Universal Questions For Brand Positioning (And Creating Your Brand Story

of businesses, such as large industrial conglomerates; or portfolios of capital-intensive assets and projects, such as telecommunications. Banking- and insurance-sector companies are also more likely than most to prefer strategists in the fund-manager cluster, reflecting the need to balance risk and return profiles across a portfolio.

Fund-manager strategists rely on robust analytics that underpin decisions to rebalance the portfolio. However, they also need to invest heavily in decision-making processes and in their personal ability to help leadership teams get beyond their natural bias to maintain the status quo. One new chief strategist—unlike her predecessor, who tended to act as a facilitator—is trying to develop her role into that of a fund manager as she faces a major disruption in her company’s core consumer-goods market. Her top priority now is to help the company’s executive committee make a series of unfamiliar and uncomfortable choices to reallocate resources away from traditional cash cows and into a disruptive technology that represents the future of the business.

Above and beyond

Regardless of which profile best fits the needs of a company and its leadership team, three broader issues bear consideration for organizations and strategists seeking to raise their strategic game: career background, resource reallocation, and prioritization.

Why career background matters

While nobody wants to be a prisoner of the past, the familiar is comforting, especially when starting a new and often very wide-ranging role. Many new strategists therefore gravitate to what they know already—a trap that requires an alert and honest self-assessment to avoid.

Chief strategists who are former investment bankers, for example, are 2.5 times more likely to focus on business development than the average strategist. Former project leaders are two times more likely to prioritize the projectdelivery facets of the chief strategist’s role. Although a company driving a strategic M&A program may find it advantageous to choose a former investment banker as chief strategist, he or she must be careful to avoid overemphasizing familiar mind-sets and activities.

The data from our survey suggest that basing priorities on prior experience doesn’t necessarily correlate with better strategic performance. For example, among former project leaders who prioritize the project-delivery facet of their role as strategists, only 20 percent feel that their strategy is actually effective, compared with 51 percent of all respondents.

Resources, resources, resources

Whichever type of strategist you may be, or need to be, a shift in the way your company allocates its resources must accompany its strategy. McKinsey research shows that companies tend to allocate 90 percent or more of their resources to the same places year after year, regardless of changes in the environment or their strategies.7 Dynamic companies that reallocate resources more actively deliver better, less volatile annual returns to shareholders, on average,8 than their Whether or not chief strategists measure this, they intuitively know it. Some 40 percent of those surveyed cite concerns about translating strategy to action. In particular, linking it to budgets and objectives is their top concern. Yet only 10 percent include resource reallocation among the top three facets of their role. Of the few chief strategists who do prioritize it, only 24 percent feel they do so very effectively— the lowest percentage of any facet. The strategist for a minerals company astutely remarks that, along with building strategic capabilities, “the resource-reallocator role is always critical, since it defines how to execute the strategy. Without it, you just have a good strategy paper.” By fighting inertia in resource allocation, strategists can go a long way toward making strategies stick.

Prioritize!

Implicit in effective resource allocation is prioritization—a critical need for strategists more broadly as the potential scope of their roles continues to widen. Our survey shows that chief strategists are up to four times more effective at the facets of the specific role they prioritize.

To cut through a potentially vast scope of responsibilities, chief strategists, and those who hire them, need to make choices. What drives these choices will depend on the unique circumstances of the organization and, to some extent, the capabilities of individual strategists and their partners on senior-executive teams. A chief strategist may be better placed to take on certain roles that have historically been part of the mandate of other executives, and as CSOs carve out their role, they will need to facilitate a reshuffling of responsibilities within the executive team. For example, a strategist whose priority is to be a fund manager may wish to own the company’s resource-allocation map, which might currently be within the responsibilities of the CFO as part of the budgeting process. (The same could be true in reverse for a CFO assuming greater strategic responsibility.)

Having explicit conversations about expectations and the division of roles and responsibilities across the executive team will improve its dynamics and make the organization as a whole more effective. The chief strategist’s role is partly about setting the mandate for a job that can mean many things in different organizations. These conversations should take place when a new strategist takes over and when the needs of the organization change and it makes sense to reassess priorities. A critical place to start is deciding whether the strategist will shape and run the process that generates the strategy or will instead take responsibility for crafting the strategy itself on behalf of the senior team. A related issue for the CEO, board, and other executives concerned with the quality of the company’s strategic direction is who owns the organization’s resource-reallocation and strategic capabilitybuilding efforts. If a hard look in the mirror reveals that these roles aren’t owned elsewhere or aren’t managed effectively, that too can influence the priorities of strategists, including tough questions about whether or not their strengths will lead them to emerge as strong fund managers or mobilizers.

How Starbucks, Peloton & Pizza Hut Use Gamification (And You Can Too)

By Jenn McMillen

There’s a reason gamification has continued to be one of the marketing buzzwords you’re seeing everywhere. Because it works.

Gamification involves applying game mechanics, as easy as challenges, bingo cards, memory games, scratch-off, or spin-to-win, to marketing-driven outcomes such as visiting a website, watching a video, or interacting on a platform. In my article titled Actionable Strategies for Driving Customer Engagement: 4 Go Do’s, I discussed how gamification drives meaningful engagement when driven by a specific strategy or goal. While on the surface it appears to be a pleasant diversion, gamification is actually a powerful marketing tool based on human psychology.

“People like winning. It’s human nature. When you win, your brain releases dopamine which makes you feel happy. So when you use a game to reward completing a behavior, the dopamine reinforces that behavior and makes people want to complete that behavior over and over again,” says Todd McGee, CEO of CataBoom, a leading SaaS-based gamification platform. Working with clients such as Southwest, Dell, and Michaels, CataBoom is proof that gamification works with a 3X open and engagement rate on emails, 2X social media engagement rates, and 5X retention rates.

Take a second look at gamification through the lens of the examples below where brands leveraged game mechanics to achieve various marketing goals.

Goal: Driving Sales

While the pandemic has driven an increase in at-home dining, it has also spurred feelings of nostalgia among many customers for simpler times. Pizza Hut is leaning into both with their recently launched “Newstalgia” campaign. The arcade games you loved to play while waiting for your Personal Pan Pizza(R) made a comeback in the form of an AR Pac-Man game that you can play on your limited-edition pizza box. Players who shared their scores with Pizza Hut on Twitter were entered to win a custom Pac-Man game cabinet. Leveraging a game with a global brand recognition rate of 90% is creating much-needed at-home entertainment for Pizza Hut’s customers and driving sales. The game kicked off the brand’s year-long campaign that will see the return of many more beloved Pizza Hut icons of the 80s and 90s.

Goal: Reaching a larger audience

It wasn’t too long ago when luxury brands looked down on gamification as a kitschy marketing tactic that was misaligned with their elevated brand experience. Not anymore! Games have grown up and found their own personal style for brands such as Hermès, Louis Vuitton, Gucci and more. Italian fashion powerhouse Salvatore Ferragamo launched their spring/summer 2021 campaign via a custom game titled Enigma. Serenaded by soft piano music, players make their way through four beautifully animated activities, such as word searches and memory games, that highlight Ferragamo

designs and are set in various iconic landmarks around Milan. The game helps Ferragamo to reach a broader and younger audience and provides a fun way to virtually shop the brand at a time when travel and Fashion Week are not possible.

Goal: Learning About New Products

Starbucks didn’t just celebrate Earth Day, they celebrated Earth Month with games designed to drive sustainable choices and promote the brand’s eco-friendly products. For every purchase during the month of April, Starbucks Rewards members earned one game play for a chance to win prizes such as free non-dairy drinks, a discount on select food items and reusable merchandise, or grand prizes such as eBikes, drinks for a year and more. Members earned additional game plays for foregoing plastic straws, trying meatless menu items and reading articles about food waste. With each level achieved in the Play + Plant puzzle game, members earned votes that were cast to choose which reforestation effort Starbucks will select for a donation of 250,000 trees. Facts and product features were sprinkled throughout the games to highlight Starbucks’ Planet Positive initiative and eco-friendly products like reusable drinkware made from recycled products.

Increasing Frequency:

commodity and oftentimes a glorified laundry drying rack. But not Peloton. The key to Peloton’s success lies in the brand’s gamification of the user experience. Cyclists earn badges for milestones such as their 100th ride, celebrated with a shiny silver Century Club badge (digital, of course) and a free Peloton t-shirt (this one is not digital!). Take a look at some of my badges and milestones below (you are welcome to connect with me on Peloton! My leaderboard name is ForbiddenGinger because I picked a dish off the PF Chang’s menu in a moment of pique. True.)

Riders can also compete against one another in challenges and on leaderboards, and perhaps most addictively, complete “streaks.” A streak is an activity completed consecutively – in the case of Peloton, working out every day for 30 days, for example. The longer the streak is sustained, the greater the desire to keep the streak going. The power of streak psychology, plus the sense of community and achievement, help to create the habit of riding your Peloton. This, in turn, leads to continued use of your bike, the monthly paid subscription for access to classes, and of course, sharing your Peloton love with all of your friends. Who may go out and buy a bike themselves.

Jenn McMillen is Founder and Chief Accelerant of Incendio, a firm specializing in customer-facing initiatives, whether it’s marketing or technology. She was the VP of Loyalty and CRM for GameStop & Michaels.

6 Principles to Build Your Company’s Strategic Agility

By Michael Wade, Amit Joshi, and Elizabeth A. Teracino

In early 2020, Airbnb was headed for a banner year — bookings were up, expansion plans were in place, and an IPO was set for the spring. Then Covid hit, and more than $1B of bookings disappeared, expansion plans were postponed, and one-quarter of the workforce was cut. However, by the end of the year, revenues had recovered, and the company completed one of the most successful tech IPOs in history.

California Pizza Kitchen (CPK) is well known for its innovative offerings. It was one of the first pizza chains to offer glutenfree crusts, “take and bake” home pizzas, and iron-chef-style innovation competitions for its cooks. During the Covid crisis, it moved quickly to offer curb-side delivery and upped its online capabilities. Yet, despite its reputation for innovation and forward thinking, the company filed for bankruptcy protection in July 2020.

Why was one able to thrive while the other floundered?

Ultimately AirBNB and other companies that successfully navigated the crisis identified were able to deviate from their strategic plan and adapt to the changing environment. Our research identified three distinct ways they did this: First, they were nimble enough to avoid the worst impacts; second, when they were hit, they were robust enough to absorb a lot of the damage; and third, they were resilient enough to accelerate forward faster and more effectively than their peers. We refer to this combination of capabilities as the Triple As of strategic agility.

As soon as it became clear that Covid-19 travel restrictions would be inevitable, Airbnb took steps to avoid impact to its business. It implemented strict disinfectant protocols for its properties and added a mandatory free night between stays to allow additional time for cleaning. It also relaxed guest cancellation policies and put measures in place to compensate hosts for lost revenue. Of course, the company couldn’t entirely avoid the effects of the pandemic, so it raised capital to bolster its ability to absorb the impact of reduced bookings and cancellations. Even before the business was stabilized, the company began to accelerate into areas that were less affected, such as in-country travel and stays at rural locations. It also started to promote longer “quarantine” stays and added details such as internet speed to its listings.

California Pizza Kitchen, by contrast, was unable to shift its core dine-in business to delivery fast enough after stay-athome orders were issued, and thus was unable to avoid a direct revenue hit. Furthermore, years of mismanagement had left the company with a high debt load, inhibiting its ability to raise additional capital to cover its costs. With its locations either closed or operating at limited capacity, cash started to dwindle. The company entered bankruptcy protection in June 2020. After a few months of restructuring, it emerged in November 2020 owned mostly by its debt holders, who had swapped their loans for equity. The company is now trying to make up for lost time by focusing on “Cali-health” menu items like non-meat proteins (BBQ Don’t Call Me Chicken Pizza), expanding its global franchise footprint, and investing in marketing and digital channels.

The Six Principles Behind a Triple A Rating

Strategic agility is the ability to improve performance — not just survive but thrive — amid disruption. Our multiyear research project, based on studying qualitative and quantitative data from hundreds of organizations, suggests that strategic agility can be further broken down into six

principles. These principles are not definitions, rules, laws, tools, or frameworks, but guidelines to help organizations leverage disruption proactively to their advantage.

Avoiding shocks: Speed and Flexibility

Side-stepping shocks is linked to sensing risks in the environment, being able to position yourself to avoid dangers, and moving quickly to dodge impacts.

Principle 1: Prioritize speed over perfection

Opportunities come and go quickly during a crisis, so organizations need to be ready and willing to act quickly, even if they sacrifice quality and predictability in the process.

During the multi-day celebration of Chinese New Year, movie theaters are typically full of families. However, in January 2020, due to the spread of Covid-19, most theaters were empty, and many had closed their doors. The Huanxi Media Group (Huanxi) stood to lose millions on its New Year-themed movie Lost in Russia.

While most of its peers decided to postpone their releases, Huanxi approached Bytedance, the Chinese company behind the blockbuster app TikTok. Bytedance was not an obvious distribution partner, as its properties mostly stream shortform, user-generated content. TikTok, for instance, caps videos at 15 seconds — and Lost in Russia clocked in at over 2 hours.

In just two days, Lost in Russia racked up 600 million views on Bytedance platforms. Not only did the movie gain a huge following, it also led to a flood of goodwill from Chinese citizens who were frustrated about not being able to leave their homes during the outbreak. By waiting, other studios missed out on a major opportunity to build market share and capitalize on a limited-term opportunity.

Principle 2: Prioritize flexibility over planning

Strategy is often taught in business schools as a cascade of choices around where to play and how to win. These choices are typically built into strategic plans that are devised and approved over a period of several months, and then executed over three or five years, before the cycle repeats. However, in a crisis, a strategic plan can easily become an anchor that locks an organization onto a path that is no longer relevant.

Faced with a massive drop in revenue during the pandemic, Qantas abandoned its five-year strategic plan and dusted off an old idea from the 1980s to offer “flights to nowhere.” These excursions included fly-bys of some of Australia’s main tourist destinations, such as the Great Barrier Reef and Uluhu. The entire stock of seats sold out in 10 minutes, making it the fastest-selling promotion in Qantas’ history.

Qantas was not only quick off the mark, it was flexible in how it operated. The airline recognized the public’s latent desire to travel, even if they couldn’t leave the country, and it quickly adapted its services to meet this need. It then built upon its initial success, next offering viewing flights to Antarctica.

Absorbing shocks: Empowerment and Diversification

When it’s impossible to avoid a shock, like the Covid-19 pandemic, the next best thing is to minimize the damage. This step is often misunderstood by managers. Some of the hallmarks of strong shock absorption — scale, inefficiency, or centralization — are seen as impediments to effective competition in volatile environments. Yet, when set up in the right way, these elements can enhance the ability of organizations to withstand shocks without inhibiting performance.

Principle 3: Prioritize diversification and “efficient slack” over optimization

Many organizations struggled — and some failed — during the pandemic not because they weren’t nimble or innovative, but because they were felled by a single devastating blow. The root of this problem, in many cases, was either a lack of diversification or an overemphasis on efficiency and optimization.

The principles of diversification and slack have fallen out of favor recently. The share price of diversified organizations is often hit with a “conglomerate discount,” and markets and activist investors are quick to penalize any sign of slack. Yet, these are both powerful hedges against the impact of shocks. Pain in one area can be compensated by gain elsewhere. During the pandemic, when sales in P&G’s personal care brands dropped, the company was able to make up the difference in increased revenue of its cleaning and disinfectant brands. By contrast, Gold’s Gym, Avianca Airlines, and Brooks Brothers suffered from a lack of diversification and ultimately went bankrupt.

Swiggy, one of India’s largest food-delivery startups built a platform that included more than 160,000 restaurants in 500 cities. During the Covid lockdown, restaurant activity, including deliveries, fell by more than 50%. Swiggy realized that its overdependence on fixed location, traditional “sit-down” restaurants as delivery partners was a severe vulnerability. In response, it started a program to add street food vendors to its platform, ultimately adding more than 36,000 of these vendors. While servicing these vendors was less profitable, they provided valuable “slack” during the crisis, while also delivering a societal benefit. As a consequence, the company rebounded to about 90% of its pre-Covid food delivery volumes.

Principle 4: Prioritize empowerment over hierarchy

Systems are most vulnerable at their weakest points. A hierarchy, for example, is most vulnerable at the top.

Empowered teams, by contrast, are inherently robust. Since they’re decentralized, no single strike or crisis can take them all out. The key is to maintain open and regular information flows so that they are working from the same page.

they were about to launch their largest ever new product, a medication for dogs. A number of challenges, including supply-chain disruptions, marketing delays, and reduced opening hours at testing enters and laboratories, threatened to scupper the launch. In response, Zoetis’ CEO decided to allow local leaders across 45 global markets autonomy to conduct the launch in the most appropriate way. For example, social distancing regulations varied massively by location, as did requirements to wear protective clothing. The empowerment extended to field-based employees, managers and teams who were encouraged to “run it like you own it.” To further enable these employees, a priority was placed on data-driven decision-making, and dashboards containing up-to-the-minute information on the pandemic were made available to everyone in the organization.

Accelerating away from shocks: Learning and modularity

Bouncing back from shocks is partially operational (being able to redeploy and reconfigure resources) and partially cultural (fostering a tolerance for failure and implementing an environment that encourages risk taking and rewards learning). The application of the acceleration principles has a major impact on performance in highly uncertain environments.

Principle 5: Prioritize learning over blaming

It has been well established that organizational cultures that reward risk taking and tolerate failure move more quickly that those that don’t. If people are criticized for failing, they are less likely to take risks; in a crisis, this can be fatal.

Evalueserve is a mid-sized global IT services firm with offices in India. When the country declared a strict lockdown with six hours notice, it had no choice but to shift almost all of its 3,000 employees to work-from-home. This move created an increased risk to employee wellbeing and morale, as home environments were often stressful and not conducive for working. In response, the company instituted several changes to promote a “no blame” culture. It added mental health and wellbeing initiatives such as “no agenda check-in calls” to maintain motivation, as chairperson Timo Vättö and cofounder Marc Vollenweider explained to us in an interview. The company also adjusted its incentives to reward employees for learning and adaptability. As a result, Evalueserve faced negligible attrition of both employees and clients during the period of the lockdown.

Principle 6: Prioritize resource modularity and mobility over resource lock-in

Since it is difficult to predict how the future will unfold in a crisis, it is hard to effectively plan the allocation of resources. Thus, it important to build resources that are modular and/ or mobile so they can be reconfigured or moved as needed.

An example of resource modularity comes from the “Paranoid Fan” app, which allowed NFL fans to order food to be delivered to their seats in sports stadiums. But with live events curtailed by the pandemic, the app lost its users. Seeing long queues outside food banks in New York City, founder Agustin Gonzalez recognized an opportunity to reconfigure the app’s mapping and delivery technology. The company launched a new app, named Nepjun, that allowed food banks to set menus and create delivery protocols, while also allowing users to find operational food banks in their neighborhood.

Putting Strategic Agility into Action

2020 was an extremely disruptive year for the media and entertainment sector. Streaming companies like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video experienced strong growth, while organizations involved in live events and cinematic releases suffered massive drops in revenue. The Walt Disney Company was caught in the middle. In early 2020, media and broadcasting operations accounted for about a third of its revenue, 17% was earned from direct-to-consumer brands, and the remaining 50% came from movie studios, theme parks, and product sales.

Gains in broadcasting revenues failed to offset heavy losses from the closure of movie theaters, theme parks, and retail stores. Disney’s share price began 2020 at $146, but by March 20 it had dropped to $86 a share as the global scale of pandemic became apparent. The company managed to avoid the worst impacts of the pandemic for as long as it could by keeping its theme parks open in a limited capacity and adding strong safety protocols for all facilities, staff, and guests. It saved money by laying off employees across its portfolio of stores, parks, and cruise ships, and worked with local governments where possible to supplement its income. A strong balance sheet allowed it to absorb the drop in revenue.

Meanwhile, the company reallocated resources and people to its Disney+ streaming service that had been launched in November 2019. The company worked hard to accelerate enhancements to the offering, adding new content throughout the year. For example, the live-action cinematic release Mulan was offered through the service as a special paid feature. By the end of the year, the company had attracted more than 90 million paying subscribers to the Disney+ service, significantly outperforming competitors such as HBO Max and Peacock, and far exceeding a goal it had hoped to meet by 2024.

When conditions improved, Disney was quick to take advantage. It reopened its theme parks in Shanghai in May and Tokyo in July. Most importantly, it continued to heavily invest in Disney+, building it into one of the world’s largest video subscription services just a year after launch. It empowered local managers to make decisions as situations shifted across the world, and it moved people and resources around to focus on growing areas. Its story shows that even large companies that are in the firing line of shocks like Covid-19 can respond effectively as long as they leverage the Triple As of strategic agility.

While we will eventually see the end of the Covid crisis, there is no doubt that organizations will continue to face other challenging situations in the future. Under these circumstances, incorporating avoidance, absorption and acceleration can be the difference between survival and collapse.

The beauty of contrast

By Steve McKee

To the poet, blue is the hue of sky and sea, the aura of twilight and haze of lost love.

To the scientist, blue is a color on the visible light spectrum with wavelengths between 450 and 495 nanometers.

To Dave Ortega, my company’s creative director, blue is meaningless without green, red, orange, and yellow.

While the poet inspires and the scientist informs, I believe the creative director’s observation is uniquely instructive. Blue has distinct and undeniable scientific properties, but it only becomes meaningful to us in relation to other colors. If everything was blue, nothing would be.

It’s as true of our other senses as it is of sight. Without bitter, we wouldn’t know sweet. Without cold, we wouldn’t know heat. And imagine what life would be like if we could hear only one sound.

In his sweeping analysis of the historical arc of culture, “The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self,” Carl Trueman makes the point with respect to humanity in general: “Individual personal identity is not ultimately an internal monologue conducted in isolation by an individual self-consciousness. On the contrary, it is a dialog between self-conscious beings. We each know ourselves as we know other people.”

Just as we can fully appreciate one color, taste or sound only by knowing others, it’s our relationships with other people that both define and enrich us—personally, emotionally, and spiritually. And when it comes to economics, literally.

Bestselling author and economist George Gilder has repeatedly demonstrated that wealth isn’t a function of raw materials, but of know-how. The stuff from which we make things has always been there, but somewhere along the way humanity learned to put airplanes in flight and turn sand into semiconductors. The process of learning and discovery comes as a result of trial and error, accelerated by human interaction.

That’s the idea behind various innovation districts that are springing up around the country in an attempt to foster “creative collisions” between entrepreneurs and engineers, programmers and financiers. One way to describe creativity itself is the combination of previously unrelated ideas, and a great way to generate unrelated ideas is to put unrelated people in close proximity to one another.

Just as the colors on the visible light spectrum operate at different wavelengths, so do each of us, and there’s beauty in the contrast.

When I was a kid shopping for school supplies, the sight of a giant, 64-color box of Crayola crayons (with built-in sharpener) made my eyes light up. The more colors, the greater the possibilities, and the better able I would be to reflect all that my young eyes took in about the world -- Forest Green, Robin Egg Blue, Dandelion Yellow, Sunset Orange and 60 other glorious possibilities. Alas, my mother thought a dozen or two was enough. (Given my artistic skills, she was probably correct, but you get the point.)

The more colors we have, the more combinations we can make. The more combinations we can make, the more creativity we can foster. And the more creativity we can foster, the more things get better in the world.

Someone once quipped, “If I didn’t have to work for people, or with people, I’d love my job.” It’s a humorous thought with which we all can identify at some level, but if my team has learned anything from 18+ months of on-again/offagain working from home it’s that there’s a tradeoff between productivity and creativity.

To some extent we can all individually be creative, but there’s nothing like sharing bad pizza or day-old doughnuts as we bounce ideas off one another in three-dimensional space and time. Eliminating a commute has its benefits, but collaboration isn’t one of them.

Embrace the varieties of tints, tastes, tones and talents around you, celebrating the contrasts that help you paint a better world. It sure beats being blue all by yourself.

Each month, When Growth Stalls examines why businesses and brands struggle and how they can overcome their obstacles and resume growth. Steve McKee is the co-founder of McKee Wallwork + Co., a marketing advisory firm that specializes in turning around stalled, stuck and stale companies. The company was recognized by Advertising Age as 2015 and 2018 as Southwest Small Agency of the Year. McKee is also the author of “When Growth Stalls” and “Power Branding.”

26 Universal Questions for Brand Positioning (and Creating Your Brand Story)

By Ulli Appelbaum

How do I position my brand for success? What is the most compelling story I can tell about my business? Those are two of the most substantial questions marketers and entrepreneurs have to answer when running their business. In fact, the answers will determine whether their brand will gain traction in the marketplace, grow, and get shared by consumers—or not.

An analysis of over 1,000 case studies from around the world of successful brand building has found that there are 26 different “approaches” to telling a brand story, each representing a different but proven opportunity to positioning your brand and telling your brand story. Each approach can be summarized by a key question (or set of questions), which I share below. Tapping into this collective marketing intelligence by answering those 26 questions will help marketers sharpen their brand positioning platforms and tell better brand stories.

Setting the Stage The first 10 questions deal with the context in which the brand can be positioned. They set the stage of the brand story, if you will. 1. Redefine your business: What other categories satisfy a similar need or provide the similar emotional reward that yours does? And what opportunities would this new perspective offer for building your brand and your portfolio? (Example: Cirque du Soleil) 2. Claim the gold standard: What is collectively understood and accepted to be the “ideal” your category has to offer, and how can your brand claim, utilize, or position itself against this ideal and its associations? (Example: DiGiorno’s “It’s not delivery, it’s DiGiorno.”) 3. Be a part of culture: What cultural movement or subculture (and associated set of values) could your brand fit into or position itself against? (Example: the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty) 4. Tap into consumer rituals: How does your brand fit into your consumers’ existing rituals? What emotional transformation do they go through during those rituals? How can your brand become a believable part of these rituals and help in the transformation? (Example: the way people eat Oreo cookies) 5. Harness the usage context: Where do consumers consume or use your brand, and what expectations, associations (both positive and negative), and opportunities does this environment provide? (Example: the original Got Milk campaign) 6. Disrupt category conventions: What are the generally accepted rules for how your category operates, and which ones could you break to change the category dynamics

and the way your brand is perceived? (Example: Pedigree’s Dogs Rules) 7. Resolve a category paradox: What are the biggest consumer frustrations in your category? What is your category’s biggest paradox? How can your brand help resolve them? (Example: Dyson doesn’t lose suction.) 8. Overcome consumption barriers: What barriers (real or perceived) are preventing consumers from purchasing or using your brand, and how can your brand help overcome those? [Example: the user imagery of Harley-Davidson’s core riders, the OWG (old white guys), preventing younger riders from identifying with the brand] 9. Identify an enemy: What threat (real or imagined, conscious or unconscious) could your brand mitigate in your consumers’ lives? (Example: the Truth anti-smoking campaign focusing on the corporate executives of the tobacco industry) 10. Brand archaeology: What lessons can be learned from the strategies and tactics that lead to your brand’s growth in the past, and how can those lessons be translated into a contemporary solution? (Example: Buddy Lee) Creating the Story The next nine questions deal with the offering itself and provide the building blocks to create the actual brand story. These questions help you illuminate the main characters of the brand story, their antagonists, and their most defining features.

11. Romance the origins: Where does your brand come from, and what explicit or implicit meanings are associated with this origin that you could use to enhance the appeal of your brand? (Example: Fosters Beer) 12. Craft a creation story: Does a compelling story arise from the expertise and care with which your brand is made, or the ingredients and components being used? (Example: Jack Daniels) 13. Romance the way the product works: Can a focus on how your product works and delivers its core benefit elevate your brand? (Example: Febreze doesn’t cover up the odors—it eliminates them.) 14. Celebrate the ingredients: Is there a highly differentiating ingredient or component of your product or brand that can be focused on to tell a compelling story? (Example: Westin’s Heavenly Beds) 15. Identify your brand’s defining attributes: What attributes do consumers find most distinctive and appealing in your category or for your brand? And which of those can your brand credibly claim or focus on? (Stella Artois’ “Reassuringly Expensive,” where price is a defining attribute) 16. Give meaning to the brand’s weakness: If your brand has a real or perceived weakness that acts as a barrier to consumption, what meaning can you associate with this weakness that would turn it into strength or benefit? (Example: Old Spice’s “If your grandfather hadn’t worn it, you wouldn’t exist” campaign) 17. Create a sense of scarcity and exclusivity: Can the scarcity and exclusivity of any aspect of your brand story elevate your brand’s appeal? (Example: Abercrombie & Fitch’s exclusive focus on the cool kids in school) 18. Conduct a torture-test: By showing how your product reacts under the most challenging circumstances or is used by those who depend on it the most, can you also demonstrate the value the product could provide to your everyday consumers? (Example: Duracell’s “Trusted Everywhere”) 19. Let experts tell your story: Who would be the most authoritative (or memorable) expert you could utilize to share your brand’s story? (Example: Hill’s Pet food “Vet’s #1 Choice for Their Own Pets”) Defining the Connection The last seven questions focus on the type of value the brand offers to consumers and the role it wants to play in their lives. Does the brand connect with its consumers by delivering a powerful and differentiating benefit or experience addressing a relevant consumer need, or does it want to connect with them at a deeper, more purposeful level?

20. Highlight the benefit: Does your brand deliver against a relevant consumer need by providing a benefit that is new to the category, or by providing a new level of benefit, or by providing a new combination of benefits? (Example: Method Cleaning Products, Clean Happy) 21. Stimulate the senses: What are your brand’s sensory properties and how do they affect how people perceive, feel about, and interact with your brand? (Example: 5 Gum’s “Stimulate your senses”) 22. Dramatize the reward: What needs and wants drive consumers to choose your brand and how does your brand help your consumers help improve their lives? (Example: Wal-Mart’s “Save Money. Live Better.”) 23. Create a branded ritual: Can a set of ritualized behaviors be associated with the consumption of your brand that would give it increased meaning or emotional resonance with your customers? (Example: the Stella Artois nine-step pouring ritual) 24. Communicate shared values: Which core values driving your brand’s actions and behaviors would best match the core values that guide your consumers’? Looking at those two sets of core values, what narratives and positioning territories emerge? (Example: Molson Canadian Beer’s “I am Canadian”) 25. Highlight your purpose: What’s your brand’s core reason for being? Why does it exist? How does your purpose tie back to an unmet consumer need or something that is of significant relevance to your consumers? (Example: Cheerios’ Cheer on Reading Program) 26. Identify your brand’s archetype: What core motivations and desires do your consumers try to satisfy by using your category in general and your brand in particular, and which archetype best corresponds to this set of desires? What characteristics define this specific archetype and how can those guide your brand story? (Example: The Geek Squad Hero archetype)

Numerology and the Marketing Math!

By Suresh Dinakaran

Numerology and the Marketing Math: The 25 to 70% off enigma!

Numerology: Definition: The branch of knowledge that deals with the occult significance of numbers.

We are all swayed by possibility. As we are swayed by short cuts. Human beings are hardwired to be lazy. So, unless and until there is a by design effort to put in the emotional labour , routine is the ardently followed also ran. Mundane replaces the potential jugular. It remains that way, because it’s always been done that way. So why upset the applecart? But what happens when the cart is being toppled?

I am not a numbers person. Far from it. It somehow just doesn’t add up for me. So, I have almost subtracted it from my life. But, being in the space that I am, and observing the brand marketing communications around me, I am tempted to do a deeper dive and know more. billboards, radio ads, digital ads etc. In fact, some of us were mistaking the 25 to 70% off to be a tourist destination(considering how many of them sprout all over the city)- One cannot miss it because leading brands across industry verticals with the support and ‘ advise ‘ of big ticket advertising agencies make sure such campaigns are run 13 months in a year. So, that makes it 24X7X395. A different numerology this!

The ever lasting love affair of brand and marketing experts with 25 to 70% off remains a mystery. Or by now, it should not be. Considering the amount of time ‘ the practice ‘ has come to root(or should it be rot?). And the practice has been perfected beyond question. And ably aided by ‘ brand guardians ‘ who toe the line willingly as this ‘ ad vise ‘ is coming from senior czars at the big ticket ad agencies– how can they get their ‘ numbers ‘ wrong? . They have everything going for them- They use ‘ fancy calculators ‘, wear Armani suits, have Turkish coffee 8 times a day, the hair is slickly gelled. Sorry, forgot to add the clincher-they also wear crocodile skin pointed leather shoes!!!

I have heard somewhere that ‘ the more things change, the more they remain the same ‘. Recently, a very senior brand and business head of a market leading lifestyle brand called us at ISD Global saying that they are in troubled times. They were losing market share and from being a clear category leader with over 65% retail market share, it was time for store closures, downsizing(or rightsizing to make it sound sweeter) and market share dipping to below 40% – all that in a matter of about 18 months. Inspite of increased marketing spends as advised by the ‘ experts ‘. My question to him was to understand what were they doing different to what was being done and not surprisingly the answer remained ‘ we have aggressively started doing deep discounting and instead of doing it 4 times a year, we remain committed to doing it through the year ‘…so there you go, enough said – ‘ the more things change, the more they remain the same ‘.

So, do these brand owners and guardians take their coveted ad agencies to task? I’m afraid not. If that were to happen, how can they make ‘ interesting, cerebral conversation ‘ saying that our brand works with XXXX agency – they are in the Top 5…and walk around with a chip on their shoulder. And be ranked among ‘ Top 50 ‘ Marketing Professionals in XXXX. Recognised as the ‘ best 40 under 40 ‘ or the ‘ leading 50 over 50 ‘- to be flagged on their Linked In profile. And ‘buy awards ‘ and (p)ride of place in Superbrands next hard bound edition. belief(believe it or not!). We can keep bribing them and they will keep flocking like bees to honey. But, what happened? The numbers are not adding up. The 25 to 70% off numerology chapter needs to turn the page. The strategy is now clearly a ‘ has BEEn ‘! And still being tried Bees Saal Baad( Twenty Years Hence for those not familiar with the Hindi language).

So, where are they headed? To me the writing is on the wall- or is it on the palm?

Palmistry, anyone? Could be easier. Palm off your responsibility to someone or something else! Enough suckers around.

As for me, I am calling up my Mom(God Bless Her) to know more about the occult practice..you guessed it: Numerology!

Disclaimer: She is a retired Math teacher. And she has no interest in ‘hyperbole discounting‘.

And if you permit me a bit of Marketing 01(not even 101): ‘ Differentiation is not an intrinsic characteristic of a brand; differentiation is in the eye of the consumer ‘.

For all those swayed by the ‘ herd mentality ‘, this may never get heard. But, that being said, marketing is a serious responsibility. And there is no running away from that!

Suresh Dinakaran is the Chief Storyteller at ISD Global, a brand strategy & creative ideations entity based out of Dubai and Managing Editor, BrandKnew. With over two decades of insights, expertise and experience in building and growing brands across multiple geographies and media platforms.

HOW VIDEO GAMES ARE EMERGING AS ESSENTIAL PLATFORMS FOR MUSIC MARKETING

By Ilyse Liffreing

Music labels, artists and legacy gaming companies are leaning in to new gaming and music relationships

Earlier this month, Ariana Grande, rocking her traditional high ponytail, dazzled audiences with her hits “Raindrops” and “Be Alright” against backgrounds of dreamy, candycolored sets. It wasn’t your typical concert. Grande, wearing a shimmering dress made of shards of glass, towered over her fans and smashed them with a bejeweled hammer upon her entrance. At one point, she sprouted wings and flew across a landscape of floating bubbles and ornaments, blowing kisses back at her fans dressed as mini Ariana Grandes.

All of this could only happen within the world of “Fortnite.” The virtual concert is expected to top the 12 million concurrent players the Travis Scott “Astronomical” event saw last year. In the three days after Grande’s event, video streams of her hit “Be Alright” surged 123% from 42,000 streams to 93,000 streams, according to MRC Data.

Video games have long served as a way for consumers to discover new music. But over the past year, the pandemic gaming boost and new metaverse technology have further merged the worlds of gaming and music, reaching new audiences of concert-goers and music streamers. So much so that the opening ceremonies of the Tokyo Olympics featured the theme songs of “Dragon Quest” and “Final Fantasy,” to popular role-playing games.

Music labels, talent agents and brands are all looking to be part of the equation, namely to reach young audiences who might be experiencing their first concert in a virtual setting. Even legacy gaming companies are seeking new ways to position their games as platforms for music discovery. And even with in-person concerts coming back, experts say the assimilation of music and gaming, such as virtual concerts, has staying power. “We are right at the beginning of a massive new industry,” says Jon Vlassopulos, VP, global head of music at Roblox. “Artists, labels, publishers, venue and festival owners, video platforms, all have a chance to reinvent themselves and capture first-mover advantage. Virtual performances are now an integral part of the music landscape even with the return of IRL [in real life] concerts and other types of events and will become more immersive in the months and years ahead.”

A new generation of concert-goers

Young audiences are a big reason why music marketing is blending much more with video games today. Multiple studies point to music discovery stopping by 33-yearsold. After that, many people simply continue listening to the bands they know and already love. With such a tight window of opportunity, it’s essential to reach young audiences where they are already spending the majority of their time. In 2021, that means the virtual worlds of video games. Already, with 2.9 billion worldwide gamers taking part in the $177.8 billion industry, brands and ad agencies have been bolstering their capabilities to reach these young gamers.

“For many kids, their first concert will likely be a virtual concert and it’s going to be normalized for them,” says Jarred Kennedy, chief operating officer at Wave, which uses gaming technology to create virtual concerts for artists like The Weeknd, Dillion Francis and within gaming environments like Roblox and social platforms like Twitch, TikTok and YouTube. “For kids who are coming of age and getting into games, it’s the way they are getting entertained. Instead of having two separate tracks—where there are game scores and music recorded for consumption—these lines are blurring.”

In fact, Gen Zers and millennials spend more time gaming than taking part in other forms of traditional entertainment like watching broadcast TV, reading, and yes, even listening to music, according to an August Newzoo study of 72,000 people across 33 markets. The study found that the younger the generation, the more time is spent on gaming, with Gen Zers and millennials averaging around seven hours gaming every week. Gen Zers make up the largest majority of video game players, with 81% taking part. Roughly 25% of Gen Zers’ leisure time is spent gaming compared to 14% listening to music.

Brands hear the music

Naturally, music labels and the talent that fuel them are driving many of these concepts forward. Increasingly, musicians themselves are angling to be part of the world of video games. For recording artists during the pandemic, virtual concerts replaced in-person shows as forms of revenue drivers. Although top talent can still make more with in-person stadium concerts and tours, virtual concerts allow them to bolster their business portfolios and cater to an even wider base of fans, since many of the virtual concerts on platforms like “Fortnite” are free to all players. For talent that might not see themselves headlining stadium tours, the chance to grow their following virtually spells big opportunity. Geoff Sawyer, a video games agent at United Talent Agency (UTA) who focuses on fostering collaborations between UTA’s music clients and the gaming industry, says artists’ interest in collaborating with video games has never been higher. Over the past year, the agency has secured “Fortnite” virtual concert deals with artists like DJ Marshmello, rapper Trippie Redd and singer Dominic Fike. Marshmello’s “Fortnite” concert alone was attended by 10.7 million players. For chart-topper Post Malone, Universal Music Group for Brands crafted a deal with Pokémon to have him headline its 25th anniversary virtual concert in February on YouTube and Twitch as well as another deal that made the rapper and songwriter an owner in esports organization Team Envy. “Video games are becoming the most influential arbiters of pop culture in the entertainment industry. With their thoughtfulness and authenticity, partnerships between the gaming and music industries in particular have built up a strong momentum,” says Sawyer. “Authentic artist integrations are one of the most effective ways a game can delight its audience, and that audience might well be hundreds of millions of people worldwide. The mutual benefit is massive.”

For brands outside of the world of gaming and music, there are still opportunities to become incorporated into the events. Wave, for instance, has worked with brands like Crocs, Asics, People Magazine and Hyper X to secure product placements in virtual shows. For instance, Dillion Francis wore a pair of Crocs during his virtual performance that changed color based on viewers’ votes. “A lot of times when brands look at opportunities like this, it’s how can they bring added value, not just sponsor or slap on their logo, but bring added value to an experience and to a community,” says Kennedy. “In a virtual environment, the opportunity to doing that is robust.”

Bridging connections

Platforms like Roblox see the potential and their place in creating virtual concerts and album release parties their users can take part in. “Artists can perform in an infinite venue that they dream up, connect directly and literally hang out with millions of fans in a single night—instead of having to fly around the world for 18 months on a physical tour,” says Vlassopulos.

Vlassopulos says Roblox has a goal to make music an integral part of its platform’s experience, where 46.6 million daily active gamers, mostly under the age of 18, can explore and play games in millions of virtual worlds as avatars, a concept it promotes as a metaverse. On its way in doing so, Roblox is starting to license more music catalogues like Monstercat onto the platform so developers and creators can use it to enhance the virtual worlds they are creating. Roblox has also created experiences to introduce a love of music to its players. With Splash, players can DJ and create music, and in games like Robeats, music fans can play with their favorite songs. Of course, virtual concerts, album release parties and artist meet-and-greets are popular with music labels and artists and can be monetized through virtual merchandise and VIP experiences within Roblox. Over the past year, Roblox has worked with Columbia Records, Warner Music, RBC Records and others to create virtual experiences popular with players in the U.S. and Europe. After its Lil Nas X virtual concert in November 2020 garnered 36 million visits and with virtal merchandise expected to bring in more than eight figures by the end of the year, the platform replicated the concept for artists like Royal Blood, and this past weekend for UK rapper KSI, as well as launch parties for artists like Zara Larsson, Ava Max and Why Don’t We. Vlassopulos says labels are seeing between 5% to 1,000% increases in streaming numbers and social followers during events.

The path to integrating music with gaming isn’t always smooth, however. With so many users and platforms growing so quickly, it can be challenging to regulate the use of music, as social media platforms like TikTok have seen. In June, Roblox partnered with Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) for future music usage after being embroiled in a $200 million lawsuit from the National Music Publishers’ Association for illegal use of music.

Not your parents’ music

Legacy gaming companies, seeing the momentum in the space, are also further positioning their games as drivers of music discovery to reach younger audiences. Electronic Arts (EA), the U.S.’s second-largest video game company behind Activision Blizzard, is releasing its own hip-hop album in partnership with Universal Media Group’s Interscope Records for the soundtrack of its upcoming “Madden NFL 22” game out on August 20. Unlike with past soundtracks, 11 songs have been exclusively made for “Madden” from hip hop artists like Jack Harlow, Swae Lee, Tierra Whack and

Moneybagg Yo, and available across streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. The 11 songs will be included in a 56-song in-game soundtrack. It’s a deviation away from purely licensing existing songs, an approach that has been in place for the company’s entire 40-year history. This is a product that can live on its own outside of the game.

The new tactic allows EA to promote itself through the upand-coming artists on its album. The musicians are creating original content with the music over social and digital platforms to promote the new game. EA’s collaboration with the NFL also means the songs will be used for the football season kicking off next month, playing in stadiums and at NFL events.

Steve Schnur, worldwide executive and president of EA Music Group, says the new approach better positions the game as a place of music discovery for the next-generation of football fans, a tactic that has always been part of the company’s strategy but is leveling up. “It’s a little disruptive in the sense that people generally want to hear what they know already, but we feed them the tone and sound of what they will love, not what they have loved,” Schnur says. “There’s high expectations of nextgeneration football fans to lean into Madden and to hear what’s next.”

Therefore, it’s important that the album not sound like something parents might play. “There was a time when the NFL sounded like Bon Jovi. Football does not need to continue to sound like it belongs only to the people in the suites,” he says. “The tone should sound like it belongs to the people in the stands—the next generation of season ticket holders; the next generation of people who may respond to the advertisers of the sport.”

Ilyse Liffreing reports on pop culture, social trends, influencers and esports. She has covered the advertising industry for Ad Age since 2019 and has previously covered brands and agencies at Digiday and digital platforms at Campaign U.S. She is a proud alum of the NYU Graduate School of Journalism and the University of San Francisco.

You should never work on weekends unless you’re doing one thing

By Filip Urban

Her words soared across the Twittersphere, inciting thousands of reactions: “Unpopular opinion: the best thing young people can do early in their careers is to work on the weekends.” so much with it that I thought it would be one of those unpopular opinions that wasn’t that unpopular. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Responses range from descriptions of working on the weekend as a “never-ending wealth-chasing capitalist hellscape,” to an inevitable path to “zero time with their

friends and family . . . zero social skills, have no life experiences, and suffer from mental burnout before 30,” to “sell yourself body and soul for companies that don’t even bother with your mental, physical, and financial well being.”

Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham supported Kong’s tweet, noting responses that equated work with earning an income. He replied, “for the ambitious, they are far from identical.” Kong clarified that work “can mean different things: could be a project that you own at your day job, could be a new skill you need for advancement, could be a side hustle you love.”

Can you consider the radical proposal that even if your work never pays you, it will still be a valuable and integral part of your life, for the rest of your life? What if your art gives you life and your employment pays for that life?

Work means something different to everyone, which is why Kong’s tweet was polarizing. For example, the Futur CEO Chris Do tweeted, “my wife and I can’t agree on this. Can you work hard and make sacrifices if you love the work you do? She only considers it work if you hate what you do. Therefore I haven’t been working [for] the last six years. Thoughts?”

Similarly, in 1843 Magazine, Ryan Avent writes that software and IT have made the workplace much more likable. He writes about the joys of flow, collaboration, and a sense of purposeful immersion. This is probably the case in most venture capitalists and technology offices, and even for some of the people who get to work from home.

Still, there are many who don’t get to work in this type of environment. I could put on my headphones and get into flow at a coffee shop or in a coworking space, but there were always others that made it possible—the baristas, the caretakers, and the drivers, among others.

Therein lies the rub. The digital divide might cover hardware and internet access, but the diverging natures of work, and feelings of optimism or despair in the future, drove the strong responses to Kong’s tweet. It’s not necessarily ambitious to work on the weekend when it involves learning, autonomy, and feels fun. It’s easy.

Venture capitalist Mark Suster wrote a post titled, “Is it Time for You to Earn or to Learn?” The frank truth is, many of us probably feel the need to do both. For example, there was a point when I worked at Lifehacker in what would be the last days of Gawker Media, where I was also running my editorial studio.

In my ideal world, I would be a full-time author. But writing is an unstable business. I inherently knew and felt the same as Kim’s Convenience lead actor Paul Sun-Hyung Lee and Donald Glover when they said they felt like they didn’t have chances to fail. I’ll quote Brenda Peterson quoting Edith Oliver at The New Yorker, “My deah (sic), you don’t mean to say that you actually live on your salary?” Many of us do, and that’s just the way it is. For me, I couldn’t risk not earning, but thanks to my friends and family, I also knew the essentiality of learning. So, I do marketing and writing simultaneously. At points, there is definitely a sense of brain overload. But it’s a common element in many jobs, it’s still a privilege to experience them while I was doing the thing I liked to do. It helped that marketing paid well, and I didn’t hate it.

Like Kong says, my marketing opportunities started compounding thanks to my work in my spare time. After writing dozens of articles for a Canadian tech publication— on weekends in college and for a summer—through my friend Keane’s introduction, I got a contract job with Xtreme Labs, which got bought for $65 million in 2013.

I didn’t own any equity, and I wasn’t even working that day so I missed the party. But I learned a lot, and I could easily pick up relatively well-paying freelance opportunities with that. I learned to negotiate, to price, and to write, all on the weekends. Spending less time making the same amount of money meant I could make more time to write.

For most of my childhood, my schedule was packed with classes. Sunday was for going to church and attending Sunday school. Monday to Friday I went to daycare and public school. Piano class would be on Thursday, but I practiced each assigned song six times every night. Friday nights were swimming. When I stopped swimming, my parents made me play floor hockey. On Saturdays, I went to Chinese and math classes. If I wanted to watch cartoons on Saturday morning, I’d have to wake up at 6:45 a.m.—the earliest time of the week—which I did happily. I was upset cartoons didn’t start earlier and usually turned on the TV to the end credits of That ’70s Show. If I woke up even earlier than that, I would draw pictures.

My parents made it clear: I was privileged to have a chance to learn. I also knew that a lot of other kids who went to my daycare had a similar schedule with different mixes of classes—ballet, guitar, violin, Kumon, martial arts, and such.

I loved books, and my parents made sure I could read plenty for fun (I would finish a book at the bookstore, and borrow a maximum of 50 books at the library). And I spent no shortage of time playing video games. But the structure and discipline my parents instilled in me was a huge asset that made earning and learning—working on the weekends— much easier than if I hadn’t had those habits.

I also know that none of the habits that serve my work ethic would matter if I didn’t enjoy my work. Given my temperament, I’m just not the type of person that can grind away for 14 hours a day, thirstily seeking out drops of joy in something that makes me feel miserable. These days, I still do things that might look like work on the weekends— writing at Medium, taking notes, figuring out GPT-3, and reading, among many other things.

Even after all of this, I still find myself agreeing with Kong. I would amend her tweet more carefully, by removing the vague elements and polarizing misunderstandings that made it go viral in the first place: “The best thing young people can do early in their careers is to learn skills that excite and fulfill them on the weekends.”

Talking About Purpose Won’t Transform a Brand; These 5 Skills Will

By Laura Quinn

From Pride to voting rights to climate change, modern brand leaders have to be ready to step up and take a strong point of view on the biggest social and environmental issues of our time. And in a world of woke-washing and cancel culture, it’s a skill that can’t be taken lightly.

We all know the stats by now — globally, 67 percent of people agree it has become more important that the brands they choose make a positive contribution to society beyond just a good service or product; and 64 percent of US adults now say a company’s “primary purpose” should be “making the world a better place.” Masses of purpose-driven startups are disrupting sectors from eyeglasses to fashion to toilet paper; while legacy companies including Unilever, Mars and Danone have made brand purpose mandatory in the positioning of their legion of brands.

The result is a wholesale shift in the work of brand leadership. According to Pree Rao, Head of North America CMO Practice at leadership advisory and executive search firm Egon Zehnder:

“Brand purpose is now critical to how CMOs and their teams can both respond to the consumer and drive bottom-line results. For full-stack marketing leadership roles, bringing brand purpose to life is core and central — no matter the industry.”

But transitioning from a traditional brand leadership role into a leader who can deliver real societal impact through purpose is a journey that takes commitment and skill. At Purpose, we meet amazing brand leaders every week with one very clear ask: How do I do this work?

The challenge they face is that “purpose” and social impact have been written into job descriptions, but the skills needed to deliver a traditional brand campaign and those required to support real, effective social change are not often the same. Navigating complex issue spaces, finding a meaningful brand role within a movement, working with nonprofit partners effectively, and mobilizing consumers to take real-world actions requires new muscles and a different mindset than the traditional expertise of brand leaders and their partner agencies.

From our work supporting leaders to deliver brand value through purpose, we’ve identified five skills that every brand leader needs — but as yet, not enough have:

1. Ecosystem thinking

with many actors working together. Unlike a traditional brand campaign approach, working within these spaces isn’t just about pushing out relevant messages or creating engagement — it’s about knowing who’s already in the ecosystem and being ready to listen, to understand where a brand or corporation can add the most value.

2. A sharp equity lens

Arguably the most valuable skill for any leader today is to understand how and where inequities play out in their business and society, in order to position their organization to counter existing structural inequities and to take an equity lens to all brand touchpoints, from ethical tech to respectful representation.

3. Movement generosity

The muscle memory of brand leaders is to identity, occupy and “own” a space. But a brand can’t, and shouldn’t try to, own a movement. To create an authentic positioning within an issue space that consumers will respect requires a brand to understand the movement that already exists, share resources generously with other actors, and fill the gaps that are most critical — not just those that are most self-serving.

4. Double impact measurement

Brand leaders are well versed in tracking brand value and measuring marketing ROI. In order to deliver brand purpose effectively, leaders must also seek to understand social impact measurement and evaluation methodologies. Once they’re able to track the impact of their activities, brands can build powerful platforms and stories that drive credibility and engagement.

5. Knowing what you don’t know

Working in challenging issue spaces often means experiencing discomfort. You never know what you don’t know. Surrounding yourself with the right people to help navigate complex issues, partners and relationships — and understanding when you’re not the expert in the room — creates deeper, more authentic strategies and more powerful brand impact.

When brand leaders are able to build these skills — or find the right people to support them — they not only succeed in delivering authentic brand purpose that drives real, positive impact in the world; they also build credible stories, protect the reputation of their brand, and develop deeper and longer-lasting consumer relationships.

HOW LANGUAGE IS THE KEY FOR BRANDS TO UNLOCK CONSUMER BEHAVIOR

By Adrianne Pasquarelli

The CEO of research company MotivBase offers a primer for brands on changing purchase behavior brought on by the pandemic

Ujwal Arkalgud has had a busy 18 months. As co-founder and CEO of research firm MotivBase, Arkalgud studies the meaning behind what consumers say and write and decodes it for brands. Among MotivBase’s clients are Clorox, Procter & Gamble and General Mills. On the latest episode of the “Marketer’s Brief” podcast, Arkalgud discusses how the coronavirus has altered consumer behavior and what marketers might learn from some of the changes, particularly regarding concepts including sustainability and eco-friendly products. “The pandemic has been the perfect breeding ground for us in a way,” says Arkalgud. “When clients, companies, marketers look at behavior, what they forget is behavior can change overnight; it changes anytime something happens in culture.” MotivBase has spent recent months tracking the rise in demand for cleaning products during COVID-19. Previously, many consumers had been seeking out eco-friendly solutions but in 2020, they scooped up any cleaners they could find— even those kitchen products boasting chemical ingredients. Many manufacturers of household cleaning products asked Arkalgud if the “natural trend” was done. On the contrary, he says. “The meanings around natural cleaning haven’t changed,” Arkalgud says. “The knowledge of the average consumer around the benefits of cleaning with natural products like vinegar were increasing through the pandemic, though behavior, sales data was not demonstrating that. It teaches us that when we look at meaning, we maintain focus which allows us to get past the short-term blips to think about what will settle in.” On the podcast, Arkalgud also discusses how brands can responsibly add sustainability messaging into marketing, particularly following a recent Greenwashing in Advertising guide released by the 4A’s.

Adrianne Pasquarelli is a senior reporter at Ad Age, covering marketing in retail and finance, as well as in travel and health care. She is also a host of the Marketer’s Brief podcast and spearheads special reports including 40 Under 40 and Hottest Brands.

How to Make Your Brand’s Storytelling More Compelling

By Andy Nairn

In recent years, it’s become fashionable for marketers to describe themselves as “storytellers” for their brand. But many brand narratives are deadly dull. That’s because they lack the one element that every good writer uses: conflict.

Every great story, whether a novel, play, film, or TV series, is based on a dramatic conflict—a protagonist’s struggle to get what he or she wants in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. That tension is what gets us interested and keeps us hooked: We want to know whether our hero will succeed or fail.

Without that element of jeopardy, a story can be flat, predictable, boring.

of those things. The characters and setting are nice, lest they reflect badly on the organization. Wonderful things happen to the protagonists, as if by magic. Difficult themes are avoided, and negativity is frowned upon. There’s no conflict.

Obviously, I’m not suggesting we start putting Freddy Krueger and Hannibal Lecter into Cornflakes ads (although “Cereal Killers” would be amazing to watch). But we should always ask ourselves why anybody should care about our brand stories.

I think it’s helpful to consider the various types of conflict that storytelling experts say make for the best narratives.

Five Types of Conflict in Storytelling

1. Character vs. Self

Some of the greatest novels and films revolve around an inner conflict, but such turmoil is usually avoided in branded content because it’s believed to signify a lack of confidence.

And yet, acknowledging self-doubt can be used to heighten empathy toward the character—your brand or its products— and emphasize strength.

What concerns might your prospects have about buying from you? What myths or taboos might put them off? Instead of avoiding those issues, why not make them central to your story and show how you can overcome them?

2. Character vs. Character

This conflict is a storytelling classic: David vs. Goliath, King Kong vs. Godzilla, Kramer vs. Kramer. It’s common in marketing, too: Pepsi vs. Coke, Mac vs. PC, Burger King vs. McDonald’s. But it’s not easy to pull off. It can come across as petty and it can inadvertently draw attention to your rival.

The character vs. character storyline makes sense only for a challenger brand. Market leaders should avoid mentioning the competition. (When they get dragged into a fight like that, you know they’re in trouble!)

But upstarts need to make their conflict entertaining to a wider audience, not just to their own stakeholders, and one way to do that is using humor. How could you poke fun at your bigger, slower rival?

3. Character vs. Nature

This is an increasingly popular plotline in movies. It’s even given rise to a new genre sometimes called “eco-apocalypse” or “cli-fi.” But it’s almost untouched by brands in a classic example of organizations’ trying to avoid conflict: They want to steer customers toward eco-friendly choices but don’t want to scare them with the consequences of inaction.

Again, I’m not saying your brand content should start with flooded cities or burning forests. But think twice before cutting straight to the solution.

Can you capture the struggle that went into creating your green product? Can you show nature’s destructive power being tamed? Can you set up a ticking eco-time-bomb then show how it can be defused?

4. Character vs. Technology

This is another conflict that writers are using more often in Hollywood. After all, the relationship between people and machines is one of the great themes of our time.

In marketing, of course, we’re typically trying to sell a technology, so we tend to focus on its benefits. But let’s face it: Downsides exist, too, and sometimes leaning into those frustrations in your marketing storytelling can highlight your product’s strengths.

Can you harness category concerns, then present an alternative? Can you dispel myths or untangle confusion? Above all, can you make your technology feel human and loved, rather than just mechanical and efficient?

5. Character vs. Society

In this kind of conflict, the protagonist takes on societal forces such as prejudice, ignorance, and oppression. It’s a dominant theme in fiction right now, and it’s increasingly popular with commercial organizations, too.

Used well, the character vs. society conflict can tell a compelling story and help make the world a better place. But it should be used with caution.

First, your brand should have a strong and relevant story to tell. Otherwise, you could be accused of “purpose-washing.” Second, ensure that your narrative goes beyond platitude. Otherwise, there’s no real conflict; you’re just mouthing empty words about a topic that everyone agrees on, anyway.

To get this one right, ask yourself what social problems your organization genuinely cares about and how it can move the issue forward instead of just jumping on a bandwagon that’s already rolling along.

Brand Storytelling: From Conflict to Resolution

Some of the suggestions in this article may feel counterintuitive for content creators who have been brought up on the need to accentuate the positive. That should be your goal, but you should also think about how you get there.

Obviously, a happy resolution is crucial for any brand storytelling. But you need to make people care about it in the first place, and that’s where conflict comes in.

I’ll leave the last words on the subject to one of the greatest storytellers of all time: the late, great John le Carré. He sold more than 60 million books—often with very complicated plots—over the course of his career. But his philosophy was simple, and it was about conflict: “’The cat sat on the mat’ is not a story,” he once said. “But ‘The cat sat on the dog’s mat’ is the beginning of a story.”

The next time you create content for your brand, ask yourself: Does your narrative consist only of a cat on a mat?

If so, find a dog.

Andy is one of the 3 founders of Lucky Generals, a creative company for people on a mission. It’s been shortlisted for Campaign’s Agency of the Year for 5 years in a row.He also chairs Dark Horses, a sports marketing agency for those who want to break away from the field.

Tap into the power of loyalty by serving your Brand Lovers better than anyone else …

By Bj Bueno

Marketing used to be fairly straightforward: Throw money at advertising in order to influence people to buy your products and services. If your advertising campaign was decent, the resulting sales outweighed the cost of advertising. If your campaign was excellent, your business grew like a wildflower.

Fast forward to today: The customer is now in control. Media fragmentation from hundreds of cable networks, millions of Web sites. mobile devices in every hand, and social media make it more difficult to reach the general market. And even if you do reach your potential customers, they don’t have to listen, and probably won’t. What’s an intelligent marketer to do?

Five ways to tap into your most profitable customers

1) Understand what branding is really all about.

Management guru Peter Drucker explained that the purpose of business is to create a customer.1 In contemporary marketing, your job is to create a repeat customer who is likely to build a relationship with you and buy from you year after year. In order to accomplish this magnificent feat, you must develop what’s called a brand. A brand is an association that a customer has with certain feelings and images represented by a company, not simply a company name or a logo. You cannot create a brand by yourself because branding is a co-authored experience between you and your customers. When a group of customers has strong associations between your brand and a desired feeling, the brand has “equity” it can leverage in order to grow.

2) Focus on your best customers.

The secret ingredient to a sustainable enterprise is called Brand Lovers: The customers who love you the most. Brand Lovers emotionally connect with what you do and they want to celebrate who you are. Their connection with your brand is so strong that they often don’t consider doing business with anyone else. Apple’s Mac users, for example, don’t consider purchasing a PC. To them, there is no alternative.

At the very least, your Brand Lovers choose you more often than your competitors. For many companies, the best customers drive a significant part of their profitability—both through purchasing and by acting as evangelists to convert other people into customers—and yet the business generally knows very little about them. Basic market research does not offer you insights into your best customers. The true drivers of choice for your best customers are emotional connections to your brand.

Certain brands have a legion of Brand Lovers – we call them Cult Brands. In a Cult Brand like Apple, CEO Steve Jobs knew he was selling a unique way of life that’s intelligent, creative, and special—he wasn’t just selling computers, digital music players, and mobile phones. Oprah turned herself into a Cult Brand by being is far more than just another talk show host: real, honest and loving, Oprah

radiates hope and the promise of a better tomorrow.

3) Identify your Brand Lovers.

Perhaps your enterprise doesn’t have Brand Lovers like Apple or Oprah, but you do have your best customers – customers who give you repeat business and who may tell their friends and colleagues about your brand.

So how do you find your best customers? Actually, they often find you. They congregate at your stores. They send you e-mails and call you from time to time to tell you how great you’re doing. Some customers might even blog about your products or services or create videos and post them on social media.

On the financial side, if you maintain a customer database, you can sift through and determine who purchases from you with the greatest frequency – and for the longest time span.

What if none of the above helps you locate them? Then get creative. Carefully crafted surveys might point you in the right direction or you may need to hire a firm to help you identify who your best customers are.

4) Get to know your Brand Lovers.

Talk to them. Find out why they keep doing business with you. Don’t be afraid to ask. But listen carefully. them.

5) Serve your Brand Lovers better than anyone else.

There are always ways to grow your business by embracing your best customers. The answers don’t have to be complex. For World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), offering free meatball subs before the show increased the love among participants. Skaters were ostracized by most businesses, but Vans listened to its customers and gave them what they wanted. Harley-Davidson developed leather jackets for its riders.

The role of marketing is to create the future today, which requires you to know what your customers will want tomorrow. The only way to anticipate the future needs of your customers is to understand who they are, talk to them and listen. Then, you can create the future together.

Onward

A final word of advice: Don’t try to be all things to all people. You don’t need everyone to like you. You only need your Brand Lovers who already love you. Remember, your best customers are the lifeblood for growing a sustainable business. By learning to understand their needs and serving them better than anyone else, you can build a legion of brand loyalists that catapult your business growth without throwing more money at directionless advertising campaigns.

The key ad trends driving the in-car commerce boom

By Lawrence Dodds

With news that traffic on the roads has in some cases exceeded pre-pandemic levels, the car has been thrown into the limelight as the key mode of transport for millions up and down the country. Consumers are driving further for leisure and even staycationing more, as Covid concerns have created a jittery foreign travel market. At the same time, the car market has had a confidence bounce-back from the early days of the pandemic, with consumer demand increasing and a global chip shortage creating price inflation for used cars and increasing waiting lists for new cars.

Cars as digital platforms

Encouraged by strong demand, car manufacturers are releasing new models into line-ups, even though they are struggling to get them off the production line. They have also had to look for ways to respond to the success of Tesla, the share price of which has skyrocketed, leaving a wide array of manufacturers with red faces, given their own slow adoption of technology. Support for mobile mirroring services has risen as manufacturers have recognised the importance of mobilephone-based services at the centre of the in-car experience. However, no manufacturer has yet been able to offer mapping that can compete with Google or Apple. Both tech giants are starting to accelerate their in-car offerings in what can be seen as a drawing of battle lines in the ever-increasing war for our attention. Amazon’s Alexa is also playing a role, with Ford adding the smart assistant as a hands-free option in an over-the-air update.

Emerging advertising opportunities

As cars start to benefit from connected services and direct internet connections, it comes as no surprise that advertising opportunities are increasing. Advertisers can already drive visibility on Google Maps and Waze through programmatic offerings. Waze already offers four ad formats in which to intercept journeys and drive up the prominence of bricksand-mortar destinations. Given that the car is such a vital method of transport for retail, you can see why so many advertisers are already investing here, especially destinationdriven businesses.

The future in this space is potentially fragmented as car manufacturers are likely to get in on the party. Companies such as Telenav are already offering OEM advertising systems to auto manufacturers and it is only a matter of time before the value of advertising revenue is fully recognised. This would mirror the step that TV manufacturers have taken in the development of offerings such as Samsung TV and Samba TV.

With more self-driving and driving-assistant options due to become the norm, the focus is set to shift to cars as entertainment platforms. Competition is rife, with in-car screens getting bigger and Netflix becoming available as incar entertainment. Mercedes also recently debuted its in-car infotainment hyper screen. There is a strong likelihood that contextually relevant advertising will not just come from in-car software and navigation apps, but also from entertainment platforms tapping into in-car consumption.

Forget ecommerce, think in-car commerce

A newer, exciting development in cars is connected commerce, with in-car payments being trialled and launched by auto manufacturers. Hyundai is one such company, bringing incar payments to its all-new Ioniq 5. Hyundai is betting on the technology as a way to drive incremental revenue and sees fast food and charging occasions as key opportunities. When the technology arrives in the US in 2021, it will include partners such as Domino’s, ParkWhiz and Charge hub. The potential for such technology is clear and will ultimately represent an opportunity for retailers to provide seamless services and remove barriers to purchase. Consumers could potentially order their favourite pizza as they drive home or even pay before arriving at a drive-through. Coffees could be paid for just before collection. The potential for frictionless commerce is clear.

What should advertisers do now?

The connected in-car experience offers advertisers one of a few ways to tap into spatial context. Retailers, especially bricks-and-mortar ones, should optimise their digital presence to ensure they are accessible on digital platforms and then supplement this by testing in-car navigation opportunities to further increase visibility. In-car audio opportunities are a way that advertisers can intercept consumers today. DAX, Spotify and Acast are an easy win. Campaigns can be customised fully to the environment, using dynamic audio technology. Fully expect to see in-car purchase technology accelerate quickly. Brands should look to drive integrated partnerships to unlock enhanced consumer experiences as the technology develops, rather than waiting and being left behind.

3 Ways Artificial Intelligence Will Change Marketing Forever

By Courtney Behrens

Marketers are no exception to the relentless pace of organizational digital transformation and automation— especially by leveraging artificial intelligence. AI-powered automation doesn’t just make a firm’s marketing department faster, it also becomes smarter by leveraging data far more efficiently than through manual methods. It’s no surprise that many companies have already begun to adopt marketing intelligence in their digital marketing strategies, which can generally be broken down into three main areas: smarter customer interactions, personalization and risk assessment.

Smarter customer interactions

An increasing number of businesses have modernized their methods for customer communication by implementing predictive messaging tools such as chatbots and more. These automated communication instruments enhance the customer experience by opening rapid communication channels between interested buyers and sellers, bolstering the customer experience while simultaneously fostering brand loyalty. Younger customers especially have higher expectations for customer service innovation. In particular, the era of direct messaging has led to a boon for “smart” chatbots. They can be a powerful customer tool, cutting response times, saving costs and expediting customer interactions. These automated interfaces operate through several channels to streamline conversations with customers at any time and place, even outside regular working hours. Chatbots’ cousins, AI-powered phone agents, are also becoming customers’ everyday companions. Virtual assistants in general have grown in popularity, as they provide faster, more economical ways of encouraging online sales.

Smarter personalization

Another marketing area that AI transforms is personalization. According to data from dotdigital’s Global E-Commerce Benchmark Report 2020, only 5% of brands currently provide contextually relevant content. As businesses market across multiple channels, it is essential to utilize every piece of data collected to conduct smart outreach. Artificial intelligence enables businesses to predict consumer preferences by collecting and interpreting data to tailor messaging, products and recommendations accordingly across channels, from social media to email. For instance, web metrics, such as response and value indicators, will indicate what resonates with the targeted consumer. Sellers can then predict consumer wants and needs more accurately through AI-powered data mining. This allows businesses to personalize their content in terms of segmentation and targeting.

Smarter risk assessment

Digital transformation, which has only been accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic, opens the door even further to security risks. Hence, solutions that help businesses detect and prevent security risks are more needed than ever. AI’s cognitive computing capabilities are a great asset to risk management and assessment. Cognitive analytics allow businesses to tap unstructured information, personalize services and reduce subjectivity in decision making. With respect to information security, data gathered through sales and marketing programs’ AI solutions can help businesses analyze massive amounts of data, and recognize unusual behavioral patterns at lightning speed. And because AI tools are free of emotions and biases, they can improve the context for prioritization and responses to those risks, making detection and threat mitigation more efficient. Not only does artificial intelligence detect security risks, but it also helps risk management in terms of managing businesses’ return on investment (ROI). The data gathered through sales and marketing initiatives can power better decision-making and reduce ROI risk. With AI, businesses and marketers can more accurately target their audiences, such as what they are responsive to, which marketing touchpoints drive brand engagement, and how to optimize reach and frequency. Lastly, it is critical that businesses connect their data across all platforms for a unified marketing perspective. Data silos pose a major barrier to most businesses—a Forrester report found that 72% of firms stated their most significant sales and marketing challenge was managing data and sharing insights across organizational silos. Utilizing data and breaking down these data silos can minimize human error when calculating risk and ROI. From customer interactions to risk management, enterprises are using AI to streamline marketing workflows, improve predictive capabilities as well as better accommodating customer demands. The data is becoming smarter, so marketers must be, too.

Creating A Marketing Masterpiece - Great Plan & Disciplined Execution

By Vanessa Singh

So often we as Marketeers get excited about a brilliant idea from our creative agencies. Expectations run high in terms of changing brand perception, growing market share- acquisition of more clients, deepening the share of wallet with existing clients and ultimately getting clients and staff to become ambassadors of the brand.

This often does not materialise, one has to have a solid strategic plan and a disciplined execution plan in place that includes marketing, advertising, communications and change management. Let’s talk about the plan. In all of my highly successful campaigns, I found the construction of a detailed plan to be a winning formula. The plan should ideally include the following: 1. Advertising channels: to avoid wastage and ensure effectiveness of your ad/s, be ruthless in choosing 3 to 4 channels and ensure optimal spend on each channel. Use previous data to choose the optimal channel mix. 2. Think digital first; digital channels are paramount. The big creative idea needs to be carried through for digital. Remember, you need to have an ‘Always On’ mindset. 3. Below the line advertising mix , the big idea needs to be carried through for this channel. use test and learn methodologies. Create champion and challenger campaigns. Segment groupings of potential clients to ensure correct messaging. PS. Timeous Request for data/ data mining is essential. 4. Communications, both internal and external PR. This is the most inexpensive way to convey your message. Don’t forget change management with the value chain stakeholders. 5. Above the line (ATL), below the line (BTL) and through the line (TTL) thinking is important. 6. Socialise plan/obtain approval from key stakeholders. This is a crucial milestone!

Disciplined execution using “marketing sprints” I found the most effective way to succeed is to implement “marketing sprints.” As a first-line approver, this ensures consistency in the message and mix, and managing your time efficiently. - Identify work streams. - Each work stream to schedule an initial sprint session to present their strategy. - Once approved, at key milestones/ approval /guidance points, the work stream has to book a sprint slot. - All work streams present top-line status at a weekly alignment session. - Don’t forget to make provision for link testing of your ads prior to implementation date. - Non-disclosure agreements to be undertaken with key personnel to ensure no market leakage or competitor advantage/ambush. Create learning environments were all team members want to be and feel included.

Have fun and celebrate your awesome ads that’s on time, within budget with an extraordinary launch! Monitor the effectiveness of your campaigns hourly, daily, monthly, weekly and publish post campaign results. Don’t assume a media schedule guarantees your ad being flighted.

Living Your Best Digital Hygge Life

By Martin Pedersen

How to leave clients with a warm, inspired and fulfilled feeling

Each year, leading up to the Oxford Dictionary’s selection of their “word of the year,” is a shortlist of words up for the honor. These words are generally a tally of pop culture idioms, memes, movie catch-phases and the like. Think words we’ve all come to know in the last few years like Brexit, gaslighting or youthquake. One particular word that was shortlisted back in 2016 caught my eye because it’s one that I am quite familiar with: hygge. Pronounced “hoo-guh,” this is a term near and dear to my native Denmark. Hygge is “a quality of coziness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being.” The English word equivalent would likely be cozy, although hygge is an English derivative. Still, I’m not sure either of those nails it though. For me, hygge was more like the feeling I would get as a child when my mother would light a candle every morning when we would have breakfast and talk about what lies ahead that day. It brought a sense of calm and purpose over me, and the consistency of the act made the moment even that much more impactful. As a Dane, I feel hygge is literally in my DNA, and a defining feature of my cultural identity. When I came to the U.S. hygge came with me and is a part of my everyday home life and work. As a fellow Dane aptly said, “hygge is to the Danish what freedom is to Americans.”

Creating that same feeling of hygge in the office is a greater challenge though. This is the agency industry after all, and I’m not naive enough not to know success isn’t always based on merit. Competition among agencies is often fierce and people sometimes do un-hygge things to get ahead. Undeterred, the agency I founded would bring what I call “digital hygge” not only to our office, but to the clients we work with, and the work we create. You see, digital hygge is a mindset that is embedded in all of our business relationships. You can see it with our employees, the work we create, the services we provide and the trust we earned. It’s about more than wanting to do great work, it’s about loving the work we do, being genuine, and remaining curious and innovating. It’s basically a form of affective design that considers the emotions and mindset of the user into the experience. Think of it as a UX/CX that leaves you feeling warm, inspired, and fulfilled. Yup, it can be done, and we’re pretty good at it. When you understand customer psychology, you can create experiences that amplify the right emotions and feelings. For UX/CX to truly be effective, designers need to incorporate empathy into the experience so they can better understand what the end users’ needs are, why they’re there, and how to actually help them. A user experience involving a help desk chatbot, for example, that leaves the user feeling more stressed than when they first sought help is an epic fail. One that was likely created by a UX designer who wasn’t really thinking about the customer’s experience, and definitely not feeling cozy I’m sure. Ultimately, digital hygge is about infusing emotion into your work so your clients’ are left with a warm, inspired, and fulfilled feeling. Deliver that consistently for your clients and they too will get used to that feeling of hygge, just as I did many years ago with breakfast by candlelight with my mom.

A longtime digital marketing executive, I have strengths in team and project leadership, talent recruiting, and financial management.My experience includes leadership roles at both small and large digital agencies, and working with brands such as Sony, Nike, Yahoo!, and the NFL. I also have in-house leadership experience at a Fortune 500 company.

Book,

&Line Sinker

Build Your Brand Mania: How to Transform Yourself Into an Authoritative Brand That Will Attract Your Ideal Customers

By Matt Bertram

he missing piece of internet marketing that almost all business owners miss is transforming themselves into an authoritative brand that attracts their ideal customers.

Sticky Branding: 12.5 Principles to Stand Out, Attract Customers, and Grow an Incredible Brand

By Jeremy Miller

Companies like Apple, Nike, and Starbucks have made themselves as recognizable as they are successful. But large companies are not the only ones who can stand out. Any business willing to challenge industry norms and find innovative ways to serve its customers can grow into a Sticky Brand.

Book of Branding: a guide to creating brand identity for startups and beyond

By Radim Malinic

Book of Branding is a creative guide for new businesses, start-ups and individuals, which puts visual identity at the heart of brand strategy. The conversational, jargon free, tone of the book helps the reader to understand essential elements of the brand identity process.

How to Launch a Brand (2nd Edition): Your Step-by-Step Guide to Crafting a Brand: From Positioning to Naming And Brand Identity

By Fabian Geyrhalter

Most entrepreneurs, even seasoned brand managers, launch first and then work on slowly transforming the new offering into a brand. A logical progression, I would agree.

Identity Designed: The Definitive Guide to Visual Branding

By David Airey

Ideal for students of design, independent designers, and entrepreneurs who want to expand their understanding of effective design in business, Identity Designed is the definitive guide to visual branding.

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

By Wally Olins

Wally Olins: Brand New: The Shape Of Brands To Come by Wally Olins is a an interesting presentation of branding and its related terms. The book is a useful resource for everyone who wants to know everything about branding and how it works in the current world.

Brand Society: How Brands Transform Management and Lifestyle

By Martin Kornberger

Brands are a fait accompli: they represent a mountain range of evidence in search of a theory. They are much exploited, but little explored. In this book, Martin Kornberger sets out to rectify the ratio between exploiting and exploring through sketching out a theory of the Brand Society.

Persuasive Signs: The Semiotics of Advertising (Approaches to Applied Semiotics, 4)

By Ron Beasley

Using both verbal and nonverbal techniques to make its messages as persuasive as possible, advertising has become an integral component of modern-day social discourse designed to influence attitudes and lifestyle behaviours by covertly suggesting how we can best satisfy our innermost urges and aspirations through consumption.

Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind

By Al Ries

The first book to deal with the problems of communicating to a skeptical, media-blitzed public, Positioning describes a revolutionary approach to creating a “position” in a prospective customer’s mind-one that reflects a company’s own strengths and weaknesses as well as those of its competitors.

Brand New Name: A Proven, Step-by-Step Process to Create an Unforgettable Brand Name

By Jeremy Miller

You will discover how names persuade people and get stuck in their minds, and the origin stories of iconic brands. Brand New Name brings together a practical how-to guide with loads of examples and inspirational stories so you can create a name that you will be proud to own.

The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that Win

By Michael Lewis

The bestselling classic that launched 10,000 startups and new corporate ventures - The Four Steps to the Epiphany is one of the most influential and practical business books of all time. The Four Steps to the Epiphany launched the Lean Startup approach to new ventures.

Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It

By April Dunford

You know your product is awesome—but does anybody else? Forget everything you thought you knew about positioning. Successfully connecting your product with consumers isn’t a matter of following trends, comparing yourself to the competition or trying to attract the widest customer base.

The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you

By Rob Fitzpatrick

They say you shouldn’t ask your mom whether your business is a good idea, because she loves you and will lie to you. This is technically true, but it misses the point. You shouldn’t ask anyone if your business is a good idea.

This is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn To See

By Seth Godin

For the first time Seth Godin offers the core of his marketing wisdom in one compact, accessible, timeless package. This is Marketing shows you how to do work you’re proud of, whether you’re a tech startup founder, a small business owner, or part of a large corporation.

Deploy Empathy: A Practical Guide to Interviewing Customers

By Michele Hansen

Empathy is a skill that anyone can learn. Armed with the tactics you’ll learn in this book and the toolbox of scripts and phrases, you’ll be able to sell more of your existing product, build the right features that will delight your customers, and stop churn in its tracks.

The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest & Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

By Scott Belsky

How do you make your start-up a genuine success in the long term? While most books and press focus on the more sensational moments of creation and conclusion, The Messy Middle argues that the real key to success is how you navigate the ups-and-downs after initial investment is secured.