effort to cast off its unwitting association with ‘chav’ culture. However, the likes of Abercrombie & Fitch, who famously caused public uproar by deliberately restricting its clothing sizes so ‘fat people’ couldn’t shop in its stores, makes for a classic example of a failed attempt to manipulate a brand fandom. Lets take a closer look at some cases of fandoms gone wrong…
The Cult of Apple: Cast you mind back about 10 years or so to when Apple was
still a relatively little fish in a big pond, trying to compete with the corporate tech giants and show the world that computers could actually be ‘cool’. The early “Get a Mac” switcher ads were genius. Deliberately cultivating a Mac vs. PC battle and personifying the typical PC user as an outdated unfashionable businessman lagging behind the times, whilst the hip young Mac user showed the world that computing didn’t have to be complicated. The campaign was a marvel of simplicity, no special effects or fancy graphics, just a clean white space, 2 characters and one question… which one are you? It was clever because it was one of the first ads of its kind to so deliberately perpetuate the notion that consumers are defined by the technology they choose. It wasn’t just saying something about the Mac but about the Mac ‘user’. Apple became one of the most striking examples of extreme brand fandom we’ve ever seen. In the BBC’s documentary, Secrets of Super Brands, Apple Stores were actually likened to cathedrals. Fans flocked to their doors, eager to be the first to get their hands on the latest new product, sometimes camping outside for days in anticipation. However, in recent years the Apple fandom has become a source for industry mocking, with the concept of the ‘Mac enthusiast’, giving rise to a string of jokes and comedy spoofs, (Sh*t Apple Fanatics Say sums up most of the stereotypes nicely). The problem was that Apple marketed itself around the idea that consumers were joining a club of people who think a little different. But with increasing competition from its rivals, it’s clear that Apple can no longer get by on the ‘Mac user Ideal’. Over time we’ve seen the tech giant become a target of ridicule from other brands. Recently Samsung took a cheeky swipe at the iPhone in its ad for the Galaxy S4 (pictured); Nokia mocked the Apple Vs. Samsung Rivalry in its Lumia 920 Phone ad; and Microsoft finally turned the tables with a series of videos parodying Apple’s earlier ‘Get a Mac’ campaign by comparing the iPad to the Windows tablet. Only instead of personifying the operating systems with comedians, Microsoft backed up its claims with a clear demonstration of the features the iPad is lacking. The fandom that once worked in the brand’s favour is now working against it, dividing public opinion and alienating it from a demographic of consumers who view the ‘cult’ of Apple followers as a joke. It’s pretty obvious that just being ‘cool’ isn’t going to cut it anymore and Apple is going to have to step up its game with some hard facts and figures if it wants to maintain its fanbase.
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The Burberry Chavs: When you think of Burberry, what’s the first thing that springs to mind? Catwalk models and stylish wealthy socialites parading around the English countryside; or chavs and drunken football fans drinking larger in the local park? Burberry is the perfect example of a brand whose fandom very nearly ruined its image. In fairness, the Luxury fashion label has made a big come back in recent years, and thanks to some pretty savvy advertising, for the most part succeeded in shaking off its market stall image. But maintaining a luxury-clothing name is tricky and if the wrong demographic of people suddenly become fans it can be very damaging to a brand’s reputation. Unfortunately for Burberry, that’s exactly what happened. Growing up near Liverpool back in the 90’s, I can still remember seeing the ubiquitous checked pattern everywhere, particularly among football fans, (of which there were many). The Burberry print quickly became the unofficial uniform for what was referred to as the ‘chav’ community. And when former soap star, Daniella Westbrook (best known for her nose-eroding cocaine habit), was famously pictured with her daughter dressed in a head to toe matching outfit, it did nothing to help the brands reputation. The Burberry name became a bit of a joke and when pubs and clubs across the country began to ban customers who dressed in the label it became clear that the company needed a new strategy, fast! The brand removed the checked baseball caps from sale and reduced the visibility of its distinctive pattern. It also made a big effort to clamp down on copyright infringement to reduce the amount of cheep imitation goods available to what it considered to be the ‘wrong’ type of fans. In an effort to go back to its roots, Burberry tried to recapture the essence of ‘Englishness’. Reinventing the old classics and hiring stereotypically British models, such as Stella Tennant, granddaughter of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire. It was part of a massive advertising campaign to focus on tradition and quintessential English heritage, championing good oldfashioned British clothes. And to all extents and purposes, it appears to have worked. With the likes of Kate Middleton and Emma Watson now being pictured in outfits, the brand is well and truly back on track and its old chav status is quickly fading into a distant memory.
The Abercrombie Fitch Fat Fail:
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No story about the damaging effects of brand fandoms would be complete without a mention for Abercrombie & Fitch. The American fashion line has repeatedly come under fire for its elitist attitude to consumers, generating a storm of negative public opinion towards fans. You would think the brand’s PR team would have put a gag on Mike Jeffries by now. Back in 2006, the company’s CEO was famously quoted saying that Abercrombie & Fitch deliberately don’t market to ugly people, stating, “that’s why we hire good-looking people in
our stores. Because good-looking people attract other goodlooking people, and we want to market to cool, good-looking people.” Abercrombie & Fitch’s controversial employee ‘look policy’ has landed the company in hot water numerous times, with multiple high profile cases of racial and religious profiling of staff. One girl successfully sued because she was banished to the stock room after being told that her prosthetic arm didn’t fit in with the aesthetic of the store. More recently Jeffries dropped the company in it again, defending A&F’s decision not to make clothes larger than a US size 10 by publicly stating that it didn’t want ‘fat people’ to be associated with the brand. WOOPS! As expected an obvious PR sh*t storm followed. The story trended across the news, being picked up by chat shows like Ellen and triggering a barrage of negative viral tributes. Among my favourites was the hilarious video called #FitchTheHomeless, which nicely sums up the general public perception of the whole situation. But what do you do if the wrong type of people do get hold of your clothes? Well, ask them to cease and desist apparently! I’ve heard of fashion labels sponsoring celebrities in an effort to have their name associated with A-lister style, but to actively pay someone NOT to wear your outfits is a new one for me. This is exactly what happened when Mike Sorrentino, star of hit reality TV show, Jersey Shore, decided that Abercrombie & Fitch was his new favourite thing. After being pictured on numerous occasions donning the A&F logo, the brand reportedly offered a substantial cash settlement for him to agree never to go near it again. In a statement the company said, “We are deeply concerned that Mr Sorrentino’s association with our brand could cause significant damage to our image,” It added: “This association is contrary to the aspirational nature of our brand, and may be distressing to many of our fans. We have also extended this offer to other members of the cast, and are urgently awaiting a response.” Hilarious! So what can we deduce from these lessons? A fan following is a great resource for any company but just because your brand inspires a fandom doesn’t mean you are going to be able to control it!
10 Lessons For Design-Driven Success ROBERT SAFIAN Imagine that the iPhone does not yet exist. Mark Zuckerberg is still enrolled at Harvard. Barack Obama is a hopeful state senator in Illinois. The final episode of Friends has just aired, with 52 million people tuning in. Not a single viewer tweets about it. Amid this quaint-sounding environment, Fast Company’s editors decide to devote an issue to the intersection of business and design. Readers are introduced to little-known characters such as Jonathan Ive at Apple. The magazine chronicles “20 visionary men and women who are using design to create not just new products but new ways of working, leading, and seeing.” It is 2004. When I arrived at Fast Company three years later, I still had an archaic understanding of design. Like many businesspeople, I equated design with tangential aesthetics and fleeting style trends. I was taught by the Fast Company staff--and in particular, by senior editor Linda Tischler--that good design is really about problem solving, that it offers a more sophisticated perspective on modern business challenges than traditional spreadsheet-based approaches. You could go to consulting
firms like McKinsey and get an answer based on established business models. Or you could go to one of the rising design firms such as Ideo, and maybe you’d come up with something never before seen. This is our 10th annual issue dedicated to what we call Innovation by Design. Today, there is a broad recognition that a well-designed business--one that delivers customer delight-has a significant competitive advantage. Apple’s triumphant rise has shown the financial value that good design can bestow. We’ve seen the emergence of the chief design officer and a proliferation of design labs across industries. Fast Company’s own Co.Design digital platform attracts millions of readers monthly. There is much to celebrate about the progress that’s been made. Yet much opportunity remains. The businesses profiled within this issue are at the forefront of the economy, with a collective market value worth more than $1 trillion. They are examples of what good design can enable and offer lessons for all of us. For businesses to thrive in an age of flux, a new kind of creativity is required. Among the lessons:
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1. DESIGN STARTS AT THE TOP It can be argued that the best CEOs are effectively designers-grappling with ambiguous challenges, probing for creative solutions--even though few would accept that moniker. Yet successful design-driven organizations are often distinguished by a close personal rapport between the top business leader and the top designer. That was certainly the case at Apple, between Steve Jobs and the person we unequivocally dub “designer of the decade,” Jony Ive. We’ve highlighted 25 other CEO-designer pairs in “Dynamic Duos” (which will be rolled out, beginning on September 23). You can’t listen to Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts talking to chief creative officer Christopher Bailey and not be struck by their genuine connectedness--there’s just no way to fake that energy. Or Nike CEO Mark Parker’s penchant for doodling (by which we mean drawing) with VP of design John Hoke. Or PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi’s unabashed support for her new chief design officer, Mauro Porcini. “Only the CEO can get the entire company to focus on something,” observes Google designer Jon Wiley. As Farhad Manjoo reports in “Google: The Redesign,” CEO Larry Page’s support has been the single motivating factor in Google’s recent embrace of a design signature.
2. THE APPLE MYTH IS POWERFUL - AND INCOMPLETE Apple is the touchstone for so many business lessons, and the role of design has been key. In a quest to be the Apple of their industry, many businesses have embraced design. How design actually operates at Apple, though, has long been shrouded in mystery. Because Apple’s products work so seamlessly together, the assumption has been that Apple operates internally with high collaboration. Yet when contributing writer Max Chafkin set out to do an oral history of Apple’s design, he discovered something else: “The greatest business story of the past two decades is completely misunderstood,” Chafkin writes. As it turns out, the integration of disparate efforts--each often devised in secrecy--has defined Apple’s process.
3. TODAY’S DISASTER IS TOMORROW’S TRIUMPH The dividends of good design do not always play out according to Wall Street’s quarterly demands. Jon Rubinstein, who was Ive’s boss at Apple for a time (and later ran Palm),
recalls how Apple’s introduction of the Cube in 2000 flopped, but, he says, “it set the foundation for almost all of our future products.” As Rubinstein explains, “We learned a lot about materials, curved plastics, touch switches.” The results you can see from the iPod to the iPad.
4. ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL As much as we applaud the advent of the chief design officer, we need to acknowledge that there are many ways to build a cohesive design culture. Google does not have a chief designer, nor any hard-and-fast design “rules.” Instead, as Manjoo writes, “Google’s new process leans heavily on conversation and collaboration.” At Warby Parker, the top designers are co-CEOs. If there is any overriding model to design-driven solutions, it is that there is no single overriding model for anything.
5. YES, VIRGINIA, PENNY-WISE IS POUNDFOOLISH For many years, there has been a rigorous debate about how best to measure the return on investment for design initiatives. It is a discussion that often relies on short-term cost metrics. When the Apple Stores were being developed, the financial penalties for including a Genius Bar seemed insurmountable. As Michael Kramer, the CFO of Apple retail at the time, says, “So you’re going to take away 20% of the sales floor? . . . What are we going to charge? ‘Nothing.’ Most CFOs would say, ‘Are you fucking crazy?” If Apple hadn’t embraced a design vision, Genius Bars might never have been. And Apple Stores might not boast the highest sales per square foot of any retailer.
6. DESIGN HUNGER IS REAL Retailers such as Target have long capitalized on the appeal of well-designed products, and today’s consumer is more discerning--and more responsive--than ever. No entity represents this trend better than online bazaar Fab, which has built a rabid following and $1 billion valuation in barely two years. Read more in “How High Can Fab Climb?” We’ve seen this too in the design-driven resurgence of Samsung and the emergence of new brands such as Nest and Warby Parker, which have taken on traditional old-school approaches and exploded them.
8. A WELL-DESIGNED PRODUCT DOES NOT EQUAL A WELL-DESIGNED BUSINESS Beauty is way more than skin-deep. Apple has thrived not simply because each of its products is lustworthy, but because of the way they reinforce one another (unlike at enterprises such as Microsoft). The biggest challenge for Fab may not be whether chief designer Bradford Shellhammer’s taste will keep customers engaged but whether CEO Jason Goldberg’s aggressive expansion plans will prove too helter-skelter. Nike thrives not simply because it has well-designed shoes but because CEO Parker and design chief Hoke integrate shoe design with manufacturing, with marketing, and, yes, with financial realities.
9. THE BIG PICTURE IS A MASS OF DETAILS When Samsung Electronics CEO Boo-keun Yoon talks about drawing inspiration “from the contours of a wineglass,” you can get the impression that it is the little things that matter most. “Sweating that detail for the experience,” as Hosain Rahman, CEO of Jawbone, puts it. But as you dig more deeply into the businesses of Samsung and Jawbone--and Flipboard and J.Crew--what you see is a meshing of both small-bore focus and big-picture vision. “Jenna [Lyons] is a designer all day long,” says J.Crew brand president Libby Wadle of the company’s executive creative director, “but she can also have conversations about real estate, about parts of running the business. . . . Her head is not in the clouds.”
10. IT IS STILL DAY ONE
7. THERE’S SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN In an era of big data, we can convince ourselves that if we just watch consumers closely enough and look at the numbers the right way, all our problems will be solved. But consumers will rarely alert us to opportunities they have not yet seen. The best designers can divine those opportunities from the gaps in user experience. That’s what has fueled the rise of breakthrough design-led enterprises such as Airbnb and Pinterest. It is a perspective that infuses “The Best Designs of 2013,” the finalists in our annual Innovation by Design Awards. No focus group had been clamoring for a Leap Motion Controller. Nor were Cambodian mothers agitating to add iron to their family’s diet, a challenge the Lucky Iron Fish Project cleverly surmounts. Only AidPod saw that packing medicine within crates of Coca-Cola bottles could create a low-cost aid-distribution network to remote, needy communities.
Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, uses the expression “day one” to describe how far along his enterprise is in its maturation: Despite two decades of success and growth, Bezos contends, Amazon is at the beginning. You could apply that same perspective when assessing design’s impact on business. So much has changed in the past decade, it is natural to feel a bit of wide-eyed amazement about how far we have come. Yet given the chaotic, fast-changing nature of our world, and the increasing requirement for flexible responses to new challenges and new opportunities, there’s no question that design has only begun to reach its potential. Businesses cannot sacrifice “better” and “nicer” in order to be “faster” or “more efficient.” We need to do it all. Which means the design revolution is only at its dawn. These 10 lessons are only the beginning. Within this issue, you will find much more--starting with our timeline of notable design moments over the past decade. A more extensive e-book version of our Apple design oral history is available via Amazon, iBookstore, and Byliner. And on October 2, you can experience a live version of this content at our Innovation by Design Conference in New York, where you’ll meet the top folks at Airbnb, Burberry, Jawbone, and Nike; have an opportunity for intimate hosted sessions with Warby Parker and PepsiCo; and see the live announcement of this year’s Innovation by Design Award winners. (Space is limited.) Our goal with all of this coverage is to inspire and encourage the next wave of design and the innovation that comes with it. When design is embedded at the center of business, anything is possible.
Is your brand’s social media persona spot-on? Mark Cijo
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No doubt about it, social media is an incredibly powerful marketing tool these days when it comes to profiling a brand and extending its reach. And for some companies – especially those whose target customer is in the teen and twenties age range – it’s essential to be ‘social.’ A recent survey of American teens by researchers Ipsos OTX, for instance, revealed that 63 per cent received their information about brands through social networks such as Facebook and YouTube. That means they’re not reading printed material such as newspapers and magazines and they don’t care much for terrestrial TV. And even more revealing for brands - 41 per cent of those polled said they’d used their Smartphone to buy goods. Meanwhile, here in the Middle East, a study published two years ago by business services firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, predicted digital advertising in Arab nations would grow 35 per cent a year until it was generating around $580 million by 2015.
Tie-in with customer persona If a brand’s market is Millennials then in order for customers to hear about promotions or new products social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest are a must. Traditional marketing channels are no longer relevant. But it’s not just a case of the brand being seen on the right channels, the language too has to be spot on. In other words in order to keep coming back to the page customers want interesting content and in a tone they find genuine and non-corporate (ie one they’ll understand). The focus of a social media strategy should be, first and foremost, about communicating and building loyalty; not selling. Actually most age groups can be found online these days, not just Millennials: very few under 50-year-olds don’t use social media to some extent. Just as in face to face communication a brand’s tone and content on social media should vary depending on their audience. Both content and voice (or tone) on social media have to reflect the brand and appeal to its target customer persona. The following are examples of two international brands that use parts of their social media strategy to appeal to particular customer personas: • In a recent YouTube video and having extended its branding to focus on business owners, Apple demonstrates how the iPad can make them work more efficiently. The video refers to investment portfolios and stock options while the tone is akin to that of a friendly business conversation. They promote the video on the social media channel LinkedIn – the B2B channel – where business types are more likely to be found. • Emirates Airlines is amongst the 50 best brands in the world and has re-focused its marketing from a travel brand to a global lifestyle brand with the launch of its Hello Tomorrow platform in November last year. With a target market of young (ish) men and women who have the money and time to travel, it seeks to get them excited about the unlimited possibilities the future may hold for them via YouTube adverts and a dedicated Hello Tomorrow Facebook page. The latter contains images of in-flight
business class seating and meals as well as videos of Arsenal football players talking to pilots. So important is getting a brand’s voice spot-on on its social media channels that marketing expert Ric Dragon advises carrying out a social media voice check-up every couple of months. He suggests a company puts its Twitter and Facebook feeds, as well as blog posts, into a word file and get a couple of individuals to read them over (not the authors of the posts) to ensure there is a consistent tone (this is especially important if several people in the company are posting). Consistency is crucial in branding as it allows a company to build up its reputation and, at the same time, trust: the customer knows exactly what to expect and that he or she can rely on the brand.
Identifying the customer persona In order to identify what type of tone and content to be using in the first place a brand must identify its customer persona. That involves creating a ‘typical customer’ – giving them a name, gender and even a photograph so that employees know exactly who they’re dealing with. They should also know the customer persona’s ideals, opinions and what they stand for ie political leanings, whether they’re single or a mother, father etc. Other things that matter include income, hobbies, how technological au fait they are (ie do they own a Smartphone or iPad?) and even whether they have any pets. A brand which knows its customer persona inside out will engage with consumers more and build more meaningful and profitable relationships in the long run. Brands which attempt to appeal to the masses are doomed to failure. Narrowing the market and having focus is far more likely to succeed. The brand Pampers Arabia market to mums and dads. Every piece of content they put on their social media channels and website is written to appeal to doting parents. It provides expert advice and tips as well as sharing parents’ concerns that their children are as comfortable and safe as possible. Its Facebook page – with nearly 96,000 ‘likes’ is full of articles on child development as well as funny YouTube videos and cute pictures of children. The tone of voice is caring and that of a best-friend. It encourages followers to upload their own videos and share parenting tips to re-enforce the two-way friendship idea.
Social media’s boost to branding Creating a social media persona allows brands to understand their customer and what it is they need from them ie how the brand impacts the customer’s life and has the potential to make it better. Any company’s social media strategy should involve sharing interesting and relevant news items on its sector and uploading information that may be useful to its customers (interior designers can upload examples of rooms and new décor trends on Pinterest, restaurants can provide favourite recipes on a blog and link to Facebook or Twitter). Providing this kind of content allows a brand to become an authority in its niche, which again leads to customer trust and loyalty. And when it comes to successful branding trust and loyalty from a brand’s customers are the two qualities that really matter.
Brand Marketing: How To Reach Customers In The Digital Age Angela Stringfellow
Brand marketing can create value for your audience-when done correctly. Stand out from your competitors with these tips.
Brand marketing and reputation building used to be a combination of print advertising and word-of-mouth. Radio and TV advertising entered the mix along the way, but within the past decade or so, brand marketing has shifted dramatically from the tried-and-true, taking on a whole new form in the digital realm. Today’s consumers are savvy, technologically advanced and, quite frankly, tired of being treated like an advertising target. That’s why digital media plays such an integral role in brand marketing today—it’s a marketing channel that makes it possible to establish and enhance your brand by creating value, not by selling.
New Brand Marketing Challenges Digital media has opened a whole new world of opportunity for brand marketing, but it has also introduced a few challenges. “The biggest branding challenges that I see come up over and over again in my work with clients are in the areas of differentiation, consistency, transparency and audience,” says Danielle Miller, a brand strategist for women entrepreneurs. “It’s a challenge to cut through the noise, stand out and be heard.” The vast number of social media outlets and other digital marketing channels leaves many small businesses confused about where to spend their efforts. Instead of focusing on a core strategic plan, they spread their efforts across as many channels as possible. The result? A diluted message and no clear target, Miller says. Transparency is also a common issue, particularly for entrepreneurs and solo professionals, as they struggle to hit the delicate balance between sharing enough to be trusted and sharing too much, which alienates audiences.
Finding The Digital Media Balance Julie Cottineau, founder and CEO of brand consultancy BrandTwist, says small businesses get caught up in using Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and everything else—yet they’re not really sure how they should be using it, or for what. “Don’t tweet just because everyone else is if you are not clear on what you want to say and how it can build your business,”
Cottineau advises. Rhonda Page, chief differentiation officer at marketing consultancy Know Your Difference, concurs, noting that there’s a lot of noise in the digital realm and there’s a strong tendency to copycat strategies. “Something works for one person and every else copies and then it’s no longer different,” she explains. What small businesses should do instead: • Focus on your strategic goals. • Define your audience. • Choose one social platform to start with if you’re just getting in on the game; get comfortable with it and make it work for you. • Expand and experiment from there, slowly building out your marketing platform and scaling it up as you find what resonates with your audience. • Be willing to modify your strategy, approach and channels based on what works and what doesn’t. Don’t be afraid to ditch a strategy or channel that just doesn’t produce results.
The Power Of Digital Media In Brand Marketing You can’t ignore digital media if you want to keep pace with your competition. But that doesn’t mean you should do whatever your competitors are doing with a blind eye to how it will actually impact your bottom line. “Consumers are finally able to have that two-way conversation that we’ve been talking about for years with branding,” Cottineau says. She points out that small businesses actually have a strong advantage when it comes to brand marketing in the digital age, “because they have authentic, engaging stories that capture consumers’ attention—and often their share of wallet.” There’s really a simple formula behind successful brand marketing in the digital age: Define your audience, find out where they spend their time and craft powerful stories that resonate and build connections. Once you’ve discovered the right combination, you’ve struck brand marketing gold.
Rethink Sales and Marketing: You’re Really Doing Commerce Michael Ni Thanks to the cloud, today’s online buyer has more exposure to information. Some studies estimate each of us are exposed to more than 3,000 brand impressions a day… and that is only being matched by a shorter attention span. Potential customers no longer want, nor expect, a long, drawnout sales process where discovery, education, comparing, payment, and deployment, as well as retention come in distinct waves. For today’s buyer, if any of those steps are visibly disconnected or misaligned with their individual needs, a deal can be ruined completely. That new sales paradigm has demanded a rethinking of how sales and marketing platforms talk to and work with each other to address buyers in a B2Individual (B2I) world and not just the “consumer” or “business.” No longer can a business look at commerce and marketing as separate cycles that only touch at the very ends of their respective processes. Such a separation creates more opportunity for issues to arise that cause inefficiency and confusion on the vendor-side and leave a bad taste on the buyer-side. And why would you add an extra layer to a process that technology can eliminate?
channels from being seen as just an opportunity to increase reach to integral pieces of the sales equation. For all intents and purposes, channels today are nearly the same as their direct counterparts, but able to get to the specific markets a vendor cannot easily reach or service. These new channels can be anything from an online reseller, mobile application, to a live-chat support person—anywhere that the individual touches your business. This array of channels that blur the traditional sales model means that more holistic analysis of the customer is necessary. Every point at which a customer engages, discovers, learns, and uses your service is an opportunity for them to make further purchasing decisions on your products and services—whether that’s to buy something, upgrade from a trial, or just sign-up for a freemium version. That means that, as a customer uses your products, it’s easy for them to add-on capabilities at the point of need. Even the more “mundane” of channels, like outbound emails, sales engagement, and support channels matter in this “transact anywhere” world.
Going With the Flow Software buyers today are no longer satisfied with a “one size fits all” way to pay, and with increasing number of alternatives to both your product as well its pricing and packaging, buyers have plenty of choices in how they would like to pay now as well. Having the ability to offer a product on a fractional ownership, rental, subscription, or even plain old pay-upfront has become a core part of the value of your solution to your customers. Enabling these various business models requires a holistic, commerce analysis of your key customer segments’ requirements.
Let’s look at three key ways to make the online sales experience as streamlined and impactful to the individual as possible.
Addressing Needs, Not Waiting for Them Now, businesses can use various channels, both direct and indirectly managed, to get their wares in front of buyers more frequently and consistently. Technology has changed
Additionally, customers no longer want to spend their money in the same ways as their peers either. Whereas before they had to succumb to the business models promoted by the vendor, taking a holistic approach and looking at commerce as a whole has allowed for businesses to quickly experiment with and customize their models to best suit the needs of increasingly fragmented sets of buyers. Along with increasingly individualized payment models, vendors have to increasingly expand from the traditional “consumer” or “business” methods of payment such as credit card or via purchase orders to payment approaches that increasingly overlap across both, such deferred payments, bank transfers, and other payment options.
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Building Relationships Globally The online world has not only exposed vendors to the global stage of competition but also leveled the field for reaching global prospects and customers. That means if you are not selling global right from the get go, you are already losing share as ideas and product concepts are rapidly replicated worldwide. You may be thinking right now, “How can I tailor to the individual wants of global customers when I’ve only just launched with a sole focus in the US?” The answer is your holistic commerce solution becoming an invaluable extension to your marketing and engagement efforts. Rather than walking into a new market with a “we will just figure how best to sell here” attitude, vendors can use the localization, distribution, and reseller capabilities of a holistic commerce solution to enter the market with the ability to reach and personalize to the unique needs of that local audience. Even as a vendor focused on one market, but with some international customers, a global commerce solution can drive the same individual-focus regardless of location. That is important because, rather than sending customers the same emails with the wrong currency, taxes, and URLs, their channels can be localized and tailored automatically. As to the points above, the traditional silos isolating marketing from sales cannot support today’s more inundated buyer.
Having a two-part process with its requisite sets of systems and integration points is too slow, too clunky and too risky. That is why integrating the knowledge of these two functions into a holistic act of commerce is crucial. Customers want more engagement, but they want that executed in a way that is highly personalized with other options for self-servicing, as well as assisted service to buy when and how they want. So, get on the same wavelength as your buyers and start thinking about ways to do commerce. Your customers will thank you for it.
Brands can learn a thing or two from media companies Niko Ruokosuo
The Telegraph and The Sun are two more media companies that have recently launched paywalls. Following in the footsteps of The Times and The Financial Times they are paving the way for more publishers to follow suit and charge readers money for the news content they consume. However, with so much competition from free online news sources, both sites will need to offer exclusive content and a unique perspective in order to convince readers to start paying. The same challenge applies for brands, which are increasingly acting like media companies and producing their own content. Brands like Red Bull and Topman have realised that the content they produce needs to be exclusive and more than a thinly-veiled sales message if they are to engage consumers in today’s plethora of advertising and marketing messages. The most popular content is of genuine interest and therefore it is highly valued, however, it can be costly to produce. To keep costs down, brands should look to the media to learn how to produce high quality content cost effectively.
Curate valuable content The Innovations in Newspapers World Report that was presented at the World Editors Forum recently discusses the importance of interactive storytelling for newsrooms, but also how good content will become social organically. Savvy brands have already acknowledged that content must be valuable in order for consumers to share it. Whether that’s making a friend laugh by sharing a video or providing useful insight into current affairs in the form of a written article, this type of engagement is invaluable for brands as their audience does the marketing for them by endorsing their content. Brands need to consider the ‘shareability factor’ when creating and curating their next campaign.
Produce engaging content Media powerhouses like The Guardian and MailOnline host large volumes of fresh, unique and topical image and video-led content on their sites as this helps to increase both page views and periods of time spent on the site. Brands are similarly moving towards these mediums to produce engaging and relevant content. Marketers in the UK are designating nearly a third (27%) of their marketing budget for content marketing and brand journalism activities in
the form of blogs, their own magazines and podcasts. By utilising video and images, brands too can increase their engagement with customers.
Engage the community Media companies are now engaging readers by tapping into their audience’s personal interests and creativity. Digital media has brought about the introduction of reader comment sections and alongside the rise of mobile and social media, where people can share opinions on-the-go and quickly, these forums have encouraged engagement and interaction. In turn, readers are now a hugely valuable source of material. Many publications turn to readers when sourcing photo and video content for breaking news stories and other reports, ranging from football matches, to community events, and even issues affecting readers locally such a pot holes or extreme weather. To source content quickly, more than 50 media companies are using Scoopshot to crowdsource photos and video on-demand, including Metro International, 20 Minutes in France, Krone Zeitung in Austria, Hurriyet in Turkey and WAZ in Germany. However, this is not just limited to the media. Brands can also use the crowd to gather content and ideas, and in turn enrich the experience of their communities by involving them in the creation of content. Oxfam is one brand that has turned to the crowd as part of a global marketing campaign. The charity recently partnered with Scoopshot to crowdsource thousands of mobile photos and videos to highlight the issue of land grabs. Working with Coldplay, Oxfam used the content to produce a music video to raise awareness of land grabs during the World Bank meetings. The campaign was a great success, with more than 5,600 photos and 800 videos submitted. Aside from engaging the public about an important issue, Oxfam was also successful in getting the World Bank to agree to most of its demands, helping to bring an end to land grabs. In today’s always-connected world, brands and media companies alike have large communities at their fingertips. By harnessing this asset, brands can involve consumers in the creation of content, while producing unique content that the rest of their community will value and share.
Five Ways to Realize Greater Value From Programmatic Advertising David Jacobs
In this article, you’ll learn... • Some common misconceptions about programmatic advertising • Where automated bidding fits within the context of a holistic and balanced advertising strategy • How to get the biggest bang for your programmatic buck Today’s marketers have a lot of questions about programmatic advertising: Where do I start? If I automate my bids, will I be sacrificing quality for “low rent” inventory? How much control will I have over where my ads appear? As is often the case with any type of relatively new technology, people are still finding their sea legs. But using programmatic technology intelligently doesn’t have to be complicated. A basic understanding of where automation most appropriately fits within a balanced digital marketing strategy will help advertisers make smart and successful programmatic choices. Whether directed at financial trades, the purchase of airline tickets, and now media buying, automation is, at its essence, a tool for driving greater efficiencies at scale. When large numbers of buyers and sellers can come together without a lot of manual steps in between, valuable resources can be redirected to other important tasks that exclusively require human brainpower and talent—such as creative campaign development and execution. Certain classes of transactions are still handled by stockbroker and travel agents, however, just as there will always be a place for direct media buys. The trick is knowing when programmatic technology is the best tool for the task at hand, and then wielding the tool with skill. Here are a five key considerations to keep in mind to get the most value out of programmatic advertising.
1. Stay balanced The idea that marketers have to choose between a programmatic or premium path is a false one. In fact, an advertising strategy that views programmatic and premium inventory as opposites is imbalanced— much like a barbell with a weight attached to only one end. Many media packages do come together best when a buyer and seller sit down with each other and work out the right deal. But that doesn’t mean that programmatic strategies can’t also be used simultaneously to automate for better efficiencies and results overall. The question shouldn’t be one of whether or not to use programmatic technology. Rather, the real question that advertisers should be asking is this: What are the best ways to use programmatic channels within a balanced and holistic advertising strategy that includes both automation and direct sales?
2. Know what you want to achieve Take the time to understand what components of your marketing campaign are best suited to a programmatic approach. That means developing a comprehensive outline of your objectives in relation to the type of audience you want to reach, at what scale, and the performance required. Now that an overwhelming array of programmatic technologies are available, spending a little effort up front to identify the best match for your campaign will help ensure you get optimal value from your technology investment rather than make a costly mistake.
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3. Automate, don’t go on autopilot The value of automation is that it eliminates busywork (like manual insertion orders) that keeps media planners from turning their talents to more advanced strategy. But not everything that can be automated should be. (Sometimes, for example, it might make more sense for a marketer to capitalize on a special relationship with a key publisher.) When a programmatic approach does seem like the best fit, it still doesn’t mean that you leave all the decision-making to a machine, or that you sit back and take no active role in optimizing the results. Automate, but don’t put your entire strategy on autopilot. In fact, the efficiencies gained through automation should enable marketers to spend even more of their creative energy on strategies designed to tap into programmatic advertising’s unique ability to granularly target and segment audiences.
4. Learn how to read the data tea leaves Ad buyers need to know how to harness all the data that is made available to them to bid more effectively on the inventory that gets them the best results. That goes beyond just knowing that your ad is reaching 35-45 year-old women, for instance. Content (where, exactly, is your ad running?) and context (such as how often a target consumer has been on a particular site during a single session), are also highly relevant data points that are key to achieving strong performance and ROI.
5. Take control Why do some advertisers fear automation? Because no one wants to find out that their carefully crafted message has appeared next to content (porn, for example) that reflects poorly on their brand. As programmatic technologies have evolved, vendors are beginning to offer controls that empower buyers to more effectively reap the rewards of increased reach and automation while mitigating the risks. With so many programmatic options now available, including more and more opportunities to purchase premium content programmatically, marketers should only consider solutions that include an ability to carefully control the parameters of automated bidding.
Although the buzz around programmatic advertising has reached deafening proportions—”Is it The Next Big Thing?” “Overhyped?” “Misunderstood?”—today’s marketers really only need to know one thing: What’s in it for me? The answer is greater ad buying efficiency, more-granular targeting, and improved reach, provided that programmatic technology is used strategically—and in circumstances where it is truly the best tool for the job.
Infographic: what annoys us most about your brand on social media? Jennifer Whitehead
Are we a nation of pedants? The answer is most resoundingly yes, at least if you go by this piece of research into what annoys people most about brands on social media. Post 300 updates every day shamelessly begging people to buy your wares? Apparently that’s way less annoying than one or two pithy updates but making a typo or, God forbid, a grammar mistake. Lance Concannon, director of Disruptive Communications, the agency that put the research together, says: “A lot of people talk about the need for brands to be less formal when they communicate through social media, but this survey shows that there is a danger in letting standards slip too far. While a more relaxed tone of voice may be desirable, it’s very important to have quality control in place to ensure that spelling errors and other sloppy mistakes don’t slip through and cause brand-damage. “The findings also illustrate that you can’t take a one-size fits all approach in social media. Younger consumers clearly have different expectations and priorities – overall people said that not posting updates frequently enough wasn’t a major concern for them, but the 18- to 24-year-olds listed it as their most important issue.” What else can you do to annoy people? To be fair, they’ll probably be miffed if you do send out those 300 salesy updates, so you might want to hold back. And no bad jokes!
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Book, Line & Sinker
By Matt Haig
BRAND ROYALTY
Brand Loyalty
Some say that brand success equals business success, and since there is no single magic formula for creating a winning brand, studying the best brands can provide many winning strategies for those looking for a better way to brand. Branding expert Matt Haig, the author of the acclaimed Brand Failures, has studied the longevity, technological advancements, new product developments, workplaces, mass communications, achievements and financial success of hundreds of brands to determine the best of the bunch. The result of his research is Brand Royalty, a book that provides a list of 100 brand success stories, helpful commentary about them from brand managers and experts from a variety of fields, and the secrets behind their worldwide recognition as great brands.
A 1984 for the 21st century, the novel explores a possible world which has been taken over by the corporate totalitarianism of the ULTIMATE company. Personal identity and meaning have become trading commodities and the central characters struggle to maintain their individuality in the face of a world which has registered, trademarked and copyrighted their very existence.
By Cally Phillips
Future Perfect: The Case for Progress in a Networked Age
Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet
Johnson has built his career as an unabashed champion of contemporary digital culture, debunking critics and promoting the nurture of ideas and innovation. He goes the next step in this book with an examination of the ways in which digital sophistication and imaginative reinvention are transforming everything. Decentralized peer networks that channel and harness the flow of data are remaking government, education, railways, community infrastructure and more.
The term Big Data gets thrown around a lot, but what it actually means is less well understood. Big Data is the future, so it is essential for brand marketers to get up to speed right away. Yet, there are few primers offering a solid foundational understanding of Big Data much less a comprehensive look at its many incarnations, including those directly affecting brand marketers. This book, written specifically for senior business executives with little or no background in IT, fills this gap. Covering a wide variety of industries, data environments and business applications, this book is the best resource for getting in the know quickly, intelligently and proficiently.
By Steven Johnson
By Andrew Blum
Ad Women:
The Little Book of Big Data, 2012 Edition
Ad Women: How They Impact What We Need, Want and Buy by Juliann Sivulka, tells the story of women and the ad business, and that of all people—how we become empowered by respect, independence, and confidence. From the early 20th century when agencies first hired women to learn how to sell to women, to modern milliondollar ad firms run by female executives, this book explains how women brought style and substance to both a business and a nation.
By Noreen Burlingame
By Juliann Sivulka
The Global Brand
Habit: The 95% of Behavior Marketers Ignore
In The Global Brand: How to Create and Develop Lasting Brand Value in a World Market Nigel Hollis confronts the dilemma all brands must tackle when going global: how to communicate a cohesive, international brand strategy to people who view the world differently. By examining mega-brands from Coca-Cola and Pampers to Nokia and Google, Hollis explores the importance of authenticity, innovation and engaging complex cultures to establish relationships with local demographics.
By Nigel Hollis
The term Big Data gets thrown around a lot, but what it actually means is less well understood. Big Data is the future, so it is essential for brand marketers to get up to speed right away. Yet, there are few primers offering a solid foundational understanding of Big Data much less a comprehensive look at its many incarnations, including those directly affecting brand marketers. This book, written specifically for senior business executives with little or no background in IT, fills this gap. Covering a wide variety of industries, data environments and business applications, this book is the best resource for getting in the know quickly, intelligently and proficiently.
In, Habit: The 95% of Behavior Marketers Ignore, Neale Martin explains how consumer response is guided by the subconscious mind. Martin provides a practical guide to the human psyche and the behaviors that form a habit: discovery, purchase, and use. From analyzing neurons in scientific experiments to broad theories regarding advertising campaigns, this book explores the psychology of consumers without reducing them to brainless purchasing machines.
By Neale Martin
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The Long Tail
Overpromise and Overdeliver: The Secrets of Unshakable Customer Loyalty
While the 20th century was dominated by hit products, the 21st century will be dominated by niche products, according to Chris Anderson’s groundbreaking explanation of web-based purchasing habits. As useful as this book is, you can get the gist of it from his original article in Wired. Best quote: “As demand shifts towards the niches, the economics of providing them improve further, and so on, creating a positive feedback loop that will transform entire industries-and the culture-for decades to come.” Edited by Rick Barrera By Chris Anderson
Zag: The #1 Strategy of HighPerformance Brands
Branding for Nonprofits: Developing identity with integrity
By DK Holland
Targeted at nonprofits, this book is for any organization that believes it’s above corporate shilling. Holland leads us softly with facts and logic until we arrive at the realization that everything really does have a brand (politicians, religions, museums). The good news is that a clear and consistent brand identity can aid an organization in growing brand awareness; the question is how to arrive at that clear identity. Practical and process-oriented, the author walks us through the design brief (tailored to nonprofit concerns), exploring design options, launch, and implementation. Non-threatening, easy to read.
“When everybody zigs, zag,” says Marty Neumeier in this fresh view of brand strategy. ZAG follows the ultra-clear “whiteboard overview” style of the author’s first book, THE BRAND GAP, but drills deeper into the question of how brands can harness the power of differentiation. The author argues that in an extremely cluttered marketplace, traditional differentiation is no longer enough-today companies need “radical differentiation” to create lasting value for their shareholders and customers. By Marty Neumeier
Emotional Branding: The New Paradigm for Connecting Brands to People
Why Johnny Can’t Brand Not groundbreaking, but if you’re still trying to get your head around “what is a brand and why should I care,” this book is as readable as any we’ve seen this year. After drawing the reader in with what branding is not, the authors focus on defining, identifying and instructing the reader in devising a dominant selling idea (DSI—what used to be called USP). Short illustrative examples from current popular brands quickly make the point and move on to more enlightenment. The book has teeth; the authors are not afraid to stake out a position (focus groups blow, the AFLAC duck is a quack), but they have a tendency to get overexcited with their own outrage.
Emotional Branding is the best selling revolutionary business book that has created a movement in branding circles by shifting the focus from products to people. The “10 Commandments of Emotional Branding” have become a new benchmark for marketing and creative professionals, emotional branding has become a coined term by many top industry experts to express the new dynamic that exists now between brands and people. By Marc Gobe
By Bill Schley & Carl Nichols, Jr.
Branding Unbound
Storytelling: Branding in Practice
Leave no channel untapped for reaching consumers. Mobile marketing, ring tones, electronic signs, Wi-Fi on the grocery cart, RFID and countless other innovations allow brand owners to better research (data mining), better reach (targeting, advertising, distribution) and better delight their markets. The possibilities are endless but the old rules still apply: all of the technology is useless if the brand itself is not worth communicating.
By Klaus Fog, Christian Budtz, Baris Yakaboylu By Rick Mathieson
An engaging and straightforward articulation of basic principles that we know about customer satisfaction but don’t deliver. Starting with a basic explanation of what is a brand promise, Barrera demonstrates how companies like Toyota, Commerce Bancorp, Bellagio, and Best Buy define this promise and then deliver it. There’s a reason that Hummer, Disney, Apple have such strong customer loyalty, and it doesn’t have to come down to sheer luck or size. It merely requires brand owners to understand their brand and their audience.
As a concept, storytelling has won a decisive foothold in the debate on how brands of the future will be shaped. Yet, companies are still confused as to how and why storytelling can make a difference to their business. What is the point of telling stories anyway? What makes a good story? And how do you go about telling it so that it supports the company brand? This book is written for practitioners by practitioners. Through real life examples, simple guidelines and practical tools, the book aims to inspire companies to use storytelling as a means of building their brand internally as well as externally.