BrandKnew October 2016

Branding matters. Because branding matters.

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Dear Friends: We are almost at the tail end of what has been a whirlwind year. Next month by the time you get the BrandKnew edition on your smartphone or tablet or laptop, we would have known the fate of the 2 US Presidential candidates.

The whole world is watching and millions of dollars have been poured into advertising and digital marketing in the race to the White House. In this issue too we have superstars no less. When the likes of Steve Jobs, Richard Branson and Guy Kawasaki talk branding, the world sits up and listens. We also discuss the value of respect and the art of building a revered brand. Brand connoisseurs will relish the feature on 5 Killer examples of branding done right. We all know that the future of advertising is changing rapidly and its better to know that podcasting will be playing a huge part in it. How workplaces stimulate and motivate creativity and productivity is best exemplified on the feature we have carried on The Best Places to Work in Advertising and Marketing. The article on Airbnb will articulate the compelling need to know customers inside out to become a sought after brand. Those VR obsessed practitioners and followers can soak in a lot from the feature on how brands are digging into the Virtual Reality treat. There is loads more to absorb and savour. Go ahead, enjoy the read. Till the next, the very best.

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Suresh Dinakaran @sureshdinakaran

@Brandknewmag

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

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CONTENTS

Steve Jobs, Richard Branson & Guy Kawasaki talk branding Behind The Branding Of The Hillary Clinton Campaign 5 Killer Examples of Branding Done Right These Are the 10 Best Workplaces in Advertising and Marketing Two Ways To Prove That Marketing Works Brands are biting into the Virtual Reality feast Why the Conversational Power of Podcasting Is the Future of Advertising What Airbnb Understands About Customers’ “Jobs to Be Done” Brand Admiration and the Value of Respect: How to Build a Revered Brand Branding a New Offering: The Brand Relationship Spectrum Brand experience drives up loyalty What Keeps a CMO Up at Night How brands should measure ad engagement levels 12 minimalist packaging designs that do a lot with a little Book, Line & Sinker

Steve Jobs, Richard Branson & Guy Kawasaki talk branding

By Anastasia Haralabidou

“The chance to make a memory is the essence of brand marketing” are the words of Steve Jobs, one of the greatest brand strategists in corporate history. “Think Different” was the maxim pervading Job’s philosophy and the core message of one of the most iconic brand campaigns of all time. Stepping on this ground of open inspiration, one can set aside for a moment the technicalities of theoretically defining a concept as experiential and holistic as branding, and let the creative process of thinking discern. So, what is a ‘brand’?

A brand is a powerful manifesto. A passionate story of life and business, a declaration of visions and values, a strategic map and the starting point of unimaginable journeys.

A brand is about mission, aesthetics and the inter-play of business strategy with consumer phycology. A field of creativity, symbolism and bridge of connections. A blueprint of intentions, dreams and ideals. A brand is identity, a signature.

The art of branding, in its various forms and shapes, can be traced back to ancient market places and the time when humans first conceived the idea of creating and trading goods, and have started to gradually perceive the principles of ownership, making profits, product differentiation, and the dynamics of market competition.

The reward of permanent presence in consumer consciousness is immense and beyond the mere act of capitalising on human needs. What is gained is a precious place within the space of our everyday life, we are co-living with the brands of our life.

At the same time the relationship is becoming more and more two-way, as major brands are getting active in major philanthropic initiatives and global goals of giving back to society.

Humanising brands has been the glory of modern economic systems and radical business philosophy.

In terms of metrics, Forbes’ annual list of the world’s most valuable brands shows a clear dominance of tech giants, with Apple leading the way with a value of $154.1 billion, a voluptuous 87 per cent more than second-ranked Google.

Other tech brands such as Microsoft, Facebook and IBM top the rankings, while Coca Cola, Toyota, Disney, McDonald’s and GE complete the top ten of most powerful brands across the globe. In terms of market sectors, the second most common brands making the list fall into the category of financial services, followed by consumer packaged goods, automotives, and luxury and retail.

Logically, it becomes intriguing to catch a glimpse of the mechanics of powerful brands and comprehend the underlying principles of iconic campaigns. Purpose, focus and identity set the creative energies free and stand within the basic core of building dynamic brands. Mission can be seen as the ‘flagship’ of a brand.

Richard Branson, Virgin’s creative force, has been a crusader for the importance of purpose in driving meaningful business: “The brands that will thrive in the coming years are the ones that have a purpose beyond profit.”

Image credit: Getty images

In his vision of an evolving economic system of modern times, he emphasizes the role of entrepreneurs as catalysts in reinventing the ways of doing business so as to include the wellbeing of people and the planet. Empowering the young generation of change-makers, his advise is as follows.

During the last decades, brand experiences have evolved to a masterful orchestration of multiple channels and resources, combining a whole spectrum of tools and methods aiming to evolve companies to powerhouses of creativity. Few of them have attained iconic status and a solid reputation that navigates them successfully through the changes of time, technology waves and shifts in market demand.

““I particularly encourage start-ups to make a commitment to making a positive change in the world. Being a new business gives you the agility to really think about what’s important to you. So choose your cause, and put your purpose at the forefront from the start. If you make it part of your story, both your business and the world will reap the rewards.” Branson, wisely concludes. “Business can – and should be – a force

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for good. This mission makes us innovative in ways we could never have anticipated.”

“Think different”, Apple “American by choice. Rebel by birth”, Harley Davidson “The ultimate driving machine”, BMW “We bring good things to life”, GE “Success. It’s a mind game”, Tag Heuer “Good things come to those who wait”, Guinness

Image by Owen Billcliff

Peter Diamandis, one of the most radical thinkers and gamechangers presently, declares that: “Your mission is to find a product or service that can positively impact the lives of one billion people because that’s the game we are playing today.”

Tony Robbins, a business strategist and influential motivational guru of our times points out: “Success in business is all about falling in love with your clients - not your product or service and finding a way to add more value to them. Making them raving fans!”

“A brand is not so much about rational arguments, but the way that the company resonates with people emotionally.

Marketing is about values.” These words encapsulate the unique philosophy of Steve Jobs and reveal the secrets of successful branding campaigns.

Vision, mission, excellence, trustworthiness, consistency, creativity, reinvention, loyalty are a few of the virtues of brands that survive through the passing of time and keep on evolving along with our fast-paced lives and the constant swifts in market demand. The creative energies of image making are in continuous working in the back scene of carefully curating campaigns to vividly portray what a brand stands for and which ideals it aims to project to the world.

Brands speak the language of human psychology. They are alive and breathing, playful, and interactive... They know the words you wish to hear. They paint the world in colours we love. They pick the symbols that intimately connect us. They choose images that tease our imagination, evoke emotions and ignite desires. Brands navigate big dreams, reinvent the ways we perceive our lives, and expand the boundaries of doing business. They express a clear intention to add their ‘signature’ in every page of our lives.

One cannot resist to think, have brands, as part of the evolution process, started to have a ‘soul’ of their own and behave in ways to conquer a place in our heart?

Iconic brands are masters of the power of words. They express compelling messages that sooth and empower us, and know the art of delivering them in ways that imprint the workings of the human mind.

“Find your greatness”, Nike

Who can resist the pulling force of a powerfully condensed message? Once upon a time, the world was under the spells of Evangelists. They were the chosen ones to spread the message and influence the masses.

The concept was reinvented during the internet boom of the late 1990s, and found a worthy successor in the face of Guy Kawasaki, Apple’s former chief evangelist. “Evangelism is selling a dream” – this is the starting point of everything and the contextual framework in designing impactful brand strategies according to Kawasaki. In further clarification, he adds: “Love the cause. ‘Evangelist’ isn’t a job title. It’s a way of life. It means that evangelists must love what they evangelize.”

“The best reason to start an organisation is to make meaning; to create a product or service to make the world a better place.” Straightforward, practical and hugely enlightening, Guy is the kind of mentor and supporter that every game changing start-up would dream of being in charge of evangelizing its products and reputation across the market.

Deconstructing the art of branding, Kawasaki points out: “The three pillars of a personal brand are trustworthiness, likability and competence.” And, if you are wondering how all this can possibly be translated in the real business world, he has the answer: “You want the likability of Virgin, trustworthiness of Zappos, and a product of Apple.”

As for ambitious start-ups and the beginnings of their adventurous journey in the world of entrepreneurship, Guy Kawasaki, in a spirit of honest empowerment, concludes: “The real world of marketing is this: you don’t have a big marketing budget so you have to depend on people ‘creating’ your brand for you!”

Anastasia Haralabidou. A research analyst, with a PhD in FDI strategy and planning in transition economies.

Greatly interested in investment and growth strategies, business incubation and acceleration. And above all, a true enthusiast of the start-up world. Non-conformist, dreamer & citizen of the globe!

Behind The Branding Of The Hillary Clinton Campaign HOW DO YOU DESIGN FOR MORE THAN 100 MILLION AMERICANS? IT’S THE CHALLENGE OF A LIFETIME FOR ORIGINAL CHAMPIONS OF DESIGN’S JENNIFER KINON.

By Jon Feagain

Last December, Jennifer Kinon arrived at the offices of Hillary for America to a typical full-slated work day. Donald Trump had just declared that he would bar Muslims from entering the country, and the Clinton campaign, at this point relatively new to such explosive rhetoric, had to craft a response. A member of the social media team brought Kinon an idea for a social graphic he had been working on. “It was Love Trumps Hate,” Kinon tells me last week in one of the small conference rooms at the campaign’s Brooklyn headquarters.

“We sat down and played with the typography and the color, then tweeted it out.”

Girl Scouts of the USA. But Clinton is no ordinary client, and designing a presidential campaign is no ordinary job. The election’s battle lines are advancing and retreating on Twitter, Facebook, TV, T-shirts, buttons, and anywhere else you can imagine. Whereas President Obama’s message in 2008 could be neatly summed up in a single powerful “Hope” image, Clinton’s has to fight a war on all fronts. It has thusly fallen to Kinon to quietly craft the most sophisticated campaign design strategy ever. “I don’t think you follow formulas,” Kinon says. “I think authenticity comes with telling the story of your candidate at the time and place of your candidate.”

Within hours, the slogan had tipped over into viral territory, spreading from social media to online media then offline onto bumper stickers and T-shirts. Eight months later, it has taken on a life outside of the campaign, still making its way onto clothing and billboards. It’s even become a kind of adlib: ___ Trumps ___.

JOINING THE RANKS

It’s just part of the job for Kinon, who went on hiatus from New York-based firm Original Champions of Design last July to take on the role of the campaign’s design director. Kinon is tasked with creating and maintaining the campaign’s overall visual language, not unlike what OCD does for clients, including the WNBA, Friends of the High Line, and

When I visited the office earlier this month, the social graphics team was working on a response to the news that Trump hired Steve Bannon, the executive editor for the alt-right site Breitbart News, to work on his campaign. (Two days later, Trump’s chief strategist Paul Manafort unceremoniously quit.

There’s a graphic for that, too.) Others on the design team, which recently grew from six to 16, were working on the web design for the new podcast the campaign just launched, With Her or designing graphics for individual state campaigns.

Campaign headquarters take up two floors of an office

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DEPLOYING THE SYSTEM When she officially joined the campaign in July of 2015, Kinon’s plan was to do what she had done with countless other clients: create a comprehensive visual system. Such an approach would not surprise graphic designers, but it’s unusual in campaign design, which has a reputation for being inconsistent, cliched, and pretty much awful. Recall Mitt Romney’s disastrous American flag “R” in 2012, or any of the generic, bash-you-over-the-head symbolism of the logos from this year’s primaries. Then you have something like Trump’s campaign, which changed its Trump Pence logo after it was widely mocked. building in downtown Brooklyn, where the drab graycarpeted, cubicle-laden interiors have been overtaken by an almost manic array of post-it notes, campaign placards, strung-up lights, hand-made signs, and a blown-up wall decal of the Hillary logo. There is near-constant activity, but Kinon assures me that this is a relatively calm day in campaign world. When I called her for an interview a month ago, the design team was right in the middle of a triple jump: preparing for the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention, as well as the roll-out for Tim Kaine’s Vice Presidential campaign. They had also just launched a redesigned website and a digital organizing app and published a 280-page policy book.

Kinon had the benefit of working with Pentagram’s logo, which is contemporary, professional and adaptable (if only recently appreciated). “What I came in and did was take the raw elements—there was a typeface, I think, and a logo and a color palette that had been floating around—and formalize it into a strategy that had meaning for a candidate and a campaign, and the issues that were important to us,” she says.

All of this came at Kinon’s directive. As a gift on her desk from Bobby Martin, her partner at OCD, reminds her, Kinon has been at the campaign for a little over 400 days. It’s a long time away from OCD, which specializes in setting up and implementing cohesive visual systems that can be applied to all elements of a business: website, social advertising campaigns, merchandise, as well as various company divisions.

In the spring of 2015, Kinon got a call from a “well-known designer” (my guess was Pentagram partner Michael Bierut, who did the Hillary campaign’s logo, which Kinon didn’t deny) asking Kinon if she would be interested in the position. After she said yes, Kinon took a series of calls with the people in the campaign and went in to the headquarters for a large group interview. The job offer came over the phone while she was walking through Tompkins Square Park. “It was something I couldn’t say no to,” she says. “I was really energized by the idea of [designing for] the first female president.”

Simple enough. Except that when your client is running for President of the United States of America, her target audience is quite literally every eligible voter in the entire country. “Whenever a client used to say to me ‘my audience is everyone,’ I would say ‘that’s very nice, but now we need to focus on who your audience really is,’” she says. “Here it really is everyone. In order to do this right, they need to come to this information, process it and make conclusions about it.”

THE POWER OF MANY Having a full team dedicated to state design is unique to this campaign. In previous presidential campaigns, state organizers would typically find their own designers and operate as a separate entity. “There wasn’t a lot of communication between the states, graphically, to get the power of many,” says Kinon. “Coming out of brand strategy and knowing that you’re going to get more understanding of your message by unification across multiple people. We try to bring all of the states into one central unit you can meaningfully differentiate but still get that impact of coordination across multiple surfaces.”

So how do you develop a design strategy for a project that has very little by way of constraints and has no focused target audience?

Step one, says Kinon, is effective communication, both between the design team—which means daily morning meetings to discuss assignments—and across the other departments within the campaign. To make their overarching task manageable, Kinon and her designers treat their campaign colleagues like clients, speaking one-on-one with strategists, aides, speech writers, and others involved in policy about what message they are trying to get out there and how they can help them do it.

Take Hillary’s position on tax loopholes for the wealthy. Kinon and her designers might talk to the policy team about what they want to communicate. They would then do research, mock up some ideas, and put together a presentation for their feedback. Once the policy experts approves, the project can take many forms: graphics for a piece of writing on the website, or for the Twitter feed. It might eventually make its way onto merchandise in their shop.

Constant communication is great, but not everyone can have a hand in every task, especially when issues pop up in the news cycle that designers need to address right away. So the team is divided into four sub-teams: social, web, “persuasion” (emails and merchandise), and state-level organizing.

The social team typically works on a day-by-day basis, nimble enough to respond to an outrageous Trump tweet, for instance, at a moment’s notice. Other teams work more slowly and deliberately; the email team, for instance, will adapt a social graphic that has done well to merchandise for the store.

Meanwhile, the states team works on branding for various coalitions and individual states.

The teams have also gotten in the habit of making design toolkits for historic days, key issues or movements they know they will want to address—so that departments will have a formula to implement themselves. “We put them in people’s hands and saying here are these tools you never knew you wanted. Enjoy,” Kinon says.

This personalization strategy is tailored for Clinton, whom many—even in her own party—criticize for being too entrenched in the establishment. One story being told again and again in the media is of a divided perception of Clinton.

People close to her or within her campaign are constantly painting her as a warm, caring person who is a good friend in addition to a skilled politician and thoughtful leader.

Outside of the campaign, many express difficulty relating to her as a human being—probably because she’s been in the public eye as a politician for so long.

None of this is lost on Kinon, who uses words like personal and authenticate to describe the branding. Creating a cohesive design system that reaches out on multiple platforms and at multiple levels is smart branding, but it’s also used to humanize Clinton. Then there’s the fact that it is starkly different from their opponent’s design strategy, which is apparently non-existent. Instead Trump’s campaign relies on sweeping statements and caustic rhetoric to lure people in.

(And it works.)

“One of the things that spoke to me when [Clinton] was speaking during the convention was when she was speaking about how important details are,” says Kinon. “To me, craft is a mirror for our candidate and all her wonkishness. A hanging punctuation, an apostrophe here, a color choice there. That craft is going to bring in another person who is going to amplify the message in just the right way. So we are holding ourselves to the most professional standard to reflect her because we know we’re her voice.”

In other words, thoughtful messaging trumps fear.

Meg Miller is an assistant editor at Co.Design covering art, technology, and design.

[Photos: Celine Grouard]

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Killer Examples of Branding Done Right

By Jayson DeMers

Startups rely on marketing to survive. Without some means of spreading the word about your company, there’s no way to build up an initial customer base.

And at the center of every successful marketing or advertising campaign is a common element: branding. Comprising your company’s unique identity, your brand standards will come to define your business for your customers, partners and even your employees, but you have to differentiate yourself from

the competition, and you have to keep it consistent.

There are countless examples of companies with reasonable ideas that failed because they couldn’t establish an impactful, memorable brand, but you probably never heard of them because of that failure.

Instead, I want to turn your attention to five prominent examples of startups that nailed their branding, setting them up for powerful future success.

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1. Ello is the creators’ network.

Ello is a self-described minimalist social network, attempting to challenge the status-quo set by more popular platforms, like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

It’s a hard market to break into, with a lot of long-cemented competition and few opportunities for differentiation, but Ello makes up for that with its approach to branding, which goes hand-in-hand with its unique value proposition.

Ello promises its users that they will never see any advertisements and that their personal information will never be sold or acquired in any way. It’s alleged to be the perfect minimalist, ad-free social platform, and its minimalist, straightforward, sincere branding showcases that. With black and white coloration, simple layouts and no-BS copy, it gives users an atmosphere that perfectly represents the product.

2. Prices drop while you shop on Jet. Originally purported to be an Amazon killer, Jet may still hold that potential.

Launched last year, Jet is striving to offer a new kind of ecommerce experience, following many of the same trends, styles and functionality of Amazon, but with a unique angle.

Jet rewards customers the more they shop - prices drop as users purchase more products. Jet also offers more transparency about its products and services. This transparency is evident throughout Jet’s site, and it compels users to stick with the brand for longer, increasing customer retention and loyalty.

3. Slack wants to kill email.

There are a lot of communication apps out there. Skype, Gchat and Facebook Messenger are just a few free options that come to mind. So how can a new business communication app like Slack enter the scene?

Through powerful branding.

Slack spent time developing its brand as one that’s professional and approachable for businesses, but also playful and friendly enough to make people feel a more personal connection to it.

It’s a precarious balance to strike - go too playful and humorous, and you’ll come off as unprofessional, but opt to be too polished and professional, and you’ll sacrifice relatability. Slack’s brand toes this line perfectly.

4. Airbnb competes with mainstream hotel chains.

Save money on a hotel by sleeping in a stranger’s house.

That sounds weird, right?

Airbnb was able to take this somewhat off-putting idea and, through successful branding, put a positive, exciting and adventurous spin on it.

Now, the company caters to millions of travelers in 191 countries and counting due to the prominence and respect of its trustworthy, appealing brand.

Airbnb caters to practical travelers through its theme of adventure, culture and immersion - speaking to travelers interested in seeing new places -- while also grounding itself with images of reliability to foster trust in an otherwise relatively sketchy concept.

5. Get a ride whenever you need one with Lyft.

When Uber was still young, Lyft came along to challenge the now-dominant ride-sharing app with a highly competitive service of its own.

Its brand allowed it some means of propulsion onto the scene - giving it the chance to develop a strong, dedicated user base in a market that was already controlled by its main competitor.

The key for Lyft was differentiation. While Uber dominated people’s minds as the black car app, Lyft opted to make its brand color hot pink. When Uber tried to pitch elite drivers, Lyft opted for friendly community faces. Catering to more fun, communal elements, Lyft was able to establish itself with powerful marketing and advertising pushes.

Here’s the key takeaways.

On some level, a brand is completely up to you. This is your chance to characterize and personalize your business. But you’ll still need to follow some key best practices if you’re going to be successful.

• Differentiate yourself. Don’t mimic or copy a business that already exists. Focus on what makes you different.

• Be memorable. Don’t just be a general business.

Identify a handful of core characteristics that help you to stand out.

• Know your audience. Learn what your audience wants and/or needs, and be able to give it to them.

• Keep it consistent. Make your brand prominent in all your promotional materials and resources.

Accomplish these priorities for your startup’s brand, and you’ll have a much higher likelihood of surviving those alltoo-important first few years. For more examples of successful startups, and for a comprehensive deep dive into how to build your own brand through content, see The All-in-One Guide to Planning and Launching a Content Marketing Strategy.

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

These Are the 10 Best Workplaces in Advertising and Marketing ACCORDING TO EMPLOYEE SURVEYS CONDUCTED BY GREAT PLACE TO WORK.

By Fortune Editors

We asked the workplace culture experts at Great Place to Work, the longtime partner for Fortune’s list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For, to identify the best workplaces in the advertising and marketing industry in the U.S. To compile this year’s ranking, more than 4,000 employees were surveyed about their work experience. They answered questions about how frequently they encounter behaviors that create a great workplace, which include management’s honesty and ethics, camaraderie among employees, and fair and respectful treatment and clear expectations from management. Here are the 10 employers that ranked the highest — and that are Great Place to Work Certified. In their own words, here are a few examples of how these firms keep workers happy.

01 Dixon Schwabl US employees: 104 Locations: 1 U.S. headquarters: Victor, N.Y. Year founded: 1987

“I love how close everyone is here and how welcoming they all were when I first started. I felt like I fit right in from day one. Team building activities and certain things provided to employees make us feel appreciated and make work a little more fun. I don’t ever dread coming to work like I have at previous jobs. Everyone here is so supportive and helpful it feels like a second family,” says an employee at this Rochester, N.Y.-based firm.

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02 Newscred US employees: 111 Worldwide employees: 162 Locations: 2 U.S. headquarters: New York City Year founded: 2008 “People truly love one another here; we choose to spend extra time outside of work together and invite one another into our external lives. Personality and fit are HIGHLY considered in the hiring process. It is a very inclusive social place,” says an employee.

03 Fluent US employees: 96 Locations: 2 U.S. headquarters: New York City Year founded: 2010

“There are so many fun company social activities here. We have holiday celebrations, happy hours, as well as weekly in-office yoga classes and catered lunches and breakfasts,” says an employee.

04 Acceleration Partners US employees: 43 Locations: 2 U.S. headquarters: Needham, Mass.

Year founded: 2007

“Acceleration Partners feels like a family away from my family. The work from home atmosphere of our entire company is truly unique and I valued that very highly when I was looking for a new employer. My co-workers are the most caring, fun, considerate, passionate, hard-working, honest and trust-worthy group of people that I have ever worked with. Our whole company is truly a team,” says one employee.

05 4imprint US employees: 800 Locations: 2 U.S. headquarters: Oshkosh, Wisc.

Year founded: 1977 Read the Great Place to Work review here.

“This is by far the best place I’ve ever worked. Everybody is really friendly and seem genuinely happy to be here. I enjoy the work I do and I’m given enough autonomy to figure out the best way to get it done, which has enabled me to figure out new processes that have increased my productivity as well as helped me grow as a person in my career. I’ve never felt like I’ve had to choose between my career and my personal life since I’m given more time off than I usually even use. I just can’t say enough good things about this company and I feel extremely lucky to be here,” says an employee.

06 Horizon Media US employees: 1,025 Worldwide employees: 1,025 Locations: 3 U.S. headquarters: New York City Year founded: 1989

“The team I work in is of its own breed and very tightly knit. We geek out together and get work done. It’s a great environment to be in every day,” says an employee.

07 Communications Strategy Group US employees: 31 Locations: 4 U.S. headquarters: Denver Year founded: 2004

“CSG is truly an exceptional company to work for. All the employees are caring individuals who produce quality work and care deeply about one another, as well as their craft. CSG is one of those genuine, admirable companies that everyone hopes to work for in their lifetime, and few are lucky enough to find,” says an employee.

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08 Peppercomm US employees: 85 Locations: 2 U.S. headquarters: New York City Year founded: 1995

“Peppercomm is an amazing place to work. I worked here for four years before leaving for an amazingly unique opportunity (at a museum). I not only left on good terms, but was offered a position to return after 18 months of being gone. Where else can you do that? Really? And truly be welcomed back?” says an employee.

09 Ceros US employees: 45 Worldwide employees: 45 Locations: 1 U.S. headquarters: New York City Year founded: 2012

“The best thing about working here is the people. Everyone here is really fun, has a great sense of humor and are talented and passionate,” says an employee.

10 Amobee US employees: 335 Worldwide employees: 547 Locations: 12 U.S. headquarters: Foster City, Calif.

Year founded: 2005 “Amobee has created such a great culture around amazing people. I’ve never felt so comfortable and proud of the company I work with,” says an employee.

Two Ways To Prove That Marketing Works

By Thomas Barta

Many non-marketing leaders don’t fully understand why marketing is essential for the company. That’s why making the case for marketing to them may be more important than you think.

At times, even the most high-profile CMOs had to make the case for marketing. Take Jim Farley. Soon after Jim joined Ford as the new CMO in 2007, the financial crisis hit U.S. car manufacturers. Ford’s already slowing sales nosedived and, in 2008, the company was posting major losses. Jim knew that brand preference had a big influence on purchases, but Ford managers had cut marketing budgets to save costs.

Consequently, Jim faced a major challenge: to prove to them that marketing is vital to the company’s success.

With colleagues in finance and other departments, Jim created a model that showed how brand preference drives sales. The model wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough to demonstrate the links between marketing investments, brand preference, and sales.

Next, Jim toured the globe. He sat down with the Ford managers in each major market, shared his model, and managed to convince them about the positive effects of marketing. Over time, Ford leaders agreed to invest more in marketing. It was the beginning of a remarkable recovery stage for the company, eventually making Ford the preferred car brand choice for many buyers once again.

Marketers often assume that everybody in the top team of their business knows (or cares to know) how marketing works. But most people don’t—at least not in a meaningful way. That’s why it’s the marketer’s job to ensure that people understand what marketing does and how it’s driving the business. But how? Here are two proven ways to demonstrate marketing’s power:

Share Specific Marketing Success Examples.

Much of your marketing work can (and should) be measured, whether it’s a communications campaign, a change in pricing, or an effort to retain customers. Share with people inside your

company the following information: 1) examples of what the marketing team did; 2) the effects it had on customers (e.g., higher preference for that business’s brand); and 3) the effects it had on the business (e.g., more revenue, customers, and/or profit). You need all three to make your case. If you just talk about the customer side of marketing (1+2) without its business effects (3), people will agree that you are busy, but most may still question the impact of marketing.

Build A Simple Marketing Model.

One example of such a model is the marketing funnel. Using it allows you to say things such as “Only 20% of people prefer our brand. We need to increase brand preference, because 40% of all who prefer us end up buying us.” Build your marketing model together with people from your finance department in order to give it validity and credibility. Once you have an agreed-upon model, share it widely.

As Patrick Barwise and I demonstrate in our new book “The 12 Powers of a Marketing Leader,” many CMOs such as Farley have greatly benefited from using a simple model to explain to their organisations how marketing works. Simple is the key word here. A marketing model that everyone understands is worth 10 times more (for this purpose) than a complex one that nobody can comprehend.

“It’s our job to help company leaders understand what we do as marketers,” said Anna Bateson, the director of global consumer marketing for YouTube. Her words couldn’t be more true.

No matter if you are a CMO, a digital expert, or a brand manager, it’s your job to help the company understand what marketing does for the business—and why your work matters.

Thomas Barta speaks, writes, and consults to marketing leaders on raising and achieving their growth aspirations. A former McKinsey partner, he conducts leadership research—including the world’s largest study, with over 68,000 executive assessments—on what makes for an impactful CMO.

Brands are biting into the Virtual Reality feast ADOPT NEW TECH BEFORE EVERYONE ELSE

By Matt McCue

One glaring constant in your career is that the technology you’ll use for your craft will regularly change. When this happens you have a choice: Hold on to what you know or become an early adopter, exploring the next thing. It’s the early adopters who take the early lead towards mastering the newest tools will have a greater chance of winning the race for new client opportunities. While mobile innovators are the stars of today, futurists are already looking ahead at the possibilities of virtual reality.

Despite this new kind of parallel universe still being in its earliest incarnation, Unit9 interactive filmmaker Anrick Bregman has shot out the gate and has already produced virtual reality videos for the likes of Lexus, Stella Artois, and Water.org, along with devising his own video game, Storm.

The London-based Bregman has so far tagged along with professional cyclist Christian Vande Velde in the Malibu hills for the Lexus shoot, while he traveled to a remote Honduras village for the Water.org production sponsored by Stella Artois.

By being a leader in the developing field, Bregman has been flooded with commission requests and now sits in the enviable position of being able to pick and choose what he works on next, whether that’s a humanitarian video in India or commercial production in Spain. (or, like he is doing now, both) So how does one know when to leap into new tech? We recently caught up with Bregman who explained how he was became one of the first VR adopters in the creative community and how you can make your own art when you see the next generation of creative tools beginning to come into view.

Take the Initiative “I started by putting my own money down in early 2015

and looked at this as making an R & D investment,” says Bregman. “A friend of mine built a 360-degree view drone rig and we went to Ireland and flew the drone over a cold, icy landscape in February. The filming wasn’t perfect, but I was impatient to learn about the process and have something on my reel to show off, to say ‘I’m doing this now.’

“When you’re willing to put When you’re willing to your own time and money into put your own time and a project and see that through, people are impressed by your money into a project determination. A lot of agency and see that through, people had seen the inklings of people are impressed VR at the time, but they needed by your determination. to see someone be able to pull off a project first. My first virtual reality client was Team One, an agency in Los Angeles that deals with Lexus. The creative director there saw my Ireland project and wanted to make a project together.”

Takeaway: No matter how often big corporations say they want to be on the cutting edge of cool, they tend to be less willing to experiment with emerging platforms…until someone else has tried it first. So you’ll likely have to undertake the experiment for them, like Bregman. Once you show them the possibilities that come from new tech, they odds are better they’ll try it – and commission you.

Do your research (even if you have little to go on) “The biggest insecurity I experienced was that I never know if something was going to work,” says Bregman. How could he? Virtual reality was so new when he began his first project with Lexus that he essentially had nothing to go on.

For the Lexus shoot, Bregman and his team had to attach

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New technology doesn’t give you an excuse to say, “I don’t know what will happen” when working on a client project.

360-degree cameras to cyclist Vande Velde’s helmet so Vande Velde could film his perspective of biking around the Malibu hills at 40 mph. There was a lot at risk: Would the camera stay on at that speed? Could the helmet rig impair the champion cyclist and cause some kind of injury? And was the camera able to take clean shots atop a constantly-moving head?

Prior to flying to Malibu, Bregman held a camera test day in London. “We got 3D-printed versions of all of the rigs that we would use in the real shoot, and we had an amateur cyclist spend the day biking around London testing out the rigs and giving us feedback,” says Bregman. This way Bregman could address any problems with the rigs before he started the shoot with Vande Velde, rather that wasting the first day of production in Malibu messing around with them.

Bregman’s preparation paid off. All went well with the shoot in California.

Takeaway: Sure, it’s fun to explore with new technology, but that doesn’t give you an excuse to say, “I don’t know what will happen” when working on a client project. Before you tackle paid work, you have to thoroughly research what you plan to do. While you can’t remove all the risks given the unknown, you can certainly minimize by doing your homework.

Corporations are typically risk-averse, so make it easy on the by removing the unknown.

The tech will force you to change and evolve traditional narrative and design formats “We are seeing this split in VR,” says Bregman. “The commercial work is going more towards traditional film making, such as TV commercials. Our clients want us to do what they have traditionally done with film but just have us add the 360-dgree perspective to it. But in documentary work, it’s a very different landscape. If you’re shooting a documentary using film, with the way the 360-degree camera works, you’re putting the viewer middle of the space and allowing them to explore and discover it for themselves.”

“When you’re filming in a small poor village in the middle of a jungle eight hours from the nearest city you have to change your approach.”

He first began to notice this split after the Lexus shoot when he went to a remote village in Honduras to film a documentary for Water.org. “Everything we learned from Lexus, we tried to apply to Honduras and you can’t because it’s a different landscape,” says Bregman. “When you’re filming in a small poor village in the middle of a jungle eight hours from the nearest city you have to change your approach. You can’t approach it like a commercial shoot and put lights on peoples’ houses.”

Takeaway: New tech will impact how you create your work and the final result in ways that run counter to your habits. You

will potentially have to apply different techniques and ideas to each one of your projects early on to discover what fits best in the new medium. Don’t get frustrated. Think of what you’re doing as accumulating a broad set of services that you will be able to provide for any kind of client assignment down the road.

Keep your skills sharp Once Bregman started receiving corporate projects, he didn’t stop with the personal projects. In fact, over the last six months he’s been developing a video game concept called Storm, a self-funded idea where the player has to see if they can survive in a virtual reality snowstorm.

“The project has grown week after week and now includes a Experiment! But don’t small team of people who work use your clients as on it outside of their day jobs,” guinea pigs. he says. The ultimate goal is to sell it directly to consumers once it’s ready to be published.

In the meantime, Bregman’s work on Storm allows him to experiment with new ideas – and fail – in a safe environment (i.e. without having to worry about upsetting a client if something goes awry). “A personal project like this helps me with my commercial work and vice versa,” says Bregman.

“They feed each other.”

Takeaway: Don’t use your clients as guinea pigs. Create an ongoing project that only you or your office works on, and have that be your hypothesis testing ground. This way, you’ll be able to perfect your zany notions in-house, so you don’t bring them to your clients in a still-evolving form.

Use the new frontier to recast who you are and what you sell Brands are finally starting to set up budgets for virtual reality work, and, as Bregman looks at the funding trail, he is determining how he can best position himself in this budding market.

“I get stuck in my fascination for production work, for making, building, writing and animating when really I’d like to develop a great concept and get investment for that concept,” says Bregman, who is looking to move up in the film industry hierarchy from the person who makes films for brands to making his own films. “As people decide there is more value in investing in content, it’s about the right time for me to connect with them,” he says.

Takeaway: As an early adopter and market leader, you’ve got the chance to decide how you are viewed in this new world and what you sell. If you spot an opportunity to make more money or expand your business offerings, by all means jump on it. Utilize the technology to elevate your career standing.

Matt McCue is the senior writer for 99U. Previously, he contributed to Fast Company, Fortune and ESPN The Magazine. He lives in New York City, but he is willing to travel long distances for a good meal.

Why the Conversational Power of Podcasting Is the Future of Advertising MEDIUM’S SIMPLICITY DRIVES ENGAGEMENT

By Jason Hoch

It’s been fascinating for me to observe how marketers and content creators in the past few years have become obsessed with being a part of “conversations”—conversations between platforms and brands, between brands and consumers.

I wonder, what are we talking about when we talk about conversation within the advertising context?

Before there was user data and complicated ad-techacronyms, conversation was simple, it was people talking.

Mouths, words, ears and responses. Any definition beyond that is an artificial innovation. The concept is, and should be, as delightfully simple as it is powerful. Conversations have a way of drawing us in. They keep us at the table long past our bedtimes, they stick with us for years and they leave us satisfied, but even more eager for the next conversation.

Podcasting is the digital medium built on the power of conversation. Although undoubtedly with a genesis in the American radio tradition, there are none of the literal bells and whistles of shock-jock morning radio, nor the pressure to deliver impact in 3-minutes-or-less: Listeners are engaging with podcasts for 20, 30, 40 minutes—somtimes longer—at a time. The lack of strong scripting creates a spontaneous flow, which leads listeners to repeat these conversations to their peers, their friends and their families, creating their own versions of the discussion and making new connections.

Communal viewing of a season premiere can most definitely lead to similar conversations, but only in podcasting is the conversation about the conversation—meaning an intrinsic continuity of the content that lives and evolves in the mind of the listener.

And, perhaps most importantly, today’s listener is smarter than ever. It’s no coincidence that the rise of ad blocking is contemporary with the rise of podcasting. The savvy modern consumer demands quality and authenticity. Podcasting has thrived under the pressure to offer that, eschewing the safety of over-editing or misdirection through transience or smoke and mirrors. The best conversations depend on a mutual respect of the other party’s intelligence: Podcasts respect consumers intelligence and work hard to gain that respect from them, especially if they expect them to be listening for the long haul.

Although the technology that made display and video advertising so insightful and data-driven is now coming to podcasting, it is indeed podcasting’s relative lack of complication that has laid the foundation for this trusted conversation. But podcasting has never pretended to be something else. And as consumers get savvier and have more and more options available to them, authenticity and transparency will become more and more important.

The 2016 IAB Podcasting Upfront was held this week, and from the buzz it generated, it seems that brands and advertisers are now rightfully setting their sights on the medium. Of course, their eyes follow the eyes (or ears) of the millions of consumers who have already joined the podcast conversation, which is the vanguard of media and advertising’s journey to the promised land. Podcasts sit comfortably at the nexus of authenticity, storytelling and conversation. This combination has been promised for years in all other forms of media. The delivery of this promise has been questionable at best.

But for almost a decade now, quietly chugging along in the background, podcasting has consistently served as a medium for some of the most intriguing and forward-looking brand integrations and delivered on forming the personal connections that other media is still promising. Many formats purport to “speak” to the consumer, but I refer you to the definition of conversation. We have a foundational, powerful media in podcasting, and the future holds unimaginable possibilities.

People are listening, more and more frequently and for longer and longer. For brands and advertisers, now is the time to join the conversation, if you haven’t already.

Jason Hoch (@starexplorer) is chief content officer at HowStuffWorks.

What Airbnb Understands About Customers’ “Jobs to Be Done”

By Karen Dillon

On a recent business trip to London, I surprised the conference organizers by turning down the opportunity to stay at the posh hotel hosting the conference in favor of a rather modest Airbnb flat. The hotel was clearly much more luxurious. The flat would require me to take the tube or an Uber to the event. Who in their right mind would make such a choice?

It turns out, a lot of people. Airbnb is currently raising money at a $30 billion valuation, according to The New York Times. That makes Airbnb more valuable than most of the leading hotel chains in the world. People are quick to point to disruption as the reason for the rapid rise of “upstarts” such as Airbnb. But that doesn’t really explain its success.

Disruption theory explains and predicts the behavior of companies in danger of being disrupted, but it doesn’t tell a start-up company exactly what product or service to create to successfully disrupt a giant.

To get that right, companies have to understand what Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen calls the theory of Jobs to Be Done. Too many companies focus on making their products better and better without ever understanding why customers make the choices they do.

Customers don’t simply buy products or services. They “hire” them to do a job. That job is not just about function (having a nice bed to sleep in) but about creating the right set of experiences for customers. Those experiences have social and emotional components that may be even more powerful than the functional ones.

In my case, I wanted to stay in an Airbnb because I used to live in London and I didn’t want to feel like a tourist in my former hometown. I wanted to be part of the old neighborhood, visit the same pastry and sushi joints, meet friends for coffee, and pretend, for a few days, I still was a Londoner. That experience mattered profoundly to me – more than a swimming pool or chocolates on my pillow. Airbnb wasn’t really competing with the hotel for my business. It was competing with staying with friends. And the modest Airbnb flat was still better than my friends’ spare room.

Being cheaper and “good enough” doesn’t guarantee that people will choose your product or service over all others.

You have to know what job customers are hiring you to do before you can hope to create the perfect solution for them – one that they’ll choose over all other options.

Airbnb’s founders clearly understood this. Before launching, the company meticulously identified and then storyboarded 45 different emotional moments for Airbnb hosts (people willing to rent out their spare room or entire home) and guests. Together, those story boards almost make up a mini documentary of the jobs people are hiring Airbnb to do.

“When you storyboard something, the more realistic it is, the more decisions you have to make,” CEO Brian Chesky told Fast Company. “Are these hosts men or women? Are they young, are they old? Where do they live? The city or the

countryside? Why are they hosting? Are they nervous? It’s not that they [the guests] show up to the house. They show up to the house, how many bags do they have? How are they feeling? Are they tired? At that point you start designing for stuff for a very particular use case.”

The experience of staying in an Airbnb is central to its customer strategy, explains Airbnb’s Head of Global Hospitality and Strategy, Chip Conley. One of the critical storyboard moments, for example, is when customers first turn up at the home in which they’ll stay. How are they greeted? If they’re expecting a place that has been described as relaxing, is that evident? Maybe there should be soft music playing or a scented candle. Has the host made them feel at ease with their decision? Has the host made clear how they will solve any issues or problems that arise during the stay? And so on.

The experience must match the customers’ vision of what they hired Airbnb to do. The Airbnb storyboards — which have been constantly tweaked and improved since its founding — reflect the importance of the experience customers are seeking when they hire Airbnb.

The same is true for Uber, whose founders recognized the unsatisfactorily filled job of urban transportation. In recent years, few companies have captured the media’s attention like Uber. In my opinion, Uber has been successful because it’s perfectly nailed a Job to Be Done. Yes, Uber can often offer a nice car to take you from point A to point B, but that’s not where it’s built its competitive advantage. The experiences that come with hiring Uber solve customers’ problems — from allowing you to travel without any cash on hand to knowing exactly when your specific driver will turn up — are better than the existing alternatives. That’s the secret to its success.

So before you look for a disruptive strategy to create and launch a new product, make sure you understand what job prospective customers are looking to do — and who you are competing with. That is the foundation of successful innovation. If you nail that, the rest will fall in line.

Karen Dillon is the former editor of Harvard Business Review and a coauthor of the forthcoming Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice (HarperBusiness/HarperCollins, October 2016).

Brand Admiration and the Value of Respect: How to Build a Revered Brand

By Josh Zywien

A few years ago, my wife bought her first pair of TOMS shoes. At the time, it wasn’t a purchase driven by philanthropic admiration of the company’s famous “one-for-one” social mission. http://www.toms.com/beyond-one-for-one Instead, this initial purchase was influenced by comfort, style, and the opportunity to experience a new brand.

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Today, my wife remains a happy TOMS customer (the halfdozen pairs of TOMS shoes in her closet serve as proof). But her relationship with the brand has changed.

profitable companies. Apple tops both lists, and Berkshire Hathaway, Johnson and Johnson, and Wells Fargo also rank in the top 10 of both.

Yes, her purchasing decisions still involve style and comfort.

But her ardent support of the TOMS brand has much more to do with its karmic promise. Very simply, she feels inspired by and connected to the company’s mission and vision—both of which make her more loyal and more likely to advocate on the brand’s behalf.

Three Ways to Cultivate Deeper Feelings of Brand Respect

The Business Benefits of Building a Respected Brand There’s one word that perfectly sums up my wife’s relationship with TOMS: respect.

That said, respect—and, more broadly, brand admiration— isn’t something that can be “hacked.” It’s not a tactical campaign, nor is it a short-term initiative. Rather, brands like TOMS, Berkshire Hathaway, Apple, and others have earned respect through purposeful efforts that are designed to...

And, according to marketing researchers C. Whan Park, Deborah J. MacInnis, and Andreas B. Eisingerich, this one word (or feeling) can have enormous psychological influence over my wife’s purchasing decisions. In their forthcoming book, Brand Admiration: Building a Business People Love, the authors argue that strong brand reverence has a direct impact on the following:

1. Convey empathy: Becoming a genuinely empathetic organization starts with talking to the people you hope to influence, so that you can understand where you can have the biggest impact on their lives. What do your customers, employees, and partners struggle with the most? What are they most afraid of? How can you help them?

•

Credibility and influence: When people respect your brand, they’re more likely to follow your lead and embrace your ideas. Apple (which was recently ranked the world’s most respected company by the Wall Street Journal) is a hallmark example: When the company releases new products or voices its opinion, people listen.

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Forgiveness for mistakes: Every company screws up, but revered brands overcome those mishaps much faster.

Just ask Disney, which has faced plenty of controversy but remains one of the world’s most respected and admired brands. Less-revered brands aren’t given as much leeway.

2. Clearly communicate the brand’s mission, vision, and values: Most brands invest the bulk of their time and resources into communicating the value of their product. Respected brands invest a disproportionately large amount of resources into telling their story through their mission, vision, and values. So, what do you stand for? What attributes set your brand apart from its competitors? What’s your vision for the future?

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Access to better partnerships and talent: When your brand is respected, other companies and top talent go out of their way to associate with you. Naturally, your brand can then be more selective, which only bolsters your brand’s respect in the market: Salesforce, Google, and IBM are excellent examples.

Ultimately, all of those things can have a very tangible impact on a company’s bottom line.

Let’s look at TOMS. In just over a decade, the brand has provided more than 60 million pairs of shoes http://www. toms.com/blakes-bio to children around the world, yet it is still generating nearly $400 million in revenue. Those numbers might pale in comparison with those of giants like Nike and Adidas, but they’re incredible figures for a smaller boutique brand. And it’s hard to argue that the respect for the brand hasn’t played a role in that growth.

For a broader perspective on the correlation between brand respect and bottom-line strength, let’s compare the Wall Street Journal’s ranking of the world’s most respected companies against Fortune’s ranking of the world’s most

If such a wide spectrum of brands can achieve high levels of brand respect, there’s no reason your brand can’t do the same.

3. Enrich people’s lives: The most revered brands in the world are the ones that enrich people’s lives in both intangible and tangible ways. TOMS enriches its customers lives through feelings of social good and a higher purpose. IBM enriches its employees’ lives by giving them the freedom and resources to tackle incredibly complex technical problems. How does your brand enrich the lives of its stakeholders?

All of this reminds me of a great Warren Buffet line: “Either hold a rock concert or a ballet. But don’t hold a rock concert and advertise it as a ballet.” Put another way: The most efficient path to cultivating brand respect is to say what you do and do what you say.

When people know exactly who you are and what you stand for, it makes it easier for them to feel connected to, inspired by, and validated through your brand. At scale, those feelings of enrichment are the entry point to cultivating much deeper feelings of mutual respect and, ultimately, brand admiration.

Josh Zywien is a content marketer who writes for MarketingProfs: Made to Order, Original Content Services, which helps clients generate leads, drive site traffic, and build their brands through useful, well designed content.

Branding a New Offering: The Brand Relationship Spectrum

By David Aaker

When managing a brand portfolio, a basic strategic decision should be made to determine how to brand new offerings and how these offerings will fit into or augment the existing brand portfolio. A key tool in making this decision is the . The brand relationship spectrum includes a master brand with descriptors (), a master brand with sub-brands (Calloway Big Bertha), a new brand endorsed by a master brand (Miracle

by LancĂ´me) and a new brand (Lexus).

The Master Brand Strategy The preferred go-to strategy, often termed the master brand or branded house strategy, is to use the master brand with a descriptor on the new offering. The descriptor brand will have a very modest or nonexistent driver role. A driver role reflects the extent to which the brand influences the purchase decision or defines the customer experience.

BMW has a master brand strategy with models denoted as BMW 3, BMW 7, BMW X1, BMW M, and so on. FedEx is another, with FedEx Express, FedEx Services, FedEx Freight, and more.

The branded house option maximally leverages an established master brand, requires a minimum investment in each new offering and potentially enhances the clarity and synergy of the portfolio. As a result, it is the default option.

Any other strategy requires creating a new brand and needs to be justified by compelling reasons.

The master brand strategy is optimal when two conditions are met. First, the master brand will enhance the offering because its equity, comprised of its awareness, perceived

quality, customer base and credibility in the context of the new offering, will be relevant, helpful, and consistent with the value proposition or personality of the new offering. Second, the offering will enhance the master brand by providing visibility, energy, and added credibility all while staying “onbrand.�

When one or both of these conditions are not met, alternatives to the master brand strategy need to be considered that will create some distance between the new offering and the master brand. The least amount of distance occurs through the use of a master brand with a sub-brand. A new brand endorsed by the master brand increases that distance, but by far the most distance results from a new brand not connected to the master brand.

Sub-brand The first option is the sub-brand strategy. Examples of this strategy include the Chevrolet Volt, the Samsung Galaxy handset or the Schwab OneSource Select List. The sub-brand adds to or modifies the associations of the master brand. It could have a different personality or value proposition than the master brand but does not have as much latitude as an endorsed brand. A sub-brand can stretch the master brand, allowing it to become relevant in new arenas.

An important element in managing the sub-brand is to understand its driver role. If it is significant, then it could merit some brand-building resources. But if it is minor and mainly plays a descriptive role, then its brand-building budget would be less. It is easy to assume the sub-brand is more important

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than you think. It turns out people really are buying HP and not LazerJet.

Endorsed brand The second option is the endorsed brand strategy, in which the offering is endorsed by an existing master brand. The role of the endorser brand is to provide credibility and reassurance that the endorsed brand will live up to its claims. An endorsed brand (Scotchguard) is not completely independent of the endorser (3M), but it has considerable freedom to develop product associations and a brand personality that is different from that of the endorser. The endorser brand usually has only a minor driver role, but when the endorser is strong and the new offering is unknown and risky, its driver role can become significant.

There are also times in which the endorser can benefit.

For example, a successful new product with energy or an offering that becomes a market leader brand can enhance an endorser. Thus, when Nestle bought Kit-Kat, a leading chocolate brand in the UK, a strong Nestle endorsement was added in order to enhance Nestle’s image in the UK.

A New Brand The most independent option is to have a new brand, unconstrained by any past master brand associations that might be unhelpful or even harmful. When a collection of new brands is assembled, it is called a House of Brands strategy.

P&G, a house of brands firm, operates more than 80 major brands with little link to P&G or to each other. The house of

brands strategy allows firms to position brands clearly on functional benefits and to dominate niche segments. In the shampoo category, for example, P&G has several brands such as Head & Shoulders (dandruff fighter), Pantene (makes hair shine), Pert Plus (the first shampoo plus conditioner product), Herbal Essences (nature inspired), and Wella Allure (professional quality), each of which has an unique value proposition.

A major limitation of the house of brands strategy is the loss of economies of scale that comes with leveraging a brand across multiple businesses. Those brands that cannot support investment themselves risk stagnation and decline. Another limitation is the loss of brand leverage, because focused brands tend to have a narrow range and their ability to extend is limited.

Final Thoughts When thinking about selecting the right position on the brand relationship spectrum, there is no one-size-fits all solution.

However, if a compelling business strategy is at stake some brand risks might be necessary. We should not be under the illusion that the goal is to create and protect brands. Rather, the goal should be to create and leverage a brand portfolio that enables the business strategy to succeed.

David Aaker, Vice-Chairman of Prophet, a global consultancy, Professor Emeritus, UC Berkeley, Author of Aaker on Branding & Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant.

Brand experience drives up loyalty

By Warc staff

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rufus Leonard noted that Singapore Airlines achieved a

Data sourced from Marketing Week; additional content by Warc staff

What Keeps a CMO Up at Night

By Peter Ruchatz

As CMO of a fastpaced technology company with a half billion in revenue that is growing very quickly, I have plenty of things keeping me up at night.

Three crucial pieces of the marketing puzzle seem to always be on my mind as I look for ways to stay ahead of the curve

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1. How do I keep making and redefining the market?

I do not believe in trying to defend and expand a market position or sharing an established market.

I strongly believe that to keep growth rates high and achieve a position that is unreachable by competitors, a company needs to create a new market, one in which it is perceived as the pioneer and leader.

By establishing that new market, companies define new perspectives from which customers suddenly start to look at their problems. The challenge is to not rest on early success but to keep making the market and redefining it—like an ongoing metamorphosis—without leaving customers and channel partners behind.

known to them. Engage them and show respect.

Of course, this type of community engagement requires a minimum of customer satisfaction and a good reputation, earned with a top product and customer experience.

3. How do I make sure I have the best marketing technology platform?

There is an abundance of available marketing and data technology solutions, and the vendor landscape is rapidly evolving.

At the same time, having the right platform can be the difference in winning the race to get customers’ eyeballs—by presenting the right content at the right moment via the right marketing channel in an efficient way.

Recently, my company Veeam was riding the wave of success with the new market we had created when the company was first founded. At that time, it was all about expansion and facilitating the growth by putting resources in place. Now, that is becoming more difficult because the speed of innovation is increasing, and new solutions and approaches are creating their own new markets quicker than ever. Staying ahead of and above this tsunami has become a challenge.

As marketers, our challenge is extracting the requirements for the best selection of tools from our marketing strategies, knowledge, people, and actionable road map (especially as the tools may offer something we traditionally have not even considered possible). How do we weave them into a marketing technology platform that ensures integration and also allows for constant innovation and iteration as things are so rapidly evolving?

So, we focus on reinventing ourselves and continuously changing and innovating for our customers at full steam, seeking early adopters in our customer base, promoting them, driving massive awareness for our new approaches, and educating customers to take a different look at their problems and possible new solutions.

We have seen tools using Big Data specific to our market that show incredible opportunities to further optimize and automate our marketing. Moreover, we continue to assess new technologies as they emerge. Two years ago, we thought we could live with our technology platform for at least three to four more years, but now it looks like we need to constantly monitor and evaluate new approaches.

2. How do I deal with a hyper-connected and hyper-informed market?

Customers and resellers are informed and connected like never before. With that comes a tectonic shift... Customers can access so much user-generated content (such as assessments and ratings to opinions, recommendations, and warnings) in a much easier way, and they lean toward those types of information sources much more than vendor information because they naturally trust their peers more.

The key challenges for marketers are...

• Having an ear to the ground because the information flow is taking place between customers • Adapting our marketing strategy and execution to this new situation.

My recommendation is to engage the community. Make those who successfully use and are invested in your products become advocates for you. Work with and engage influencers in your market. You cannot control them, but you can be

At my company, we operate with thoughtful innovation, meaning we innovate and iterate. We constantly monitor what is coming on the market, and we keep our platform flexible and open. We regularly make proof-of-concepts with new interesting tools, and those that look promising are tested in a limited scope to then be expanded with adjustments based on first learnings.

In other words: Do not try the Big Bang approach; you will get stuck.

These are just a few of things racing through my mind that often keep me up at night. But it is out of these sleepless nights that come the best ideas. If you want to remain a leader and stay ahead of the game, don’t get caught sleeping!

Peter Ruchatz is CMO of Veeam, a provider of solutions that deliver availability for the always-on enterprise.

How brands should measure ad engagement levels

By Freddy Friedman

App marketing used to be all about scale: getting as many users into an application as possible at the lowest cost. But technology has improved and competition has exploded.

With more than 3 million apps across app stores, attitudes are evolving to favor quality over quantity.

Consumers are using fewer apps regularly. A Millward Brown Digital survey found that while the average user has more than 40 apps installed on his or her device, only 28 percent use more than four to six apps per day.

Consumers are also demanding better app experiences.

They, likewise, expect advertising to be a better experience as well.

Beyond the target

means improved targeting.

Advertisers are seeking high lifetime value (LTV) users.

Developers want ads relevant to their app’s users, so that they convert.

While targeting is the best it has ever been, developers and advertisers should look beyond targeting to other powerful, if underused, options to gain an advantage.

Many advertisers and developers make extensive use of targeting criteria such as age, gender and location. But while this method might narrow the audience, it does not necessarily improve the quality of those targeted. This is where understanding engagement levels is invaluable.

So how to measure engagement levels? Here are three ways:

The Nielsen Connected Device Report for the first quarter found that 65 percent of consumers surveyed currently find mobile ads annoying and intrusive, particularly if the ads are irrelevant.

Clicks and installs

Advertisers and app developers both have an interest in getting relevant ads in front of the right users — and that

The more users click advertisers’ ads and install the advertised app or product, the more engaged they are perceived to be

Engagement levels for advertising campaigns are primarily measured by clicks and installs.

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with that specific campaign or product vertical.

Those users are actively responding to the ads in one of the following ways: • By clicking on a banner, a user signals that he or she is interested in either the advertised product, or similar products from that category • Installing an app after seeing an ad implies that the user is interested in what the app offers. Further, it implies that the user may also be interested in complementary products that might increase the user’s engagement with the installed app

In-app activity We can also measure user engagement by looking at how users are behaving within an app. This does not require further ad clicks or installs.

The fact that the device is requesting ads signifies their engagement by triggering ad impressions as they navigate through the app.

Additionally, post-install information reveals additional user engagement metrics related to in-app purchases or other actions. Examples include leveling up in a game, adding products to a shopping cart, or user journey analysis.

This activity data combines to create a nuanced persona for each device, resulting in a detailed source of targeting information for both advertisers and developers. This helps identify and connect with high-value customers, boosting app monetization and revenue generation.

Targeting by user engagement levels Collecting the right data over time is key to translating it into actionable picture of engagement levels.

Demographic attributes such as gender, age group and location change infrequently, if at all. This information is, for our purposes, static. But the user’s engagement level is dynamic: it is built over time and will vary.

A sophisticated data management platform (DMP) is key to both understanding this data, and revalidating it over time.

Advertisers can use engagement level as an additional targeting criterion to assess the potential quality of a newly acquired user.

For example, a fashion app might target young women. But with suitable engagement data, it could also target those who specifically demonstrate an interest in fashion by frequently clicking on fashion ads or engaging with other fashionrelated apps.

In addition to targeting the right type of users, developers can target their highest-paying ads to their most engaged users, maximizing their app’s monetization potential.

By intelligently augmenting existing targeting methods, engagement levels can also help determine other indicators, such as churn probability.

Metrics such as churn probability allow developers to understand an app’s user lifecycle and better plan acquisition strategies to ensure new users are being added at the correct time.

DATA MANAGEMENT platforms, along with dynamic data, such as engagement levels, have become an indispensable tool in enabling the current transition to precisely targeted advertising.

Developers and advertisers are realizing that quantity is out and quality is in.

Most successful apps already make extensive use of data management platforms to target users as specifically as possible. The ones that do not will find themselves playing catch-up or flying blind.

Freddy Friedman is Berlin, Germany-based chief product officer of glispa.

12 minimalist packaging designs that do a lot with a little By dezeen.com

From artisanal boutique to superstores, the trend for minimalist packaging design continues to pick up pace. We’ve rounded up 12 examples, including name-brand ketchup without the name, a CD packaged in bubble wrap, and a stylish kit for surviving the apocalypse.

Tate Modern pale ale by Peter Saville and Tate Design Studio British design legend Peter Saville adapted his graphic identity for the Tate Modern into a new Switch House beer can. The can has no words, and instead relies on Saville’s distinctive imagery to communicate what the product is.

Mandarin Natural Chocolate bars

by Yuta Takahashi Yuta Takahashi’s packaging design for Mandarin Natural Chocolate takes minimalism to the extreme. It features an almost entirely white wrapper, with lettering in a simple black serif font and a line of 10 dots to subtly indicate the chocolate’s intensity.

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Evolvia By Evolve organic extra virgin olive oil bottle by Alex Theodorou

By Evolve’s Alex Theodorou designed the company’s organic extra virgin olive oil bottle to be elegantly minimal for one key reason – so it would last. His hope was that consumers would reuse the glass bottle as a pourer even after the initial supply of oil was gone.

Leo Hillinger wine bottle by Zaha Hadid Zaha Hadid’s bottle for Austrian winemaker Leo Hillinger has a concave indentation that matches the curve on the back of the bottle, so a row of them can interlock. With no traditional label, the bottle’s minimal branding is limited to fine lettering on the neck of the bottle.

Strike Matchboxes by Shane Schneck and Clara von Zweigbergk for Hay American product designer Shane Schneck and Swedish graphic designer Clara von Zweigbergk disposed of the usual branding on matchboxes to create their packaging for Hay. Instead, the Strike Matchboxes give prime position to the striking surface, which is normally squeezed onto one side of the box.

No Noise de-branded design for Selfridges Famous brands including Heinz, Marmite and Levi’s produced limited editions of their products with no brand names on the packaging for London department store Selfridges. The range of pared-down packaging was created for a concession called The Quiet Shop.

Just in Case by Menosunocerouno Mexican branding company Menosunocerouno faces the apocalypse in minimalist style with this survival kit. Although it is packed full of items – including chocolate and hard liqueur – the design of the kit is simple and consistent, with everything wrapped in yellow and black.

Minimalist Effect in the Maximalist Market

by Antrepo Back in 2010, before minimal design was as widespread, consultancy Antrepo inspired brands with its conceptual packaging for well-known supermarket products. It stripped back the products’ existing graphics in stages, showing they could still be identified with simplified branding.

Mast Brothers chocolate bars

by Calico Wallpaper A simple marble effect gives these otherwise minimal chocolate bars a feeling of restrained luxury. Calico Wallpaper used the salts featured in Mast Brothers’ confectionary as materials to create the marbled packaging.

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Spectrum CD packaging by Spread Tokyo design studio Spread used industrial materials to create this minimal CD packaging design for Japanese band Soutaiseiriron and American producer Jeff Mills’ track Spectrum.

The light weight and lack of a CD jacket were intended “to convey deep consideration for the musicians’ work and the presence of the object itself.”

SOTO bottle by Joe Doucet For sake brand SÔTÔ, Joe Doucet blended the visual language of luxury spirits with elements that would evoke SOTO’s artisanal Japanese origins. This resulted in a minimal, white label.

However, the New York designer used dimpled glass on the bottle and black denim on the topper to add texture.

TCM+ skincare by Nendo One advantage of minimal branding is that it can easily be gender neutral, an aesthetic for which there is growing consumer demand. Japanese studio Nendo used grey and white for this line of TCM+ skincare products, which reference the practices of Chinese medicine.

Book,

&

Line

Emotional Branding: The New Paradigm for Connecting Brands to People

By Marc Gobe

Sinker The Global Brand: How to Create and Develop Lasting Brand Value in the World Market

Emotional Branding is the best selling revolutionary business book that has created a movement in branding circles by shifting the focus from products to people. The “10 Commandments of Emotional Branding” have become a new benchmark for marketing and creative professionals, emotional branding has become a coined term by many top industry experts to express the new dynamic that exists now between brands and people.

By Nigel Hollis Rapid advances in modern technology present companies with quickly expanding marketing opportunities, but they also create an oversaturated business landscape that both helps and hurts brands. The Global Brand is a thorough investigation of brand strength in the accelerated modern business world.

Perception: Take Charge of How Others View Your Brand, Become Irresistible, and Make a Bigger Impact Kindle Edition

Bananas About Marketing: How to Attract a Whole Bunch of Happy Clients Kindle Edition

By Christo Hall, Franziska Iseli

Bananas About Marketing is a much-needed breath of fresh air in the marketing and small business world. Growing a business can be challenging at the best of times, but Franziska and Christo Iseli-Hall present a new approach to marketing that is fresh, fun and cheeky!

With this book, authors Franziska Iseli and Christo Hall show you how to harness the power of perception to achieve success - whether you are leading a small business, trying to climb the career ladder, or simply working to achieve greater success in relationships and improve your personal life.

By Franziska Iseli, Christo Hall

Digital Influencer: A Guide to Achieving Influencer Status Online Kindle Edition

The Business Idea Factory: A World-Class System for Creating Successful Business Ideas Kindle Edition

By John Lincoln

By Andrii Sedniev

Featured on Forbes as one of the best marketing books to read this year! This book offers exact, step-by-step strategies to reaching influence status and dominating your industry. It has received raving 5 star reviews across the web.

Get it now!

The Business Idea Factory is an effective and easyto-use system for creating successful business ideas. It is based on 10 years of research into idea-generation techniques used by the world’s best scientists, artists, CEOs, entrepreneurs and innovators. The book is entertaining to read, has plenty of stories and offers bits of wisdom necessary to increase the quantity and quality of ideas that you create multiple times.

YouTube: How to Create a Successful YouTube Channel Kindle Edition

Social Media Marketing Workbook: 2016 Edition - How to Use Social Media for Business

By Derek Mcbeth

Kindle Edition

YouTube is one of the most popular sites on the Internet, but not all people are aware of the fact that it is also a great tool for making money and promoting your product. At the moment, over 1 billion people use it. YouTube provides access to your business to a greater number of remote customers. And this can give you an advantage over other businesses that do not include it in their marketing campaigns.

By Jason McDonald This isn’t a fancy book. This isn’t a pie-in-the-sky book. This is a practical hands-on book, with links not only to free tools but to step-by-step worksheets. By the end of the book, you’ll have a social media marketing plan ready for your business AND specific plans for each medium that makes sense for you (e.g., Facebook, Yelp, Twitter, etc.).

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Experiential Marketing: How to Get Customers to Sense, Feel, Think, Act, Relate

By Bernd H. Schmitt Moving beyond traditional “features-andbenefits” marketing, Schmitt presents a revolutionary approach to marketing for the branding and information age. Schmitt shows how managers can create holistic experiences for their customers through brands that provide sensory, affective, and creative associations as well as lifestyle marketing and social identity campaigns.

Captivology: The Science of Capturing People’s Attention

By Ben Parr In Captivology, award-winning journalist, author, entrepreneur and investor Ben Parr (Forbes 30 Under 30) presents a new understanding of attention -- how it works, why it matters, and how we leverage psychological triggers to draw and retain attention for our passions, projects, and ideas.

Unleashing the Ideavirus: Stop Marketing AT People! Turn Your Ideas into Epidemics by Helping Your Customers Do the Marketing thing for You.

By Seth Godin Counter to traditional marketing wisdom, which tries to count, measure, and manipulate the spread of information, Seth Godin argues that the information can spread most effectively from customer to customer, rather than from business to customer.

All You Can Pay: How Companies Use Our Data to Empty Our Wallets

By Anna Bernasek, D.T. Mongan In All You Can Pay, Anna Bernasek and D. T. Mongan show how companies use what they know about you to determine how much you are willing to pay for everything you buy. From college tuition to plane tickets to groceries to medicine, companies already set varying prices based on intimate knowledge of individual wants and purchasing power.

Words that Sell: More than 6000 Entries to Help You Promote Your Products, Services, and Ideas

Does It Work?: 10 Principles for Delivering True Business Value in Digital Marketing

By Richard Bayan Looking for a better way to say “authentic?” Words That Sell gives you 57 alternatives. How about “appealing?” Take your pick from 76 synonyms.

Fully updated and expanded, this edition of the copywriting classic is packed with inspiration-ondemand for busy professionals who need to win customers--by mail, online, or in person.

Written by POSSIBLE’s global CEO Shane Atchison and President of the Americas Jason Burby, this revolutionary guide shows how to use the latest digital platforms to create a high-value marketing plan that really works.

You’ll learn how to: • Set Goal • Inspire Brilliant Creative • Measure What Matters • Make a Difference

Gamify: How Gamification Motivates People to Do Extraordinary Things

By Biran Burke Gamify shows gamification in action: as a powerful approach to engaging and motivating people to achieving their goals, while at the same time achieving organizational objectives.

It can be used to motivate people to change behaviors, develop skills, and drive innovation.

The sweet spot for gamification objectives is the space where the business objectives and player objectives are aligned.

By Shane Atchison, Jason Burby

CA$HVERTISING: How to Use More than 100 Secrets of AdAgency Psychology to Make Big Money Selling Anything to Anyone

By Drew Eric Whitman Prepare yourself for a unique learning experience as author takes you on a wild, roller-coaster ride through the streets of New York’s famed Madison Avenue and teaches you the specific psychological techniques that today’s top copywriters and designers use to influence the masses...