BrandKnew September 2017 by Brand Knew

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Dear Friends: Every time we enter the month of September, I am fondly reminded of the Ventures classic ‘Come September‘soothing, uplifting, nourishing the mind. Well, the content in this issue of BrandKnew promises to do just that. Understand how we are migrating from IOT to the Internet of Changing Things. For a long time, pundits have been advocating the need for brands to have culture, history to augment their story telling- read how the KFC brand’s turnaround is rooted exactly in that- history! Blockchain has been on the fringes for the past few years but it is now time to know how it is going to impact advertising. Read about it here. The feature on Creative Collaboration and all that Jazz explores how marketers and creative community can learn from the world of jazz music, the fine art of true collaboration. Common baby, make some some noise is what they seem to be saying as Voice Search is finding more entrenchment in consumer’s lives and therefore every marketers’ as well. We also deep dive into how AR and VR are altering things for marketers. For the brand sensitive our featured list of 25 Brands That Matter Now will make interesting reading. There is loads more. So venture in and enjoy the journey. Till the next... Best

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suresh@groupisd.com Managing Editor: Suresh Dinakaran Creative Head/Director Operations: Pravin Ahir Magazine Concept & Design/ New Media Specialist: Mufaddal Joher Country Head, Australia: Norbert D’Souza Country Head, UK: Sagar Patil Regional Director: Krishna Chugh Country Manager, India: Vinit Chugh Content Creation Architect: Arunima Takiar Digital Outreach & Engagement Specialist: Khaleef Mayowa Junaid Associate Brand Connect: Hasitha Fernando Creator: Brand Stories: Salindu Sadishan

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CONTENTS

Creative Collaboration and All That Jazz How advertisers can maximise Social TV The Internet of Changing Things Snapchat’s e-commerce boss says World Lenses could transform how brands convert online shoppers How Video Platforms and Brands Are Courting the Next Generation of Internet Stars VR Aads are almost here. Don’t act surprised Embrace the Backlash, and Behave Like Your Brand: How to Really Activate Brand ‘Purpose’ What influencer strategy is right for your brand? How Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality Are Changing Things for Marketers KFC’s turnaround is rooted in brand history 25 Brands That Matter Now Delta’s Dating Wall is an Evolving Piece of Branded Art Martech and ad tech: Challenges and opportunities How blockchain technology will revolutionize advertising Marketers, prepare: Voice search is growing Book, Line & Sinker

Creative Collaboration and All That Jazz THE WORLD OF JAZZ CAN OFFER CONTENT CREATORS SOME LESSONS ABOUT CREATIVE COLLABORATION, INCLUDING THE NEED FOR HUMILITY, SELF-SACRIFICE, AND WILLINGNESS TO PUT ASIDE DIFFERENCES. By Alan Schulman

As creative content proliferates across more channels, devices, and social platforms, the need for a broader range of storytellers, systems thinkers, craftspeople, and code experts who can collaborate in real time is becoming increasingly important. Interestingly, the world of jazz offers marketers a model of creative collaboration that demonstrates how individual craftspeople and teams can work together to generate more emotional, real-time content that resonates with consumers. What’s the challenge facing creative professionals today? Typically, there’s too much “passing the ball” in content development. Often, when working on marketing projects—

developing an advertising campaign, designing a new web experience, or creating a mobile app, for instance—creative department and studio team members can get stuck in their respective silos, taking the ball from one discipline, adding their expertise, then handing it off to the next player in the creative production process. Faced with aggressive deadlines, competition, and the pressure to produce in an always-on world, writers, designers, developers, and other creative professionals often lose sight of cross-functional collaboration, which can make the work better. For insights into how to collaborate effectively, creative professionals can benefit from looking outside their own cocoons for inspiration—and specifically at the world of jazz.

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That’s right, jazz—the music genre characterized by its distinctive rhythm, individual improvisers, and collective spirit of real-time creativity. While marketing and jazz may seem quite different, in reality they share many characteristics, including: •

Perpetual evolution. As creative forms, marketing and jazz are both continually moving and changing over time.

•

Improvisation. Marketers improvise with individual words, visuals, and ideas, while jazz musicians improvise with notes, rhythms, solos, and instruments.

•

Real-time content creation. In today’s datadriven content world, more messaging is created and distributed in real time, on demand, just as jazz musicians spontaneously create new ideas, motifs, melodies, and riffs during live performances.

•

Competition. Creatives and content makers frequently compete to be the best, not only with rival businesses, but often against other agency or creative colleagues in the quest for awards and recognition. Likewise, jazz artists come from a strong tradition of “cutting contests” to see who can play faster, better, or with more improvisational creative prowess.

•

Unique voice. While a brand is often recognized for its product, service, or value proposition, having a big idea can differentiate it from its competitors. Jazz artists also strive to have a unique original sound that makes them instantly identifiable to listeners.

These shared traits present both opportunities and challenges for jazz musicians and creative professionals. The magic happens when talented craftspeople come together to create for a purpose higher than their individual skills—namely, to surprise and delight the audience. Marketing content creators can benefit from taking a closer look at how jazz musicians collaborate in real time to move from craft to great content.

Achieving the ‘Swing’ The creation of jazz music, with its unique “swing” rhythm, can be likened to the creation of a campaign. In the jazz rhythm section, the cymbal on the drum kit has the highest pitch, while the upright bass has the lowest. As noted jazz trumpeter and educator Wynton Marsalis recently said during an interview, “For something to swing, these opposites have to be reconciled … The swing is everything that goes on between the high and low frequency.” In producing marketing campaigns, creative professionals can strive to reconcile opposites—whether combining storytelling with systems thinking or enabling writing with coding. Often, collaboration in today’s marketing world overemphasizes one end of the spectrum. For example, while traditional advertising typically places more emphasis on conceptual ideas than on execution, many digital experiences focus more on the systematic process of digital production than on conceptual ideas. Truly cross-functional communications organizations, creative departments, and studios strike the proper balance, creating an environment

in which a variety of craftspeople and team members—from account planners and copywriters to art directors, designers, programmers, user-experience professionals, and others— can collaborate in real time. How can content creators who still pass the ball from one skillset to the next achieve a higher level of collaboration? They can consider the following lessons from jazz: Bring humility rather than hubris to the table. In jazz, as in marketing, players excel at their individual crafts in particular ways. One musician might have a more soulful sound, while another may be able to play faster or hit higher notes. A designer might have a particular knack for creating arresting images, while a creative director may consistently come up with brilliant ideas. The expression, “check your ego at the door,” applies to marketing as well as jazz. To make the collective ideas truly swing, a certain element of self-sacrifice is necessary. Letting others shine ultimately creates a performance that blends individual talents with the exponential power of the group, whether producing a song or a marketing campaign. Lose the “who owns the big idea” mindset. Across many marketing organizations, creative departments, studios, and integrated agency teams, ownership and territoriality—real or imagined—often rules. A traditional agency campaign team might feel superior to the digital marketing team because it created the big idea. A user interface designer might see copy as just a design element on the screen rather than the expression of the campaign idea. This “us versus them” mentality is not uncommon, and in some organizations, competition is encouraged to spur innovation. In jazz however, great performances are created when band members recognize that the power of the group performing the tune generally surpasses the individual technique or prowess of any one musician. Harness the power of the group. While marketing and jazz can thrive on individual performances, both typically require a larger group to succeed. Even the best jazz musicians recognize that their talent can grow exponentially when combined with and challenged by the musical expressions and ideas of other players. The same holds true for marketing: When the skills of diverse creative professionals are brought together effectively, the whole is usually greater than the sum of its individual parts. ***** As the marketing environment grows more complex with new technologies, media platforms, and business models, the need for collaboration among creative professionals will likely continue to increase. Like players in a jazz band, writers, artists, designers, coders, and other professionals can work together to create masterful work. When they leverage their talent with humility, openness to new ideas, and the exponential power of the group, marketing professionals may have the ability to create winning performances. Alan Schulman is national director of brand creative & content marketing at Deloitte Digital, Deloitte Consulting LLP, and a NYC-area jazz guitarist. He holds a master’s degree in jazz arranging and composition from Howard University.

How advertisers can maximise Social TV THE FUTURE OF TV IS SOCIAL By Harvey Cossell

TV is dying, and Facebook smells blood. Not satisfied with owning the space on your mobile and desktop, Facebook is after a piece of (or, a seat on) the most sought-after media real estate of all—your sofa. Ever since Facebook announced the launch of a stand-alone app for TV earlier this year, rumours around its content offering have been circulating. It’s now been revealed the platform will be launching its own original content in the form of two series, and, not to be outdone, fellow social media giant Snapchat recently announced a deal with HBO owner Time Warner to develop shows for its platform as well. This is yet another shift in a media landscape that has changed beyond recognition since those halcyon days when TV advertising was the holy grail for brands. Over the last few years, marketers have been trying to pick the lock to brand opportunities in the pay-to-view content space, with eyeballs shifting from traditional TV to the ad-free space of Netflix, Amazon Prime, and others. That’s a tough nut to crack, so the emergence of social TV and the new opportunities it offers brands to reach audiences should mean the industry is breathing a sigh of relief.

Back To Adverts? The most obvious form of branded content available on a freeto-consumer platform will be adverts. Those interested in this kind of approach could be seduced by the platforms’ huge sets of user data, and the promise of even more refined targeting opportunities. The danger here is that brands will retreat back into their more “interruptive” comfort zone. However, my hope is that the social platforms will give brands the opportunity to create their own interest-led content for broadcast to specific audiences. We need to remember that we’re not dealing with broadcast media here. Advertising’s evolution is like a wave coming into shore—it never breaks in the same place twice. Social TV will, therefore, come with a whole new set of opportunities and, of course, challenges. Brands will need to be careful not to slip back into old habits. The entertainment landscape is changing, and the consumer expects more. Advertising that follows the more traditional brand or product-first approach is not usually the best way to reach your audience. Instead, brands should aim to add to the viewer’s experience by focusing on culturally relevant content, starting with a social insight and using that to bridge back to the product. There’s a subtle but significant difference here—by starting with the

consumer, in the context of culture, rather than the product, you’re more likely to create something of interest that doesn’t interrupt their viewing experience.

AFP In The 21st Century One approach to creating content that adds value is to become the viewing experience itself. Branded content is nothing new, but it could take a big boost from the emergence of social TV, with high-quality, longer-form programming that brings the old world of Advertiser Funded Programming (AFP) into the 21st century. Whereas AFP was time consuming, expensive, and not particularly effective, with some clever technology, social platforms could transform this into a commerce opportunity. For example, consumers could watch Facebook content on their TVs, while simultaneously being served up mobile notifications about products appearing in the story on screen. Double-screening is a hugely prevalent existing behavior, and now brands will have the opportunity to entertain on the first while selling products on the second. Of course, this kind of content won’t come cheap. A one-off piece of branded content will have a long tail, but will it really engage an audience in the long term? The clear opportunity is to focus on episodic content formats. These wear in over time, delivering that desired long tail whilst also building an engaged and loyal audience attracted by the brand’s cultural relevance.

Think Culture-First Whatever approach brands investing in social TV decide to take, the important thing is to think culture-first by putting social thinking at the heart of your marketing. Brands need to build connection with their audience around what that audience is interested in, whilst retaining a relevant and authentic link back to their product or service. Many businesses will, no doubt, take the easy way out and stick with what they know—attracted by the easy wins of ad recall through interruption. But the brands that embrace existing consumer behaviour and find non-interruptive connection points with culture will be revered and loved the most over time. And this will earn them their seat on your sofa. Harvey Cossell is head of strategy at global social media agency We Are Social. He is a brand strategist with a strong heritage in helping clients to unlock communication conundrums for commercial success.

The Internet of Changing Things

HOW THE SPREAD OF COMPUTERIZED GIZMOS IS SHIFTING BUSINESS MODELS BIG AND SMALL. By Ian Chipman

Despite the bland physicality of the term “the internet of things,” much of the transformational potential of connecting devices to the cloud comes from blurring the lines around traditional business models and abstracting what it means to make and sell a product. “The internet of things is not really about things” but about services, says Macario Namie, head of internet of things strategy at Cisco. “The impact is really in changing to service-based business models.” Namie was one of nearly a dozen industry experts who spoke about how enhanced interconnectivity is impacting the business world when Stanford Graduate School of Business hosted the Internet of Things in Global Value Chains Executive Conference this spring. For example, Namie says, Konica Minolta no longer sells office copy machines — it provides a connected “digital hub” and businesses pay for the scanning, copying, and digitization services it provides. Selling these “outcomes” is a revolutionary change for a company long steeped in a onetime revenue model of selling physical products. “The impact on business models is profound when you have this kind of real-time connection to the thing itself.” What’s more, Namie says, these business-model transformations have a way of trickling down and spreading

across industries. If GM sells you a Wi-Fi–enabled car, that means AT&T, looking for ways to expand beyond phones, can add a vehicle to your data plan. Meanwhile, GM is now in the business of selling the data it collects from your car, perhaps to an insurance company that offers a pay-as-youdrive insurance model. “You would never think of a car company of being in the business of monetizing data, but that’s absolutely where they’re trying to go,” Namie says. “And their competition is not just Ford or Nissan. They’re also thinking, Who else is monetizing data? Who else wants access to this information that I have? How do I use that as a strategic point within this entire automotive ecosystem?” That impact on business You would never think models of all sorts might be of a car company of the most transformative aspect being in the business of the internet of things, says of monetizing data, but Haim Mendelson, co-director that’s absolutely where of the Value Chain Innovation Initiative and professor of they’re trying to go. operations, information, and - Macario Namie technology at Stanford GSB. “How can we create company value through the use of data and things?” Mendelson asks. “One is enhancing existing business models, one is creating

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new business models, and one is providing the platform that facilitates or sometimes enables the enhancement and creation of those business models.” Of course, these opportunities don’t come without significant risks. If people think online data security is difficult, it’s nothing compared to the potential vulnerabilities that come from millions or even billions of connected devices, says Hau Lee, co-director of the Value Chain Innovation Initiative and a professor of operations, information, and technology at Stanford GSB. “Some of them have an IQ of 1,000, but some of them have an IQ of 10,” Lee says. “There are many small devices that are stupid and that could be an easy target for hackers.” “The scope and scale of security is extraordinarily broad,” agrees Cisco’s Namie. Every refrigerator with an IP address and a default password that people are unlikely to change becomes a target for spreading viruses, adds Amip Shah, who leads research and development for the internet of things at Hewlett Packard Labs. “They’re not just low-hanging fruit,” Shah says, “they’re low-hanging watermelons.” What’s more, hacking a laptop generally affects only data. The internet of things extends the vulnerabilities into the highstakes physical world of objects and actions, from sabotaging

factory robots to taking control of a car. But if the risks are large, so are the opportunities to transform entire industries. Arable Labs, a farming data-analytics startup, has developed what Head of Special Projects Jess Bollinger calls a “souped-up weather station” that could help the company reduce risk throughout the agricultural food chain. Placed among crops in the field, the device tracks dozens of data streams on things like rain and nutrient levels, canopy cover, and plant health. The insights help growers not only to optimize the best time to prune, irrigate, and harvest, Bollinger says, but also to predict crop yields and quality, a critical component of coordinating with retailers who want foreknowledge of what’s going to be ripe and when so they can adjust their marketing efforts accordingly. Overall, Mendelson says, the internet of things is perched in the same position that the internet found itself in the early 1990s, when he began teaching about it. He recounts how in 1993 Steve Jobs came to Stanford GSB to speak to students. “One of the students raised his hand and asked, ‘Steve, what is your forecast of the future size of the internet?’” Mendelson recalls. “Jobs was standing there thinking, thinking, and a smile spread across his face, and he said, ‘It’s going to be big, man!’ So that’s the way I think about the internet of things.”

Snapchat’s e-commerce boss says World Lenses could transform how brands convert online shoppers SNAPCHAT’S HEAD OF E-COMMERCE AND STREAMING, FINTAN GILLESPIE, HAS HINTED WHERE THE COMMERCIAL POTENTIAL OF ITS AUGMENTED REALITY CAPABILITIES LIES, SAYING BRANDS COULD ALLOW SHOPPERS TO VISUALISE HOW PRODUCTS WILL LOOK IN THE REAL WORLD BEFORE PURCHASE. By Rebecca Stewart

In April, Snapchat launched a feature called World Lenses, which lets users overlay pictures taken using their rear-facing camera with a series of interactive 3D filters. The messaging app monetised the tool just one month later, with Warner Bros signing up as one of the first brands to take advantage of its capabilities. Speaking at an event hosted by digital agency Jellyfish in London today (20 July) Gillespie pointed to Snapchat’s extremely popular dancing hot dog World Lens – which has inspired hundreds of memes – as an example of how advertisers could eventually use the tool to place virtual objects in everyday environments. He said for some brands, it essentially means they can let Snapchatters try products before they buy. “We haven’t actually brought this to any brands yet,” he admitted. “But you can imagine this being able to show a new BMW in your drive way or a Burberry handbag on your desk. This is where this will go.” Retailers are already using AR in this way for some time. Ikea has rolled out an AR catalogue that lets shoppers preview furniture in their homes, while Gap recently developed an app that lets shoppers try on virtual clothes. Snapchat’s recent ‘Colourista’ Lens for L’Oreal, which let users change their hair colour, is another sign of things to come for how the platform forsees brands benefiting from its AR tech. While it’s been tried and tested by retailers before Snap’s 166 million-strong userbase would be able to deliver this experience to users at scale through World Lenses. The technology behind the dancing hot dog Lens emerged from Snap’s acquisition of Israeli startup Cimagine last year. Gillespie said Cimagine had previously worked with the likes of Coca-Cola, with reps for the drinks brand using it to show

clients things like how Coke’s vending machines would look in their units. Stressing its ambitions for the product, Gillespie said World Lenses are “super interesting,” for the Venice Beach-based firm and that it is currently pondering how it can make advances in the space. During the Game of Thrones season seven premiere earlier this week both HBO and Sky Atlantic worked with Snapchat to deploy a mixed reality Lens which gave users the chance to transform themselves into one of the show’s White Walker ice zombie characters. When a user switched to the rearview camera their surroundings were transformed into snowy landscape and one of the creatures was shown advancing towards them, with the user being given the option to shoot the figure (Pokemon Go-style) with a dagger. “These are very immersive, they bring [users] into the scene. This is where this sort of Lens technology will go, it’s not just about selfie lenses, it’s about augmenting the world,” he said. Gillespie said Snap’s traditional front-facing camera selfie Lenses were proven by Nielsen metrics to create a “halo effect” for brands using them increasing both brand awareness and purchase intent. He pointed to Vodafone UK as a brand seeing results, saying its Christmas-themed filter clocked up 17 million views in one day, while branded Mother’s Day Lens in the UK reached 15 million people. Rebecca Stewart is a reporter at The Drum. Based in London, she has interviewed key figures from brands like Airbnb, Amnesty International, Facebook and Spotify. She has covered international events in Berlin and Amsterdam, as well as Advertising Week Europe.

How Video Platforms and Brands Are Courting the Next Generation of Internet Stars THERE’S A TALENT GRAB GOING ON FOR CONTENT CREATORS By T.L. Stanley

As an up-and-coming actress-comedian, Laura Clery spent more than a year doing “free work,” posting on Facebook every day without fail, building an audience for her sketches, characters and video blogging. Those days are over, as Clery is now one of the first digital influencers to take part in Facebook’s new revenue-sharing program, while also in discussions to make original content for the social media behemoth.

deals. “Brands and platforms are realizing the power, reach and connection we have with our audiences.” At the recent VidCon industry gathering in Anaheim, Calif., and in the weeks since, these players have accelerated their pitches to content creators like never before, offering more support, state-of-the-art production facilities and other tools for higher-quality videos, not to mention financial incentives.

With her 3.1 million Facebook followers, dwarfing what she’d amassed on YouTube, Clery is part of the current crop of internet stars that’s set off a talent grab by Facebook, YouTube and other distribution platforms and brands like AT&T and Verizon’s go90.

“Talent is scarce, and these creators are the ultimate multihyphenates,” said Ivana Kirkbride, go90’s chief content officer, noting that on-camera stars also write, produce, edit and market their work, analyzing data on the back end to extend its reach. “There’s a definite land grab going on here.”

“There’s never been a better time to be a content creator because we’re being taken seriously,” said Clery, who’s turned her Facebook popularity into merchandise and advertising

Kirkbride used VidCon to “plant the flag” with digital creators, announcing a program beginning in September giving them entrée (via an application process) to a tricked-

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17 out production house in Los Angeles, gained in the Verizon acquisition of Yahoo. With its sophisticated robotic cameras, 45,000 square feet of shooting space and two dozen high-tech editing bays (with more to come), go90 is on the hunt for the next Issa Rae or Bethany Mota. But the door is open to anyone with strong “premium midform” ideas, those between 10 and 30 minutes, which Kirkbride called “the white space” not being served by other platforms. “We’re moneyballing,” she said, “trying to identify the stars of tomorrow.” Go90, looking to boost its 1,400 hours of original shows from the likes of AwesomenessTV and Complex, won’t insist on owning the content produced under its roof, another enticement for creators. Instead, the platform will want an exclusive window for its Verizon properties. AT&T, meantime, continues to expand its Hello Lab incubator and mentoring program to show that it has “committed significant resources” and is “invested in maintaining firstperson relationships with creators,” said Karyn Spencer,

AT&T’s vp, Creator Lab. There’s not only a feverish pace in the quest for talent, Spencer noted, but there’s been a shift in the way brands approach digital creators. “They’ve stopped trying to be prescriptive—they’re giving creators the freedom to express themselves,” she said. “That’s what makes creators successful in the first place.” In other words, content produced under the AT&T banner won’t be a brand brief come to life. “The aesthetic is driven by who we’re working with and their passions,” said Bryan Thoensen, svp, original entertainment at AT&T partner Fullscreen Media. This competitive environment, akin to Hollywood talent

agencies vying for A-list celebrities, comes as YouTube is vulnerable in the wake of adpocalypse and influencer defections and lawsuits, and as viewers continue to shift from traditional media to digital videos. Facebook has put on a charm offensive lately, announcing a new app with tools to help creators make their videos look more polished. In addition to revenue sharing, in beta test, the social media giant wants its own exclusive, serialized shows, and is actively courting creators with large and loyal followings. Facebook is also helping those influencers land sponsorship deals (as is YouTube), and last year paid as much as $220,000 for top YouTube stars to produce exclusive content for Facebook Live, which could be seen as an experiment or a recruiting move. Glenn Ginsburg, longtime digital vet and svp, global partnerships at The QYou, said tech advances are making it easier for creators to churn out professional-quality product on a budget and less likely to need outside help. “Software, incredible cameras, effects—that’s all accessible

and affordable now,” he said. “But if there’s support being offered, why not take advantage?” Still, he cautions creators to “read the fine print” and make sure there aren’t too many strings attached. No matter the perks, the weight of the job still falls directly onto creators’ shoulders. “The ability to come up with a strong story and deliver it—that’s the art,” Ginsburg said. “I don’t know how much money you can throw at someone to make that happen.” T.L. Stanley is a frequent contributor to Adfreak and Adweek, where her coverage includes profiles of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Oscar race and Logan Paul.

VR ADS ARE ALMOST HERE. DON’T ACT SURPRISED By Elizabeth Stinson

IMAGINE, FOR A moment, that you’re inside a virtual reality world. You look to your left and an open door appears, beckoning you to walk through it. You enter and suddenly find yourself in the middle of an advertisement—a branded world you can explore and manipulate. Forget banner ads and auto-playing videos. The advertisement of the future is immersive, almost game like. And it’s nearly here.

Last week, Unity, the world’s largest VR development company, announced Virtual Room, a new type of interactive advertisement it plans to roll out later this year. Unlike the standalone VR marketing experiences you’ve seen before, Virtual Room ads will surface across a wide network of VR apps, similar to the display ads you see on your laptop or the video ads you see while playing games on your phone. Don’t act surprised—you knew this was coming.

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Like any new medium, VR must be monetized, says Tony Parisi head of Unity’s VR and AR strategy. “Developers want to make money,” he says. “We want to help them do that.“ Until recently, though, it was unclear how, exactly, that would happen. Most VR developers make cash from micro transactions and in-app purchases, but that’s pennies compared to what advertising can bring in. To capitalize on the opportunity, other VR companies have already begun exploring what ads might look like in this new medium. In a recent blog post, Google showed off a concept for a floating cube that players can tap or gaze at to start video advertisements—sort of like auto-play, but in VR. The format is simple by design. “VR ad formats should be easy for developers to implement, native to VR, flexible enough to customize, and useful and non-intrusive for users,” writes Aayush Upadhyay and Neel Rao of Google’s Area 120. Google’s vision nods to the legacy of existing digital advertisements, which many in the ad industry are trying to avoid. “Our hope is that VR creates new opportunities that don’t replicate advertising the way that mobile originally did with repurposed 30-second TV spots,” says Eric John, deputy director of video at the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the organization responsible for setting guidelines for web, mobile, and now VR advertisements. The IAB is working with Unity to build guidelines around Virtual Room, which outline everything from how long an ad should play to how often it should surface. For now, Unity says branded content will be opt in for both developers and players. It will surface for no more than two minutes every hour, and those ads will be highly targeted as to not alienate the person interacting with them. They’ll likely pop up at points of friction—when a player is having trouble or after a level is completed—similar to ads on mobile games and television. What will change is how the player interacts with advertisements. People won’t passively watch Unity-created ads; they’ll play with them. “Ads are usually linear,” says Julie Shumaker, VP of business development at Unity. “And there’s nothing linear about VR.” To play to the medium’s strengths, Virtual Rooms will first appear as a floating, glowing door somewhere in the player’s

field of vision. Shumaker calls this the Alice in Wonderland effect. “If you choose to enter, you’re going to drop into a completely different experience than the one you were just in,” she says, adding that the experience is meant to be transportive, not jarring. From there, players can explore the branded world for anywhere from 30 seconds if they’re not interacting to 60 seconds or more if Unity’s tracking software detects deep engagement. For its pilot advertisement, Unity partnered with Lionsgate to craft a Virtual Room for the gory movie Jigsaw that will surface in apps across Unity’s growing VR ad network. Though they haven’t finished the creative content, Shumaker says the goal is to build something that will hit people on a visceral level and engage them just like a VR game engages players. That’s an appealing sell to advertisers. Creating compelling content that doesn’t feel like an advertisement is one way to avoid audience burnout. Still, developing high caliber content is prohibitively expensive. Shumaker says they haven’t finalized pricing yet, but Virtual Room is going to be a premium product that commands premium rates. According to a recent report from Forrester, developing a single 360 video ad can cost in the tens of thousands; developing a fully interactive ad could cost upwards of $500,000. “I think a lot of brands will be reluctant to invest in that,” says Thomas Husson, one of the Forrester analysts who authored the report. For advertisers, the cost might be too high for what’s still essentially an experiment. But Unity has reason to bet on it. There might not be many people using VR headsets today, but if Virtual Room becomes a de facto ad standard in what’s projected to be a growing field, Unity has a lot to gain. Plus, virtual reality offers advertisers one thing that no other medium can accomplish. “You have 100 percent of the audience’s attention,” Shumaker says. In today’s frenzied media landscape, that’s worth a lot.

Elizabeth Stinson writes about where design, technology, and science intersect.

Embrace the Backlash, and Behave Like Your Brand: How to Really Activate Brand ‘Purpose’ By Cindy Gustafson & Joe Maceda

One of the biggest marketing themes and talking points of 2017 has been about driving purpose. Everybody wants to do it. Nobody wants the backlash that can accompany it. And so the questions on marketers’ minds are: how do you activate purpose the right way, to make a real statement? How do you do it in a way that doesn’t feel fake?

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We did a deep dive on some of the most interesting campaigns this year at Cannes Lions, where purpose as a theme reigned supreme. Looking at some of the remarkable entries from around the world, there are five crucial takeaways that every marketer can apply to their media plan to create smart, agile, purposeful work.

what car crashes do to the human body to create a haunting, visually arresting piece of creative—and one that’s been adopted by the Worth Health Organization as the global face of road safety in 2017.

1) Behave Like Your Brand

Understanding, and aligning with, the DNA of your brand is key. Without it, the work won’t do much for you. But is it possible we can sometimes be too adherent to our brand essence? Brands that have strong equity in their categories occasionally need to step beyond their positioning to refresh consumers’ perceptions in unexpected ways.

The most successful, purposeful brands are those that can make their media live up to their brand’s essence. They’re not just picking a charity or a cause because it sounds good; rather their media actions are a clear reflection of what the brand actually does and stands for. For example, take Uniqlo Heat Tech. In South Korea, the company gave out branded insulating window inserts to 500,000 Uniqlo customers for free during the winter. The inserts increased the room temperature as much as 20% and served as free promotion of the company’s Heat Tech clothing line. It worked for the brand not just because they did a nice deed for consumers, but because it naturally aligned with the product (which is about keeping you warm). Uniqlo gained 500,000 out-of-home ads for free and ultimately saw over 200% sales growth for their Heat Tech products.

2) Embrace the Backlash Today, some of the most successful work is coming from brands that are fulfilling social needs that might alienate some consumers. If done thoughtlessly, it can come off as shallow or fake. But when done right, the results can be game changing—both for the cause and your brand. A recent study from Refinery29 shows that 91% of all millennials will swap out a brand to go with one that has a cause. The truth is, to really have a brand POV, to make your core audience care about your brand, it might require that some people disagree with you. The “Fearless Girl” from State Street is a great example. It was championed by many as a symbol of female empowerment. But it had its fair share of haters too – people who didn’t think it was necessary, people who were upset about its impact on the “Charging Bull” sculpture. One artist even put a small statue of a urinating dog next to it. And yet, whatever your thoughts about this statue, you can’t deny that the backlash didn’t hold it back – if anything, it drove people to double down on their support.

3) Data-as-Creative Obviously these days, you can’t walk into most agencies without hearing the word “data” all over the place (and deservedly so). But what’s really setting work apart—what the most advanced brands are doing—is using their data in consumer-facing ways that adds value or meaning right into their products or services. For example, take “Meet Graham” in Australia – a model creation of what a human being would have to look like in order to withstand a car crash. The artist who designed Graham did so with the help of a trauma surgeon and an accident research engineer. They used data and research on

4) What Else You Got?

For example, in South Africa, Castrol Magnatec created Vuvuliser: the first vuvuzela horn that’s also a breathalyzer. The goal was to try to reduce road fatalities on the days of big soccer games, since the number one cause in South Africa is drunk driving. Blowing into the horn turned the end green if good to drive, red if not. It was a natural shift for the oil engine brand, from protecting engines to protecting drivers.

5) Plan for Agility Perhaps most importantly, the number one way to activate a brand purpose is to act with purpose. That doesn’t mean you have to launch a massive Lions-honored program each time. But if you know what your brand stands for, the opportunities for you to take action will present themselves regularly. It can range from very simply donating your products during a natural disaster, to giving a voice to an artist or a creator who lacks a platform, or even just tweeting your support for someone who’s standing up for what you believe in. For example, our Huggies client has done a great job for a number of years by giving diapers or making donations to diaper networks in response to timely, crucial events or moments in culture. Often times, these opportunities may happen without a moment’s notice. And it takes time to learn to recognize what the truly right moments for brands are. At Mindshare, we use a process called Planning for Agility to identify cultural triggers for more brand-centric messaging or consumer engagement, and then work to plan strategies in advance for the moments when brands can do good in real-time. Ultimately, brand purpose is about more than just a oneoff activation. Even the best of those can fade in time. But consistent, purposeful work can make your brand part of something bigger than itself – and have a long-term impact that’s win-win all around. Cindy Gustafson leads Mindshare’s Adaptive Marketing approach and strategies across North America, spanning clients such as American Express, KimberlyClark, Unilever, and more. With data and insights at the core, she works with brands and teams to ensure that brands are moving at the speed of culture and creating marketing that performs. Joe leads Mindshare’s Invention Studio across North America, a dedicated agency unit that brings the concept of “media-as-creative” to life. He and his team merge data, science, and creativity to ignite media plans that have a real cultural impact and real-time engagement for consumers.

What influencer strategy is right for your brand? INFLUENCERS ARE LIKE ROCKET LAUNCHERS FOR YOUR BRAND By Julia Copley

Good influencers act fast, are highly visible and can open up wide swaths of previously inaccessible terrain for brands. However, even with precise guidance, they can occasionally misfire and do a lot of damage. Influencer marketing return on investment has been measured at as much as 11 times more effective than other digital marketing tactics. Influencers are clearly well worth adding to your marketing arsenal. But how should you do this effectively? You know the project management triangle, how you get to pick two options out of fast, good or cheap? Influencer marketing can be done in a number of different ways, as well. Depending on your timeline and your budget, here’s what to keep in mind for each.

Good and fast influencer marketing: celebrities This is how most influencer marketing campaigns are structured. Dozens of influencer agencies will happily take your money and connect you with their stable of influencers. Within about two weeks, you can have a live influencer campaign up and running.

Depending on your budget, they can facilitate the entire process (contract negotiation, content rights usage, category exclusivity, creative brief, performance reports, etc.) or let you handle the details. After you finalize the arrangements, the influencers you choose will create content on behalf of your brand and publish it to their channels. Boom: Endorsement and visibility among your target audiences. Sit back and watch your traffic spike. These campaigns are costly, but for good reason. They give you the greatest amount of creative control (because you’re paying your influencers) and also reduce your risk by trusting your agency to write a great brief and airtight contract. This structure should give you the best ROI, as well. If you’ve done your research properly, you will be reaching the right audiences at massive scale. Everyone you want to reach will hear about you. If your traffic doesn’t spike, it’s not them: It’s you.

Good and cheap influencers: advocates It will take a talented influencer program manager at least 12 to 24 months to develop an advocate group—nurturing a handful of your existing fans and turning them into legitimate publishers, thought leaders and influencers.

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This is a great long-term plan, and you’ll learn a lot about your brand and its strengths and weaknesses in the process. The resulting advocates are almost like family for your brand: They’ve been with you forever and know you inside and out.

audience and their channels all should align with your goals. •

Communicate clearly: What do you want the influencers to do, and how do you want it done? Instagram post, YouTube video, blog series? Provide your brand guidelines, set timeline expectations and set up regular check-in times. A creative brief can help bring this all together.

•

Define success metrics: Do you want clicks? Sales attribution? Increased followers? Make sure you know what this campaign should achieve. You can work with the influencers and their agency to structure payment around key performance indicator successes.

•

Get out of the way: Now that you and your influencers have clarity, let them work their magic. Their authentic voices are their most valuable asset, so give them the freedom to use them. Their followers will disengage if they sense something is phony. As long as you’ve clearly communicated your guidelines, you should be able to trust that they’ll do a great job representing your brand.

Unfortunately, just like with families, it’s easy to start taking each other for granted. Guard against this by making your advocates feel appreciated, and make it clear that your brand and employees also deserve respect.

Fast and cheap influencers: charity cases This is a “phone-your-famous-friend” campaign plan. I have yet to see it done well. Essentially, you’re hoping that your brand or product is so wonderful that influencers will simply recommend it for you, out of the goodness of their hearts, when you ask. This can work if you build a long-term relationship (see advocates above), but not if you’re trying to do this fast. Offering non-monetary reciprocity (free product sample, “exposure” via your brand, etc.) can improve your odds, but it’s still a long shot. I don’t like to gamble on my campaigns.

Best practices in influencer marketing There are some overall best practices for influencer marketing. No matter your campaign duration, budget or goals, follow these steps to improve your chance for success: •

Choose wisely: You worked hard to create your brand. Influencer partners should make sense. Their tone, their

Good influencers are like rocket launchers for your brand, but use them wisely.

Julia Copley is a connections strategist at Seattle-based agency Pop.

How Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality Are Changing Things for Marketers By Gavin Finn

Every so often, new and shiny marketing objects come along and become the subject of a great deal of hype about how they will change the world. The phenomenon is so typical, that Gartner developed a methodology to represent where each new promising technology is in the “hype cycle.” Of course, some new technologies don’t deliver, and yet others prove to be transformational. Usually, however, changing the world takes longer than initially thought. Marketers are now talking (again) about how augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) will change marketing, so it’s timely to take a step back and put a practical spin on what is likely to happen and what is simply hype.

Augmented Reality AR is the superimposition of digital data and “objects” into a real-time camera view of a live environment. This technology has been around for a long time, but has only recently begun to be significantly applied to marketing. There are two basic versions of this technology: Overlay AR and 3D AR. In the Overlay AR environment, the digital data or objects are not linked to the scale or specific layout of the physical world. The digital object is simply triggered by some event or data (such as a GPS coordinate.) A good example is the Pokémon Go app from Niantic Inc.; users can search for imaginary Pokémon characters, and when they “find” them the character appears superimposed on the video stream

from their smartphone camera. • The digital objects can be images, or they can also be other data (such as video; audio; numbers, such as outside temperatures and coordinates; or text data, such as names of buildings.) • Often, an object is placed using GPS coordinates (as in the case of Pokémon Go) or it’s triggered via some sort of visual cue, such as a QR code or a special image placed on a card. 3D AR is an innovation of Kaon Interactive (my company). A digital 3D product model is placed into the camera view of the physical space, with some key characteristics: • The object is scaled to fit, with the appropriate dimensions, relative to the physical space around it (e.g., a small object that fits on a table, or a large floor-standing object, both of which have the correct dimensions relative to the table or the floor and walls). • The object is placed in a position without the use of the visual cues or special cards, in a way that allows the object to “remain” in the same place even when the camera (the phone or tablet) is moved away and then brought back to where the object was placed. Think of it as object permanence, in a digital sense. The object is interactive: The user can open doors, remove parts, spin, turn etc. while it is being viewed as if in the physical environment.

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Virtual Reality With VR, users put on a headset or goggles, and they are “placed” into a digital/virtual representation of a physical environment so that they can look and explore it as they would in the real world, as if they were in that environment. When they move their head, they see the space as if they had looked in that direction in the real world. This effect is known as “immersion.” VR usually uses a headset either with a built-in vision system and dedicated computer or a headpiece that simply encapsulates the user’s smartphone to use as the display and computer system. Examples include Google Cardboard, which allows users to use their own smartphones in a headset experience, and Oculus Rift, which is a high-definition headset that connects to an external computer. In many VR games, in which the user can “drive” a car or “fire” a weapon, the application reacts appropriately to that user’s action in an interactive manner, giving the player a sense of presence and action.

360 Videos Another application type, the 360-degree video, is often confused with AR or VR. However, 360 video is a video of an actual (real life) scene that is taken with multiple cameras/ lenses pointed in every direction at the same time. The effect is to give the viewer the option to “turn” in any direction and see the action unfold from that perspective, in real-time. (Here is an example.) The user can pan across the video using the mouse (or touching the screen on a tablet or phone) while the action continues. There is usually no interactivity in this kind of video, other than the user’s changing the viewing perspective. The storyline follows the same linear path, but can be experienced differently, depending on which direction the viewer chooses to view at any point in time. These 360 video experiences can be viewed within an immersive headset (just like VR), on a screen (e.g., on YouTube or Facebook), or in a specially designed room with large screens all around.

Marketing Applications These new platforms allow for innovative ways to engage customers in an experiential manner. As with all new solutions, the key to being successful is to marry the content of the experience with the appropriate technical approach. Showing something in VR for the sake of the VR experience has no inherent marketing value to the customer, other than the “cool factor.” (In this example, consumer advertisers have been experimenting with overlay AR apps for alcoholic beverages as a way to increase loyalty and engagement with customers. This approach has the “cool factor,” but the videos aren’t inherently tied to the code on the bottle and could just as easily have been viewed without the AR trigger.) After the cool-factor effect wears off, however, the company will likely not continue to achieve the intended marketing objective.

When it makes sense to overlay marketing information on a real-world scene (say, for example, showing a unique internal product feature that can’t be seen from the outside), then there is a memorable and meaningful association of the technology to the marketing message. Customers appreciate these kinds of experiences because they have both the emotional connection and the benefit of learning something relevant and useful. For complex products and solutions, showing something in a digital immersive environment can be highly effective because the experience is difficult to deliver with real-world products or environments, and the customer is using the immersive platform to learn about the relevant value of the product or solution. When deciding on how to use VR and AR in the marketing mix, think about what is a practical application given the customer’s environment, and how the three key elements of engagement (sensory, intellectual, and emotional connections) will be used to deliver an effective marketing experience. A couple of examples can illustrate the innovative impact of AR and VR in marketing: 1. 3D AR showing how a new product will fit into a customer’s environment. For a consumer application, a good example is Wayfair, which has a 3D AR app that shows its furniture in the customer’s home. For a B2B application, applications can show how large industrial equipment can fit into a manufacturing assembly line, or how lab equipment can be placed effectively into an automated clinical diagnostics lab. 2. VR for complex B2B solutions. A recent example is a VR experience in which an IT manager can explore a virtual data center to see how the software-defined network (SDN) digital data reconfigures physical data center hardware in real-time. This is impossible to show in a real-world data center (because the data is not visible, and the configuration of the equipment happens inside the servers and switches.) These complex hardware and software products can be displayed in an immersive environment that provides the user with the sense that they are in the real data center, but uncovers how the software works, providing a clearer understanding. Immersive AR and VR applications have the potential to change the connection between customers and companies because of the opportunity to deliver the most engaging, personalized, and useful experiences. Judicious selection of the appropriate tools and venues will provide innovative marketers with effective and valuable solutions. Gavin Finn is president and CEO of Kaon Interactive, a provider of interactive 3D product marketing and sales applications that help B2B marketers and salespeople consistently demonstrate and differentiate products anywhere, any time, on any device.

KFC’s turnaround is rooted in brand history KFC’S COMEBACK STORY TAKES FLIGHT By Nicole Duncan

The Big Chicken silently clucks its beak and rolls its eyes. At 56 feet tall—about five stories—it peers over not just the nearby interstate, but almost all of Marietta, Georgia. At the chicken’s base, a marching band plays as people gather on an impromptu red carpet and take pictures. The mayor, Steve “Thunder” Tumlin, is at hand, dressed in an all-white suit. Beside him is a similarly clad man, this one a bit shorter and donning horn-rimmed glasses, a pointed goatee, and black necktie. Nearby, a “Little Chicken” mascot makes the rounds, posing with visitors.

If it sounds like a circus has come into town, that’s because it has—or rather, it has returned after a short hiatus. In May, KBP Foods reopened the fabled KFC franchise location after closing in January for more than $2 million worth of renovations. The revitalized “Big Chicken” store is just one example—albeit a sizable one—of KFC’s latest play at reincarnation. Over the past decade, the fried chicken titan has watched its star decline as long-time adversaries like Chick-fil-A and Popeyes were on the upswing. Within the Yum! Brands family,

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KFC has lagged far behind top achiever Taco Bell and even trailed Pizza Hut, which has been beset with its own woes.

have good stories in there. [KFC] is very similar; they’re just a little behind that Arby’s curve.”

But over the last couple of years, KFC has taken a multipronged approach to turning things around, proving that this bird still has some pluck in it.

So what are the keys to KFC’s reinvention? While not an exhaustive list, its efforts can mostly be distilled into three categories: branding and marketing, menu development, and design, including the functional and the flamboyant.

“As we started this brand turnaround, we really went back and started with, What’s the DNA of KFC? And what’s our brand positioning? And how do we bring this great, iconic brand to life in the U.S.?” says Brian Cahoe, chief development officer at KFC. “That’s the lens that we’ve taken everything through in this journey.” In 1991, the brand had jettisoned its original name of Kentucky Fried Chicken in favor of the snappier acronym. But as consumers find themselves nostalgic for days bygone, many brands are following suit, leaning back toward classic and authentic. For KFC, the decision to return to its roots also made sound business sense. “When Kentucky Fried Chicken was at its best and growing the fastest, the colonel and his values were at the center of everything we did. … Those values are critical to what makes Kentucky Fried Chicken so great,” says Kevin Hochman, brand president and chief concept officer. Hochman, who was promoted from chief marketing officer earlier this year, helped spearhead the company’s comeback. It seems fitting that a marketing specialist would be such an integral player in KFC’s renewed growth; after all, Harland “Colonel” Sanders called himself the No. 1 chicken salesman. At first glance, KFC’s turnaround might appear as nothing more than smoke and mirrors: off-the-cuff ads, flashy new flavors, and refurbished stores with screaming-bright colors. But for all of its staging, the process has been a serious one with high stakes. Over the past six years, the company has closed more than 1,000 domestic stores. Ten years ago, KFC ranked No. 7 on the QSR 50, besting the likes of Chick-fil-A and sister concept Pizza Hut with system-wide sales of $5.3 billion. Today paints a very different picture. Like many other legacy brands, KFC did not fare so well through the Great Recession as emerging fast casuals presented a more indulgent yet economical option for cash-strapped consumers. But for the first time in nearly a decade, the vitals are showing signs of recovery. Over the past two fiscal years, systemwide sales have finally grown, and the brand has posted 11 consecutive quarters of same-store sales growth. KFC also climbed one spot on the QSR 50 list this year (owing in no small part to the lingering damage from Chipotle’s foodsafety woes, which knocked it down a rung). Skeptics might dismiss these numbers as an anomalous bright spot in an otherwise dim future, but other brands have proved it’s possible to surmount the odds. “It’s tough to take a legacy brand and turn that big ship in the right direction. It’s not easy to do that, but [KFC] is doing it well,” says Tim Hackbardt, CEO of BrandTrip Partners, a consulting group that works with restaurant groups. “Similarly, Arby’s has been doing a fantastic job. I think those guys are right in that same space. … They’re legacy brands, and they

A crowd of Colonels Wallpaper. That’s how Hochman describes the KFC’s TV ads before today’s campaign of colonel-clad celebrities. The commercial featured an Orlando-based KFC cook handbreading and frying the chicken on-site. “Nobody even noticed it,” Hochman says. “We have to meet the customer where they are. They want to be entertained or they want something that’s going to get their attention, because if you don’t get their attention, it doesn’t matter what you’re saying.” Accordingly, the company transitioned to an education-plushumor strategy and tapped “SNL” alum Darrell Hammond as the first in what has since proved to be a long string of Colonel impersonators. Although some consumers were initially perplexed by the whole campaign, KFC’s brand engagement is stronger than it’s been in years. The company’s own internal testing suggested that only 43 percent of fast-food ads were correctly linked to the corresponding brand. Thanks to the new Colonel ads, KFC’s numbers were close to double that (74 percent), Hochman says. He expects the series of ads will be a “slow burn” over time, meaning the rotation of Colonels isn’t going to slow any time soon. In one of the more recent commercials, actor Rob Lowe puts a tongue-in-cheek spin on JFK’s famous space-race speech, asserting that KFC would put a sandwich into space. The company made good on its promise; in June, it launched a chicken sandwich into the Earth’s stratosphere with a highaltitude balloon from private space-aiming company World View Enterprises. If launching a sandwich into space seems a bit excessive, remember this is the same brand that built a logo large enough to be picked up by satellites in 2006. Like Sanders himself, KFC subscribes to a go-big-or-go-home philosophy. It’s a major asset, one that the brand has learned to yoke other company initiatives to. Hackbardt is full of praise for the commercials and says he could see the series continuing for years. “What they’ve created here is an episodic marketing campaign worth tuning into, worth finding, and ultimately—the big part— worth sharing,” he says. “How often do you get a marketing campaign where people are actually seeking it out and listening and wanting to know when the next one’s coming out? It’s a beautiful thing.” The overall dilution of media means it’s especially difficult for advertisers to reach their audiences, Hackbardt adds. Like many companies, KFC has made a big push into the world of social media to woo uninterested young consumers who make up a steadily growing slice of the consumer pie. Globally, the brand boasts more than 46 million followers on Facebook, while the U.S. Twitter feed is nearly 1.2 million. In the past two years, the TV ads have garnered more than 160

million views on Facebook and YouTube.

on the menu today.

“Our intent is to make the brand younger over time while still making sure we’re driving our core customer base,” Hochman says. “Obviously, young people don’t watch and consume as much TV as older customers do. We still have to reach them … and so, in order to do that, we had to diversify our marketing investments across several media, and not just TV.”

Despite a near decade of misses, KFC might have finally hit the mark. In early 2016, it became the first major fast-food brand to incorporate the regional favorite Nashville Hot into its menu. KFC even sent a food truck out on a two-week journey around the country to build buzz around the limitedtime offer.

Already the move is showing promise. Hochman says that three years ago, before the turnaround began, three out of five millennials had never tried KFC. According to data from YouGov, the brand has since posted a 45 percent increase in millennial consideration.

Southern, spice, and everything nice KFC’s zany new marketing strategy may pander to a certain consumer group, but it is not a simple case of lip service. The company also got down to the, uh, meat of its business. Like all facets of the brand revamp, the menu tweaks play at the retro and the über-trendy in tandem. On the traditional side, Hochman says, it was important to focus on something that would excite franchisees and customers alike: the Original Recipe with its proprietary blend of 11 herbs and spices. Amid an industry in flux, the Original Recipe chicken remains the No. 1 item to bring guests into KFC, followed by its box meals, Hochman adds. At the same time, the menu required more than its star attraction to stay relevant. “Younger people and their eating habits don’t necessarily lend themselves to eating chicken on the bone. Many meals are consumed in a car or on the go, which [makes it] harder to eat,” he says. “Our Original Recipe will always be our bestseller … but we are going to need to diversify beyond that.” To the brand’s credit, it has made several attempts to do just that—it just hasn’t been able to stick many landings. In 2009, the Fiery Grilled Chicken piqued interest; a year later, the Double Down—a sandwich with fried chicken fillets standing in for bread—turned heads (and some stomachs). In response to industry-ubiquitous chicken tenders, KFC fried up Original Recipe Bites. It’s even tried to challenge Chickfil-A’s no-bones-about-it dominance with the Original Recipe Boneless Chicken. None succeeded, and none have a spot

The road trip also presented an opportunity for KFC to improve its foodie reputation. “The customer knows a higher quality of food comes out of food trucks. They’re typically hand-prepared by chefs that are just starting out or can’t afford to have a restaurant,” Hochman says. “The reason we did the food truck for Nashville Hot was to communicate that.” To further tick up the quality quotient, KFC invested 100,000 hours retraining cooks to bring their techniques back to “Colonel standards.” In April, it also set a deadline to stop using chicken treated with antibiotics for human medicine by the end of 2018. The pledge is a couple of years behind competitors, but as KFC points out, it is the first major chain to make such a commitment for bone-in chicken. KFC hit gold again this year with another LTO. While steeped in regional flavors like its predecessor, the Georgia Gold Honey Mustard BBQ Chicken eschewed a strict template. “We did the Georgia Gold with the regional flavors of the Carolina mustards and the Georgia mustards, and created our own little homage to that,” says corporate chef Bob Das, who has been with KFC for about 17 years. Indeed, the new menu strategy is all about paying homage to Southern flavors and approaching them as Sanders would have himself. The brand’s not disregarding increasingly adventurous consumer preferences, though. “We’re trying to meet the demands of the customer. Obviously there are flavor seekers, and spice is a big thing. As you saw with Nashville Hot, we had people really craving that heat and that distinct flavor you can’t find anywhere else,” Das says. “Instead of trying these outlandish flavors typical to the Southwest or things that are even Pacific Rim or Latin flavors, we’re going to be right where we’re supposed to be [with] Southern-inspired.” To that end, the brand recently imported an international

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favorite, the Zinger Spicy Chicken Sandwich. First launched in Trinidad and Tobago in the mid-1980s, the Zinger has since expanded to 120 countries. Now KFC is testing its appeal stateside and farther afield (the Zinger is the sandwich the brand sent to the stratosphere). Again honoring Sanders and his palate, the Zinger adds hot spices to the proprietary 11-herbs-and-spices mix. For all its global fanfare and out-of-this-world aspirations, the Zinger is not a guaranteed slam-dunk. “[KFC has] always struggled with sandwiches for some reason,” BrandTrip Partners’ Hackbardt says. Whereas fast-casual players like Slim Chickens and Starbird extol the merits of their chicken sandwiches—cooked-to-order, buttermilk-marinated, purposely sourced, etc.—the Zinger isn’t sufficiently promoted, he adds. In the commercial featuring Rob Lowe, “hand-breaded” is only mentioned a single time. “If you take a look at the Zinger and the Double Crunch, there’s not a big story about that other than being hand-breaded.” Nevertheless, Hackbardt says it’s something that can be easily remedied; after all, the 77-year-old brand has great stories to tell. But for all the heritage, creativity, and adaptation to consumer trends, KFC holds one distinct advantage over the competitors: its buckets. “Bone-in chicken is something that’s great for a large party purchase. … They have that advantage, because there aren’t a lot of chains that are offering that,” Hackbardt says. “That drives the average check exceptionally high, because now we’re talking $20–$30 or even higher purchases. There are very few [quick serves] or fast casuals that are getting those kinds of purchases.”

Putting on a show Marietta’s Big Chicken may be an outlier, but it is representative of big changes throughout the system. Last year, KFC announced its “Re-Colonelization” plans, which encompass not only a recommitment to quality, but also a pledge to upgrade its stores. On the consumer-facing side, the brand combined the ostentatious with the inviting. Dubbed the American Showman style, the new design ratchets up the brightness of the exterior with bright red-and-white stripes, which were specifically designed to resemble a chicken bucket. The overall appearance is sleeker than older stores, and it manages to mix the old with the new: The iconic Colonel sketch remains, while block letters declaring KFC’s “World Famous Chicken” have been added. “If nothing happens to the exterior of your building, no one knows you did anything on the inside,” Hackbardt says. He recalls a focus group BrandTrip conducted for one of its limited-service clients; not a single participant could describe the interior of the restaurant, because they so rarely went inside. “To spend more money on the interior of your location doesn’t tend to pay off, because so much of your business goes through the drive thru.” Nevertheless, Hackbardt says a comfortable environment

is always more inviting, especially if the company wants to encourage more dine-in business. The interior of the American Showman design also sports the signature color combo, but in a more understated manner. The Original Celebrity Chef wall sets old photographs of Sanders against a red background, pendant lights are interspersed around the store, and wood finishes on the tile floor and furniture imbue a warmth not uncommon in the fast-casual scene, but far rarer in fast food. The new stores even added a chalkboard to show the name of the cook working that day, as well as the farm from which the chicken was sourced. “There’s that flash of the Colonel boldness, carnival red-andwhite atmosphere that draws your attention and creates that appeal to come in or go to the drive thru. But then we balanced that out with his pragmatic sensibilities, and certainly a real desire to have quality control on his products,” Cahoe says. Unlike the other turnaround efforts, the redesign falls squarely on the shoulders of franchisees. Company-owned stores account for just 4.8 percent of the domestic system, meaning it’s up to the operators to revamp their stores and make the American Showman style the default look of KFC stores. So far about 500 locations (a little over 10 percent) have made the upgrade. Cahoe says the plan is to have the new design in 70 percent of stores around 2020 since franchisee obligations come up for renewal within different time frames. “The partnership and the change with the franchise system arguably happened on the front end of all this. I don’t know that we would have the traction in the turnaround … if we didn’t have that relationship and partnership in place upfront,” Cahoe says. “You’ll hear a consistent theme that the relationship has never been stronger—and you need the strength of that relationship to have the type of success that we’re having in the space.” Thankfully, franchisees like KBP Foods are jumping in head first. The company plans to upgrade dozens of units and employ the new design with all future growth. As for the Big Chicken location, it required a higher price than building a completely new store. But considering what a beloved fixture it is in the community—and the larger KFC system—the price seems well worth it. From the adjoining gift shop to the statue of Colonel Sanders to its very own AM radio station featuring “deep thoughts from the previously silent bird,” the Big Chicken has the pop-culture prowess and deep connection to consumers that KFC is still chasing. But if the legacy brand can maintain this newfound momentum, the famed Marietta location will be just one of many feathers in its cap. “We’re still on this journey. We know that we have a long way to go to get to where we all want to be, our north star,” Hochman says. “Despite having very good success the last few years, Kentucky Fried Chicken’s best days are still ahead of us.”

BRANDS THAT MATTER NOW By Claire Dodson, David Lidsky, Kim Lightbody, and Rose Pastore. Illustration By Peter Oumanski

THE COMPANIES THAT CONSUMERS LOVE TO LOVE BECAUSE THEY STAND FOR SOMETHING MORE THAN MERELY WHAT THEY SELL Hottest. Coolest. Biggest. Newest. These are the qualities most often celebrated in the lists of top brands put out by agencies, analysts, and media outlets. Although those attributes often correlate with success, we have always taken a wider view. What does a brand mean? More than ever, companies have the power to connect deeply with people and bring about change. They can influence the direction of larger culture and make an impact on the way other businesses think and operate. We decided to highlight the brands that truly matter most right now. Since what “matters” can be subjective—and somewhat intangible—we started by gathering input from our Most Creative People in Business community. We asked them to apply four criteria: brands that are recognizable, deliver a quality product, make a positive difference in the world, and push their industries forward. Then our own editors analyzed the results. Most important, we wanted to identify those brands that are leadingwith courage and confidence in a fast-changingand uncertain environment. Some brands react to disruption; these are the ones driving it, creating a world of the future that is impossible to ignore.

GOOGLE

No other company better represents the idea of progress in the digital age. Google—and its parent company, Alphabet—is synonymous with finding new ways to interact with the world, and with each other.

AMAZON

Thanks to visionary CEO Elon Musk, eco-friendly products can be luxury items, inspiring both pleasure and envy.

APPLE The world’s most valuable company is also one of the most beloved, due to its gorgeous products, intuitive services, and enduring halo of cool.

NETFLIX The streaming pioneer, now also known for its original programming, keeps rewriting the playbook for the entertainment business.

As the way we buy stuff continues to shift fundamentally, the e-commerce giant consistently gets people excited about spending their money.

TESLA

AIRBNB By encouraging strangers to open their homes to each other, the sharing-economy icon isn’t just shaking up the travel biz; it represents an inclusive vision of the future.

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With high-profile creative-class partnerships (Kanye West, Raf Simons) and an emphasis on style along with performance, it’s carved out a unique space in a crowded field.

FACEBOOK Humans crave connection— and this is where it increasingly happens (for better or worse).

STARBUCKS

More than just a caffeine break, the “third place” is creating community in unexpected ways and places.

SOULCYCLE Its breakthrough idea: exercise as communal, sweat-soaked enlightenment. Not just a gym—it’s a lifestyle.

IKEA The Swedish retailer has transformed cheap furniture into covetable entry-level design. Come for the Poäng chair, stay for the meatballs.

BUZZFEED No other media company has expanded its identity so dramatically. It’s now known for serious news (not to mention cooking videos) as much as silly memes.

CHOBANI In the right hands, just about any product can take on real social significance. As Chobani churns out ever more varieties of yogurt, it also spreads a message of inclusiveness and human dignity.

DISNEY What do Marvel, Star Wars, and singing princesses have in common? A parent company that prioritizes quality, appeals broadly, and pushes forward while respecting its past.

ANDME Inspiring consumers—and, finally, the FDA—to embrace mass-market genetic testing.

SHONDALAND TV’s dominant personal brand used to be Oprah; today it is Shonda Rhimes.

SPOTIFY For 140 million users, the green-circle logo represents listening bliss: unlimited on-demand music and eerily accurate recommendations.

Who knew a sleep startup could make so much noise?

NIKE You will never be Serena or LeBron or Ronaldo. You can, however, wear their technologically advanced, designforward shoes.

CASPER

WARBY PARKER Glasses were utilitarian or absurdly expensive before Warby upended the industry. Now it’s the standardbearer for conscious online style brands.

PATAGONIA The socially conscious outdoor-goods purveyor is leading by example in the notoriously wasteful apparel business.

Game of Thrones may be winding down, but the network remains the quintessence of bingeable prestige television.

NPR With journalism under fire and public-arts funding in jeopardy, the radio (and podcasting) stalwart offers a safe space for quality storytelling.

HBO

INSTAGRAM Pictures are the key to contemporary communication, as this Facebook-owned platform continues to prove.

ADIDAS

TWITTER Contemporary culture’s loudest, fastest communication tool may not have the most users in the social media world, but it’s undeniably the center of today’s news marketplace, a vital global watercooler for anyone to engage with realtime information and opinion.

Delta’s Dating Wall is an Evolving Piece of Branded Art By Caroline Coen

what gives them their distinct personalities. Delta has extended this artwork to social media by implementing the Instagram challenge, a Snapchat filter, a Facebook shoppable post (in the works), even an online store where you can purchase different types of merchandise (shirts, mugs, and hats) with the airport code graphics on them. This fresh paint job will live on the #DeltaDatingWall until August 27th.

The #DeltaDatingWall, a product of the partnership between Delta and dating app Tinder, revamps the airline’s current Brooklyn walls. The building displays the airport codes of the 133 different destinations that Delta flies to out of both The John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports. Each airport code is unique, composed of certain colors and objects that represent that location. For example, the “F” in FRA (Frankfurt International Airport, Germany) resembles a mug of beer, and the cow/ ice cream cone represented in the BTV (Burlington International Airport in Vermont) artwork is only fitting for the home of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. Now that you have a head start, Delta is also asking passersby to find these particular distinctions and share them on Instagram with the chance of winning a prize. One of the primary purposes of this installation is to acknowledge and appreciate the different hometowns of people in the NYC area. Delta did an incredible job celebrating each of the specific hometowns by recognizing

This space was originally used for a different purpose—to trick your Tinder match into thinking you’re a world traveler. Earlier in the summer, Delta painted exotic locales of places they fly to for selfie opportunities with the objective of bolstering your Tinder profile (hence, “Dating Wall”). While most people probably weren’t fooled, the installation became widely successful nonetheless. Because of this, what was expected to be a one-off promotion, has evolved into a continuing activation for the Delta brand.

Martech and ad tech: Challenges and opportunities WHAT’S AHEAD FOR AD TECH IN THE LARGER MARTECH ENVIRONMENT? COLUMNIST JIM YU LAYS OUT THE DIFFICULTIES, AS WELL AS THE POTENTIAL REWARDS. By Jim Yu

The industry is abuzz with discussion about the unification of ad tech data with data from other marketing technologies.

author’s references to “martech” should be understood to refer to non-ad tech martech.]

For some, a potential merger means finding ways to use data from martech to power ad tech. Others see massive differences between the two types of technologies and predict synergy by way of hybrid solutions that combine elements of each within a single piece of software.

In this column, we’ll have a look at the relationship between martech and ad tech and look at some of the synergies between the two, identifying the greatest opportunities for connecting ad tech with martech to engage consumers going forward.

Private equity and venture capitalist database Pitchbook is now tracking solutions like this as a standalone industry segment, one in which US VCs invested $290 million last year. [Editor’s note: On MarTech Today, we see ad tech as a subset of martech, as advertising is a part of a brand’s overall marketing activities. For the purposes of this column, the

Martech & ad tech: Two sides of the same coin? How are ad tech and other marketing technologies different? Many would say that advertising, and therefore ad tech, is about buying media for exposure to potential customers, while other parts of marketing guide our understanding of

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Unfortunately, the industry has been organized in such a way that the left hand doesn’t talk to the right, when it comes to marketing and advertising. Breaking down these barriers is going to be far more challenging than finding solutions that marry ad tech and martech together. Those solutions are already coming to market. A single, comprehensive solution may be some time off, so you’re still going to be working within both a marketing and an advertising stack, but convergence is inevitable. The greatest opportunity, then, lies with the people using these new hybrid tools to drive ad tech with martech data. Both ad tech and martech automate and give scale to the intelligent, informed decisions of their operators. This will not change as ad tech becomes more closely aligned with the rest of the martech ecosystem.

and communications with identifiable people — our prospects and customers. These technologies are simply enablers and amplifiers of what we have always aimed to achieve in marketing and advertising. And ultimately, advertising and other forms of marketing have the same goal: driving sales. We’ve had it drilled into our heads that ad tech is for media buys and martech for personalization; that ad tech is for paid media and martech for owned. But in a recent column, martech guru Scott Brinker explored how the differences are fading. The tools we use to manage ads on social media networks aren’t considered ad tech, Brinker points out. Paid influencer marketing like Famebit isn’t considered ad tech, either. On the other side of that coin, the data management platforms (DMPs) we’ve long considered ad tech tools are now being used to personalize owned media. It’s in these intersections where the most powerful and truly interesting outcomes are happening. This convergence is where martech’s individualized datasets are being used to drive more meaningful and personalized paid interactions. So what are we really talking about, then? Is this the dawn of a new age in ad-mar-tech, where the lines will become so blurred they’ll merge into one discipline? Definitely maybe.

The humans of martech & ad tech People don’t consume media in silos; they’re interacting with companies across multiple touchpoints and platforms, each on their own path to purchase. They don’t know or care about the differences between ad tech and other marketing technologies, and they expect to hear a coherent brand message everywhere.

Organizations seeking to completely integrate both functions (think larger brands who are already standouts in their advertising and marketing) will be on the hunt for a certain type of professional. They’ll need people who can understand both the business of media markets and the art of personalized content. People who switch from left brain to right seamlessly, planning and executing campaigns with equal parts creativity and mathematical precision. Those organizations will realize the greatest advantages of hybrid ad tech-martech strategy and solutions by maximizing the value of their individualized, first-party data and deploying it across all advertising and marketing functions. Far more common will be a second scenario; one in which advertising and marketing teams realize the benefits of integration and collaboration within shared pieces of their respective stacks. They might work together within a tool that uses Martech CRM data to power brand awareness campaigns, for example, or to personalize website campaigns with their ad tech DMP.

Capitalizing on the martech/ad tech opportunity First, though, we’re going to see a lot of consolidation in the martech space. There are just too many players right now–over 5,000 of them, all competing for funding and market share. As martech solutions are increasingly forced to demonstrate both sustainability and profitability, the best will grow into the spaces left empty by those that either fold or are acquired by larger players. In any case, expect CMOs to be the ones leading the datadriven, more disciplined charge to fully integrated and optimized digital communications across the organization. The problems that converged or intersected ad tech/martech solutions promise to solve still lie solidly within the marketing wheelhouse. We may borrow from ad tech for scale and automation, but data still lies at the heart of marketing and every successful personalized, engaging customer interaction. Jim Yu is the founder and CEO of BrightEdge, the leading enterprise content performance and SEO Platform. He combines in-depth expertise in developing and marketing large on-demand software platforms with hands-on experience in advanced digital, content and SEO practices

How blockchain technology will revolutionize advertising By Scott Brinker

The following is an excerpt from the new e-book, The CMO Primer For The Blockchain World: How This “Trust Machine” Impacts Branding, Customer Experience, Advertising and

EXCERPT: Advertising Becomes More Accountable

Much More by Jeremy Epstein, CEO of Never Stop Marketing.

Familiar Challenges

It features forewords by the CMO of NASDAQ, Jeremy

You know you are not getting enough value for your advertising dollar. For every $1 you invest in advertising, you only get $.44 of value. One Forrester analyst claims that publishers who remove middlemen

Skule and the CMO of Dun & Bradstreet, Rishi Dave. The e-book explores seven different marketing functions and how blockchains might impact them as well as highlighting a few emerging vendors in the blockchain marketing tech space.

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.

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Any industry that is full of intermediaries, has a lot of value lost along the transaction path, and lacks transparency and trust is an industry that is ripe for blockchain-driven disruption.

can increase CPM from $1 to $5.

measured, and valued.

The Ad Maze report in the Wall St. Journal is only the most recent illustration of the number of middlemen (and resulting lack of transparency) between you and your intended audience. As if that is not bad enough, you also do not have enough visibility into how your advertising performs. To top it all off, bots inflicted $7.2 billion in fraud last year.

Near-Term Impacts and Benefits

Awareness is critical and advertising is a necessary component to driving consideration. You also know that the current model does not optimize your effectiveness or your return on marketing investment. John Wanamakerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s quote still rings true:

Expect to see initial traction from the first generation of solutions as early adopter CMOs and digital marketing leads begin to experiment in the next 12-18 months. You will hear of preliminary proof-of-concept implementations that reduce reporting time, improve reporting accuracy, reduce fraud, and reduce costs in the advertising supply chain. You may also see downward price pressure on traditional agencies responding to the competitive threat. The field of contenders is starting to fill up. Expect to see more join as well. You will also see several different strategies. Some of the early entrants include: â&#x20AC;˘

This next line will not help with the popularity of agencies, but that does not mean it is not accurate.

AdChain, built by MetaX, which offers a protocol for establishing trusted relationships for buying and selling advertising space via its own native token. The token will represent your right as a shareholder in the network. Together with the other shareholders, you will have an incentive to keep it clean from fraudulent or low-value publishers. In return, you will benefit by getting more

It comes as no surprise that the first and most advanced wave of blockchain-based protocols and technologies are seeking to upend how digital advertising is purchased, delivered,

ad value for your investment and verifiable campaign auditing through cryptographically secure impression tracking. In late June, AdChain raised $10 million in 6

Where Blockchain Technology Can Fit In

hours in its initial coin offering. •

•

NYIAX (New York Interactive Advertising Exchange) claims the world’s first advertising contract exchange. They are using NASDAQ’s blockchain technology to combine a financial matching engine and trading concepts with advertising technology. The goal is a transparent marketplace for buying, selling, and retrading of future premium advertising inventory as guaranteed contracts. They expect fees to lower as the number of intermediaries goes down to one. AdShares is a decentralized, peer-to-peer market for programmatic advertising. It gives advertisers and publishers ability to trade directly without the need for centralized ad exchanges. MadHive is a video advertising and data platform that allows brands and publishing partners to build audiences and target those audiences across multiple screens and platforms. MadHive’s back-end product uses blockchain technology to allow brands and publishers to leverage the inherent trust and verifiability of a decentralized, peer-topeer sharing network. MadHive is a founding member of AdLedger, the advertising industry’s blockchain consortium.

As these solutions start to come to maturity, you will have greater trust that your advertising investments are being placed as you intended. Wanamaker’s quote may not go away entirely, though you may be able to reduce the percentage wasted slightly.

Long-Term Impacts and Benefits In his book, The Attention Merchants, Tim Wu writes:

If we think of attention as a resource, or even a kind of currency, we must allow that it is always, necessarily, being “spent.” There is no saving it for later. The question is always, what shall I pay attention to? As marketers, we sometimes take for granted that the attention of others comes without any cost to ourselves. Since others pay for attention, marketers have historically just done whatever they could to get it. Advertising has been based upon this paradigm since the first penny papers of New York and Belle Epoque posters of Paris. In a blockchain-based world, this paradigm could change. Arguably, it is already changing as more than 600 million devices worldwide run some form of ad-blocking software. William Gibson writes:

The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed. In the future, though, if you want someone’s attention via advertising, you may end up having to pay the person for it directly. You certainly will not swipe a credit card every time

someone sees your ad. However, you might pay them a small fraction of a cent. Micropayments for attention can only work at scale with a digitally native currency. Making and tracking these types of payments at scale is precisely one of the inherent strengths of blockchains. Brave offers a glimpse of this future. On the surface, Brave just looks like another web-browser. Built by the creator of JavaScript and the co-founder of Mozilla and Firefox, it is already a strong browser experience for end users. It natively blocks ads and prevents cookies, which makes it much faster than its competitors. However, it is in the “Payments” tab where the story starts to get unique.

Brave Payments

Brave offers the capability for site visitors to directly make micropayments to a publisher via cryptocurrency for their content. You may not be willing to pay $200 a year for a subscription to The Economist, but you will pay a fraction of a penny to read an article. At scale, some of the most popular sites will start moving away from advertising as we know it. The next iteration will come in the form of something like the Basic Attention Token (BAT), a function built by the architect of the Brave browser. The token is the mechanism through which an advertiser pays for attention-based mental effort by an individual. With Brave and the BAT, you will pay end users for their attention, instead of the 73% of all ad dollars going to Facebook and Google. Brave may be destined for failure and there are valid critiques from very smart people that are worthy of attention (even though you will not be paid for it just yet). Still, it is radical and different and a possible hint at a world in which the CMO of the future is going to live.

Bottom line: Advertising will be the one of the first disciplines to be disrupted by blockchain technology. The good news is that you will have much greater trust in knowing that your advertising and outreach efforts are going exactly where you intended them to go. The bad news is that attention of others will come with a price tag.

Suggested Actions: Talk to some of the initial entrants to the blockchain-based advertising space. Even if they are not ready for prime time, they can help you understand the direction.

Marketers, prepare: Voice search is growing By Lauryn Chamberlain

The following is an excerpt from an report out today by GeoMarketing: The shift to increased reliance on voice over the past year is perhaps the biggest change for marketers since the advent of the smartphone. In 2017, there will be an estimated 33 million voice-first devices in circulation, per VoiceLabs 2017 Voice Report — and over 50 percent of millennials (consumers between the ages of 18 and 34) are already using voice commands once a month or more, according to research from Mindshare and J. Walter Thompson. “Just recently — in fact, just less than two years ago — voice recognition passed the threshold that makes it a viable user interface,” explained Dan Quigley, ‎ principal technical product manager, Alexa Whole Home at Amazon. “Now, consumers are reporting that that’s their preferred interface for communicating [with intelligent assistants and smart home devices.] The idea is that it’s something that gets smarter over time — the AI gets smarter over time — but the other thing that improves is our understanding of what people mean when they say things. A great little example is that in some parts of the country they’ll say, ‘Close the light,’ and that means ‘Turn off the light.’ We have to learn how to recognize that. [That’s a big part] of the progress that we’ve made.” As voice recognition technology has improved — and as the AI behind intelligent assistants continues to “learn” over time —

adoption of voice commands is skyrocketing. Noted. But why? “In our research, users [continually] talk about how more efficiently they can manage their daily lives by voice,” said Elizabeth Cherian, UK director of innovation at J. Walter Thompson. “And this makes sense: We’re humans; we’re built to exchange information orally. Swipe and text, on the other hand, are not intuitive.” In fact, JWT teamed up a company called Neuro Insight to measure brain activity in 100 participants while processing information via text and via voice. The findings? When respondents took in information by text, their brains worked harder than when they processed information in by a voice. There is a clear implication here for marketers: Human beings tend follow the path of least resistance, so as the sophistication of voice continues to improve, they are more likely to opt for voice over text because it is cognitively simpler. Essentially, the increasing popularity of voice search and voice commands appears to be at least partially tied to ingrained aspects of human cognition. And, at present, this mode of operating is significantly linked to controlling key interfaces (namely intelligent agents) in the world of connected intelligence. Lauryn Chamberlain is the associate editor at GeoMarketing. A New York City-based journalist, she specializes in stories related to retail, marketing, and technology.

Book,

Line

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

Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald’s Kindle Edition By Ray Kroc Few entrepreneurs can claim to have radically changed the way we live, and Ray Kroc is one of them. His revolutions in food-service automation, franchising, shared national training, and advertising have earned him a place beside the men and women who have founded not only businesses, but entire empires. But even more interesting than Ray Kroc the business man is Ray Kroc the man.

Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy Kindle Edition By Jonathan Taplin Move Fast and Break Things is the riveting account of a small group of libertarian entrepreneurs who in the 1990s began to hijack the original decentralized vision of the Internet, in the process creating three monopoly firms--Facebook, Amazon, and Google--that now determine the future of the music, film, television, publishing and news industries.

Tested Advertising Methods (5th Edition) (Prentice Hall Business Classics) By Caples, Hahn The fifth edition of this work on how to create successful advertising features new coverage on small businesses with limited revenues, non-profit advertising, as well as techniques of headlines, illustrations and layouts. There is also new information useful to smaller businesses.

Sinker Hey Whipple, Squeeze This By Luke Sullivan Very few advertising books are as easy and enjoyable to read. Written by a modern master of the advertising craft, it contains a wealth of information that everyone should know. If you’re just getting into the business, you’ll find a step-bystep guide to every aspect of advertising. If you’ve been around for decades, you’ll not only laugh (and cry) throughout the book, but will still pick up tips and reminders that continue to make you a better creative professional.

The Airbnb Story: How Three Ordinary Guys Disrupted an Industry, Made Billions . . . and Created Plenty of Controversy Kindle Edition By Leigh Gallagher Fortune editor Leigh Gallagher explores the success of Airbnb along with the more controversial side of its story. Regulators want to curb its rapid expansion; hotel industry leaders wrestle with the disruption it has caused them; and residents and customers alike struggle with the unintended ...

The Adweek Copywriting Handbook: The Ultimate Guide to Writing Powerful Advertising and Marketing Copy from One of America’s Top Copywriters By Joseph Sugarman Great copy is the heart and soul of the advertising business. In this practical guide, legendary copywriter Joe Sugarman provides proven guidelines and expert advice on what it takes to write copy that will entice, motivate, and move customers to buy.

Triggers By Joseph Sugarman Dramatically increase your ability to sell by learning how to control the mind of your prospect using 30 powerful psychological triggers to motivate, influence and persuade. Discover the one secret very few sales professionals know, yet it doubled response to a simple offer. Discover how to make your prospects feel so guilty that they can’t help but buy from you. Discover how to take an impossible situation and turn it around to your advantage through a simple sales technique. Buy this book now to improve every aspect of your selling and marketing skills.

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Impossible to Ignore: Creating Memorable Content to Influence Decisions

How to Write a Good Advertisement

By Carmen Simon

How to Write a Good Advertisement gets you quickly up to speed with examples of powerful profitable headlines (with explanations of why those headlines work so well), and quick lesson reviews that help you turn what you’ve read into skills you own. Schwab provides us shortcuts without sacrificing long-term understanding. Fifty years after publication this book is still the standard bearer, sought after by a new generation of copy-writers and businesspeople.

Drawing on the latest research in neuroscience and cognitive psychology, Carmen Simon, PhD, reveals how to avoid the hazards of random recall and deliver just the right amount of content. No more redundant meetings, rambling e-mails, or anemic presentations. In Impossible to Ignore, she shows you how to execute a proven three-step plan for persuasion

Productivity for Creative People: How to Get Creative Work Done in an “Always on” World Kindle Edition By Mark McGuinness Productivity for Creative People, is a collection of insights, tips, and techniques to help you carve out time for your most important work - while managing your other commitments. All the solutions he shares have been tested with real people in real situations.

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

By Victor O. Schwab

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World By Cal Newport Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It’s a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy.

Advertising, Branding & Marketing 101: The quick and easy guide to achieving great marketing outcomes in a small business Kindle Edition

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

By Dixie Maria Carlton

Snapchat Marketing 101: How to Skyrocket your Business through Snapchat Marketing: Updated for 2017! Kindle Edition

Winning at Social Customer Care: How Top Brands Create Engaging Experiences on Social Media Kindle Edition

By Zachary Allen

By Dan Gingiss, Jay Baer (Foreword)

Have you ever found yourself lost in the endless possibilities of 21st-century marketing? Or are you ever confused about how to market towards the millennial generation? Maybe you’ve even heard about Snapchat and would like to know more about how to use this powerful tool to boost sales. Well if that’s the case then this book is for you!

Social media has changed customer service forever. Dan Gingiss has interviewed dozens of business leaders on his podcast, Focus on Customer Service. From those conversations and his own real-world experience at multiple Fortune 300 companies, Gingiss has developed a series of best practices called “8 Steps to Winning at Social Customer Care.”

This book will help you to understand the basics of business and marketing plans, branding, image, customer service and public relations so that you can grow your business through simple and smart marketing practices. Getting the basics right can make such a difference to the outcomes.