BrandKnew September 2021

Branding matters. Because branding matters.

Published by 09.21#106

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Dear Friends: The heat may not let you believe so, but yes, September and fall is upon us. And we hurtle towards the end of what continues to be a turbulent year. That being said, optimism remains our biggest ally.

And hope offers us all the confidence that we need at this time.

Brand Purpose is the flavour of the season and we ask a few questions in the article on the topic. The digital marketplace is fast moving and ever so dynamic. We talk about developing a Brand Identity in such an ecosystem. CMOs have been under relentless pressure and the pandemic has not helped. Here, in this issue, we offer some tips on how they can get a good night’s sleep. Over the past couple of years the jury has been out on whether brands need to go ‘ in house ‘ or hire an external marketer. We carry forward that debate and for good reason in this edition. Psychology and marketing are intrinsically intertwined. That being the case, we make a study on the power of nudges to change people’s minds.

Metaverse is gaining steam and importance and can no longer be dismissed as just a new kid on the block. We take a deep dive into what brands need to know about metaverse. We open up a debate between Brand Fatigue and Brand Consistency and conclude that it takes two to tango. We also bring in the aspect of advertising fatigue and solutions to be mindful of for brands when they run campaigns.

Data is omnipresent and is the new oil and beyond, needless to mention. We pick up a conversation on how marketers can build consumer trust using product data.

There is ample more to chew on and soak in and I leave you to do just that. Till the next, my very best!

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Suresh Dinakaran @ISDGlobalDubai

@Brandknewmag

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Managing Editor: Suresh Dinakaran Creative Head/Director Operations: Pravin Ahir Magazine Concept & Design/ New Media Specialist: Mufaddal Joher Chief Strategy Director: Rishi Mohan Business Performance Director: Sunil Vasudevan Brand Engagement and Outreach Specialist: Anuva Madan Chief Country Man, India: Rohit Unni Brand Trends and Research Architect: Meeta Pendse Revenue Growth Architect: Ritu Dey Country Head, Australia: Norbert D’Souza Country Head, UK: Sagar Patil Performance Marketing Architect: Suresh Babu Technology & Web Enabler: Vyanky Charakpalli Social Media Outreach: Pooja Chhabda SEO Advocate: Santhosh Rakonda Content & PR: Nitin Kumar

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CONTENTS Why Building A ‘Community’ Is A B2b Marketer’s Best Asset ‘No One’s Going In Blind’: Brands Are Bringing Gaming And Esports In-House Do You Really Need A Brand Purpose?

Why Marketers Should Build Consumer Trust Through Product Data Why Social Sharing Is The World’s Most Awesome Content Marketing Metric What Brands Should Know About The Metaverse At Best, We’re On Earth For Around 4,000 Weeks – So Why Do We Lose So Much Time To Online Distraction?

Is Deflection a Good Business Tactic?

Brand Fatigue And Brand Consistency Brainstorm Sessions Are Great. But What Comes Next Is What Really Matters What Belongs In Your Basic Bundle?

Rebranding: Five Steps To Building A Story Of Evolution And Growth Hire A Marketing Agency Or Hire In-House Marketers: Which Is Right For You? Consumer Advertising Fatigue And Solutions For Brands To Run Successful Ad Campaigns How To Develop Brand Identity In A Fast-Moving Digital Marketplace ‘Change Without Story Is A Mandate, Change With Story Is Purpose’: Why Marketing And Comms Execs Are Being Tapped For Chief-Of-Remote Roles Marketing Imperatives For A Cookieless World Define The Need Before You Bleed: Marketing Rigor Can Reduce Start-Up Failure Tips For A Good Night’s Sleep For B2b Cmos A meeting of minds. A mating of malts.

Book, Line & Sinker

Why building a ‘community’ is a B2B marketer’s best asset

By Azadeh Williams

Azadeh Williams explores how building a community in B2B marketing can unlock endless potential for your brand.

How often as marketers do we hear the same conversation in boardrooms at quarter end? Statements like: ‘We need to build a community around our brand.’ But then comes a groupthink committee producing ad hoc ideas, fragmented content sprints, rushed campaigns and agency retainers blown out of budget, and then a year later… still no community.

So, what’s missing in the mix? It’s the ability to value and perceive community building as an asset that requires significant strategy, investment and time.

Let’s take a look at why community building is critical in B2B marketing, and how a robust community building strategy can supercharge business growth and customer loyalty.

What is a community and why is it important in B2B marketing?

They say ‘your vibe attracts your tribe’. A community, or audience, in B2B, is a space where your customers come together to learn, share and interact with your brand. The more value you provide to your community in terms of educational content, experiences and personal interaction, the more likely your community will grow organically.

Effective community building unlocks powerful benefits to your B2B brand including: Positions you as a trusted authority: When you provide valuable content and experiences to your community, it demonstrates empathy – that you truly understand and care about your customers and prospects’ problems. As a result, your brand is perceived as the trusted go to solution.

Provides an experience beyond the product: An engaged community can be one of a B2B company’s greatest assets.

It provides customers with an experience beyond the product and a chance to connect with customers and prospects at a more human, emotional and problem solving level.

Offers opportunities to innovate: A community can be a powerful environment for a B2B brand to run surveys, ask for customer feedback and suggestions and uncover deeper insights about your customers. You can also learn how to best help them. This opens a powerful cycle of enhancement, innovation and closer product and service alignment with the needs of your customers.

Builds customer loyalty: Happy customers are a B2B brand’s

biggest asset. At the highest level of commitment, a great B2B community helps increase customer loyalty and satisfaction.

These happy customers in turn become dedicated followers and passionate brand ambassadors, who will help recruit new organic followers and prospects to your community.

Cut ad spend: One of the long-term benefits of building your own organic community is it cuts advertising costs, which further helps your brand to look more authentically authoritative. This is because you’re perceived to be the brand people are naturally flocking to, as opposed to the brand that’s annoying customers with product ads.

Do you have the skills you need for B2B community building?

There are a number of ways you online. Some of the effective ways have achieved success stemmed marketing strategy with skills you education, journalism and design.

can build a community we’ve found our clients from integrating core traditionally see across

For example, providing quality, educational and relevant content. In order to attract your community, first, think like an educator and offer content that is valuable, practical and helpful, so your audience walks away having learnt something.

Secondly, think like a journalist and determine what content your audience wants to consume and in what media format to communicate it. This will help you develop the distinct style and communication method that just hits the mark.

Thirdly, think like a creative designer and create exceptional, premium content in multiple design formats and mediums that are on brand.

It’s this integrated approach that can help attract your audience faster. After all, different people consume information in different formats. In fact, LookBookHQ reports almost 60 percent of marketers reuse content two to five times. Furthermore, 51 percent of companies say updating or repurposing existing content has proven the most effective tactic implemented.

Applied in real life, an integrated approach to podcast production can be an excellent way to build a community.

This is because you can scale your efforts considerably by repurposing that content into multiple media formats,

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including audiograms for social media, and feature articles for web, newsletter and third party distribution.

As an example, we produced a premium podcast for a global martech client supported by an inbound and channel distribution plan, resulting in a fresh media channel to attract the B2B organisation’s new post-IPO community.

Digging deep and being inquisitive A great B2B community offers a forum to ask critical industry questions, deep diving on relevant issues and challenges your customers and prospects have.

For example, from an educational standpoint, a series of virtual panels or ‘lunch and learns’ featuring industry leaders can be a great way to attract an audience, giving them a platform to learn, interact and network. A journalistic edge can be added with professional, media trained facilitator, who can help make the experience far more interactive, allowing your audience the chance to deep dive and ask more probing questions.

Finally from a design standpoint, the content from these events can then be repurposed as feature article write ups and video content for channel distribution across EDMs, newsletters, social media and partner channels.

As an example, we produce a series of webinars and supporting inbound and community campaigns for a leading global health client, attracting the interest of thousands of health professionals across the APAC region in less than 12 months.

Supercharge community building with video Look at any great community and you’ll notice they know how to use video content to educate, engage and attract audiences at scale. Investing in great community-led video content can be a quickfire way to impress your audience and give them a visually accessible way to learn and interact with the solutions you offer.

In fact, Hubspot says 81 percent of businesses use video as a marketing tool, up from 63 percent over the previous year. In 2020, 92 percent of marketers said that video is an important part of their marketing strategy. Forbes reports 65 percent of executives have gone to the marketer’s site and 39 percent have called them on the phone after watching a marketing video. In B2B, 96 percent of businesses use video in their marketing campaigns.

Even a series of vox pops can be a fun and engaging way to attract a fresh audience to your product or service.

For example, we produced a series of interactive vox pop interviews in the lead up of one of Australia’s biggest tax events, helping support 1m+ social impressions within the tax community in only 10 weeks.

Don’t let marcomms rigmarole bottleneck your community build Producing a steady, consistent stream of excellent content is

a must for community building across various media formats and channels. However, often traditional marketing approval processes, multiple iterations, reworks and too many cooks can stifle content output, meaning the community building efforts become bottlenecked. And we’ve seen this happen all too often, in even the largest $100m+ global enterprises.

This means making sure you have a zero-tolerance approach to marcomms rigmarole and know how to streamline community content production, project management and channel distribution. Plus, producing a multi-faceted owned media channel that can grow organically. If you don’t have this in place, or have the skills to carry it out, hire a specialist who can either lay down the processes and strategy for you.

Or, implement and manage the entire community build.

One example is creating your own digital magazine or content hub, which becomes the go-to content source for your customers and prospects in your industry. A few years ago, we produced a content hub for a leading B2B health technology company that contributed to a 247 percent increase in lead generation and reduced PR costs by over 70 percent.

Quick tips on getting started It can feel overwhelming to start building a community from scratch, or even rebuilding one that a legacy marketer left behind in your capable hands. Here are some quick tips to build momentum: Discover what your audience wants: Conduct a survey across your customers to uncover what type of content they want and in which format, plus the frequency of engagement. Without this step, you’re stabbing in the dark.

Build a content plan: Create a 6-month content creation project plan that’s realistic and within budget. Briefing processes and style guides need to be clear and streamlined to prevent time wasted doing multiple edits, iterations and revisions.

Don’t rely on one the one lone champion: A common mistake B2B brands make is investing in the one lone community champion in-house, and when that person leaves, the community effectively dies upon their departure. Create an evergreen community hub that can last irrespective of team or talent.

Find the right team: Don’t have the resources in-house?

Consider a specialised media and marketing agency with vast B2B knowledge in community and content building across various media channels and formats such as webinars, content hubs, podcasts, newsletters, videos and events.

One final tip is don’t skimp. Community building takes time, and it’s a long-term investment. Community building can help generate leads, support inbound marketing and shorten the sales cycle, but it’s still very much a ‘top of the funnel’ activity. It needs to be supported by robust digital marketing capabilities, nurture and ABM campaigns, plus linked to the sales team. All this requires a holistic, integrated approach.

Done well, and the potential and possibilities are endless.

‘No one’s going in blind’: Brands are bringing gaming and esports in-house

By Alexander Lee

Nothing says a media trend is here to stay quite like marketers scrambling to take it in-house. On this basis, gaming has well and truly arrived — or at least it has for AB InBev, Nike, Adidas, Puma, Red Bull, PepsiCo, Manchester City, KFC and Pizza Hut, to name a few.

These advertisers are either in the process of setting up or have already set up specialist teams or roles for esports and gaming. Some of those moves are to be expected. The likes of Nike and Adidas have long prided themselves on their ability to get out in front of whatever trend has cultural cachet with its fans.

Puma hired Matthew Shaw as its senior strategist for esports as far back as 2017, for example. Others like KFC, however, don’t have the same pedigree. It set up KFC Gaming earlier this year. And yet despite those differences, both sets of advertisers see a gaming industry that’s moving further into mainstream culture and want to keep in lock-step with it.

“I’m going to have to bring someone new into my team to help run point and scale our efforts in esports,” said Sean Pate, brand communications officer at online eyewear retailer Zenni Optical.

His reason being that esports has become too strategically important for the eyewear business to do anything else. In fact, Zenni manufactures a full line of blue-light-blocking gamer glasses and runs a gaming-focused Twitter feed separate from its main brand account.

“We believe we have an opportunity to be an endemic product that’s part of any gamer’s kit,” Pate continued.

If gaming is indeed a gold rush, then no one wants to be without a pickaxe — especially those that have been prospecting for some time. Since 2019, Zenni has been steadily moving further into esports via deals with teams such as the Golden Guardians and Houston Outlaws. It got to a point where those investments became so big that the

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business needed to be more hands-on.

“Esports is now too significant for us not to [make this move] — not only because we have a specific product line for it but also for our brand in general and our investment levels,” said Pate.

Normally, this would spell bad news for agencies or at least see their role diminished somewhat. After all, it’s not unusual for in-house teams to take over some or all the tasks usually handed to an agency. Zenni, however, will keep working with communications agency DKC to make them work. There’s no point walking away from what has effectively been Zenni’s consigliere on all matters gaming when its advice so far has guided the brand to the point where one of the most popular esports players in Clayster is willing to endorse it.

“They [DKC] are working in great cooperation with me on the guidance of what moves do we make,” said Pate. “Our investment in the Call of Duty League in March was bigger than all our partnerships combined up to that point, so it took months of examination to determine whether it was the right move.”

Indeed, plotting the best path forward isn’t just about knowing which influencer is on the right side of edgy for a campaign.

There are fandoms to figure out, IP to identify, technical innovations to assess and platforms to lean into — all while hurdling the many challenges that come with resonating with an audience that’s opposed to anything that whiffs of corporate chicanery. Understandably, advertisers continue to rely on specialists despite having expertise in-house.

“For many of our campaigns where we work with influencers and creators in and around gaming, we do so directly with our in-house team,” said Stephen McSweeney, a digital marketing specialist at Pringles Europe. “But we tend to partner with agencies or a media platform like Twitch for the larger campaigns.”

It’s an arrangement that underscores what this latest in-house wave actually looks like. Agencies are increasingly doing less big-picture planning and more execution — just like the previous in-house waves. “You’ve either got brands bringing in internal experts, you’ve got media agencies and creative agencies starting up their own divisions— it’s a fantastic time, because we could all agree [Twitch] is a hugely underutilized marketing channel to target Gen Z and millennials,” said Adam Harris, global head of Twitch’s Brand Partnership Studio.

For instance, Paul Mascali may head up gaming and esports across the PepsiCo business, but he’s backed by the specialist Zero Code team within Omnicom. Then there’s Joe Barnes, director of sports marketing at Bud Light, who hired Code Red as its esports agency in Europe last year.

“No one’s going in blind [into gaming and esports],” said Joe Marsh, CEO of T1 Entertainment & Sports. “We were in talks with a luxury brand that had an agency that has done some deals with other teams, but they also had someone that

understood the space. That’s exactly what you need; to build something lasting and organic, and not just a one-off, big splash that fades away.”

See BMW’s current setup. There are six of its marketers working on esports in tandem with specialists from outside the group, like those creators at the teams they sponsor.

Often, these teams double as agencies, helping their commercial backers develop, activate and even measure campaigns. Naturally, BMW figured that the benefits of this hybrid approach outweigh its costs — at least for now.

“We have a dedicated department working on gaming and esports sponsorship opportunities,” said Pia Schoerner, head of esports at BMW Group. “It’s part of a wider digital entertainment team I lead that has around 23 people in it.”

Gaming is becoming more dominant as an entertainment medium. But Schoerner, like many of her counterparts, is fascinated by how far-reaching it has become. BMW can’t afford to lose sight of that.

“We talk a lot about the concept of digital entertainment because we acknowledge that our younger target audiences won’t necessarily watch as much TV as they previously did or will be interested in cars,” Schoerner said. “It’s meant that we’ve had to rethink how we might launch cars on these platforms as well as accept that there may be more demand for brand collaborations, not advertising, as well as the use of influencers to promote our message.”

Finding someone like Schörner or Mascali isn’t easy. Marketing trends are like catnip to chancers — those marketers who don’t know as much as they say they do about a major trend but try to coast on it nevertheless. Consequently, hiring the right person can be a slow, meticulous process. Get it wrong and it could throw a whole strategy out of whack.

Even when hiring candidates from within the esports industry, brands need to exercise caution, as the space is rife with “esports consultants” whose resumes are stacked with buzzwords and false qualifications. Fortunately, the world of gaming and esports is a small one, and a single qualified hire with genuine industry experience is likely to invite confidence among other trusted collaborators.

“People move from one company to another company, and we all know the space very well,” said Margot Rodde, founder of the boutique gaming/tech creative agency WePlay. “And we all speak the language, and it’s hard for somebody external to come in and understand that world.”

“A lot of advertisers will try to approach this moment as just another shift of one movement from one generation to the next when there’s a lot more to what’s actually happening,” said Jason Chung, assistant professor of sport management and executive director of esports at the University of New Haven. “It’s not about the preconceived ideas people have about a medium, it’s really about understanding the fundamental changes that people are going through.”

Do You Really Need a Brand Purpose?

By Kevin Namaky

In recent years, many have jumped on the “purpose”

tools and documents, do you really need to add a brand

bandwagon—not the least of which are consultants and

purpose to the mix?

freelancers pitching for work, and CMOs wanting to make their mark. On the surface it seems like a noble thing. Why wouldn’t a person, brand or company want to serve an important higher cause through their work?

But like many things we initially create for good reason, it seems maybe we’ve gone too far. There’s a difference

While every brand needs a certain level of “north star” guidance, sometimes we marketers tend to overcomplicate things. The reality is that there are just a few fundamental things a brand needs to create in order to establish meaningful direction.

between taking steps to operate ethically in support of moral

The three questions below can help you focus on these

imperatives, and defining an organization’s entire reason

fundamentals. If you can clearly answer these questions, you

for existence around a cause that is disconnected from its

probably don’t need to embark on creating a brand purpose.

product or service value. And in taking up the mantle of brand

You may already have it.

purpose, it seems many brands are becoming disconnected from reality.

While sustainability is rising as an influencing factor on

1) Why do you exist?

It’s most important to start with the fundamental problem or

consumer purchase consideration, this is not to be confused

desire that your brand solves for. More specifically, this is the

with a brand’s purpose. Perhaps the biggest red flag is that

fundamental problem, tension or desire that your product

everyone seems to have their own definition of what brand

or service solves. This is traditionally captured in a targeting

purpose is. Depending whom you ask, it’s equivalent to

profile and positioning statement, and is ideally based on

vision, mission, objective, positioning, insight, brand story,

consumer/customer research such as ethnographies, other

manifesto, or all of the above. With all of these other strategic

observational methods and possibly surveys.

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For example, personal care brand Dove addresses the problem of “big beauty”—that the beauty industry itself creates an unrealistic and unhealthy perception of beauty among women. This unhealthy perception was uncovered and

they enter is removed of toxic beauty standards. (dove.com) 3) Is this future aspiration motivating for internal employees?

illuminated through a series of research studies beginning in

If you’ve gotten this far, you already have a problem/

2004. This insight lies at the heart of great campaigns such

desire and future vision that is relevant to your consumer or

as Dove Real Beauty Sketches. And because Dove products

customer. In other words, you have a purpose! But this last

are beauty products formulated to moisturize skin and hair,

question is a test to confirm if it’s also inspirational, not just

the brand’s “why” is directly connected to the value that Dove

for consumers/customers, but also for everyone working on

provides to consumers. This ensures that Dove’s strategy is

the brand. A vision that is inspirational can excite employees,

authentic.

create a sense of belonging and increase loyalty.

2) Where are you going?

You will probably have some level of gut reaction already. It

Next, define what you want to accomplish in the future.

What is the larger impact your brand hopes for? What would the world look like if you completely solved the problem identified in question #1? The answers to these questions are traditionally captured in a vision, mission or objective statement. While many brands or businesses have these statements and they are often used interchangeably, it’s a lack of inspiration that leaves many brand leaders seeking to create something more—a truly inspirational “purpose.”

If Dove wants to completely solve the problem of big beauty, then they must support acknowledging, loving and bringing out women’s true, authentic beauty. In a perfect future state, big beauty standards would be completely erased. This is indeed their vision: We want to redefine beauty standards and help everyone experience beauty and body image positively. We care about the future generation: helping girls build positive self-esteem through the Dove Self-Esteem Project, ensuring the world

may feel motivating to you. If so, validate your initial reaction by asking employees and fellow stakeholders. If you’ve uncovered something truly inspirational, they’ll tell you.

Do you need a purpose after all?

If you already have the answers to the three fundamental questions—great. You don’t need to do additional work to come up with a “brand purpose.” You already have what you need regardless of what you call it.

If you don’t have at least one of the answers, then you have some work to do. Call it a brand purpose if you want, but the semantics are a bit irrelevant. The important thing is to align on the answers, document them, communicate and live them in your organization.

Kevin Namaky is the CEO at the Gurulocity Brand Management Institute, a consumer marketing education company. Kevin is also a featured instructor for the American Marketing Association, lectures at the IU Kelley School of Business, and is a member of the CMO Council.

WHY MARKETERS SHOULD BUILD CONSUMER TRUST THROUGH PRODUCT DATA

By Jake Athey

Today, product data and marketing content have one of the coldest relationships in the martech stack.

Engineers worry about SKUs, specs, sizes, and materials.

Marketers worry about images, videos, docs, and diagrams.

Copywriters try to bridge the divide with descriptions, features, benefits, and sales messaging.

If the product data and content match across channels, either the marketers got lucky, or they’re using an integrated digital asset management (DAM) and information management (PIM) solution.

To not mislead or let down shoppers seems like a low (but technologically challenging) hurdle to clear. The higher hurdle is for a brand to be consistent with its own mission and values—thereby demonstrating trustworthiness. That, too, is all about product data and content. At least, that’s my takeaway from Widen’s Connectivity Report.

Brands can no longer treat product data and marketing content in isolation, my teammates and I found. Accurate, comprehensive product data is critical to building trust, whereas emotive, interactive content is essential to driving sales.

Both types of information are needed to tell the story of how a brand lives up to its values, and a brand’s ability to tell that story may hinge on emerging technologies.

Trust From the Product Up Marketers intuitively know that presenting accurate product information across channels is important. But why?

For the 2021 Connectivity Report, my colleagues and I surveyed 155 marketers and creatives from the US and UK between August and September 2020. The respondents represented 25 industries with employers ranging from Global 2000 brands to our local Wisconsin tourism agency.

Nearly 50% of respondents credited product data as the information type that has the greatest impact on building customer trust—far ahead of product photography (16%) and descriptive copy (11%), the runners-up. In other words, marketers don’t consider their own photos or videos to be trustworthy, because hyperbole is part of the art.

But product data is different. There are massive consequences for fudging nutritional stats, material tolerances, safety ratings, etc. Product data sets expectations, conveys authenticity, and builds a foundation of trust. Online shoppers especially rely on product data in absence of a sensory, hands-on experience.

Still, most brands are led to think that “trust” is a top-down phenomenon. Every year, the PR firm Edelman releases its Trust Barometer. In 2021, even though business was the most “trusted” institution (ahead of government, NGOs, and media), US-based companies have seen their trust index fall from 62 in 2014 to 48 in 2021.

Worldwide, 56% of respondents agreed that “Business leaders are purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations.”

Does it make sense for “trust” to hinge on whatever the C-level leaders happen to say out loud? No. I think we need to build trust from the product up instead.

But how?

Blurring the Data/Content Divide Although our Connectivity Report respondents credited product data for building trust, they agreed (72%) that digital assets such as photography, videos, and product marketing content have the biggest impact on sales. They

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also said they feel that they haven’t come close to realizing the potential of virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and interactive experiences in driving transactions.

For example, a retail leader in home goods spoke to the problem of selling expensive items online: “You would really love to see how that $1,000 chandelier would look in your dining room using something like augmented reality,” said the interviewee.

For that to happen, product data and content would need to be interlinked. Accurate dimensions for each chandelier must coexist in a profile with 3D imagery and take into account the limitless variations of a single product (e.g., a black metal body versus a copper one versus...).

The augmented reality experiences could build trust and excitement by depicting how the chandelier would look in a certain dining room. Maybe the shopper could add dining hall dimensions, wallpaper color, and a 3D image of the table using a smartphone at home.

The point is that trust-building media experiences sit at the intersection of product data and visual content, which cannot be treated separately anymore—especially not for brands that want to tell a more meaningful story about their products.

A Mission Told in Product Data During long-form interviews for the Connectivity Report, one marketer tapped into a challenge that dominates news cycles but doesn’t have much traction with marketing technologists: Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) reporting. The marketer said, “The factories and manufacturers where the products come from follow responsible sourcing practices and are expected to meet or exceed environmental standards. Those parts of the product data tell a compelling sustainability story.”

The use case is interesting because so many companies have lost or gained trust through ESG actions. Sometimes, consumers perceive ESG marketing as greenwashing or wokewashing, an example of “Business leaders...purposely trying to mislead people,” as Edelman put it. But if companies build ESG reporting into their product data and content, they could build trust that is safe from whatever the CEO tweets at 2 a.m.

For instance, technologists have discussed using spoofproof distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) such as the blockchain to document products through their supply chain.

In practical terms, a fishing vessel could scan a QR code to verify where the fish were caught and the health of the species population. With each stop in its journey from Dutch Harbor in Alaska to a grocery store in Madison, Wisconsin, each QR scan would add product data, like the accumulated carbon footprint per pound of fish. At the end, an online shopper would see photos of the fish and the vessel and crew that caught it. They would also find data documenting how the grocery store took measures to protect the environment and the end consumer through its sourcing process.

The same could be done with textiles, mining products, petrochemicals, and the countless finished goods they enable. What narrative could do more to build (or restore) trust in brands that tout their responsible practices?

Inspired by Values and Powered by Martech The marketing technology stack is a foundation for telling a meaningful story with product data and content. As I mentioned, DAM+PIM systems are already equipped to manage consistency across channels. More advanced VR, AR, and blockchain applications will likely depend on the same system.

It’s time that digital marketers advance from worrying about data-content consistency to cultivating integrity and trustworthiness. New approaches to the role of product data and visual content might create trust in ways that not even the most charismatic CEO or spokesperson can. And enriching product data with ESG factors and content would enable us to recognize the hidden heroes who make possible our commercial paradise. Brands that have nothing to hide should embrace the opportunity.

Jake Athey is VP of marketing at at digital asset management (DAM) software provider Widen Enterprises, where he has worked with CRM, campaign management, DAM, email, blogging, and social media management platforms.

Why social sharing is the world’s most awesome content marketing metric

By Mark Schaefer

The most important metric for any digital marketing effort is conversions. We all like money. But AFTER conversions, I have a radical idea of the most powerful metric for your content marketing: Social sharing.

metric” but I think it’s critical for most businesses because

Social sharing has been unfairly maligned as a “vanity

The business benefits of social sharing

it drives the right behavior in a marketing department. Let’s dive into the majesty of social sharing today.

There are three extraordinary benefits of social sharing (which simply means that somebody is sharing your content on their own social media channels):

share, and then design your content to meet those needs. The

First, when people share your content, they are making a statement to the world that they support whatever the content is about. In a virtual way, they’re standing up and saying “this means something to me, and I want it to mean something to you.”

people share content:

In other words, the act of social sharing represents organic advocacy, and my friends, that is certainly the best marketing you could ever hope for.

and that’s why 94 percent of people say they share on social

The second big advantage is that people react to what is shared on social media. More than 75 percent of adults say their purchases are influenced by what they see friends sharing on the web. So … if people are sharing your content, eventually this may sway purchasing behavior. An increase in social sharing is a leading indicator of an increase in sales.

New York Times Customer Insight Group published a study, “The Psychology of Sharing,” which explains five reasons 1. To bring valuable and entertaining content to others Sharing content is one little way we can change the world.

We want to inform, amuse, and help the people in our lives, media.

2. To define ourselves to others People share content because they want to look cool. We all have our personal brand, and the content we share reflects our identities. You are what you tweet. So it’s no surprise that 68 percent of people say they share on social media to communicate who they are and what they care about.

Finally, the content shared on social media helps define your brand. A brand used to be what a company told you it was.

Today, a brand is what people tell each other. So feeding that narrative is important!

3. To grow and nourish relationships

Organic advocacy + influenced purchasing behavior + brand narrative. Seems like a winning strategy to me!

percent share because it enables them to communicate with

The internal impact on your marketing department

4. To fulfill ourselves

But it gets better! Picking the right metric is critical because it drives the behavior of your marketing department. Measure what you treasure.

Quite simply, we share because we enjoy it and it helps us

What does it take to get people to share your content?

5. To get the word out about causes or brands

1. It has to be share-worthy. Your content has to be deeply relevant, interesting, timely, and entertaining. You need to constantly tune to your audience and adjust to evolving needs, tastes, and trends.

In the world of social sharing, branding is more important

2. You have to show up. You can’t just dump content into the marketplace and hope for something to happen. You need to consistently engage in a way that encourages social sharing.

much.

3. Finally, you need to know who is sharing your content.

These are the special people who are driving the economic value of your content marketing effort. Do you know them by name? Do you treat them like royalty?

In summary, to drive social sharing as your success metric, you have to create finely-tuned content, actively engage on social media, and reward your best advocates. Isn’t that EXACTLY what your social media marketing department should be doing?

That’s why this metric rules.

Get into the social sharing mindset The entire premise of my book The Content Code is that there is no power in content alone. There is only power in content that moves. The economic value of your digital marketing effort comes through the transmission of content. So how do we encourage social sharing?

One of the important strategies is to consider WHY people

People also share as a means to make and maintain connections. The research revealed that 73 percent of people share online to meet others with shared interests and 78 people they otherwise wouldn’t stay in touch with.

feel more connected to the world. It’s fun to see people react to our posts.

than ever. In my book I explain the idea of “heroic brands.”

These are the people, products, and companies that we support through social sharing just because we love them so The battle Here is the hard truth. It’s difficult to get people to share your content. Most people never do it. But marketing in general is hard, right? If you’re going to pick your battle, I think this is the right one.

The worst thing you can do in business is to execute beautifully on a flawed strategy. Most people are aiming at “engagement” as a key metric. I’m not a fan (and wrote about it here). Engagement is easily gamed (especially by influencers) and generally has no connection to sales.

On the other hand, social sharing drives the right behavior and results and it’s harder to game.

So if you have to pick a metric for your digital marketing efforts, I’d go with social sharing. There is just so much goodness in that number : ) Mark Schaefer is the executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions and COO for B Squared Media. He is the author of several best-selling digital marketing books and is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant.

The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world.

What Brands Should Know About The Metaverse

By Ilyse Liffreing

By Ilyse Liffreing

Brands need to reinvent their marketing playbook for digital worlds Brands need a metaverse strategy.

The so-called metaverse piqued the interest of brands looking for ways to bridge the digital and physical divide amid COVID-19 lockdowns, which created a demand for virtual escapes. Now with Facebook announcing plans last week to transition into a metaverse company over the next five years, it’s become essential for brands to understand how to navigate digital worlds.

“The metaverse could be the next ubiquitous way to connect

Essentially, the metaverse can serve as a playground where brands can connect to fans outside the constraints of the physical world through options as broad as the internet itself. It’s no surprise that imaginative creatives and forwardlooking businesses are attracted to the potential, and experts say the interest will only grow with advances in technology.

Facebook’s announcement last week of plans to create a new metaverse product group is only expected to further fuel a trend that had already been gaining momentum.

users across every platform and social touchpoint, whether

Ready Player One

it be a game, entertainment, video, zoom, SMS or phone

The COVID pandemic has served as a catalyst for the emergence of these new virtual worlds and goods. The rise of gaming, avatars, blockchain technology and NFTs, tied to social e-commerce, stand as new portals into the metaverse. As people hunkered down in their homes, games like Epic Games’ “Fortnite,” Nintendo’s “Animal Crossing: New Horizons,” Microsoft’s “Minecraft” and the millions of gaming worlds of Roblox, became places where players could virtually transport themselves away from the monotony of their living rooms. Live streams of people playing these games on platforms like YouTube, Twitch and Facebook Gaming, have only increased their reach and popularity.

call. The idea of a massive, centralized community is being invested into heavily and is coming,” says Victor David, co-founder and CEO of Epik, a global licensing agency connecting brands with major video games.

In short, the metaverse —a term coined in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel “Snow Crash”— is a collection of digital worlds and assets, where interoperability allows users to interact as digital versions of themselves, also known as avatars, across platforms. The ultimate goal is to allow users to generate content and connect it across digital worlds. Users will be able to take their avatars and assets and move from place to place; a “Fortnite” skin could be brought into a “Minecraft” world, for example.

Now brands are looking to become part of these worlds in an effort to connect with the largely Gen Z audiences that engage

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in these universes. Success stories like Fortnite’s Travis Scott concert, which saw 12.3 million views; and Warner Media’s “Wonder Woman: The Themyscira Experience,” which has been visited nearly 30 million times on Roblox, prove there’s a powerful opportunity.

“We’ve been tracking the use of synthetic experiences by brands over the last couple of years, and through the pandemic it became increasingly a replacement for physical experiences.

But with video games at the center of youth culture today, it’s become a critical pop culture connection,” says Jeff Roach, president and chief strategy officer at independent Irvine, California-based agency Schiefer Chopshop: SCS. In July, SCS worked with U.K.-based design studio Blockworks to create a virtual world within the blocky building platform “Minecraft” for farming and lawn care brand John Deere.

In “FarmCraft,” players complete farming missions like harvesting crops they grow themselves while learning about automation in agriculture. The experience, created to introduce the brand to a new generation of tech enthusiasts, has already been downloaded more than 2.3 million times.

A side of NFT with your VR Meanwhile, with people spending so much time on their phones and cryptocurrency becoming more widely adopted, digital assets like non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, have become popular, as well as the use of digital avatars in apps, social media and websites. Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) experiences are also now converging with blockchain technology to form another name for the metaverse: “Web 3.0.” Anything that sits on blockchain technology like NFTs and AR or VR experiences are part of the metaverse because they are decentralized, meaning users can own and claim them as their own.

There’s already a wide array of examples of brands experimenting in the space. Warner Bros., Gucci and Nerf, among others, have built their own virtual worlds on gaming platforms. More traditional brands, like Coca-Cola, Campbell’s Soup and Anheuser-Busch InBev, have been tiptoeing into the metaverse by creating and selling their own NFTs on blockchain-fueled platforms. Meanwhile, brands like Nike, Sephora and Porsche continue to build AR or VR creative in platforms like Snapchat.

using virtual worlds as a marketing vehicle, there’s also an opportunity for brands to profit from these experiences through digital goods. In games like Roblox and Fortnite, users use real currency to dress their avatars with skins or collect objects. Brands then share a percentage of the sale with the platform or developer. A prime example of this is Gucci’s “Gucci Garden” Roblox event in May, where a digital version of a Gucci purse sold for more than it would in real life, despite it not carrying any value outside of the Roblox metaverse. Another popular route is to sell NFTs. While some brands are sending proceeds to charity, others like CNN, e.l.f. Cosmetics, Anheuser-Busch InBev and Porsche are experimenting with it as a new revenue stream.

Another option is to find ways to bridge the virtual and physical divide and drive customers to a brand across both worlds. This fall, Hasbro’s Nerf will sell a line of Nerf Roblox blasters in stores, which include a code gamers can redeem in Roblox to equip their avatar with the same blaster.

Becoming part of the metaverse For brands looking to claim a place in the metaverse, the path to get there isn’t as simple as becoming immersed in the worlds themselves, however. Brands and agencies are continuing to experiment with the most effective ways to design their own environments and how to place ads in front of people in virtual worlds.

For starters, brands need to play by specific rules. Each platform has their own approach to branded content.

Roblox, for instance, is selective with the brands it chooses to work with on experiences. Facebook started allowing ads in its Oculus virtual reality games this June, but so far player backlash has stunted application. The only company using the format, Resolution Games, decided to stop after players complained. “Minecraft” also has its own set of commercial guidelines for regulating the use of logos and advertising on the platform. It’s for this reason that Blockworks focuses more on campaigns that have a youth education angle.

“Minecraft” allows the virtual experiences, called “maps,” to be sponsored by brands. Along with the FarmCraft work, the agency recently created a financial literacy world for Ally Bank and an employee training simulation for PepsiCo.

The main driver for these experiences is to raise brand awareness and connect with a new generation of consumers who are accustomed to digital realms.

Some brands are already creating metaverse-focused marketing teams, much like digital or social teams that have evolved over the last decade, says Roblox’s Christina Wootton, VP of brand partnerships, but declined to reveal which brands are doing this.

Eventually, virtual worlds and assets could become brands’ calling card, just as social media profiles and websites work today, says Cathy Hackl, a metaverse growth strategist who consults brands like luxury fashion line Asprey and jeweler Simone Farcshou. “Just like many in the early 2000s thought they would never need a social media presence, brands in the 2020s will need to start setting up metaverse teams that will help them enter the era of Web 3.0.”

Many are also choosing to work directly with creators or developers and bypass the platforms, a route which allows them to tap into creators’ expertise and existing followings.

Gucci, for instance, worked with Roblox creator Rook Vanguard to create the virtual items for Gucci Garden.

Platforms are actively encouraging this type of approach by building out creator programs like Roblox’s UGC Avatar Creator Program.

While much of the efforts thus far have centered around

Seeing this, startups like Metaverse Team, which created a

Roblox game for Nerf, or BeyondCreative, which worked with Verizon to create a stadium for the Super Bowl within “Fortnite,” are continuing to emerge made up of creators from specific platforms. The NFT space is also growing with startups like Genies, which has recently scored deals with Warner Music Group to create NFTs for artists; NBA Top Shot maker Dapper Labs; and Utah-based Tafi, which debuted Coca-Cola’s NFTs last week.

Other brands are experimenting with creating virtual worlds of their own so that they don’t have to cater to rulebooks and can garner first-party data at the same time. Cosmetics and skincare brand SK-II worked with ad agency Huge to create its own virtual SK-II City to transport users to the virtual streets of Tokyo, featuring Olympians like Simone Biles. Although there are no avatars, visitors can journey around the city to see virtual stores of female entrepreneurs and watch various films. Unlike concepts built on gaming platforms, the virtual experience will continue to evolve with different brand messages and interactions.

“By creating an experience beyond just selling, you can engage users at a whole new level,” says Ben Skelsay, group VP of Huge APAC. Since metaverse work varies widely, efforts can take anywhere from a few days or weeks for NFTs, and up to six months for multi-layered brand experiences. The John Deere FarmCraft project, for instance, took roughly four months to produce, says James Delaney, managing director at Blockworks.

Fully immersive digital worlds do not come cheap: Costs can range from $10,000 for NFTs to $500,000 or more for virtual worlds.

Laying the groundwork The rise of the metaverse will have repercussions to the marketing and advertising industry, similar to how e-commerce has disrupted retail. Namely, more work in virtual spaces means a higher demand for agencies and game developers

who can build 3D digital assets, as well as digital engineers and coders who can take a brand’s aesthetic and meld it to fit its new digital reality. “Brands need to prepare for this shift now and produce 3D models that represent their products,” says David Ripert, CEO and founder of Poplar Studio, which works with brands to do just that. Most brands today, he says, still rely heavily on 2D assets like photos and videos. For work in the metaverse, they need 3D models of their products that they can then deploy across platforms.

Beyond securing the talent and creating the work itself, brands need to figure out how to be authentic in this new setting. “Just because you are an iconic brand in the physical world, doesn’t mean it transfers over into the metaverse,” says Akash Nigam, CEO and founder of avatar agency Genies.

“Someone needs to reinvent your brand with the metaverse in mind. These brands will ultimately start from scratch, reinvent their digital goods in a more fantastical way, and exceed boundaries for what is feasible in the physical world.”

When Wootton speaks with brands about joining the platform, she recommends they try to enhance gameplay without interrupting how players are already experiencing the game. For instance, a brand could place branded items within the existing avatar marketplace or build out a virtual train ride players can choose to hop on to reach a movie scene; this is what Warner Bros. did around the premiere of “In the Heights.” That experience alone showed the power of the metaverse: Nearly 1 million players took part in a virtual flash mob on the same day in the virtual streets of Manhattan, something that could never occur in real life.

“It’s not just about having a known IP,” says Wootton, “but rather how that IP makes shared experiences in the metaverse better, more engaging.”

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

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At best, we’re on Earth for around 4,000 weeks – so why do we lose so much time to online distraction?

By Oliver Burkeman

One Friday in April 2016, as that year’s polarising US presidential race intensified, and more than 30 armed conflicts raged around the globe, approximately 3 million people spent part of their day watching two reporters from BuzzFeed wrap rubber bands around a watermelon. Gradually, over the course of 43 agonising minutes, the pressure ramped up – the psychological kind and the physical force on the watermelon – until, at minute 44, the 686th rubber band was applied.

What happened next won’t amaze you: the watermelon exploded, messily. The reporters high-fived, wiped the splatters from their reflective goggles, then ate some of the fruit. The broadcast ended. Earth continued its orbit around the sun.

I’m not mentioning this story to suggest there’s anything especially shameful about spending 44 minutes of your life staring at a watermelon on the internet. But it’s a vivid

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illustration of one central obstacle we encounter when it comes to our efforts to use time well: distraction.

After all, it hardly matters how committed you are to making the best use of your limited time if, day after day, your attention gets wrenched away by things you never wanted to focus on.

It’s a safe bet that none of those 3 million people woke up that morning with the intention of using a portion of their lives to watch a watermelon burst; nor, when the moment arrived, did they necessarily feel as though they were freely choosing to do so. “I want to stop watching so bad but I’m already committed,” read one typically rueful comment on Facebook. “I’ve been watching you guys put rubber bands around a watermelon for 40 minutes,” wrote someone else.

“What am I doing with my life?”

The average human lifespan is absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short. Here’s one way of putting things in perspective: the first modern humans appeared on the plains of Africa at least 200,000 years ago, and scientists estimate that life, in some form, will persist for another 1.5bn years or more, until the intensifying heat of the sun condemns the last organism to death. But you? Assuming you live to be 80, you’ll have had about 4,000 weeks.

Social media is engineered to constantly adapt to our interests.

No wonder the rest of reality seems unable to compete When I first made that calculation, I felt queasy; but once I’d recovered, I started pestering my friends, asking them to guess – off the top of their heads, without doing any mental arithmetic – how many weeks they thought the average person could expect to live. One named a number in the six figures. Yet, as I felt obliged to inform her, a fairly modest six-figure number of weeks – 310,000 – is the approximate duration of all human civilisation since the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia. On almost any meaningful timescale, as the contemporary philosopher Thomas Nagel has written, “we will all be dead any minute”.

And so distraction truly matters – because your experience of being alive consists of nothing other than the sum of everything to which you pay attention. At the end of your life, looking back, whatever compelled your attention from moment to moment is simply what your life will have been.

When you pay attention to something you don’t especially value, it’s not an exaggeration to say that you’re paying with your life.

This was why Seneca, in On The Shortness Of Life, came down so hard on his fellow Romans for pursuing political careers they didn’t really care about, holding elaborate banquets they didn’t especially enjoy, or just “baking their bodies in the sun”: they didn’t seem to realise that, in succumbing to such diversions, they were squandering the very stuff of existence. Seneca risks sounding like an uptight pleasure-

hater – what’s so bad about a bit of sunbathing? – and, to be honest, I suspect he probably was. But the crucial point isn’t that it’s wrong to choose to spend your time relaxing, whether at the beach or on BuzzFeed. It’s that the distracted person isn’t really choosing at all. Their attention has been commandeered by forces that don’t have their highest interests at heart.

All of which helps clarify what’s so alarming about the contemporary online “attention economy”, of which we’ve heard so much in recent years: it’s essentially a giant machine getting you to care about things you didn’t want to care about. And you have far too little control over your attention simply to decide, as if by fiat, that you’re not going to succumb to its temptations.

Many of us are familiar with the basic contours of this situation. We know that the “free” social media platforms we use aren’t really free, because, as the saying goes, you’re not the customer but the product being sold. In other words, the technology companies’ profits come from seizing our attention, then selling it to advertisers.

You might also be aware that this is delivered by means of “persuasive design” – an umbrella term for an armoury of psychological techniques borrowed directly from the designers of casino slot machines, for the express purpose of encouraging compulsive behaviour. One example among hundreds is the ubiquitous drag-down-to-refresh gesture, which keeps people scrolling by exploiting a phenomenon known as “variable rewards”: when you can’t predict whether or not refreshing the screen will bring new posts to read, the uncertainty makes you more likely to keep trying, again and again and again, just as you would on a slot machine.

We mustn’t let Silicon Valley off the hook, but we should be honest: much of the time, we give in to distraction willingly What’s far less widely appreciated, though, is how deep the distraction goes, and how radically it undermines our efforts to spend our finite time as we’d like. As you surface from an hour inadvertently frittered away on Facebook, you’d be forgiven for assuming that the damage, in terms of wasted time, was limited to that single misspent hour. But you’d be wrong. Because the attention economy is designed to prioritise whatever’s most compelling – instead of whatever’s most true, or most useful – it systematically distorts the picture of the world we carry in our heads at all times. It influences our sense of what matters, what kinds of threats we face, how venal our political opponents are – and all these distorted judgments then influence how we allocate our offline time as well.

If social media convinces you, for example, that violent crime is a far bigger problem in your city than it really is, you might find yourself walking the streets with unwarranted fear. If all

you ever see of your ideological opponents online is their very worst behaviour, you’re liable to assume that even family members who differ from you politically must be similarly, irredeemably bad, making relationships with them hard to maintain. So it’s not simply that our devices distract us from more important matters. It’s that they change how we’re defining “important matters” in the first place. In the words of the philosopher Harry Frankfurt, they sabotage our capacity to “want what we want to want”.

I vividly recall walking alone along a windswept Scottish beach as dusk began to fall, when I experienced one particularly disturbing side-effect of persuasive design, which is the twitchiness you start to feel when the activity in which you’re engaged hasn’t been crafted by a team of professional psychologists hellbent on ensuring that your attention never wavers. I love windswept Scottish beaches at dusk more passionately than anything I can ever remember encountering on social media. But only the latter is engineered to constantly adapt to my interests and push my psychological buttons, so as to keep my attention captive. No wonder the rest of reality sometimes seems unable to compete.

To make things more troublesome still, it can be difficult even to notice when your outlook on life is being changed in this depressing fashion, thanks to a special problem with attention, which is that it’s extremely difficult for it to monitor itself. The only faculty you can use to see what’s happening to your attention is your attention, the very thing that’s already been commandeered. This means that once the attention economy has rendered you sufficiently distracted, or annoyed, or on edge, it becomes easy to assume that this is just what life these days feels like. In TS Eliot’s words, we are “distracted from distraction by distraction”. The unsettling possibility is that if you’re convinced that none of this is a problem for you – that social media hasn’t turned you into an angrier, less empathic, more anxious or more numbed-out version of yourself – that might be because it has. Your finite time has been appropriated, without you realising anything’s amiss.

As the technology critic Tristan Harris likes to say, each time you open a social media app, there are “a thousand people on the other side of the screen” paid to keep you there – and so it’s unrealistic to expect users to resist the assault on their time and attention by means of willpower alone. Yet if we’re to understand distraction at the deepest level, we’ll also have to acknowledge an awkward truth at the bottom of all this, which is that “assault” – with its implications of an uninvited attack – isn’t quite the right word. We mustn’t let Silicon Valley off the hook, but we should be honest: much of the time, we give in to distraction willingly. Something in us wants to be distracted, whether by our digital devices or anything else – to not spend our lives on what we thought we cared about the most. The calls are coming from inside the house.

Had you been walking in the Kii Mountains in southern Japan during the winter months of 1969, you might have witnessed something startling: a pale and skinny American man, entirely naked, dumping half-frozen water over his own head from a large wooden cistern. His name was Steve Young, and he was training to become a monk in the Shingon branch of Buddhism; the process had been nothing but a sequence of

humiliations. First, the abbot of the Mount Kōya monastery had refused to let him in the door. Who on earth was this gangly, white Asian studies PhD student, who’d apparently decided the life of a Japanese monk was for him? Eventually, after some badgering, Young had been permitted to stay, but only in return for performing menial tasks, such as sweeping the hallways and washing dishes. At last, he had been authorised to begin the 100-day solo retreat that marked the first real step on the monastic journey – only to discover that it entailed living in a tiny unheated hut and conducting a thrice-daily purification ritual in which Young, who’d been raised beside the ocean in balmy California, had to douse himself with several gallons of bone-chilling melted snow. It was a “horrific ordeal”, he would recall years later. “It’s so cold that the water freezes the moment it touches the floor, and your towel freezes in your hand. So you’re sliding around barefoot on ice, trying to dry your body with a frozen hand towel.”

Faced with physical distress – even of a much milder variety – most people’s instinctive reaction is to try not to pay attention to it, to attempt to focus on anything else at all. For example, if you’re mildly phobic about hypodermic syringes, like I am, you’ve probably found yourself staring very hard at the mediocre artwork in doctors’ clinics in an effort to take your mind off the jab you’re about to receive. At first, this had been Young’s instinct, too: to recoil internally from the experience of the freezing water hitting his skin by thinking about something different – or else just trying, through an act of sheer will, not to feel the cold. Common sense would seem to suggest that mentally absenting yourself from the situation would moderate the pain.

When we succumb to distraction, we’re motivated by the desire to flee something painful about our experience of the present And yet as icy deluge followed icy deluge, Young began to understand that this was the wrong strategy. In fact, the more he concentrated on the sensations of intense cold, giving his attention over to them as completely as he could, the less agonising he found them – whereas once his “attention wandered, the suffering became unbearable”. After a few days, he began preparing for each drenching by first becoming as focused on his present experience as he possibly could so that, when the water hit, he would avoid spiralling from mere discomfort into agony. Slowly it dawned on him that this was the whole point of the ceremony. As he put it – though traditional Buddhist monks certainly would not have done so – it was a “giant biofeedback device”, designed to train him to concentrate by rewarding him (with a reduction in suffering) for as long as he could remain undistracted, and punishing him (with an increase in suffering) whenever he failed.

After his retreat, Young – who is now a meditation teacher better known as Shinzen Young, his new name bestowed on him by the abbot at Mount Kōya – found that his powers of concentration had been transformed. Whereas staying

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focused on the present had made the agonies of the ice-water ritual more tolerable, it made less unpleasant undertakings – daily chores that might previously have been a source not of agony but of boredom or annoyance – positively engrossing. The more intensely he could hold his attention on the experience of whatever he was doing, the clearer it became that the real problem had been not the activity but his internal resistance to experiencing it. When he stopped trying to block out those sensations and attended to them instead, the discomfort would evaporate.

doing, in order to escape how disagreeable it feels to be

Young’s ordeal demonstrates an important point about what’s going on when we succumb to distraction, which is that we’re motivated by the desire to try to flee something painful about our experience of the present. Consider the archetypal case of being lured from your work by social media: it’s not usually that you’re sitting there, concentrating rapturously, when your attention is dragged away against your will. In truth, you’re eager for the slightest excuse to turn away from what you’re

It’s worth pausing to notice how exceptionally strange this

doing it; you slide away to the Twitter pile-on or the celebrity gossip site with a feeling not of reluctance but of relief.

“One of the puzzling lessons I have learned,” observes the American author Gregg Krech, describing his own experience of that urge, “is that, more often than not, I do not feel like doing most of the things that need doing. I’m not just speaking about cleaning the toilet bowl or doing my tax returns. I’m referring to those things I genuinely desire to accomplish.”

is. Why, exactly, are we rendered so uncomfortable by concentrating on things that matter – the things we thought we wanted to do with our lives – that we’d rather flee into distractions, which, by definition, are what we don’t want to be doing with our lives? So that suddenly, the thing you’d resolved to do feels so staggeringly tedious that you can’t bear to focus on it for one moment more.

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The solution to this mystery, dramatic though it might sound, is that whenever we succumb to distraction, we’re attempting to flee a painful encounter with our finitude – with the human predicament of having limited time and, more especially in the case of distraction, limited control over that time. When you try to focus on something you deem important, you’re forced to face your limits, an experience that feels especially uncomfortable precisely because the task at hand is one you value so much.

This is also why boredom can feel so surprisingly, aggressively unpleasant: we tend to think of it as not being interested in whatever it is we’re doing, but, in fact, it’s an intense reaction to the deeply uncomfortable experience of confronting your limited control. Boredom can strike in widely differing contexts: when you’re working on a major project; when you can’t think of anything to do on a Sunday afternoon; when it’s your job to care for a two-year-old for five hours straight.

But they all have one characteristic in common: they demand that you face your finitude. You’re obliged to deal with how your experience is unfolding in this moment, to resign yourself to the reality that this is it.

No wonder we seek out distractions online, where it feels as though no limits apply – where you can update yourself instantaneously on events taking place a continent away, present yourself however you like, and keep scrolling forever through infinite news feeds, drifting through “a realm in which space doesn’t matter and time spreads out into an endless present”, to quote the critic James Duesterberg.

This also makes it easier to see why the strategies generally recommended for defeating distraction – digital detoxes, personal rules about when you’ll allow yourself to check your inbox, and so forth – rarely work, or at least not for long. They limit your access to the things you use to assuage your urge towards distraction, but they don’t address the urge itself. Even if you quit Facebook, or ban yourself from social media during the workday, or exile yourself to a cabin in the mountains, you’ll probably still find it unpleasantly constraining to focus on what matters, so you’ll find some way to relieve the pain by distracting yourself: by daydreaming, taking an unnecessary nap, or – the preferred option of the productivity geek – redesigning your to-do list and reorganising your desk.

What we think of as distractions aren’t the cause of our being distracted.

They’re just the places we go to seek relief The overarching point is that what we think of as distractions aren’t the ultimate cause of our being distracted. They’re just the places we go to seek relief from the discomfort of confronting limitation. The reason it’s hard to focus on a conversation with your spouse isn’t that you’re surreptitiously checking your phone beneath the dinner table. On the contrary, “surreptitiously checking your phone beneath the dinner table” is what you do because it’s hard to focus on the conversation – because listening takes effort and patience and

a spirit of surrender, and because what you hear might upset you. Even if you place your phone out of reach, therefore, you shouldn’t be surprised to find yourself seeking some other way to avoid paying attention. In the case of conversation, this generally takes the form of mentally rehearsing what you’re going to say next, as soon as the other person has finished making sounds with their mouth.

I wish I could reveal, at this point, the secret for uprooting the urge towards distraction – the way to have it not feel unpleasant to decide to hold your attention, for a sustained time, on something you value, or a task you can’t easily choose not to do. But the truth is that I don’t think there is one.

Certainly, there are small tricks that can help. For example, you can make your devices as unexciting as possible – first by removing social media apps, even email if you dare, and then by switching the screen from colour to greyscale.

I also recommend, as far as possible, choosing devices with only one purpose, such as the Kindle e-reader, on which it’s tedious and awkward to do anything but read. If streaming music and social media lurk only a click or swipe away, they’ll prove impossible to resist when the first twinge of boredom or difficulty arises in the activity on which you’re attempting to focus.

Constant fragmentation of our time and concentration has become the new normal.

The lost art of concentration: being distracted in a digital world But the most effective way to sap distraction of its power is to stop expecting things to be otherwise – to accept that this unpleasantness is simply what it feels like to commit ourselves to the kinds of demanding and valuable tasks that force us to confront our limited control over how our lives unfold.

And yet there’s a sense in which accepting this lack of any solution is the solution. Young’s discovery on the mountainside, after all, was that his suffering subsided only when he resigned himself to the truth of his situation: when he allowed himself to more fully feel the icy water on his skin.

My powers of concentration might not come close to Young’s, but I’ve found the same logic applies. The way to find peaceful absorption in a difficult project, or a boring Sunday afternoon, isn’t to chase feelings of peace or absorption, but to acknowledge the inevitability of discomfort, and to turn more of your attention to the reality of your situation than to railing against it.

Some Zen Buddhists hold that the entirety of human suffering can be boiled down to this effort to resist paying full attention to the way things are going, because we wish they were going differently (“This shouldn’t be happening!”), or because we wish we felt more in control of the process. There is a very down-to-earth kind of liberation in grasping that there are certain truths about being a limited human from which you’ll never be liberated. You don’t get to dictate the course of events. And the paradoxical reward for accepting reality’s constraints is that they no longer feel so constraining.

Is Deflection a Good Business Tactic?

By Wharton Staff

Politicians are especially deft at deflection, which is the tactic of answering a question with a question that steers the conversation in a different direction. It’s not an easy skill, but former President Donald Trump mastered it, according to Wharton operations, information and decisions professor Maurice Schweitzer.

“Deflection provides a method of avoiding answering questions that causes your counterpart to think that you are trying to learn more information instead of hiding information,” Bitterly said. “In doing so, it is less interpersonally costly than declining to disclose and less risky than deception.”

Schweitzer, whose research focuses on negotiation and communication, pointed to Trump’s confrontational style with reporters during press conferences and frequent refusal to give direct answers.

The study has practical implications beyond the political realm. Deflection is a tool that can be wielded during business negotiations, such as a sales deal or a job interview, where information-gathering is critical to the outcome. If a hiring manager asks a job candidate to disclose their current salary, for example, the candidate could use deflection rather than answering truthfully or declining to share the number. In one of their experiments, the scholars found that a humorous deflection to the salary question helped a job candidate maintain a favorable impression with the hiring manager while not giving away crucial information that could have lowered his salary offer.

“In the 2016 presidential campaign he repeatedly was asked, ‘Are you going to release your taxes?’ And he would reply, ‘What about [Hillary Clinton’s] emails,’” Schweitzer said. “That’s deflection, and it worked.”

Schweitzer and T. Bradford Bitterly, a management professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, are co-authors of a study titled, “The Economic and Interpersonal Consequences of Deflecting Direct Questions,” which appeared in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. It’s the first study to examine the costs and benefits of answering a question with a question, compared with answering with the truth, a lie, or declining to respond (“I prefer not to answer that question”).

Across four experiments, the researchers found that deflection can help people maintain a good impression with their conversational partner, avoid revealing potentially costly personal information, and safeguard them from the inherent danger in lying.

“In job interviewers, candidates are sometimes asked sensitive and even illegal questions like, ‘Are you married?

Do you have kids?’ Deflection seems like an opportunity to respond to a difficult question by redirecting the conversation and not facing the repercussions,” Schweitzer said.

Declining to answer doesn’t always work because that response itself signals information, he said. And deception is tricky because if the lie is uncovered, it creates reputational damage for the liar. But deflection does work, and it works best when it redirects the conversation back to the asker.

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“People love talking about themselves,” Schweitzer said.

“There’s so much to share about the most interesting topic around, which is me.”

Breaking Conversational Rules Schweitzer said deflection is intriguing because it violates longstanding norms of conversation, which were codified by linguist Paul Grice in the last century. One of those norms is that humans tend to answer questions truthfully. When asked about the weather, for example, a person doesn’t respond with, “I’m very concerned about my aunt’s health.”

“If I ask you a question, the conversational rule is you answer it. We feel compelled to answer questions,” Schweitzer said. “What I think makes deflection so interesting is we’re violating the rule and we’re invoking it.”

“People love talking about themselves.

There’s so much to share about the most interesting topic around, which is me.”–Maurice Schweitzer While deflection may be an effective conversational alternative, it does have pitfalls. First, successful deflection depends on the level of sophistication of both people in the conversation. The deflector may need some practice before getting it just right and not raising suspicion, and the asker also has a responsibility to recognize deflection and circle back to the question. In Trump’s testier press conferences,

reporters often redirected their questions after his deflection, usually to no avail.

“In our studies, after an individual deflected, it was surprising that the majority of their counterparts never followed up on their initial question, even when they were financially incentivized to do so,” Bitterly noted.

Schweitzer said it’s easy for people to get derailed when a conversation pivots from the key line of inquiry, “especially people who are narcissistic or easily distracted.” The idea of shared conversational responsibility is one that he’s exploring further. He’s currently conducting research into the shared responsibilities in being deceived. For example what responsibilities do potential targets of deception have to ask questions, ask follow-up questions, and verify information?

“If you told a lie of omission, I never asked and that’s more my fault,” he said. “I think deflection is closer to that. I asked, you deflected, and I went along with it. It’s active on your part, but it’s still really my fault.”

Bitterly is also interested in further research on effective business communication strategies.

“We all have information that we would like to protect for completely legitimate reasons, yet the number of methods we are taught for navigating situations where we are asked sensitive questions are surprisingly sparse,” he said. “I’d like to continue to explore other strategies individuals can use for navigating these difficult situations.”

Brand fatigue and brand consistency

By Marketoonist

There’s an adage that “Marketers get tired of their advertising before consumers do.” The same is true for all aspects of a brand. A brand team spends so much time surrounded by the same old brand assets, it can be tempting to change for the sake of change. Marketers are also tempted to leave their mark on a brand the moment they join a new brand team.

There are times to refresh a brand so that it doesn’t grow stale.

But, as ad veteran Robin Wight once put it, “it’s certainly true that clients throw away brand assets too early.” Consumers don’t think about brands nearly as much as the marketers of those brands, and they not only don’t grow tired as quickly, they rely on those brand assets to shop.

The most famous cautionary tale is the Tropicana 2009 packaging redesign, when PepsiCo completely revamped the North American packaging of their largest fruit juice brand, throwing out most of the visual cues that consumers recognized when they shopped. As the creative agency behind the change put it, “We thought it would be important

to take this brand and bring it or evolve it into a more current or modern state.”

Two months later, sales dropped by 20% and Tropicana backtracked, saying “We underestimated the deep emotional bond they had with the original packaging.”

Brand consistency is an underrated value in marketing. And yet it’s that consistency over time that can create brands that are distinctive, memorable, and valuable.

I like this perspective from Prashant Peres at Mondelez in Indonesia: “Great brands are true to what the brand stands for … and keep it relevant. If you do that, you are at the highest order of communication and marketing. It’s very exciting for any marketer to come in and say ‘I’ll change this brand, take it to a new space and leave a mark on it.’ But the hallmark of great marketers is taking a brand to the next level without changing it. Brands are built over years and not campaign on campaign.”

Top brands come to SCAD seeking new ideas, inventions, and business strategies for a changing world. SCADpro delivers.

Tap into our talent bank. scad.edu/scadpro

Brainstorm sessions are great.

But what comes next is what really matters

By Dr. Evans Baiya

There is nothing quite as energizing as a well-run brainstorming session. When I work with clients on innovation projects, the Ideation stage is one of my favorites. There is a distinct energy and creativity generated when a group of people have come together to work toward solving a common problem. When ideas start flowing without constraint, great things are possible.

that will help you broaden your view as well. During this step, ideators also have a chance to explain the thought process behind their original idea and offer clarity. It is important in this step to listen and suspend judgement on the idea’s value for now. Discussion often leads to the generation of more ideas, so remember to return to Step 2 and capture these new ideas in your Bank.

You can think of innovation as an economy of sorts—one that is tied to creating value. Real-world economies are driven by currency, whether that is the dollar, peso, yen, or euro. In innovation, ideas are the currency. Without them, there will never be enough exchange to generate value. This is why ideas are critical for company growth and survival.

STEP 4: IMPROVE IDEAS

Innovative organizations have mastered the generation and growth of ideas until they are fully realized. The key is involving employees. Employees will always be more engaged in innovation and idea management when they know their ideas will actually be heard and put to use. With these seven steps, you and your team can create exponential value from ideas, grow an innovation economy, and master idea management.

STEP 1: GENERATE IDEAS Generation of ideas—a lot of ideas—is a must. This is the most basic value in your innovation economy. It requires consistently setting aside time for yourself and your team to simply come up with ideas. You want to operate like an Idea Factory, constantly churning out ideas and encouraging others on your team to do so too. Practicing idea generation techniques such as brainstorming, data sharing, creative thinking, and experimenting will help make this a habit and lead to endless ideas.

STEP 2: CAPTURE IDEAS For every idea generated, there should be a place to record it for future reference and evaluation. Think of it as your Idea Bank. An idea doesn’t need to be perfect, and, in fact, ideas in their raw form are better. Try to stay away from prequalifying or perfecting ideas and simply work on the discipline of capturing them, no matter the format. Some ideas may be written, recorded, or sketched. Capturing ideas in different formats is encouraged as long as it can be understood and reviewed at a later time. Like my colleague Ron Price always says, “You don’t have to say every idea is a great one. You can say, ‘That’s an idea—great!’ ” There’s no such thing as a bad idea in this stage, only lost ideas that lead to lost value.

Now is the time to judge ideas. From the collaboration that occurred during the preceding stage of discussion, there should be multiple people providing input to improve the original concept. No idea discussed remains the same— exponential value is added, and this is realized during the improvement stage. Your team can now experiment with interconnecting, combining, substituting, subtracting, adding, reversing and modifying multiple ideas or parts of ideas. The key skill here is the ability to ask questions to challenge the conventional understanding of the idea, to go beyond the initial description and make it stronger.

STEP 5: ORGANIZE IDEAS Now that you have a holistic view of the possibilities, it is time to organize your ideas for comparison. By clearly recording what the idea is all about, how the idea can create value for the organization or the individual, which other ideas could contribute, which team members could contribute, and the impact of the idea, you can create an Idea Portfolio to clearly see the value of one idea versus another.

STEP 6: EVALUATE IDEAS With your ideas organized, you can now evaluate an idea against other decision-making metrics such as return on value or return on experience. This step is all about evaluating the idea before committing to it—timing, scope, cost, and benefit ratio all should be considered. Negotiate and justify why the idea is worth pursuing (or not worth pursuing) in comparison to other ideas and priorities. In other words, this step is your decision framework for which ideas to prioritize.

STEP 7: PRIORITIZE IDEAS

STEP 3: DISCUSS IDEAS

This is the commitment stage for any idea. This is where you create a project charter, team, budget, timeline, and roadmap to actually work on the idea. Without this stage an idea dies or is lost in the proverbial forest. Prioritization is not just permission to move forward, it is permission with a clear plan. In this final step, you not only decide to invest in the idea but also determine that your evaluation yielded suitable results and your idea will create value.

This step is the first exposure of ideas to others and where the creation of exponential value begins. In collaborating and conversing with others, you begin investing and growing your idea. They may see the situation from a different perspective

With these seven steps, your idea is ready for action and you can master idea management—and, in turn, master successful innovation. Skip any step, and you risk losing ideas and devaluing your innovation economy.

What if food packaging were carbon-neutral?

Go nature.

Go carton.

Food packaging plays a critical role in getting food safely to consumers around the world. But it can also cause problems for the planet. What if all food packaging came from plant-based materials and didn’t impact the climate? At Tetra Pak, we already have paper-based carton packages with reduced climate impact. But we won’t stop there. Our aim is to create cartons made solely from plant-based materials that are fully renewable, fully recyclable and carbon-neutral. It’s all part of our journey to deliver the world’s most sustainable food package.

Learn more at gonature.tetrapak.com

What Belongs in Your Basic Bundle?

By Stamos Kanellakis

Say you’re planning to watch a movie tonight — you sit down, open the Amazon app, and start searching. Want to watch Marvel’s The Avengers from 2012? That’s free on Amazon Prime. But if you’re interested in the most recent installment in the Avengers’ series, Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Endgame from 2019, that will cost you $3.99 to rent. But not all new movies are rental only, and not all older movies are free. For example, you can watch Eddie Murphy in 2021’s Coming 2 America for free with your Prime membership, but if you want to check out the Murphy classic Beverly Hills Cop from 1984, that’ll cost you an additional $2.99. What gives?

Amazon is known for making very deliberate choices about what to bundle in with a standard Prime membership, when, and for how long. To make these decisions, the company is likely using a metric like cost-per-first-stream — dividing the title’s costs (e.g. production or licensing) by the total number of subscribers streaming a given title — to determine what to offer as standalone versus adding to the basic Prime bundle.

Because the value of shows and movies tends to depreciate, some titles will lose their value after a certain period. At that point, the standalone charge can no longer be justified, so Amazon moves these titles under the standard Prime membership.

This two-step approach to rolling out services is an example of a strategy called biphasic subscription monetization in which 1) businesses roll out novel services as standalone offerings and quickly monetize them by targeting enthusiastic consumers, before 2) adding them to pre-existing bundles consisting of more mature services and monetizing them over longer periods of time with the broader consumer base.

As companies across sectors are going from a productbased to a subscription-based business model — from

Microsoft, Google, and Nike to auto manufacturers, industrial manufacturers, and brick-and-mortar retailers — this strategy is catching on. If done correctly, it can help offset initial development costs of novel offerings, provide companies with quick and actionable feedback on these novel services, and generate positive momentum that drives larger investments in innovation. And as companies continue to add more services to existing subscription bundles, they can justify a progressive increase in subscription fees since the perceived value of the bundle is increasing.

In my experience working with thousands of subscription businesses, I’ve seen three considerations that drive the successful adoption of the biphasic monetization strategy.

First, companies need to prove the benefits of this biphasic monetization strategy by qualifying new services against 13 attributes that make up what I call the Unified Subscription Adoption Model (USAM). I developed the USAM as the first hybrid framework for assessing the end-to-end potential of subscription offerings, combining two widely recognized technology and product adoption models, but adjusting their core attributes to better match the idiosyncrasies of subscription-based offerings. Second, new features/services need to be added over time to maintain or increase the overall price of a given subscription bundle. And lastly, companies need to take into account how susceptible the demand for a given offering is to changes in price.

Let’s dig in with an example to show this biphasic monetization strategy in action.

How Biphasic Subscriptions Work Recently, traditional automakers — alongside software juggernauts including Apple, Google, Amazon, and Baidu — have embarked on a tight race to offer the most advanced

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Let’s explore a simplified example of how that could work.

A hypothetical automaker has already introduced a basic subscription bundle consisting of three car-connected services: road navigation, road assistance, and remote start.

The bundle is offered to all prospective car owners in the form of a subscription for $89 per month. Ten thousand car owners have already subscribed to the basic subscription, generating $890,000 Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) for the automaker.

Let’s assume that the same automaker’s R&D unit has developed two new connected services that are ready to be launched: Over-The-Air software updates (OTA) and SemiAutonomous Driving (SAD).

The marketing department has conducted a market segmentation study according to which, the automakers Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM) consists of a total 10,000 existing drivers, out of which 9,000 are low-income earners and 1,000 are high-income earners. Through various A/B tests conducted in the past, the automaker found out the Price Elasticity of Demand (PED) for the basic bundle is 0.9 (quite elastic). This means that an increase in the overall price of the bundle will result in an almost proportionate decrease in demand. The company also defined the minimum prices of the two services to be $5/month for OTA and $15/month for SAD based on the investment size required to develop each service.

market (past the late majority of the consumer population). In other words, OTA is an existing feature in most if not all cars.

Car owners expect that their car’s software can be updated remotely (i.e. over the air), similarly to how laptops or PCs do. In contrast, SAD appears to be a novel service still in the early adoption phase (early majority of the consumer population). It is widely seen as a nice-to-have feature, not really a necessity.

Step 2: Bundle vs. standalone Let’s start by hypothesizing that the automaker decides to add both services to the existing basic subscription offering.

Approach 1: “All-in” Bundling Strategy Once the automaker adds both services to the existing basic bundle, the subscription fee increases to cover the R&D costs incurred to develop the OTA and SAD services. In consequence, 2,000 subscribers representing 20% of the overall subscriber base cancel their subscriptions. The increased subscription fee is barely enough to offset the subscriber churn, leading to a 2% reduction in the automakers Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) from $890k to $872k.

Let’s think about this dynamic. Once the automaker adds a nice-to-have service to a bundle consisting of basic services and uses that to justify a fee increase, car owners feel like they are asked to pay for a feature they don’t need and never asked for. Since the basic bundle includes services with close substitutes, they won’t hesitate to cancel their subscription.

So, how would the company deploy a biphasic monetization strategy?

Let’s now see how the biphasic monetization strategy can provide a much more profitable alternative. Exhibit 2 shows the impact of adding OTA to the existing basic bundle and launching SAD as a standalone subscription service.

Step 1: Assess the maturity of the new services

Approach 2: Basic Bundle + Stand-Alone Strategy

Companies need to measure the maturity of an offer to determine the overall market readiness for a new service.

The Unified Subscription Adoption Model (USAM) is a hybrid framework for assessing the end-to-end potential of offerings, measuring attributes that will impact potential adoption, including: functionality, reliability, usefulness, usability, efficiency, and desirability.

The OTA service matches closely the overall maturity of the basic bundle already adopted by 10,000 subscribers. By adding it to the bundle, the automaker increases the overall subscription fee to cover the R&D costs. In consequence, a portion of subscribers still cancel but the churn, in this case, is much lower resulting in a net MRR gain.

To use the framework, you measure the service quality attributes by asking a series of core questions. For example, for “Desirability,” the pertinent question is “Does it make the user care?” — and what you are assessing is the measure of positive emotions, such as desire and pleasure, that a service generates for the user. Similarly, for “Usefulness,” the question is “Does it solve real problems?” For each attribute, you rate on a continuum of Low to High and then tally the results for a total score.

If we use this framework for our two new hypothetical connected services, we clearly witness that the two services differ across the board. The first service (OTA) is a very mature service (scoring 55/60 points). In contrast, semi-autonomous driving is more of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) scoring 32/60 points.

The overall service quality is very often a reliable indicator of both market maturity and market penetration. The ratings for OTA indicate the service is well diffused/adopted in the

The gains do not end here though. The manufacturer launches SAD as a standalone subscription at $15/month and targets only those drivers in their subscriber base that demonstrate the greatest willingness/ability to pay for additional features.

The car manufacturer now has two recurring revenue streams. Over time, semi-autonomous driving will mature as a capability as an increasing number of car manufacturers offer it and its overall quality increases. It will eventually be adopted by the early and late majorities of the consumer population. At that point, the standalone subscription fee won’t be justified, forcing the automaker to make the feature part of the basic bundle and, perhaps, using that as a justification for an increase in its subscription fee.

To avoid losing the second revenue stream altogether, the car manufacturer will need to launch a new service as a stand-alone subscription to replace SAD. This process creates a continuous innovation cycle that can help subscription businesses stay competitive while growing their revenue and minimizing risks associated with new launches.

Rebranding: Five Steps to Building a Story of Evolution and Growth

By Chen Guter

As any entrepreneur will tell you, good ideas start with a need.

In nearly a decade, Dropbox hadn’t felt the need to alter its identity. It wasn’t until Dropbox Creative Director Aaron Robbs saw the need to align the brand with how people were actually using it that a rebranding project finally kicked off.

Dropbox had historically cemented its role as an “end of process” product, useful when a project is complete and ready to be stored. In practice, however, Dropbox had long since been used for collaborative processes and has been a major contributor to development and production flows.

In 2017, Dropbox Creative Director Aaron Robbs set out to transform the way the public thought about Dropbox. He intended to reposition it from a static, “heavy” brand that stood for merely storing files and lugging them from one inbox to another, to a dynamic brand, “in motion,” that lives inside work processes and is a partner in development.

At that time, the Cloud storage revolution was already well underway and Dropbox was facing bitter opponents: Google Drive, OneDrive, iCloud... To make matters worse, it was sporting an old-school corporate blue logo that was literally the shape of a box—unmistakably cementing the brand as a storage solution—a place where projects go to die.

It was time for Dropbox to up its game if it was going to stay in the game. And it took Robb’s full brand overhaul to make it market-ready again.

Which brings me to step number one of B2B rebranding.

1. Feel out the market The tech space tends to get crowded. Every company selling a product has dealt with the pains of competing for market share. Companies allocate outrageous resources to help them stand out in the crowd. But such efforts are useless if the market is not ready for your brand.

The market calls the shots. So much so that if the market

isn’t ready for your rebrand, your relaunch efforts will be for naught. Dropbox knew not only how to go about a rebrand but also when to do it.

Before you become discouraged, it doesn’t take a horribly lagging product or a painfully dated brand to set the groundwork for a successful rebrand.

In slightly less dramatic fashion—yet with an equally successful outcome—Israeli task manager Monday launched a rebrand in 2018. Formerly known as Dapulse, the company rolled out its new Monday.com offering without changing anything about its focus and with no alterations to its original offering.

Sometimes, your brand will need a complete repurposing overhaul like Dropbox’s, and sometimes it’ll be just a facelift like Monday’s. As long as you are pitching to a market that is ready for the “new you,” you’re likely to succeed.

2. Go beyond a marketing campaign We are used to thinking about B2B rebranding—all branding, really—as a Marketing initiative quarterbacked by Design.

And though they usually are the immediate suspects that will spearhead and execute the undertaking, they should by no means be the only departments involved. Sales, GTM, and Product should all have pivotal roles in a successful rebrand.

A successful B2B rebranding requires an internal, companywide, soul-searching effort to identify what its product does, whom it is sold to, and why. The new logo and color scheme you choose should say something about the company DNA and its core values. It should also tie into the mission statement.

The hotel industry was hit hard by the emergence of Airbnb, and many hotel chains attempted to take back part of the market share lost to the couch-surfing superstar. Marriott

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responded with the launch of Moxy Hotels in hopes of appealing to Millennial travelers. Radisson did the same with Radisson Red.

pineapple logo. Breaking the mold of financial institutions?

Check. Positioning your brand as friendly and approachable?

Double-check.

In both cases, the rebranding included much more than Marketing. Such enterprise-grade companies require getting buy-in from all departments.

4. Ensure your new B2B brand ‘breathes’

Which brings me to the third step in the rebranding handbook.

3. Lock into an identity

A updated brand needs to reflect where your business is going, not just where it is today. It must be a living, breathing entity, dynamic enough to grow with the company’s aspirations and flexible enough to withstand the winds of change.

What many marketers see as the Herculean task of creating a new brand identity really just comes down to a set of questions that need to circulate in your organization.

Keeping your brand guidelines on tap and asking yourself “Is this on brand?” often will allow the brand to develop comfortably without veering away from the iconic assets that make it recognizable.

Remember the five Ws of storytelling? Rebranding, too, follows a who, what, when, why, and with-whom logic. Answer those questions, and you create your very own brand story.

Ensuring the longevity of a B2B rebrand ties into my fifth and final tip to rebranding success.

But a brand should also have a distinctive tone of voice and style. Like humans, a brand has a set of qualities that define its personality. To uncover a brand’s unique personality, you’ll have to ask a few more questions: If it were a person, what would your brand like to eat? Where would it vacation?

Would it be a casual or formal dresser?

The answers to those questions make up the how of a marketing strategy. They are what the market reacts to when they are met with your collateral or see your social ads, paid campaigns, and emails.

Sharesies, best known as the “nonpretentious investment banking app,” wanted its customers to know the brand was approachable, welcoming, and nonjudgmental. Knowing people’s usual attitude toward financial institutions, it wanted to generate the opposite experience.

In fleshing out its identity, Sharesies settled on a bright pink color palette and rounded lettering topped off with a cute

5. It’s rebranding, not refreshing A proper rebrand is labor-intensive and costly. Given the stakes, many companies attempt to go down a more risk-free route. That is the refresh.

Don’t rush a rebrand. Either do it completely, or don’t do it just yet.

I haven’t gone into detail about the art of choosing a color scheme or agreeing on messaging because neither of those is at the heart of a rebrand. B2B rebranding is so much more than splashing on a fresh coat of paint.

Rebranding is about asking yourself why your brand exists, and having the answer lead your every action. Every other aspect of your brand may change over time, but the reason for your brand’s existence is your North Star—your purpose.

If you haven’t yet settled on a purpose or you are still shaky on whether a rebrand is necessary, you’re better off trying a refresh first.

Hire a Marketing Agency or Hire In-House Marketers: Which Is Right for You?

By Jackie Hermes

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Pre-pandemic, automakers were already facing massive disruption, including driverless cars, electric vehicles, and shared mobility. But COVID-19 dealt another blow: automotive was one of the hardest-hit sectors in 2020, especially in the U.S., where auto sales sank by 15 percent.

In the midst of these unprecedented challenges, however, 118-year-old Ford Motor Company leaned in and began to reinvent itself.

As the virus accelerated, dealerships were forced to close their lots and shift to servicing and selling cars online, while larger supply chain concerns caused shortages in critical parts like microchips, which slowed vehicle production.

In the midst of these unprecedented challenges, however, 118-year-old Ford Motor Company leaned in and began to reinvent itself. Under the leadership of two new executives— Jim Farley as CEO and Suzy Deering as CMO—the company saw an opportunity for business transformation and started mapping out a strategy.

Questioning everything from its organizational silos to its customer experience, Ford made difficult decisions to put technology at the center of its business and get ahead of auto consumers’ evolving needs.

While still in the early stages of its journey, Ford has developed something of a blueprint for auto brands of the future. Recently, I spoke to Farley and Deering about the company’s transformation. They shared three key changes they’re focused on.

1. REIMAGINING WHAT AUTO BRANDS DO The notion of business transformation has been a buzzword for decades, but for years, it wasn’t an urgent reality for Ford.

Following the Great Recession, the company was profitable.

Then along came the pandemic, and its significance accelerated.

“Events of 2020 made it clear that modernization is required to be a sustainable company,” explains Farley. A critical factor to modernizing has been disrupting its organizational model to aid the shift toward vehicle electrification and other digitally connected products. Since consumers expect more safety and convenience from automakers, the future of the auto industry will increasingly exist outside the doors of the vehicle.

According to Farley, this has required Ford to “unglue” its organization to allow for a new way of being. “The biggest transformation for us is to a software services-dominated company and brand,” he explains. “We have to invest in electric architectures and build software know-how in the company. And we need to integrate that know-how in ways we’ve never had to before.”

Such a fundamental pivot, Suzy Deering acknowledges, impacts company culture. “We have to make sure that we bring people along with us, and at the same time, give them the space to fail. There is strength in knowing that change is not going to be easy, but we’re going to do it together, and we’re going to look forward.”

2. DRIVING FORWARD

THE

CONNECTED

CAR

EXPERIENCE

By committing to look forward, the automaker is building on Henry Ford’s original vision – that every American consumer can own a vehicle – by reimagining what vehicle ownership looks like. Through software and other technology, Ford is working to ensure that it’s a fully connected, always-on experience.

“For so long, cars have really been isolated from the rest of people’s lives. We can change that by making them digital products,” Farley explains. To facilitate this shift, Ford has tapped into strategic partners like Google and is integrating software into its vehicles. Beginning in 2023, for example, millions of Ford and Lincoln models will be powered by the Android operating system, with Google apps and services built in.

Beyond offering drivers more assistance and convenience, connected vehicles also give Ford the ability to deepen its customer relationships. “When we have the ability to update our products dynamically with software, the customer relationship is no longer episodic. It’s every day,” says Farley.

3. TRANSFORMING THE CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MODEL To deliver on its vision of an always-on customer experience, Ford is also evolving how it approaches relationship-building.

While many automakers stick to a traditional acquisition model to attract consumers through ads and rebates, Ford is bringing customer relationships to the forefront by shifting to a loyalty-based model.

“Another big transition for us as a company—and an industry—is to stop being obsessed with conquest, and start putting all our resources into taking care of the customers who already love the brand and own the product,” Farley explains. “This is a model that is available because of the always-on nature of digital. Our products and services are now integrated.”

We want to know our customers well enough to meet their needs while they’re in the vehicle, while they’re outside the vehicle, and before they even think about buying a vehicle Gearing marketing efforts to meet people’s ongoing needs in a more personalized way is critical to Ford’s loyalty-based push, because, as Deering points out, “The customer expects us to know them.”

For Deering and her team, this means relying more than ever on first-party data and signals to create an ecosystem that nurtures deeper relationships. “We want to know our customers well enough to meet their needs while they’re in the vehicle, while they’re outside the vehicle, and before they even think about buying a vehicle from us,” she explains.

While Deering and Farley both readily admit that Ford’s business transformation is a years-long journey, they’re committed to playing the long game and continuing to drive brand love and loyalty through the twenty-first century.

Thomais Zaremba is the director of automotive at Google. He focuses on partnering with the automotive industry to help grow their business and utilize the power of Google to transform their business models for the future.

Consumer Advertising Fatigue and Solutions for Brands to Run Successful Ad Campaigns

By Stephen Rapier

Everywhere you go and look, consumers are swamped by ads that tell them to buy this, watch this, subscribe today, and how the product can improve their life. The digital world opened doors for new advertising tactics to expose consumers to more ads. In 2021, the average person is estimated to see between 6,000 to 10,000 ads every day – and consumers are increasingly becoming ad fatigued. With the internet, social media, streaming services, digital advertising, and traditional advertising tactics, consumers are being bombarded with ads. And marketers and advertisers must ask themselves, how successful are the ads?

result the advertiser was seeking.

A recent consumer survey found that 3 out of 4 social media users think there are too many ads and dislike them. I myself have grown tired of seeing the same ads over and over on my streaming service. In fact, the ad began to annoy me and after seeing the ad several times I wanted nothing to do with the brand or product. With consumers seeing thousands of ads every day, brands must ensure their ads stands out, mitigate the negative perceptions, and drive successful results.

For example, Nike’s Just Do It ads show marathon runners, soccer players, and other sport enthusiasts using their products and run a variety of commercials during the same time.

As society has navigated through the COVID pandemic, we all experienced changes to our lifestyles. Marketers and advertisers need to take these changes into account and acknowledge how different the industry will be in the postCOVID world.

One area of the ad industry that saw increases was connected TV – and this segment is prone to ad fatigue. According to a study published by Statista, “binge-viewing” multiple episodes of a television series or movies in one sitting is more common. As a result, consumers often must endure sitting through advertising spots repeated throughout each episode – which can be less effective advertising tactic. Marketing and advertisers can avoid ad fatigue with three new tactics: Know your customers and their behaviors.

Binge watching is a new behavior that marketers and advertisers must consider with their advertising campaign. A Schmidt & Eisend Study (2015) found that an ideal number of impressions needed to achieve advertising’s objectives ranged from 5-10 over a set period of time, such as a month.

However, they notably found that the growth curve of awareness and positive attitudes fueled by impressions became an inverse U in which perceptions were negatively affected as the target market became fatigued with the same message over, and over, and over again. As such, while the target market was highly aware of the campaign, its awareness turned negative thereby impairing any positive

Create a tiered approach in which multiple creative concepts are incorporated into the campaign over time.

For instance, in terms of radio advertising, multiple 60-second radio spots should be recorded as part of a campaign.

Similarly, an effective search engine marketing strategy on Google should incorporate not just three key words and one ad, but a pool of key words and corresponding ads that will rotated in response to a specific key word search. Brands can also create multiple ads that share the same message.

Lately, Chick-Fil-A launched a series of commercials for their #thelittlethings, which offer multiple creatives that often run within the same hour. These successfully help against consumer ad fatigue and keep the consumer engaged.

Track and monitor progress.

Marketers and advertisers should consider embedding appropriate tracking mechanisms into each ad capable of assessing its response rate. For instance, a steaming, print, or outdoor ad may incorporate a unique toll-free number and URL that allows for the measurement of its response rate over time in comparison to other ads.

These insights may also be supplemented with periodic research studies intended to track target market awareness and perceptions related to specific ads. For instance, intercepts may be conducted at retail locations to gauge the shopper’s awareness and perceptions of different ads promoting a sale.

When combined, these offer the opportunity to make realtime assessments gauging the merit of each advertisement, its relative impact on target market awareness and perceptions, and its potential for advertising fatigue.

As a result of the pandemic and lifestyle changes, the precovid tactics must evolve for organizations to be successful.

Advertising fatigue is a new challenge the industry must overcome and address to avoid negative perceptions of the brand’s advertising.

Regardless of whether it is digital advertising or traditional advertising, marketers and advertising can continue to successfully use ads by knowing their target consumer and their behaviors, develop a tiered approach to avoid consumers having to review the same ad within a short time period, and appropriately tracking and adjusting ads.

How to develop brand identity in a fast-moving digital marketplace

By Mel Dixon

Brand identity lies at the heart of all your marketing efforts. Get your brand positioning right and it can inspire thousands of winning marketing campaigns.

When was the last time you seriously considered who you were? Maybe it’s time...

Our new series of blog posts are inspired by the University of Glasgow Online MSc Marketing programme. Today we examine brand development in the digital age.

Over the last twenty years we’ve seen a rapid growth in how companies market their products and services. Businesses big and small are in an arms race to create the best content

It’s about purpose.

The most successful marketing campaigns started with a thorough understanding of brand. It’s about knowing who your consumers are, what they value and how they connect with you.

across the digital world.

A few questions will help point you in the direction of discovering your true brand identity:

But wait!

• What service or product do you provide?

Before launching the next fusillade of content, perhaps you

• How does it benefit customers?

should take a second look at your brand’s identity. Without a strong brand, marketing is a runaway train on broken tracks. Or like a bull in a china shop to use a more familiar metaphor (here, UK readers will be reminded of the “The Money Calm Bull”).

This begs the question: how do you establish a strong brand identity?

How to pinpoint your brand identity The idea of branding derives from the practice of branding cattle to differentiate one from the other. But in the world of marketing it’s about much more than standing out from the competition…

• Who are your customers?

• What does your product represent to your customers in a deeper sense?

• What are your company’s values?

• What is your company’s culture?

Addressing these questions will help you get to the root of why you exist. Only when you’re equipped with a guiding philosophy can you have a strong basis for creating winning marketing strategies now and into the future.

A strong sense of brand ensures that marketing creativity is unleashed in a focused and strategic way. It’s also the

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foundation for consistent – and consistently powerful – marketing across every platform.

Brand management is just one of the courses included in the University of Glasgow Online MSc Marketing programme.

Delivered by the triple-accredited Adam Smith Business School, it gives students the tools to succeed now and into the future. Discover how the programme can expand your digital marketing expertise.

Rising to the challenge of branding in a digital age “To be in business today, means one interaction at a local restaurant can change the face of a global brand. Customer service, once an exercise done one-on-one, now happens in public. The online world has blurred with real life, making them one in the same. Today, we learn the truth about nonethical businesses practices with ease, while at the same time those seeking to deceive continually have new tools to do so.”

– Scott Stratten, best-selling business author and keynote speaker talks branding in an age of disruption.

Once brand identity is established, it needs to be reflected in how the business operates and reinforced across all your marketing channels.

Today’s marketing channels require a level of vigilance never before required. Companies cannot afford to dip in and out of social media when it suits them, unlike traditional forms of media comms. Your consumers, indeed the wider public, will be discussing your brand whether you’re present or not.

The question is: will they highlight your brand in a positive or negative light?

The answer of course, will depend upon the quality of your product and whether you live up your stated ideals. If you claim to offer friendly customer service you’d better not have a grumpy advisor taking calls or responding to emails. If you claim to be a green company, you’d better not throw perfectly good products in the trash (we’re looking at you Amazon).

But let’s not only dwell on the dangers. There is great potential for positive outcomes too. If your bold mission statements are supported by the product and service you offer, happy customers will amplify your message. Social media teams will have good news to share and there’ll be plenty of enthusiastic case studies to display across all your channels.

It’s also an opportunity to learn. Is there something they’re telling us about the brand that we don’t already know? Are there useful critiques which we can take onboard?

This information can be used to evolve the product offering

and brand messaging. Another reason why all good business leaders should seek out the views of the marketing department.

Great branding looks like this…

Here are two examples of businesses which have got brand identity down to a fine art. One a confectionary giant, the other a small, but rapidly growing, business #1 Kit Kat The famous chocolate covered wafer sticks nailed its branding right from the start. The version we recognise today was originally launched in 1934 by Rowntrees after a worker at its York factory put a suggestion in a recommendation box for a snack that “a man could take to work in his pack”.

In 1958, Donald Gilles, the executive at JWT Orland, created the iconic advertising line “Have a Break, Have a Kit Kat”.

That simple strapline has been the cornerstone of the brand ever since. Wherever you see the brand, you’ll see the strapline. It was a big bang moment for the brand, launching thousands of marketing campaigns which continue to this day.

But that doesn’t mean the brand has stood still. It’s always developing different flavour offerings and more recently launched a new vegan version in order to keep the brand fresh and relevant. Its current owner, Nestle, boasts of its ethical credentials in its “Ethical Cocoa Plan” (though some socially aware consumers may well scoff at this claim!). #2 Imperfect Foods The premise of this company taps into rising concerns

over food waste. Launched in 2015, Imperfect Foods is a US company which allows people to shop for “imperfect” groceries which would previously have ended up in the trash can. Sustainability is the company’s reason for being and not a cynical marketing ploy.

Imperfect Foods offers useful insights into food waste, exploring the scale of the problem, and how to solve it. It even highlights the challenges the business faces itself. You get the sense that the brand and its customers are on a journey of mutual interest. What better way to build brand loyalty than through genuine purpose?

Environmentally friendly food without paying a premium: now that’s a mission statement to envy.

Perfect your brand, unleash your potential Brand identity is the launchpad for successful start-ups and a gift that keeps giving for multi-national corporations. If you take the time to consider you brand and uncover its true reason for being, you too can improve the results of your marketing and the prospects for ongoing business success.

Would you like to upgrade your marketing expertise and enhance your career path? Brand management is taught alongside a full range of new and traditional marketing disciplines in the Online MSc Marketing programme at the University of Glasgow.

Delivered by the triple-accredited Adam Smith Business School, it explores the latest topics from analytics to user experience, along with core marketing essentials. Find out how you can unlock new opportunities in your marketing career.

‘Change Without Story Is A Mandate, Change With Story Is Purpose’: Why Marketing And Comms Execs Are Being Tapped For Chief-Of-Remote Roles

By Marylou Costa

That coincides with a 147% jump in jobs advertised as remote in the U.K. at the end of last year, according to online jobs marketplace Adzuna, and 42% of U.S. startup founders have said they will set up remotely.

Cimpress is one of a number of companies like Facebook, Dropbox, Okta, LinkedIn, LogMeIn and more that have recently hired specific leadership for remote working — a role remote-first software company GitLab claims to have pioneered.

And like Cimpress, Gitlab’s head of remote, Darren Murph, sits within the marketing department, which also includes a whole team allocated to owning and telling the company’s remote story.

Companies shouldn’t assume a head of remote is a HR role, Murph said. For those with a “solid level of remote fluency”, a head of remote may thrive in marketing and communications.

Their core responsibility will be to evangelize new ways of working both internally and externally, he added — and storytelling is crucial, especially in the midst of the hotly tipped “Great Resignation”.

remote.

“More companies will be sharing their lessons on remote/ hybrid, and much of that will require marketing support,” said Lars Schmidt, founder of executive search consultancy Amplify, and author of “Redefining HR.” Hema Crockett, co-founder of on-demand HR consultancy Gig Talent, believes an effective head of remote will communicate with all facets of the business, especially HR, when it comes to engagement, retention, total rewards and other facets of culture. “Without this, strategies can look disjointed and fragmented,” she added.

However, Laurel Farrer, founder of remote working consultancy Distribute and the Remote Work Association, recommended companies analyze their requirements first.

“Do you need someone to advocate for your remote practices externally as a marketing tool to attract talent or promote your remote-friendly product? Or do you need someone to maintain your remote operations with a focus on employee experience?” she asked.

“Change without story is a mandate, change with story is purpose,” said Murph. “For firms making the remote transition, this becomes an immediate part of their identity.”

Conveying the “why” of a firm’s remote transition, makes senior marketing and communication leaders ideally suited to pivot into heads-of-remote roles, he added.

“The former will lead you to hire a candidate with marketing expertise. The latter should be a virtual operations expert.

If marketing your organization’s remote value proposition is essential to growth, having a head of remote that focuses on external advocacy, through speaking engagements and content development, will help you stay relevant and attract top talent.”

Marketing and communications execs are also getting the nod from HR and remote-work experts as the next chiefs of

Yet there is also a counter-argument that heads of remote are most effective operating across multiple functions.

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53 “Communication plays an important role in ensuring remote workers feel integrated, but leaving it only to comms and marketing will fail to unlock all the benefits of remote working,” said Morten Bruun, North America managing director of freelance talent management platform Worksome.

real time, yet produces a more efficient output. This doesn’t mean it’s slow, however. By aligning as a team at the start of a project and having clear deliverables, everyone knows exactly what they need to provide and when. How they go about it is up to them.

Certainly, the role’s biggest challenges may not necessarily be tackled by marketing and communications skills. For instance, a newly hired head of remote has to quickly get up to speed on the business, teams and past operating structures to steer their strategy, according to Amplify’s Schmidt.

What are the pitfalls of adopting asynchronous communications?

“They also have to understand what messages have been sent to employees, and integrate employee sentiment into the design. That’s a lot to digest while under pressure to deliver ideas and strategies ASAP,” he added.

Either way, a good head of remote needs a proven track record of leading change, as Cimpress’ McKinlay acknowledged — making the hottest, new, corporate-leadership role potentially one of the hardest to get.

3 Questions with Arthur Mamedov, COO, TheSoul Publishing Explain why you banned meetings and what the result has been.

We have more than 2,000 employees and 80% of that talent is remote. Due to the way we’re structured, we rely a lot on asynchronous communications. The goal of the no-meetings policies is to make sure everyone stays productive, minimizes distractions, and spends their time on focused work. Because of the many different time zones, in-person or zoom meetings aren’t just challenging to arrange — they’re ineffective for us.

Meetings are much like large conferences: Speaking live to a group of people is never entirely efficient. Some people might get distracted in the moment. For others, the information may not be relevant, or might not be ready to digest well on the spot. Time may run out. Meetings can easily become a passive activity that wastes participants’ time. It can also be challenging for listeners to focus for long periods. Finally, the flexible working that many of us have become accustomed to, doesn’t always fit around conventional working hours.

and

Many companies are understandably concerned that asynchronous comms will remove the human element. We find the opposite is true. When people work together, they tend to seek opportunities to socialize and communicate both on and around the project. Naturally, we’ve received feedback from new employees that the no-meeting model is unusual and a bit stressful in the beginning. But once they get into it, they feel liberated because their productivity skyrockets.

For most managers, having a reduced ability to interact face-to-face with their team and reports can be confused with mismanagement or loss of control. In our company, our established corporate culture and well functioning processes proves that the opposite is true. While it sounds simple, rolling out a no-meeting policy takes foresight and planning as well as bearing in mind that how employees communicate is part of your corporate culture too.

Number crunch •

15% of 1,000 U.S. workers said they would take a 25% pay cut at their current or next prospective employer if that employer offered them the option of working remotely full-time, and 65% would take a 5% pay cut

•

[Source of data: Breeze survey.]

•

45% of 1,200 working parents feel penalized for focusing on their families during the global pandemic.

•

[Source of data: Qualtrics and Boardlist study.]

What else we’ve covered •

Offices are getting a full makeover as businesses embrace the concept of collaboration hubs over traditional layouts, and many have downsized their real-estate as a result.

And when it comes to decisions around reallocating capital that would’ve spent on office space some experts believe they should be oriented around “work as a set of activities, not as a place.”

•

From tunes that provided the backdrop for kitchen discos during lockdown to podcasts that made sense of the tumultuous political climate, a playlist for the pandemic has emerged. We asked ad execs to share what tracks meant the most to them through lockdowns.

•

The pandemic has required a lot of creativity and new types of energy from employees in order to be successful in their jobs while working from home. But for those on the job hunt, capturing the attention of hiring managers and recruiters has required a whole other level of resourcefulness.

Why is asynchronous communication so important as a method of working in remote and hybrid setups?

Asynchronous communication is about removing methods of communication that reduce transparency. We all know how frustrating it can be when a member of the team holds key information and it’s not possible to reach them. That’s why we’ve banned internal emails as well as meetings. By sharing all relevant information on a mutual platform, everyone can access it as needed. You can’t expect people to perform as a team, when they’re not all on the same page. We find asynchronous communication actually boosts collaboration and productivity. When we take away the expectation of an immediate response, employees who rely on a last-minute surge of activity to get a task over the line are likely to come unstuck. It’s about collaboration that doesn’t happen in

synchronous

Marketing imperatives for a cookieless world ByRanga Somanathan

In the pre-digital era, as long back as we can go, we have known that, for one to sell, they needed to understand the buyer; what drives them, where they are and how best to reach them.

Reaching the audience at the most relevant moment was in many ways delivering the competitive advantage to brand

marketers.

Marquee FMCG companies spent millions of dollars to define their audience, laser targeting and fine-tuning their prime prospects even as they laid out their media strategies.

In this world, the signals analyzed to arrive at the prime

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prospects were from point-in-time studies like usage and attitude research, household panel data, and large-scale target group indexes. As most of these studies were operating on a representative sample, the resultant estimates were probabilistic in nature and directional.

As digital became more pervasive, audiences were leaving large-scale footprints in their digital sands of time. These signals were captured by what we have come to call ‘cookies’.

Cookies are small software codes placed on the individual’s devices by websites visited by the user. These software codes keep a record of audience behavior and interest, allowing for precision targeting and brand communication.

In theory, this should have been the panacea for brand marketers to deliver targeted and relevant messages to their prospective buyers.

Did the cookies live up to their promise?

The answer lies somewhere in between “maybe yes” and a resounding “no”.

Businesses that fulfilled a sale online were better equipped to leverage cookies to improve their marketing effectiveness.

Most of their work, however, was at the mid- to bottom-end of the funnel. Rather than first building brand salience, they used intent and behavior signals captured by cookies and converted them into buyers.

Businesses whose fulfillment happened offline, in brick and mortar environments, however, have struggled to fully leverage insights that could have been mined from the cookie data. They tapped into the cookie functionality more as a regulator of hygiene measures like reach and frequency. In most cases, their audience definition is led by offline signals and limited to surrogate variables of demographic segments.

As such, the impact of cookies in the marketing world has been a mixed bag.

Add to this the fact that upwards of 50% of digital ad spend worldwide (this figure is estimated to be close to 70% in South East Asia) is within the ‘user ID’ environments like Facebook, Google and Amazon. These platforms can curate insights using individual IDs, thanks to unique identifiers like email, device ID or mobile number, rendering cookies somewhat redundant.

What’s the big deal about the cookie apocalypse?

•

Marketers, via their ad tech solutions, will lose the ability to place a cookie on environments other than their own.

•

This limits their understanding of what audiences are doing outside their website. They will not be able to retarget, nor have effective frequency caps, or be able to attribute seamlessly across the overall online ecosystem.

•

They will retain the ability to place a cookie on users’ devices when visiting websites owned by the brand, and will be able to mine insights from this sliver of the audience base.

•

However, if done well, the scale at which one could

collect audience behavior data will still be significantly larger than when done offline through consumer contact research.

When Chrome, which commands a major market share amongst web browsers, shuts down third-party cookies from 2023, it will have broadly brought down the curtain on this type of audience tracking. Safari and Firefox have already blocked the placement of third-party cookies via their platforms.

What are the implications of a third-party cookieless world on the industry?

Consumers: It is not going to be an ad-less environment.

Marketers will still place ads on websites. The difference will be that the exposure limit might go away, more irrelevant ads might get shown to the audiences. The pendulum might swing from more meaningful to more irritable brand experiences. On the upside, they might not feel the creepiness of brands following them eerily across the sites visited by them.

Brands: Sophisticated marketers will attempt a shift to contextual and moment-based communication – a bit of time travel by brand custodians to the pre-internet era, where passion group targeting and focus on context might resurrect. There will likely be a pivot from the “bottom of the funnel” performance optimization to “top of the funnel” preference strategies.

As the levers at the lower funnel weaken, it will become imperative to move the needle to build brand salience and affinity. Bringing the right audience to their owned website, capturing first-party data, building a strong CRM capability, and recalibrating emphasis on performance media to performance creative.

The emergence of a third-party cookieless world presents an opportunity for brand marketers to truly own the consumer journey via meaningful and relevant communication strategies.

Publishers: There is a high risk of advertising flow petering off and moving into environments rich in first-party audience data like Google, Facebook and Amazon.

The open exchange, which thrived on the promise of efficient targeting using third-party cookies, will have the biggest impact. Publishers had abdicated their advertising sales to programmatic platforms and were riding the digital wave.

They’ll need to pivot to building quality content, improving the user experience, enhancing stickiness, and – most importantly – revisit their commercial and monetization model to create better value for brands.

Publishers have to create meaningful environments for brands to engage their audiences effectively and efficiently to remain relevant as the (third-party) cookie crumbles.

With third-party cookies, at the very best, marketers were “Dunkin-in-the-dark”. The shift in focus from third-party to first-party cookies, embracing contextual advertising, and building robust CRM will be key imperatives for the marketing renaissance and to bring the advertising world back from a marketing dystopia.

Define the Need Before You Bleed: Marketing Rigor Can Reduce Start-Up Failure

By Donovan Neale-May

As the debate around sustainability becomes ever more urgent, packaging is one area where brands can make a big difference, says Jose Gorbea of HP Graphic Arts.

It’s fair to say that most of us wanted to have superpowers when we were children. From invisibility, to breathing underwater, flying or immense strength, we looked to emulate the heroes of our comic books, cartoons or movies.

My children are going through that magical time now, and one thing that struck me recently, when watching a Marvel re-run, was the strong morality and sense of purpose behind these figures. The incredible powers come with immense responsibility.

The same can be said of the world’s businesses. We too have the power – but also the responsibility – to effect change.

Not only do the majority of consumers (51%) want to buy more sustainably, but 68% of them say that they rely on brands to act as leaders in delivering positive social and environmental outcomes in wider society. That’s a huge remit. But crucially, brands are realising that packaging is a key area where they can make a difference – evaluating how it is produced, used and disposed of, but also, as a platform to communicate directly with customers and drive positive behaviour change.

The packaging problem The challenge is one primarily of production and waste.

Carbon output in manufacturing processes is disturbing the delicate equilibrium of the planet’s ecosystem, and collectively we need to cut 65% of global emissions this decade if we are to avert climate catastrophe. Meanwhile, packaging waste is polluting our coastlines, clogging waterways and, according to the World Economic Forum, costing the global economy a staggering $120bn every year.

But packaging is necessary. It remains an important part of how we safely and hygienically transport products around the globe. But we can – and must – do more to reduce the impact that this has on the planet. It’s not just a challenge for the supply chain, it’s an issue for the entire value chain, and it’s an issue that touches almost every sector.

Digital at the forefront of delivering sustainable innovation Digital printing uses technology to transform the outdated and clunky process of analogue printed packaging. By digitizing the process, it removes cumbersome stages, dramatically improving speed to market and removing the need for minimum order quantities.

The secret to cutting packaging waste is that with a faster print-run, you only produce what you need, without creating

unnecessary excess. And digital print unlocks both efficiencies in cost and time. It can vary by brand, but a typical example would see analogue printing cycles of 6-8 weeks reduced to 1-2 weeks, simply because you don’t need to calibrate or produce much of the physical materials (plates and cylinders) used in the printing of packaging.

That is really powerful when it comes to building a more sustainable future for packaging. Digital printing… …reduces supply chain waste by up to 26%1… …and cuts the process’ carbon footprint by anywhere between 65-80%2 And it does this while allowing you to print on sustainable, water-based and/or compostable inks3, and on sustainable, biodegradable, organic and compostable materials.

Packaging as a platform to drive positive behaviour change Brands have the opportunity to go beyond efficiencies and use digital printed packaging to strengthen consumer engagement and drive sustainable behaviour change, all while accelerating sales.

Brand marketers may sometimes feel disconnected from the sustainability dialogue within business, but together with sustainability and supply chain leaders, they have the ability to influence massive internal and external change, showing how packaging innovation can be good for planet, people and profit. Take Hershey’s for example: with #HerShe the confectionery company used digital print to create a truly creative and engaging marketing campaign to celebrate women and encourage an important gender conversation – all while digitally printing its packaging in a more sustainable way and reducing impact on the environment.

Sustainability and brands’ role in tackling the biggest challenges we face is truly all encompassing. It involves every facet of a business. And packaging is where many of these leaders can come together to drive real change and impact.

Brands have a powerful voice and field of influence and by leading by example on digital packaging innovation, they can not only reduce their impact on the environment but be heroes of change and inspire others to take positive action as well.

Jose Gorbea is taking part in a WARC Talks webinar, Unpacking creative effectiveness’ best kept secret, on Wednesday 28th July (2:00PM BST; 9:00AM EST; 18:00PM PST), where he will discuss how brands from all over the world are using digitally printed packaging to drive sustainable impact and growth through creative campaigns.

TIPS FOR A GOOD NIGHT’S SLEEP FOR B2B CMOS

By Rhoan Morgan

Like many other marketing and business leaders, I have had my fair share of sleepless nights because a challenge or upcoming initiative consumed my mind. Last month, I looked at the top five challenges keeping B2B CMOs up at night. This month, my goal is to help marketing leaders and practitioners get a better night’s rest.

In this conclusion to my two-part series, I share solutions to overcome these challenges, launch successfully into the second half of 2021 and be ready for a successful 2022.

B2B marketing leaders and practitioners have adjusted to the new business environment and will need to remain diligent.

Not only must they dedicate resources and technology that will allow them and their team to devise ideas and initiatives around already-proven tactics, they must launch new initiatives that will set them apart.

Actionable Tips: •

human engagements.

Think Outside the Box With Your Marketing Strategy The pandemic made it impossible for companies to do things the same way and expect favorable outcomes. The development of new, innovative marketing strategies to drive demand, engage buyers and result in revenue was not only necessary but critical. While a more stable environment may be on the horizon in some industries, marketing innovations, taking some calculated risks, and keeping up the current momentum will remain central to marketers’ continued success.

Dig deeper into the customer experience to create more

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Get even more out of your technology and data by creating experiences that are more responsive and personalized, which builds trust.

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Improve content to better align and support the decision making and purchasing processes and the challenges that your buyers face.

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Double down on analytics and marketing attribution to ensure that every dollar is well invested.

Outpace the Competition With Content Innovation The competitive landscape for marketers continues to intensify with each passing year. Marketing leaders need to expand and penetrate new markets and gain net-new clients, in addition to furthering relationships with their existing customer base.

CMOs can position their brands as industry leaders by engaging their audience with relevant, innovative, engaging content that the buyer can use to learn and advance themselves as well as your offering within their organization.

I’ve seen our B2B clients engage the most elusive of audiences and increase their engagement by 30% by generating timely, valuable and educational content. Your target audiences are looking through a myriad of content resources when conducting research — yours and your competition’s. By investing in the development of exceptional thought-leadership content, you are providing something of real value. Consider how you will align your content to the buyer’s unique needs and share it in different media to make your message easy to consume and promote internally as the buyer’s interest intensifies.

Actionable Tips: •

Consider and plan for both the message and the medium in your content marketing strategies.

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Matrix your content by the customer’s journey and try to flip your image of content marketing to see things from the customer’s experience (this takes time to really get right — you may fall short if you just use your instinct or what you already know).

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Move content from afterthought to forethought. As we see clients making this shift, they are reaping the rewards of this approach.

Report on your content’s performance at every stage and step, from every perspective.

Differentiate With Customer Experience Within the next several years, customer experience (CX) will continue to emerge as a primary differentiator. In our day-today lives, we tend to spend our money with the companies that provide us with the best buying experience. Your customers are no different. It’s their experience with your business and its products or services that makes the difference.

To achieve an Amazon-like experience that keeps customers coming back, marketing must step up as the leader of CX. We call this the marketing-led customer experience (MLCX).

MLCX supports a more cohesive and intuitive experience by placing the customer journey in the hands of the CMO, in partnership with every customer-facing team within their organization.

Power your business’s MLCX through a marketing tech stack capable of generating, managing and protecting meaningful, accurate and trustworthy data that informs and supports the entire journey. If you effectively tap into the transformative power of data collection methods, integration and analytics,

those insights will help you better know your buyer and deliver a customer experience that deepens loyalty and drives conversions.

Actionable Tips: •

Improve how you use your website and other online channels to capture more behavioral data.

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Ensure that your practices are compliant with all global regulations.

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Focus on what you really need to create a truly noteworthy experience for your audience (sometimes less is more) and enable solid reporting.

The impulse for some companies during a downturn is to find the easiest areas to cut expenses and start slashing. While sometimes unavoidable, these cuts can come with unexpected repercussions for your business and your customers. Be proactive about impending budget changes.

To support your go-forward planning, take a strategic assessment of your initiatives and in-house costs. Cut any initiatives that yield little to no results, like live events during a pandemic. Keep doing the essentials, like optimizing your processes. Assess where you can add in some of those innovative, high-yield initiatives mentioned above. The Cut, Hold, Accelerate Decision Matrix is a great resource to support you in this process.

Prove Marketing’s Success With Attribution Even as many sectors begin to recover from the pandemic, CMOs will continue to be expected to do more with less.

They will have to account for the effectiveness of every dollar spent and be able to quantify the benefits of their marketing initiatives.

For C-suite executives, revenue attribution provides hard evidence and confirmation of the important contributions of marketing and allows marketers to connect their activities to revenue. It allows marketers to extend their reach beyond brand equity and engagement. It provides a unique opportunity to examine both lagging and leading indicators, as it allows for faster decision making and execution.

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Ensure your data is reporting ready by properly managing it, from acquisition to augmentation.

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Maintain an organized and integrated tech stack to pull and leverage data from all your organization’s sources to provide attribution reporting.

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Create a 360 degree view of the customer that supports your initiatives and ties back into analytics.

I can’t guarantee you won’t still experience restlessness from time to time, but understanding today’s challenges, analyzing changes and developing strategies to help turn the dial are all essentials to success and a better night’s sleep.

Rhoan is the co-founder and CEO of DemandLab, an agency she launched in 2009 in response to the disruptive impact of technology in marketing. She is a leading authority on marketing-led customer experience and continues to explore next-generation technologies and analytics that accelerate revenue, deliver valuable customer insights.

A meeting of minds. A mating of malts.

The venue was the eclectic Library at Address Boulevard, Downtown Dubai. The ambience was understated elegance. The meeting of senior thought leaders from diverse industry verticals, the first in the CEO Meet series, was a class act. The team at the Library put on a grand serving and the special edition cocktails made fluid by Glenfiddich took the evening to a new high.

Here are some candid moments captured from the evening - A Meeting of Distilled essenCEO! The CEO Meet series is an ISD Global thought feedership initiative and is being planned as a monthly meeting of heterogeneous mindsets having a homogenous vision of making things better.

Book,

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Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action (Int’l Edit.)

By Simon Sinek Why are some people and organizations more innovative, more influential, and more profitable than others? Why do some command greater loyalty from customers and employees alike?

Even among the successful, why are so few able to repeat their successes over and over?

Unfu*k Yourself: Get Out of Your Head and into Your Life

By Gary John Bisho

Joining the ranks of The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, You Are a Badass, and F*ck Feelings is this refreshing, BS-free self-empowerment guide that offers an honest, no-nonsense, tough-love approach to help you move past self-imposed limitations.

Sinker Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

By James Clear No matter your goals, Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for improving - every day.

James Clear, one of the world’s leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results.

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

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

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

Power Branding: Leveraging the Success of the World’s Best Brands

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

By Steve McKee

Marketing Made Simple: A Step-by-Step StoryBrand Guide for Any Business

Identity Designed: The Definitive Guide to Visual Branding

By Donald Miller Based on proven principles from Building a StoryBrand , this 5-part checklist is the ultimate resource for marketing professionals and business owners as they cultivate a sales funnel that flows across key customer touchpoints to effectively develop, strengthen, and communicate their brand’s story to the marketplace. In this book, you will learn

Written by best-selling writer and renowned designer David Airey, Identity Designed formalizes the process and the benefits of brand identity design and includes a substantial collection of high-caliber projects from a variety of the world’s most talented design studios.

Every one of the largest, most successful corporations were, at some point, mere startups.

McKee explains what enables some companies to growbigger and better, while others stumble along year after year, running but never winning the race. The difference is that the biggest and best brands aren’t slaves to conventional marketing wisdom.

By David Airey

groupisd.com

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Thinking with type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students

By Ellen Lupton The best-selling Thinking with Type in a revised and expanded second edition:Thinking with Type is the definitive guide to using typography in visual communication. Ellen Lupton provides clear and focused guidance on how letters, words, and paragraphs should be aligned, spaced, ordered, and shaped.

The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles

By Steven Pressfield

THE ICARUS DECEPTION: The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly? [Audiobook, Unabridged] [Audio CD] Seth Godin By aa

Do the Work: Overcome Resistance and Get Out of Your Own Way

A succinct, engaging, and practical guide for succeeding in any creative sphere, The War of Art is nothing less than Sun-Tzu for the soul.

What keeps so many of us from doing what we long to do?

Why is there a naysayer within? How can we avoid the roadblocks of any creative endeavor— be it starting up a dream business venture, writing a novel, or painting a masterpiece?

By Steven Pressfield It saved my life, and it will save yours.” -- Steven Pressfield Could you be getting in your way of producing great work? Have you started a project but never finished? Would you like to do work that matters, but don’t know where to start?The answer is Do the Work, a manifesto by bestselling author Steven Pressfield, that will show you that it’s not about better ideas, it’s about actually doing the work.

The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds

Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics

By Michael Lewis Forty years ago, Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky wrote a series of breathtakingly original papers that invented the field of behavioral economics. One of the greatest partnerships in the history of science, Kahneman and Tversky’s extraordinary friendship incited a revolution in Big Data studies, advanced evidence-based medicine, led to a new approach to government regulation, and made much of Michael Lewis’s own work possible.

Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

By Dr. Dan Ariely n this newly revised and expanded edition of the groundbreaking New York Times bestseller, Dan Ariely refutes the common assumption that we behave in fundamentally rational ways.

By Richard H. Thaler Nobel laureate Richard H. Thaler has spent his career studying the radical notion that the central agents in the economy are humans― predictable, error-prone individuals. Misbehaving is his arresting, frequently hilarious account of the struggle to bring an academic discipline back down to earth―and change the way we think about economics, ourselves, and our world.

Marketing Myopia (Harvard Business Review Classics)

By Theordore Levitt What business is your company really in? That’s a question all executives should all ask before demand for their firm’s products or services dwindles.