BrandKnew September 2019

Branding matters. Because branding matters.

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09.19#83

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Dear Friends: Summer hopefully is at its tail end we will enter fall real soon. But, what is on the rise is the narrative that brands and organisations are building around changing landscapes, technology and consumer expectations. For ages, SWOT Analysis was considered irreplaceable. In this issue, we urge you to take a new look at this fabled concept. We bring to the fore 5 Revolutionary Digital Marketing Trends that will have the power to reshape 2020. We also want our readers to reimagine retail as they knew it. What once was is no longer good enough, however great a brand you might have been.

As they say, there is a time for everything and in this edition we talk what about what is the best time for a rebranding exercise. We are all in an ‘ attention deficit ‘ economy and the article on how marketers can capitalise on low attention will be of high interest and attention. Colour and brands have been partners in rhyme and we examine here how colours can have potent effect on brands. Its time to go OOH MG with location data driving the impact and efficacy of outdoor advertising. Also featured is an interview with disruption and innovation champion Whitney Johnson- she truly is a Class Apart. Short form is taking over video storytelling and we talk about the fast emerging trend. There is a lot that marketers can learn from Indie filmmakers and we lay bare that fact in this issue. Social selling is the new norm and how to sell on Pinterest will excite the many who are paying close attention to that space. There is ample more to devour and I urge you all to go ahead and make the most of it. Till the next…

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Managing Editor: Suresh Dinakaran Creative Head/Director Operations: Pravin Ahir Magazine Concept & Design/ New Media Specialist: Mufaddal Joher Business Development Director: Rishi Mohan Brand Engagement and Outreach Specialist: Anuva Madan Country Head India: Rohit Unni Research & Analysis: Meeta Pendse Country Head, Australia: Norbert D’Souza Country Head, UK: Sagar Patil Performance Marketing Architect: Ryan Govindan Video Content Specialist: Mikhaela Cena Content Development Specialist: Abijith Pradeep Trend & Market Intelligence: Simran Thanwani

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CONTENTS

Supreme Clientele: Branding Lessons From Businesses That Use Buzz to Drive Growth.

Retail Reimagining: Why Being Great Is no Longer Good Enough 5 Revolutionary Digital Marketing Trends With The Power to Shape 2020 Brand Marketing vs. Performance Marketing: Finding the Right Balance Rethink the SWOT Analysis The potent effects of colour on brands A Class Apart!

5 Ideas For Innovative B2B Video Marketing Annals of Advertising: When an influencer oversteps the boundaries Starbucks just publicly deconstructed its brand-here’s why How to Know When Rebranding Is Right What marketers can learn from indie filmmakers Short form video is the new wave of storytelling Location data is improving OOH ads in starkly different ways The end of search dominance? Consult your marketplace The future of marketing on Pinterest How to capitalise on low attention ‘I have to fight to do my job’: Confessions of a copywriter Book, Line & Sinker

Supreme Clientele: Branding Lessons From Businesses That Use Buzz to Drive Growth.

BANKSY AND OTHERS DEMONSTRATE HOW TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS STRATEGIC TACTIC.

By Andrew Medal

Every brand hopes to build major buzz. Gaining marketing momentum can position companies and ideas to take off and succeed in big ways, but how do they best grab this kind of attention? Before I showcase some other brands, I want to share one key lesson I’ve learned while building my own resume as a tech entrepreneur, author, angel investor and radio/podcast host. That is, I rarely talk about my success, instead focusing on my biggest failure as a way to differentiate my brand. Namely, my time in prison. I turned my hardest setback into a successful branding tactic, proving that creativity and resilience can transform even the bleakest situation into a massive opportunity. So don’t be afraid to make noise and go against the grain. Some people won’t like you, but you don’t want to do business with them anyway.

supply, which in turn enhances the allure of high demand, which then makes a product or brand more popular. This is how Supreme established its enduring coolness factor.

2. Banksy

While attention-grabbing brands may vary in their marketing approaches, each knows how to tap into its respective market and earn the acclaim and loyalty of its followers. These three brands exemplify how to build major brand buzz and generate growth.

The anti-establishment artist has somehow earned a reputation for building a brand so valuable that a single piece of his art sells for seven figures (including the piece with a built-in, self-destructing shredder that went for $1.4 million at a Sotheby’s auction). His success has helped elevated a once formally unacknowledged artform -- street art -- into work with the potential for serious profit. Part of his appeal is his distinctive and immediately recognizable style, but much of his brand’s buzz comes from the mystique behind each piece. Graffiti, in general, is still considered an illicit art, and the artist never shows his face in public. Mystery leads to desire. Banksy knows this and deploys it, creating an almost folkloric appeal. Plus, he is unwavering in his core values, which only further adds to his essential appeal.

1. Supreme

3. SpaceX

Few brands have created the level of obsession that streetwear manufacturer Supreme has. Every time they release a new item from their collection, followers line up to spend up to $1,000 or more. While major celebrities such as Kanye West and Victoria Beckham regularly sport Supreme, celebrity influence isn’t the only reason behind its success.

From its logo to its attention-grabbing endeavors, Elon Musk’s aerospace-manufacturing brand is set up in every way to generate major buzz. Really, everything Musk does is designed to get attention, and his forays into space exploration take this trait to another level, a la when he launched his Tesla Roadster into space via the Falcon Heavy Rocket.

James Jebbia opened the first Supreme skatewear shop in downtown Manhattan in the early 1990s. This is an important part of the brand’s claim on authenticity. Very few periods and places were more famous for urban skate culture than New York during this time. Wearing Supreme offers consumers a claim over this cultural moment, demonstrating a certain awareness of what’s cool and why.

The brand’s exclusivity also plays a major role in its appeal.

Because the amount of items Supreme produces is so low, it’s easy to encourage demand. If every piece is unique, it logically follows that the wearer is unique, too. Essentially, Supreme has built its brand recognition based on authenticity and exclusivity. And exclusivity creates the perception of limited

While his plans to send recreational travelers into space haven’t yet materialized, and his goal of colonizing Mars may seem distant, there’s no doubt that Musk’s brand is built on showmanship and he knows how to excite an audience.

Musk is emblematic of the fact that entrepreneurs who build buzz around their brands know how to strike a widespread cultural chord. While some of the brands listed above used big budgets to gain their audience’s attention, others relied on minimal resources. But what the most successful ones ultimately share is having inspired a following and movement rooted in relentless loyalty. That loyalty is the ultimate buzz builder.

Retail Reimagining: Why Being Great Is no Longer Good Enough

By Knowledge@Wharton

The retail industry is undergoing a major repositioning as legacy stores and brands that were once customer favorites fall victim to shifting consumer demands. Nine West, Toys R Us, Claire’s, Macy’s, Aerosoles, BCBG, Payless and countless others have either filed for bankruptcy, closed hundreds of stores or simply pulled the plug on the whole operation. In her new book, The Shopping Revolution: How Successful Retailers Win Customers in an Era of Endless Disruption, Wharton marketing professor Barbara Kahn explains how retailers can weather these radical changes. Kahn joined Knowledge@ Wharton to explain why in today’s retail environment, it takes more than a great sale to keep customers coming back for more.

An edited transcript of the conversation follows.

Knowledge@Wharton: This book could easily be titled The Amazon Revolution. What is it that Amazon knows about consumers that other retailers don’t?

Barbara Kahn: The interesting thing about Amazon is that they have, as they call it, a maniacal focus on the consumer.

If you look at retailers in the past, the customer was not part of the proposition. Amazon understood that the customer experience really matters.

Knowledge@Wharton: Walmart is also a huge player here.

In what ways does Walmart need to copy Amazon, and in what ways should it follow its own path?

Kahn: Walmart disrupted the retail industry in the mid-1990s.

I wrote a book about it then. It was called Grocery Revolution.

What Walmart did was an operationally excellent strategy at the time: They evened out demand, got rid of high-low pricing and went to everyday low pricing. They understood that customers want low prices, and they really attacked it from an operational point of view. But what Amazon

showed was that it’s not just about price, although price clearly matters to a certain segment of consumers. But it’s also about convenience. Frictionless. Make it easy. Walmart hadn’t done that before. In response to the competition, or the competitive expectations that Amazon has imposed on the industry, Walmart has to make their world more frictionless.

And they have to embrace online shopping and e-commerce in a way that they hadn’t previously.

Knowledge@Wharton: In the book, you share a framework for helping to make sense of all these changes in retail. What are some of the key elements of the framework?

Kahn: I did a lot of research, and I’ve been studying the industry for a while. [In the book,] there is a description of some of the different research, but it’s important to lay it on a framework and to think about the strategic implications.

That’s what I think the value of the book is. So, it’s a very simple framework. It’s deceptively simple, but it has really strong implications.

I start with two basic principles. The first is the principle of customer value. In the retail world, it means that customers want to buy something they value from someone they trust.

That forms the columns of my matrix — product experience and customer experience. The second principle is the principle of differential advantage. They want to buy from retailers who do it better than anybody else. How can a retailer do it better? They can either give more pleasure or take away pain. That provides the rows of the matrix.

Therefore, in my matrix, I have a two by two. On the top row, which is benefits or pleasure, the product quadrant would be things like brand or luxury or design or technology or something that’s really super-cool about a product that you’re willing to pay a premium price or even a luxury price. It’s the importance of in-store touch and feel. That quadrant would

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be retailers like Sephora or Eataly, which provide incredible, state-of-the-art customer experiences in the store.

you’re competing on price, but Amazon is making twohour deliveries or these kinds of things that raise customers’ expectations. Just being good enough in that quadrant of frictionless or convenience is getting harder and harder to do, let alone being the best the way Amazon is.

Knowledge@Wharton: Are customer expectations driving a lot of these changes?

Kahn: Five years ago, you would walk to your grocery store and get groceries. You didn’t think that much of it. Now, you demand that it’s delivered to you, and it’s got to be delivered to you at this time. The reason why those customer expectations are higher is because retailers are delivering to these new values, and customers get used to it and want everybody to do it.

Knowledge@Wharton: If you could pick one trend that retailers need to focus on now, what would it be?

Copyright Barbara E. Kahn. Published by Permission of Wharton Digital Press.

On the second row, it’s take away pain. And on one, it’s the pain of the product’s price. Walmart is an example of take away pain and offer low price. Walmart, Costco, TJ Maxx would be in that quadrant. Take away the pain from the customer experience is what Amazon did really differently, and they made it convenient. They made it frictionless. In Amazon’s case, their differential advantage is collecting a lot of customer data so that they can constantly simplify and personalize and customize the experience to make it easier and easier for the customer. That’s the matrix. That’s how I can define things. But the strategic implications of the matrix are something else.

Knowledge@Wharton: You noted in the book that it used to be good enough to just be good at one of those things. But now, you need to be good at more than one of those things.

Is that one of the implications?

Kahn: Yeah. That’s something that I discovered when I was trying to map these different strategies on the matrix. In a lot of marketing strategy frameworks, it’s, “Be the best at something and good enough at everything else.” That’s a rubric that we’ve used strategically. But when I was looking at what was happening in retail, it’s an industry that is being disrupted. It’s very, very hyper-competitive now. If you can’t make it, you’re really going to go out of business.

When I looked at the winning strategies, each one of the winning retailers were the best at something. But they leveraged that leadership advantage to be the best at something else, too. I call that the two-quadrant strategy.

So, you have to be the best at two things and good enough at everything else. But if you’re in a competitive industry, if everybody’s trying to be the best at something, what that does is ratchet up customer expectations. Even when you’re trying to be just good enough at something, those expectations are constantly going up.

You can see it in what Amazon’s done to the industry. Say

Kahn: I do think understanding the importance of customer experience is really important — understand that customers now have been catered to. They expect things to be convenient.

They expect the retailer to have an online presence. There are some retailers who still don’t have an online presence, and I wonder what will happen to them. Trader Joe’s is a retailer that people just love. It’s a real niche retailer, but they don’t have much of an online presence. I wonder what will happen going forward if they don’t rectify that situation.

Knowledge@Wharton: A lot of legacy retailers are suffering because they have stores and systems that are outdated. If a retailer is way behind now, how can they catch up?

Kahn: I don’t know. A lot of retailers that have fallen behind just really haven’t caught up. A couple of things are driving that. One, Amazon alone has just raised people’s expectations on e-commerce. But you also see a difference in consumers.

A lot has been written about millennials, but now people are focusing on Generation Z. These are what people are calling digitally native consumers. They grew up with the phone in their hand and shop through their phone. They expect online.

If you don’t have a seamless shopping experience that goes across physical stores, mobile and online, these people are just going to go somewhere else. It doesn’t make sense for them.

A lot of the legacy retailers understand it. I’m not saying they’re naive and don’t get the importance of e-commerce.

But they have legacy systems that are hard to integrate. The online and offline have been so separate that, for some of these retailers, it’s very hard to get up to speed. That gives an advantage to the digitally native retailers who came in after expectations. They came in with an online presence, and then they started opening stores. It was much easier for them to integrate the shopping experience than the other way around.

Knowledge@Wharton: All eyes tend to be on Amazon and Walmart because they are the big examples. But what are some other retailers flying under the radar that are doing things well?

Kahn: A lot of attention is being payed to what are called digitally native vertical brands. [One] is [eyewear company]

Warby Parker. Warby Parker is one of the big ones that started and really got the equation right. What digitally native vertical brands have in common is an amazing brand that really caters to a customer segment and really cares about what the customers want. So, they offer something of value. The other thing that characterizes these digitally native vertical brands is that they are vertical, which means that they go direct to the end-user. They can do that because they start out online and don’t need to go through physical retailers, necessarily. That eliminates layers and offers a good price. So Warby Parker, as well as Bonobos, Casper, or some of the other digital native vertical brands, offer really cool customer experience brands, but they offer it at a lower price. They compete very effectively because they have that two-quadrant leadership strategy.

Knowledge@Wharton: H&M is a retailer that became successful riding this wave of fast fashion, but now it’s sitting on billions in unsold inventory. What do you think went wrong? What lessons are there for other retailers?

Kahn: Zara is also a fast-fashion retailer, which I also think of as a vertical brand. It eliminated the layers, too, and offers a good brand at a low price. H&M and Zara both did that. Zara is a little higher price point than H&M but still much cheaper than luxury. What Zara did, which I don’t think H&M did as well, was it had a better prediction of inventory, of fashion taste. They were right on top of fashion and managed their inventory well. H&M had a lot of excess inventory. Once you start doing that, you’re not really on top of what customers want. Then you get a lot of costs that have to be managed.

Knowledge@Wharton: A lot of luxury retailers are retooling to compete in an even more fickle fashion world. What does luxury mean now? Does it mean something different than it did 10 years ago?

Kahn: Yeah. Going back to this epiphany that I had about two-quadrant strategy, luxury used to be good enough to be just fantastic brands. They didn’t have to compete on price, and they weren’t convenient. Part of the luxury paradox is that it shouldn’t be easy to get, so that makes it more valuable.

That’s crazy, but that is what happens.

But now, with people’s expectation of online convenience, even luxury brands, which went kicking and screaming into this notion of e-commerce, recognize that e-commerce is starting to be a factor in whether consumers will buy from you or not. You’re seeing new platforms starting up, like Neta-Porter or Farfetch, which are e-commerce platforms trying to cater to the luxury market. Outside of the U.S., Alibaba is doing that.

Most of the luxury companies or brands do not want to sell on Amazon because they don’t think that Amazon will give them enough power over their own brand. Amazon is a very ruthless retailer. But some of the other platforms are ways for these luxury brands to reach their consumers, protect their brand mystique and still offer some convenience of e-commerce.

Knowledge@Wharton: This new era of retail also has implications for commercial real estate. How will developers have to change their strategy to accommodate this new world?

Kahn: You’re seeing a lot of interesting changes in physical

stores. A lot of the B and C malls, the less attractive malls, have been closing down. Even when you see the A malls open up, they are not the same A malls as in the past. A good example is Century City, one of the new malls that opened up in Los Angeles. It’s a gorgeous mall. I loved it. One of the anchors is Eataly, which is a food place. They have tons of restaurants. They have gyms. They have a department store. Nordstrom is there. But the statistics that I’ve seen is that a lot more of the purchases used to be made in the department stores, and that’s going way down. It’s much more experiential. People like to hang out at the malls. They eat, they go to the movies, they go to gym. There’s still some retail there, but it’s a different mix of retail.

Knowledge@Wharton: Given these trends, what do you think the retail experience will be like for the consumer 10 years from now?

Kahn: That’s hard to call, for sure. There are other trends.

Demographically, a lot of people are moving into the city, so you’re seeing smaller-footprint stores there. I think a lot of the retail physical stores are making themselves smaller because they’re not carrying as much inventory. Some of the retail stores are becoming showrooms. You can go there to touch and feel the product, and then you order it online and it’s delivered within two hours. That suggests the store itself doesn’t have to have the inventory.

I think the importance of this touch-and-feel and really valuable customer experience is going to matter. It’s not just about food. A lot of people think customer experience is to offer a cup of coffee. It’s obviously more than that. But it has to be a way where you really understand what the customers want to do in the store.

The other thing that a lot of the retailers are fooling around with, and it’s very interesting to think about, is health care.

That’s also very high touch. You’re moving into CVS and Walgreens doing a lot more primary care in their stores, which is an experiential thing. You do have to see somebody to have them touch you, figure out what’s wrong with you or give you a shot. Anything that’s experiential might be in these retail stores, not just pure shopping. I think you’ll see these smaller stores, more experiential, defined very broadly. If the industry continues to be this competitive, then I think you’ll see customer expectations constantly being ratcheted up, and retailers will really have to keep improving and innovating.

Knowledge@Wharton: What about the fate of big-box stores?

Kahn: A lot of the closings are big-box retailers: Circuit City, Borders, Toys R Us. Those used to be called category killers. What they offered was huge assortment at low price, but online can totally defeat that. That’s just not a winning proposition anymore. The question is, can department stores exist? They’re trying. Macy’s has a lot of strategies on the table. They really understand the threat, and they’re trying to catch up. Time will tell if they can make it.

Knowledge@Wharton: What are the core tenets of retail that will never change?

Kahn: The irony when I developed this matrix is that, duh, this is Marketing 101: Give customers what they want and do it better than the competition. What that means is customer expectations change. It might mean something different. But really, being customer-focused I think will always be in style.

5 Revolutionary Digital Marketing Trends With The Power to Shape 2020

By Zee Ahmed

Digital strategies are all about innovating and improving existing tactics.

After being consistently ignored by Google, Genius came up with a (genius) solution to catch them in the act:

When a trend is adopted by the masses, it eventually stops helping marketers stand out – forcing them to move on to other avenues to outpace the competition.

They began watermarking Morse code in curled and straight quotation marks that spelled “Red Handed,” in their lyrics.

Take long-form content, for example. Over the past few years, it was hailed as one of the keys to content marketing and SEO success.

However, now that almost everyone is producing long-form content, these assets alone won’t help you rank.

Therefore, it’s important to innovate and improve upon existing trends and strategies.

The 5 Potentially Powerful Digital Marketing Trends for 2020 From web design trends to the incorporation of “micromoments”, 2019 has seen many changes in the realm of digital marketing.

Looking beyond 2019, here are 5 potential digital marketing trends of 2020 that may change the game as we know it, forever.

The War Against Search Engine Monopolies With 63,000+ Google searches per second resulting in massive potential for traffic, websites need to abide by search engine rules or accept the consequences.

However, that could all change.

Genius, a company that uploads song lyrics, found out in 2016 that Google was copying lyrics from their website and displaying them on knowledge panels – without attributing Genius as the source.

As phenomenal as that was, it didn’t do much in terms of getting a reaction out of Google.

That is, until June 2019, when The Wall Street Journal published an article shedding light on the situation.

In response, Google blamed anonymous licensing partners and vowed to attribute the actual sources of lyrics in the future.

However, by this time, they had already faced a lot of backlash as industry leaders (such as Rand Fishkin and Barry Schwartz) sided with Genius.

Realistically, content creators themselves have little influence against search giants, so publications will play a crucial role moving forward.

Could such incidents put an end to search engine monopolies?

This may entail: 1. Google updating its search engine features (especially the knowledge panels), encouraging marketers to optimize their content for search features.

2. Content creators (who feel that their content is being exploited) to raise their voices and seek help from publications.

Mobile OS Optimization Due to Google recently prioritizing mobile-first indexing, marketers now have to emphasize more on making their content mobile-friendly across both iOS and Android.

However, considering a recent political scandal involving a

major tech player, a new mobile OS is expected to hit the market.

This may entail: 1. Marketers looking beyond popular mobile browsers and familiarizing themselves with new ones.

2. Google announcing a major algorithm update to implement significant changes that would start taking new platforms into account.

3. Apart from mobile optimization, marketers may also have to consider an entirely new mobile ads network for in-app advertisements.

Here are the implications for marketers: 1. Marketers may have to focus more on creating “feel good” content, while respecting existing variables to rank higher in the SERPs. 2. In-house marketing teams and agencies will have to use data to back all decisions – even those as small as publishing a tweet – with hard data.

Starlink to Give Rise to Untapped Markets

AR & VR Marketing

SpaceX’s satellite constellation, Starlink, is set to provide fast and affordable internet connectivity worldwide – giving rise to billions of new internet users.

Companies such as AMC Theaters are already leveraging AR and VR marketing.

In May 2019, the first 60 of 12,000 satellites were launched into orbit.

By 2020, even more brands are expected to jump on the bandwagon.

Needless to say, Starlink has been a hot topic in the global science community, but the general public doesn’t realize its true magnitude.

In order to keep up ecommerce businesses will have to create interactive shopping channels, further optimize user experience, and add new levels of personalization to the customer journey.

If this trend finally kicks off and the VR and AR technologies become the norm, it could usher a new era of consumer marketing.

And of course if businesses are to leverage this technology they will need need to optimize their content and funnel for AR and VR devices.

This may entail: 1. Businesses revising their strategies and experimenting with entirely new channels to sell the new experience (instead of just the product).

2. Businesses optimizing the web experience for AR and VR devices, such as smart glasses.

Greater Emphasis on Psychological Variables Understanding your consumer’s psychological drivers will help you optimize your marketing campaigns.

Platforms such as Facebook have been offering demographic and ad copy A/B tests for some time now (allowing marketers to run experiments on the fly).

This lets them: 1. See which approach works best.

2. Target individuals instead of a broad audience.

3. Access a plethora of demographic profiling and behavioral attributes.

Smart marketers go one step further and layer in analytics tools (such as heat maps) to better understand audience behavior for visitors on their website.

With platforms accessing this website data, algorithms have a better understanding of user intent with every update. This may force psychological variables to become the norm in 2020.

Here are the implications for digital marketers if all goes to plan: 1. Companies may have to change their global strategies to incorporate new markets by introducing unique offerings based on additional cultures, political landscapes and economic conditions.

2. Local search engine optimization may be impacted the most and new local keywords might pop up.

3. Wide-scale access to uninterrupted internet connectivity will grow the global workforce. You may one day be outsourcing to an award-winning agency based in a North African desert.

4. On the other hand, more skilled professionals would mean more competition and noise. This may prompt search engines and social networks to tweak their algorithms to ensure that the quality of online content remains unaffected.

What It All Means With such momentous potential changes over the horizon, digital marketers should begin considering how they can build upon current strategies to align with future possibilities.

For starters, here are a few quick ideas: 1. Competitive Intelligence: Create a report of brands like Genius that are turning the tide against search engine giants. Be sure to take detailed notes of what their marketing strategy.

2. Advertising: Utilize the full demographic targeting capabilities of platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads. Additionally, leverage their split testing capabilities.

3. New Demographics: Be on the lookout for new geotargeting capabilities on platforms like Google as more and more people from around the world gain access to the internet.

By conceptualizing and executing plans based on tomorrow’s landscape – today – we can capitalize on the entire life cycle of a digital marketing trend.

Brand Marketing vs.

Performance Marketing: Finding the Right Balance

By Farzana Nasser

Is brand marketing becoming the forgotten hero?

Many direct-to-consumer brands today have begun to develop an obsession with performance marketing while placing branding in the proverbial back burner.

However, prioritizing one strategy over the other can result in significant ramifications.

marketing across performance-marketing channels in realtime.

Brand marketing was the foundation of my career. Identifying authentic consumer insights and using that as a basis to develop inspiring creative briefs and ultimately communicate with consumers for major brands was my specialty. The opportunity to harness both brand and performance marketing became evident to me when social media went mainstream. And after my partnership with MSN to launch the first-ever branded online game, I became hooked on how exciting it was to be able to measure engagement. I went on to found a marketing technology company that used a company’s first-party data to apply customer intelligence to

Brand marketing defines a company’s reputation, its values, the quality of its offerings, its trustworthiness, and more. It seeks to enhance credibility, prompt an emotional response from the consumer, increase customer loyalty, and motivate buyers. Performance marketing, on the other hand, deals with the realm of concrete data, such as lead generation and conversions (e.g., email sign-ups and number of purchases).

My experience made clear to me that finding a balance between brand marketing and performance marketing is essential for organizational growth and long-term success.

Many marketers are masters of either brand or performance marketing, but very few excel at both simultaneously. It is challenging to go deep into both.

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However, the best marketers must and do understand both the art and science of marketing and are able to bring forward foundational brand elements into communication with the consumer across every channel.

The Inadequacies of a Skewed Focus Brand marketing and performance marketing are becoming increasingly interdependent in a world where personalization and building relationships with your consumers are of paramount importance.

We’ve all seen what happens when the focus is too brandheavy. Some luxury retailers, for example, maintain a strong focus on aesthetics and art, and fail to give the same attention to measurable growth-marketing strategies and tactics.

We’ve seen the gorgeous websites with beautiful editorialstyle pictures, long page-load speeds, a lack of content that fosters organic traffic, and impossible-to-navigate webpages.

The idea is that by wowing the consumer with aesthetic and creative approaches, one can stand out from the crowd and make an impact.

However, that alone is not a recipe for success in a modern age where reach is largely determined by ad spend and organic traffic searches. Without strong SEO, user experience, or PPC strategies, those gorgeous campaigns end up like the Prada store in Marfa, Texas—a beautiful piece of art that draws attraction here and there but is largely confined to a desolate landscape.

We’ve also seen what happens when marketers go too far on the other side of the spectrum. Content is heavily optimized with a strong focus on performance and little regard for branding or image. It is dry, robotic, or too salesy—more like the byproduct of a content farm than a brand looking to make a strong and lasting impression on its audience.

It’s a short-term strategy founded on the principle that when one focuses on the methodical aspects of marketing—the concrete numbers, every single conversion and data point— then an emotional connection or a strong brand image and voice almost become moot.

However, brand-driven insight is your truth—the WHY behind all that you do. The performance marketing is your plan put into action—the HOW and WHAT of manifesting that truth.

You can be optimized to a T and your performance channels can be solid, but without leveraging brand learnings your organization will not achieve the growth and success that it can when those two realms are combined.

A Recipe for Success Needless to say, there are serious costs when a company is focused too heavily either on branding or on performance.

Top-of-funnel branding efforts with no clear path to purchase can impact conversion; solely focusing on the bottom of the

funnel will impact your ability to grow your business over the long term.

The solution entails finding the right, delicate balance between the two in order to achieve the highest level of effectiveness and growth.

That means making sure brand marketers understand the more concrete and measurable realm of performance marketing, and performance marketers understand that every moment is an opportunity to tell your story and connect with audiences on a more personalized and deeper level.

Moreover, brand channels are now more measurable than ever before. Capabilities such as programmatic advertising and performance media can be optimized for branding through tactics like sequential storytelling.

To facilitate more effective results, teams of all backgrounds must learn to leverage the insight that data from omnichannel consumer behavior can provide. Clear objectives must be established for every single channel, and they should all fit seamlessly within the overall business strategy (especially considering the need for executive buy-in).

Laura Joukovski, president of TechStyle Fashion Group, has embraced this philosophy: “We don’t think of marketing as brand vs. performance. We believe a brand is built on advertising, experience with the website, and the merchandise.

Our strategy is comprehensive and nuanced based on the needs of the channel to ensure we deliver content of interest to our consumers. Ultimately, all advertising is evaluated on a performance basis.”

The goal is to combine the worlds of brand marketing and performance marketing and use that amalgamation to deliver a holistic presence across multiple distribution channels—a presence that marries common principles of the two. But that cannot happen without cooperation and a strong focus on a long-term strategy of unification, versus one crafted siloed schools of thought for short-term gain.

If you’re looking to remain competitive in today’s landscape, the synthesis of these two realms is essential if companies are to truly achieve the growth and success needed to make a substantial and lasting impact.

At the end of the day, it’s all about driving business results; increasing market share; and, most important, overdelivering on consumer expectations by crafting a strong brand that connects, incites action, and instills long-term loyalty in customers.

Farzana Nasser is a digital marketing executive at Chameleon Collective, a hybrid consulting and marketing services firm. She has managed global brands or developed digital marketing strategies at the New York Times, Bugaboo, Betty Crocker, Cheerios, The Royal Bank, and Wyndham Hotels.

Rethink the SWOT Analysis ARE YOUR COMPANY’S STRENGTHS REALLY WEAKNESSES?

By Adam Brandenburger

Look at a map of the world drawn upside down. It’s a good way to challenge your assumptions about the way the world is — especially which continents and oceans are bigger and which are smaller. Looking at the business world upside down has a similar effect: It challenges your assumptions about company characteristics and what they mean for an organization.

In an upside-down business world, big companies are brought down by their supposed strengths or toppled by smaller and seemingly weaker rivals. Small companies find ways to turn deficiencies into advantages or to leverage the scale and capabilities of larger competitors against them.

In the right-side-up world, strengths remain strengths and weaknesses remain weaknesses. That does seem to hold true in stable environments where technologies and market structures are more or less fixed. But as many well-known strategy theories recognize, the business landscape is far from unchanging. More often than not, the upside-down world is the one we actually live in.

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Rethinking SWOT A venerable tool of business strategy, SWOT analysis, can help executives navigate this reality. Traditionally, this framework has you conduct an internal examination of your organization’s strengths and weaknesses, scan the landscape to identify external opportunities and threats, and then synthesize all four factors into a strategic plan.

an evolutionary process, he argued, by which people with the skills and mindset for the prevailing business environment rise to the top of an organization. And when the environment changes, as it inevitably does, they may be precisely the wrong people to lead the organization.

Strengths can also turn into threats at the industry level. Take the taxi business. A market monopoly in many cities, it looked

The downside of traditional SWOT is that it doesn’t account for the more dynamic forces at work in business. To address them, we need to take the model apart and reconstruct it, like this: The retooled framework recognizes that threats and opportunities can come from within as well as from without — and that not just your own capabilities and deficiencies but those of other players matter. Because of this, it has companies examine two additional factors: others’ strengths and others’ weaknesses. Critically, it acknowledges that the strengths of an organization may actually pose a threat to it while its weaknesses may present opportunities.

Your Strengths and Weaknesses The idea that your strengths can turn into risks was expressed very memorably by Harvard Business School professor Dorothy Leonard, who argued that an organization’s core competencies often harden into “core rigidities.” Features that served the organization well in the past — such as its values, skills, and managerial and technical systems — can become obstacles with new projects.

In his 1996 book, Only the Paranoid Survive, former Intel CEO Andy Grove went so far as to suggest that a company’s biggest core rigidity might be its top management. There’s

stronger than ever in 2009. That was the year a smartphoneenabled ride-hailing service, then called UberCab, was founded. Over the next several years, many taxi businesses found out just how much their market dominance had let them ignore customer service and technology that could connect passengers and drivers. It’s a classic illustration of how a powerful market position can lead to life-threatening underinvestment in innovation.

For an example of a supposed weakness that turned into an advantage, let’s look back to World War I. British army officer T.E. Lawrence (the famous “Lawrence of Arabia”) helped organize an Arab uprising against the Ottoman Empire, an ally of Germany that then ruled much of the Middle East.

The British military establishment was skeptical, believing the

nomadic and lightly equipped Arab armies were too weak to take on the Turks. Lawrence realized these characteristics actually gave the Arabs an opportunity. He avoided the Turkish garrisons and led fast-moving and highly successful guerrilla attacks on the main railway line supplying the Turkish army.

A century later, SpaceX is playing the weakness-opportunity card against giant players such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin in space technology. SpaceX lacks the experience and financial resources of the incumbents. But those apparent weaknesses have led it to develop a series of innovations — such as the use of cheaper consumer electronics in its rocket components — that significantly reduce production costs.

The incumbents would need to unlearn some of their longstanding habits to make rockets the way SpaceX does.

Others’ Strengths and Weaknesses The idea that your competitor’s strengths present an opportunity to you can be found in many cultures. The Japanese art of judo, for instance, teaches you how to turn the weight and force of your opponents against them.

In its early days Pepsi used this approach to challenge the soft drink front-runner, Coke, pursuing a variety of strategies that Coke was loath to copy. They included low price (expensive for Coke to match over its larger customer base), distribution in new supermarket chains (a conflict with Coke’s traditional channels at the time), and lifestyle advertising targeting the younger generation (not in sync with Coke’s “heartland” image).

Today a similar battle may be unfolding in coffee. In China, Luckin Coffee, a recent startup, is attempting to take on Starbucks, which has been in that country since 1999.

Luckin already has 3,000 locations (Starbucks has 4,000) and is growing fast. Attempting to use the size and premium positioning of Starbucks against it, Luckin is pricing low and building simple stores — most are small booths — optimized for cashless pickup or delivery. Starbucks is responding with its own delivery service and express store format, betting that it can successfully occupy two different market positions.

The complementary concept that a rival’s perceived weakness may pose a serious threat to your organization was popularized by Harvard Business School’s Clay Christensen in his famous disruptive innovation theory. Say your business is focused on its important customers. A competitor — perhaps a new entrant — invents a technology that’s weaker on several dimensions but stronger on a couple that matter to a small subset of customers. Before you know it, you start losing mainstream customers who now value the new dimensions.

This dynamic has been playing out in recent years between traditional colleges and universities and online education.

Online courses have clear weaknesses: They offer students limited interaction and feedback and, often, no credential.

But online education is also open access and often free. It’s appealing to people who have trouble getting admitted to schools, affording tuition, or making it to a classroom on a campus at set times of the week. To date, the incumbents have

been slow to respond, though they’ve started to introduce some innovations, such as online master’s programs. More radically, Purdue University has created an income-sharing agreement, in which student loan repayments are pegged to a graduate’s income, to make on-campus courses affordable for more people. But most colleges and universities are probably overly focused on the weaknesses of online education today and not paying enough attention to the serious threat it could pose in the future.

The lesson for incumbents in all industries is that initially weak- or unimportant-looking competitors may lull them into a false sense of security.

Testing Your Thinking with the New SWOT It isn’t difficult to incorporate the new framework into your strategic planning. Here’s an exercise that any organization, large or small, can do to check its assumptions: Form two teams. Have Team A list all the strengths it sees in your organization, and Team B list all the weaknesses.

Then have the teams swap lists. Ask Team B to argue that the strengths listed constitute threats to the organization’s future, and Team A that the weaknesses listed constitute opportunities. Next, do a similar external analysis: Ask Team A to list all the strengths it sees in your competition, and Team B all the weaknesses. Again, have the teams swap lists. Ask Team B to argue that the strengths listed are opportunities for your organization, and Team A argue that the weaknesses constitute threats.

This exercise will open your eyes to many possibilities that otherwise might never occur to you. However, it’s critical to remember that sometimes right-side-up thinking about strategy will be exactly what’s needed. An organization’s strengths may indeed be strengths, to be guarded and bolstered, and weaknesses may indeed be weaknesses.

Good strategists allow for the possibility that things may be what they seem or may be the opposite, depending on the situation. In his book On Grand Strategy, Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis analyzes military and political strategists over the centuries. The better ones, he has found, are those who exhibit (in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous words) “the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”

So you have to think flexibly. That does not mean thinking wildly, however. It’s crucial to approach strategy in a structured way. By using the new SWOT diagram, you can systematically ask important questions about whether upside-down rather than right-side-up dynamics may be at work in your business.

Adam Brandenburger holds positions as the J.P. Valles Professor at the Stern School of Business, Distinguished Professor at the Tandon School of Engineering, and faculty director of the Program on Creativity and Innovation at NYU Shanghai, all at New York University.

The potent effects of colour on brands

By WARC

Colour is a driver of brand awareness and is inextricably tied into a brand’s visual language, argues an industry expert in a new WARC paper. With the rise of visual social media platforms such as Instagram, brands need to be aware of its impact.

This is according to a new article on WARC, Colour and the ‘Instagramisation’ of alcohol brands, by Michael Scantlebury, Founder and Director at the ad agency Impero.

At its core, Scantlebury writes, colour is an identifier, “the thing that becomes familiar with consumers; it’s often the thing they look for on signage, on-shelf or anywhere they have to search it out.”

In the food and drink space, colour is particularly important as it pertains to Instagram, where ‘food porn’ is one of the biggest interests on the platform. For restaurants, it is crucial: According to research by restaurant chain Zizzi, 30% of 18 – 35 year olds would avoid a restaurant if their Instagram presence is weak.

The alcohol market has also been influenced particularly heavily by new considerations around colour, especially in spirits. For instance, Aperol, the aperitif which is bright orange in colour enjoyed 27% sales growth in the first quarter of 2019 alone – images of people enjoying the drink are quickly recognisable through its colour on Insta.

“Here comes the inconvenient truth, it’s the colour and the serve that makes it instagrammable. If it were a clear spirit, in a standard glass, it would probably still be battling for share of voice – even if it tasted exactly the same”, he argues.

“When trendy people sit outside a trendy cafe drinking this trendy orange drink – what do you think is going on inside the heads of onlookers? They’re not wondering about the heritage of Aperol – more often than not, they’re not even wondering what it tastes like. They’re happy to find that out later. They want to be part of the moment, and part of the trend.”

He points to a recent campaign for Pernod Ricard-owned Beefeater London Dry Gin, which recently brought out a pink variant with a strawberry flavour. Collateral would be pink, intended to cut through drab environments.

Scantlebury’s team took over Oxford Circus underground station’s OOH media on platforms and in hallways to establish itself in one of the city’s busiest interchanges.

“Utilising an innovative printing technique that infused posters with scented ink, we brought pink to life sensorially, with the smell of wild strawberries, creating TFL’s first-ever scented underground station campaign.”

The campaign not only increased awareness but drove trials significantly, leading to strong sales growth.

A Class Apart!

By Suresh Dinakaran

Thinker. Disruptor. Innovator. Builder of A Class Teams. Award Winning Author. Top 15 Coach. Leading LinkedIn Influencer.

Award winning Stock Analyst. Phew! That is a power packed summary of Whitney Johnson, a true champion on disruptive innovation and personal disruption. Here in this freewheeling conversation with BrandKnew, Whitney distills insights and articulates her thoughts on disruption, innovation and more.

BK: Could you pl tell us a bit about your growing up years?

WJ: I was born in Madrid, Spain while my father was working there—briefly. I grew up in California, what is now Silicon Valley. I’m the oldest of four children. I played piano, sewed, and did cheerleading. When I was seventeen my parents divorced. In retrospect, it’s not so much the divorce that was painful, but what it meant. They weren’t happy. Maybe they had never really loved each other (my mom was pregnant when they married). As the oldest child I wondered if perhaps things might have been different if I’d be smart or attractive enough? Would they have even married had I not been born?

What’s interesting is that some of my greatest strengths have been born of that sadness: my desire to have a happy

marriage and family life is resolute. We aren’t perfect, but we are happy: we have two children (David, 23 and Miranda, 18).

When someone I know is affected by divorce, I understand.

Regardless of why the marriage is dissolving, it is wrenching.

My drive, my intense focus on improvement, is likely a means of trying of measuring up, and I’m quite certain that my laser-like focus on encouraging and mentoring is an attempt to be the encouraging voice I wanted to hear.

BK: What/who inspirations?

were

your

childhood

aspirations

&

WJ: As a young girl, I wanted to be a concert pianist, but that ended by the time I was about eight years old. Beyond that I don’t remember having any clear idea of what I wanted to be, other than some vague notion that I would marry and have children. What I do know is that I was watching my mother closely, as all children watch their parents. She always worked, and then was a single mother with four children. I was somewhat aware of how hard it was for her to get a fair shake in the workplace. For example, when she told her principal she was pregnant with her fourth child, she was fired. She lost her seniority as a teacher in the California

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system. It made it not worth it for her to return to teaching when she returned to work. She was forced to disrupt herself.

I was always determined to be the mistress of my own fate.

Right out of college, my plan was to be a flight attendant. But they didn’t hire me. I think I’m happy now that they didn’t.

BK: Disruption and Innovation has been your calling card over the years- tell us how this mastery started and why your continued love for the subjects?

WJ: I actually started my career on Wall Street—and spent a lot of years there. Wall Street was an unlikely place for me; my education is in music. Braving the tough entrance into the world of high finance was my first big disruption. It was only in hindsight that I recognized myself as someone who disrupts themselves pretty regularly. I didn’t have that language to describe my career leaps, both up and laterally, and yes, sometimes down. After leaving Wall Street, and trying my hand at a variety of things, I connected with Clayton Christensen, who has been the master modeler of Disruptive Innovation. While working with him I began to see the wider application of disruption and I believe I continue that discovery. As long as I’m learning I don’t lose interest and the appeal of the subject is undiminished.

BK: In an era of ‘ Conformity, compliance, adherence, standardisation ‘ and all of that, do modern day organisations really see Innovation & Disruption as assets ? Or you see this more the exception than the rule?

WJ: There’s definitely tension between how business is conducted and how it should be conducted, how leaders manage employees and how they should instead coach and develop them. It’s hard to generalize how modern day organisations view Innovation and Disruption. Some see them as assets, and I think that is the majority. I would argue that all believe it is important, but they don’t believe it enough to upend their status quo–––of doing it how they’ve always done it, or how other people are doing it. Either because it’s too scary, or just plain comfortable.

BK: In our practice at ISD Global with brands and organisations, we have been espousing the value and impact of ‘ intrapreneurship ‘ – do you see a culture of intrapreneurship driving disruption and innovation in organisations?

WJ: Certainly, intrapreneurship is one of the developing trends in work that is producing disruption and innovation in organisations. It is one culture—not the only one—but a powerful one that will be fueling change for the foreseeable future.

BK: Did you always want to be a writer? When did the writing bug bite you? And do you see this as a natural dovetailing into your coaching, consulting, speaking practice?

WJ: I always wanted to publish a book—for as long as I can remember. That’s not quite the same thing as wanting to be a writer. And I don’t, even now, really view myself as a writer. (Which is good because then I don’t get caught in perfectionism that can come were I to self-identify as a writer). I’m an advisor, coach, consultant and speaker, as you mention, and I write books and articles to help share the thinking I do in relation to those other roles. The writing

supports my other work, my primary work, and not the other way around.

BK: What were the learnings from your first book Disrupt Yourself ? And how did the brand get extended into the Disrupt Yourself Podcast?

WJ: I think the first important take away from Disrupt Yourself is that disruption can be successfully applied to the way people work and manage their careers, not just to innovations in product and services. The second is being able to visualize individual growth in a job role by using the S curve to model learning. And then, recognizing that the framework offers managers a methodology to maximize the engagement and learning of their team members was an additional learning that helped lead to my next book, Build an A Team. Personal Disruption is an effective coaching tool for individuals and leaders. How did I that get extended to the podcast? My sense was that if people could hear stories of personal disruption (hearing them is different than reading about them) they would be more inspired to change. Plus I’ve always loved to interview people and learn about their stories.

BK: Take us through how the ” Disruptive Innovation Fund ‘ with Clayton Christensen came about and what has been your enrichment from this?

WJ: While I was working at Merrill Lynch in New York, I read the Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen. This book helped me understand not only what was happening with wireless v. wireline stocks which I was covering as a stock analyst. But I also started to have the insight that disruption wasn’t just about products, but about people. Including myself. Which is in part why I disrupted my Wall Street career trajectory and became an entrepreneur. Around that time, I was also doing volunteer work with Clayton Christensen for our church in the greater Boston area. When he wanted to launch the Disruptive Innovation Fund, because he hadn’t invested before, other than his personal portfolio, and his son Matt was just graduating from business school, Clayton asked me to cofound the Fund with him. What did I learn?

One of the biggest and most important things was that I got to work with a man who is deeply good. I also was able to take the ideas around momentum for the individual that I’d been noodling on while still on Wall Street, and further expand them by applying disruption to the individual which I’ve since codified in Disrupt Yourself and Build an A Team.

BK: Is Innovation & Disruption over used words and under implemented practice in organisations? Talk but no torque- If so, why do you think that is the case?

WJ: Well, those words are used a lot. But “overuse” suggests that they aren’t relevant, which is not the case. Innovation and disruption are not the only drivers, but they are the most forceful drivers of business and career advancement in the world today. I don’t share at all the opinion that this is “talk but not torque.”

BK: We are seeing a definite shift in consumption behaviour patterns from ‘ ownership ‘ to ‘ experiences ‘- in your understanding, are brands and organisations seeing and adapting to this tectonic shift?

WJ: Again, it’s hard to talk about organisations in generalities. I think there is an important distinction to be made between the actions of brands and organisations that do see shifting trends in consumption, in markets, etc. And those brands and organisations that don’t. Or that see the trends and don’t adapt to them, versus those that do. What we see is the adaptive behavior that allows businesses to survive and evolve to meet changing needs and demands, and conversely, we see the intransigent actions of those who won’t adapt and won’t survive to evolve—or evolve to survive.

WJ: I like them all for different reasons. I like the coaching because it is an opportunity for me to work one-on-one with a C-Suite executive who is serious about becoming a high growth (or higher growth) individual. It’s a thrilling responsibility to be a thought and accountability partner to a person who is in the midst of personal disruption.

I like the writing piece in that it forces me to codify what I am thinking. And to give people something to react to and learn from––the ideas then live independent and people can make them their own.

When done well, a speaker and the audience have a magical moment. People are not only instructed, they are inspired.

What they learn is the how, but what they feel is what gives them the momentum need to change, to disrupt themselves.

BK: The coveted Top 15 Coach endorsement by Dr Marshall Goldsmith– would have brought in more responsibility, more accountability, more expectations? Apart from yourself, did you have an A Team to cope with this?

WJ: I have a team and it has expanded a lot to accommodate the growth that my business has experienced thanks to the doors that Marshall’s mentorship has provided. My team— they were an A Team when they were smaller and are an A Team now that we’re bigger, and it is the constant challenge as the leader to keep us growing and building so that we’re an A Team in the future.

BK: Could you tell us about the books and people who have inspired your life and career?

WJ: The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen, Daring Greatly by Brene Brown, A Whole New Mind by Dan Pink, and A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle.

BK: What triggered you to write ‘ Build an A Team ‘ ? When you look around organisations, do you see a deficit of ‘ creative leadership ‘?

WJ: It’s wonderful how new learning grows out of old thinking! I was actually beginning to research a different topic for my next book when a conversation with my HBR editor led to the decision to explore the implications of the Disrupt Yourself framework for managers, and management technique. How could leaders encourage and help their employees gain the growth and momentum associated with personal disruption? Equally important, how could leaders be motivated to take the risk associated with making disruption a priority? This leads to your second question—the deficit of creative leadership. Yes, I think this is a problem. It’s a new and changing work environment; leading in the same old ways isn’t going to get the job done. But it’s risky to strike off in new directions, the leaders who want to try something different, something creative, often don’t have the support of their own bosses. Creative leadership has to be de-risked as much as possible.

BK: Don’t mean to put you in a spot here but what role do you enjoy most: Coaching, Speaking, Writing?

People who have inspired my life and career are Clayton Christensen, Marshall Goldsmith, Brene Brown, and Bob Proctor.

BK: What makes Whitney Johnson go ‘ Wow, another day at work ‘ ?

WJ: I LOVE the work that I do. High growth organizations need high growth individuals. I am building a business that helps people become high growth individuals. If we are willing to give up who we are today for who we can be, we will be happier. But that can be scary. When I get to teach, or coach, or interview, or write about the frameworks of Personal Disruption and the S Curve of Learning, with the outcome that people do change, and they are happier….What a gift!

BK: What do you do in your spare time? Your leisure time pursuits?

WJ: Mostly I work. Because I love my work. But I very much like to read books, mostly Young Adult fiction and fantasy, and to take walks with my family. Occasionally, watch home improvement shows like Fixer Upper. I also have this ambition to start playing tennis again!

5 IDEAS FOR INNOVATIVE B2B VIDEO MARKETING

By Tom Shapiro

Video an incredibly powerful tool for B2B businesses. YouTube has approximately 2 billion monthly active users. Aberdeen Group reports that video marketers generate 66% more qualified leads than marketers who don’t use video. And according to Wyzowl, 83% of marketers say that video gives them a significant ROI. But it isn’t enough to simply create videos. You need to create videos that will make your brand stand out from the crowd. Here’s five ways to make that happen.

Using Video to Personalize ABM Creating customized or personalized videos as part of an account based marketing campaign can be incredibly effective to help generate leads and land new customers. This is especially the case when you create a one-off video for a target company or individual.

For example, let’s say that you sell IP detection software for businesses. You could create a personalized video for a prospect, walking them through an initial analysis you’ve done on the company’s actual website traffic, with tips for how to respond to different types of site visitors based on the behavior displayed.

Shooting videos that are specifically directed at a company or person is a powerful way to grab their attention and get them to engage with you. It’s also an effective way to differentiate yourself and your brand from competitors.

Increasing LinkedIn Engagement Like most social media platforms, LinkedIn has been giving more exposure to videos of late. Additionally, 84% of marketers who have created videos for LinkedIn have found the channel to be a highly effective strategy for generating results. This presents a unique opportunity for marketers.

Sharing videos is one of the most effective ways to cut through all the noise on LinkedIn. Dave Gerhardt, VP of marketing at Drift, is a great example.

Typically, he will generate hundreds or thousands of engagement events for a single LinkedIn video.

For our clients here at Stratabeat, we notice 3X – 5X engagement on social posts featuring video.

Highlighting Customer Stories We all know that social proof is critical when it comes to building your brand and landing new clients. Getting clients to tell their stories is one of the

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most powerful forms of social proof your brand can deliver, especially when it’s on film.

But get creative when getting your clients to tell their story. Don’t simply have a talking head giving a simple testimonial.

HubSpot created an outstanding customer success story around their work for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They crafted a highly engaging success story, featuring a rock soundtrack in the background, MTV-style quick-changing shots, brief interviews, lots of zooming in and out, etc.

The result is powerful and compelling.

Another example is a Slack and Sandwich Video collaboration that highlights the power of Slack.

The video is presented as a story, with many funny cuts to employees providing their commentary.

Not only is the video enjoyable to watch, but it also shows why Slack is such an effective tool for businesses. And with more than 1.1 million views, the video has generated a good amount of visibility and social proof for Slack.

Leveraging Influencers B2B businesses are increasingly seeing the value of working with influencers, but it’s still new enough in the B2B space that it may enable you to jump ahead of your competitors. A good example of a B2B business using video and influencers is the robotics company Kuka. In an effort to promote a new product launch, Kuka lent the popular robotics influencer Simone Giertz the company’s new industrial robot arm. With it, Giertz created a hilarious video in which she programs the robotic arm to help her write 2,000 holiday cards.

Was it worth it? The creative video garnered over 1.4 million views, more than 11X higher than any videos published by Kuka itself.

Showcasing Your Personality Video is also a highly effective way to turn something mundane, such as an out of office message, into something truly magical.

Andy Freed of Virtual, Inc. created an epic, 27-minute video to tell people that he was out of the office and would return soon.

Not only does this highlight Virtual’s creativity, but it shows off the brand in a way that is entertaining and fun. It shows that the company can take even the most mundane things and turn them into something magical.

On top of this, videos like the one created by Virtual also have the potential to go viral, which will give even more exposure to the brand.

Annals of Advertising: When an influencer oversteps the boundaries

By Geoffrey Precourt

Influencer marketing is a popular strategy for brands seeking to engage consumers on sites like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. But as Geoffrey Precourt, WARC’s US Editor, found in a debate between two of the biggest names in American journalism, this activity – and the attendant debates regarding ethics, transparency, and disclosure – are far from new.

Each generation of marketers would like to think it has reinvented the way that messaging brings brands and consumers closer together.

But Charlie Chappell, head/integrated media and communications planning at the Hershey Co., for one, believes that the phenomenon of social media, and the marketing influencers it has spawned, are just new spins on old tricks.

behind an iconic culture of literacy elan that would survive into the next century.

In the Christmas season of 1936, Woollcott decided to cash in on his profile – and panache – when he accepted an offer from Seagram’s, at the time the world’s largest owner of alcoholic beverages, to be an influencer.

“All through humanity,” he told a recent conference held by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), “people have wanted to engage with other people. What technology has done is scale that onto a massive level.”

By that time, he had finished five years as The New Yorker’s “Shouts & Murmurs” critic/essayist, and his address book had never been thicker or richer. The deal was simple: Woollcott would greet scores of friends a with typewritten holiday letter that entreated:

Evidence: Eighty-three years ago, Alexander Woollcott was a Kardashian-level force of culture in New York literary circles.

In 1909, a spanking-fresh graduate of Hamilton College, Woollcott joined The New York Times as a cub reporter; by 1914, he was the paper’s drama critic. Five years later, he was one of the founders of the Algonquin Round Table, a festive, snarky set of New York writers who were a spout of Manhattan culture (and humor) for the next decade, leaving

“If you are planning to give me a present this Christmas, I beg you not to make it something indestructible which would only add to the litter of my life. Eventually, I would shove it up in the attic and then be haunted every time you came to call for fear you’d

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notice it was nowhere around...

“The gracious and truly modest gift is always something perishable – a song under the window, flowers for the living room, or, better still, something to drink. Don’t give your friend something to put in the attic. For sweet charity’s sake, give him something to put in the cellar.

That touch of integrity did not impress E.B. White, Woollcott’s New Yorker colleague. (In addition to his “Shouts & Murmurs” contributions, Woollcott wrote for the magazine on and off between 1925 and 1938.)

“The safest bet is whiskey, and you could hardly do better than Seagram’s Pedigree, that rare, eight-year-old Imported bonded whiskey, of which Seagram’s, and with good reason, are so proud.”

The original letters today are scattered all over the internet at various literary-auction sites. (You can have one of your own at bids at start around $295)….

White remains one of the brightest literary lights of his time and, as a writer/editor, guarded the publication’s moral groundings in “Talk of the Town” pieces, essays, and occasional contributions of conscience that appeared under the byline of “Eustace Tilley”, the fictional dandy who graced the magazine’s first cover, and still remains part of its cultural zeitgeist.

Even as White was very much a part of the soul of the magazine, he distinctly was not part of the Round Table culture. In fact, by the late 1930s, he was living in a farmhouse far up the coast of Maine, and mailing in his New Yorker contributions.

And one such contribution arrived in time for the December 19, 1936 issue, where a letter from Tilley appeared under a copy of the Woollcott/Seagram’s note:

“About your request that we give you some Seagram’s eight-year-old imported bonded whiskey for Christmas, we’re sorry but it’s out of the question. Our gift to you is all bought, all wrapped, ready to go by Western Union Messenger to your home on Gracie Square. We have instructed the messenger just to look for a radiance in the sky, and follow it. … and part of their value rests in their whimsical honesty: unlike the current generation of influencers, Woollcott offered full disclosure of his brand association: “But why, as the say in the drama, am I telling you this?” he concluded one letter after another.

“Well, it’s because the Seagram people have seduced, bribed, and corrupted me into doing so. Besides, it happens to be true.”

“Our gift, we are sorry to say, is indestructible. It is a tippet [a long scarf or shawl worn around a woman’s neck and/ or shoulders], lined with burrs. The tippet we got at Bonwit Teller’s, the burrs we picked ourself. It is depressing to us to learn that you eventually will ‘shove it up in the attic,’

but many Christmases have inured us to the disappointments of giving and receiving...

“The holidays come and go, yet this Christmas of 1936, thanks to your thoughtful note, has been given an unforgettable flavor pervaded with the faint, exquisite perfume of well-rotted holly berries.”

It would seem that the business side of the weekly magazine jumped into the exchange. The two letters appeared in a single center column on the left side of the page. Surrounding the editorial copy was a sea of advertisements for Seagram’s competitors.

Facing the item was a full-page ad for a Scotch whiskey; adjacent were fractional ads for a Jamaican rum and Otard Brandy (a Schenley Industries import from France that’s now a subsidiary of the Bacardi group) that carried, properly within its bodycopy, a ditty from Ogden Nash, yet another New Yorker contributor: “Her guests were the crème de la cream/ so they stifled their impulse to scream/And they weathered the siege/By noblesse oblige/And Otard, the cognac supreme.”

A 21st-century Kardashian might have turned the other cheek and not rebutted such a rebuke from White. But Woollcott complained to the New Yorker management. White responded:

“Serving the New Yorker in my capacity as jackanapes of all trades, I sometimes discover myself in the act of muddying up my friends and acquaintances – as in the case of you and the Seagram letter. I always throw myself into these discourtesies with a will, dreamily hoping to achieve heavenly grace through earthly impartiality. My wife [the magazine’s fiction editor] tells me you are convinced we maintain a Dept. of Animus; but my true belief is we have as little animus as is consistent with good publishing. In which case, my own animus, if any, was against the frantic society to which we all fall victim, in varying measure.”

A week later, a written response from Woollcott in hand, White was less kind, “emboldened to write this long, smugsounding letter, full of how wonderful and right I am and how terrible and wrong you are, first because you asked for it, but more because the persons who have spoken to me about your endorsement have, almost to a man, seemed to feel either offended, shattered, enraged, or just plain startled.”

necessarily dishonest (certainly your letter spoke plainly enough) and I don’t give a whoop about dignity...

“When you, full of an idea, engage to write a piece for a publication, write it, and get paid, you are performing a literary or creative act and are being paid for the results of your talent and labor.

“When you, again, full of an idea, write an advertisement for Seagram on your letterhead, what you really are selling is the name Woollcott, which is valuable to a commercial house because you had previously established yourself as a vivid person who could write and who was interesting to many people.

“Now, as one of your readers or as one of your acquaintances, or both, or neither, I object to your addressing me by way of a liquor house in whose debt you are. I feel patronized, and you seem suddenly discredited.”

In that same note, written on Christmas Eve 1936, White addressed what would become a hot point for generations of writers, artists, athletes, and brands:

“I still cling (by my teeth these days) to the notion that writing is a trust, that you were born in Phalanx not as other Phalanxians but with a star over your head and an itch to get going ... Then, in the midst of your writings, comes a letter … saying that you like Seagram’s whiskey.

“The next time I come across you, in the mail, in print, I feel must be on my guard, must see what the catch is, may have to read half-way through before I can determine whether this is an affiliated utterance or an unaffiliated utterance...

He continued:

“This, in my opinion, dissipates a man’s character, destroys a writer’s credit.”

“In your letter, you mention honesty and dignity. I don’t think endorsements are

Those rules still abide. But, as Hershey’s Charlie Chappell points out, the scale is much larger and the consequences – favorable or not – much higher.

Starbucks just publicly deconstructed its brandhere’s why THE DESIGN TEAM BEHIND ONE OF THE MOST RECOGNIZABLE BRANDS ON THE PLANET WAS “INSPIRED BY OTHER BRANDS BEING MORE TRANSPARENT ABOUT THEIR CREATIVE PROCESS,” SAYS CREATIVE DIRECTOR BEN NELSON.

By Mark Wilson

Whether you love or hate its coffee, there is no denying that the Starbucks brand is a juggernaut. The green siren logo—with her ingeniously asymmetrical face—is a universal beacon for a caffeine fix. And there is no mistaking one of the company’s hyperbolic beverages like the Tie-Dye Frappucino, which you can spot on the street from a block away, for a drink made by any other chain.

With more than $24 billion in revenue, 31,000 locations worldwide, and countless promotions and menu items that vary regionally, keeping the brand operating at scale is a major job. But for the past year, Starbucks’s internal creative team has been updating the brand system that makes up everything from its in-store signage to its promotions on Instagram. And now, it’s published the brand’s full guidelines—complete with color codes and typographic weights—onto a public website for anyone to explore.

“We were just proud of the work, and inspired by other brands being more transparent about their creative process,” says Ben Nelson, creative director at Starbucks.

Brands like Uber and Netflix have taken similar approaches to pulling the curtain back on their brand identities through public microsites. Such sites also serve as a tool that anyone in the company, or agency partners, can access globally to quickly double check brand standards.

Some of the core elements of the new creative don’t look a whole lot different than what you’ll find inside of any Starbucks today: The logo is the same as it’s been for years, and employees still wear their green aprons.

Using these details as an anchor, the design team redeveloped everything else. The result is an overall sharpening of the global Starbucks look. From my perspective, it’s not trying

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to be your neighborhood coffee shop in the way it has for the last decade or so. It’s trying to be your nearest Starbucks.

It does this through a combination of changes focused around two themes: First, the design prioritizes legibility and conveying information as clearly as possible.

The other half is about expressivity, emotion, and all the other intangibles Starbucks wants to spark in the consumer.

Depending on the context, the brand system allows designers to dial up either trait as needed.

The new menu board articulates the clarity the design team was going for. “We really cleaned it up and made it more functional for our occasional customers, for those who just want to come in and order their Caramel Macchiato,” says Nelson. “But then, on the other side of the spectrum, we have a lot of artfulness in our creative expression. You’ll see that in merchandise, like [gift] card packaging.”

Starbucks is moving away from hand-lettering—a staple of coffeehouse culture it had used in the past—altogether.

Instead, it collaborated with an unnamed external firm to develop two new typefaces. Sodo Sans is a streamlined typeface used for most of the company’s body copy. Lander is a serifed typeface with character that looks perfect for social media. And a third off-the-shelf typeface, condensed Trade Gothic LT, is a means to squeeze a lot of words into tight spaces.

On the expressive end, the design team focused heavily on illustration and color—which the new branding uses to articulate a sense of time, cueing you into the changing seasons, and seasonal drinks, available at Starbucks.

“We started with this kind of world of greens, building of course from our green apron,” says Nelson. “Then each season, we’re choosing colors that are on trend, inspired by our coffee craft or beverages, then building a cohesive campaign across channels as well.” So far, spring is defined by coral, turquoise, and goldenrod, while summer includes soft pink, along with a yellow and peach that resemble desaturated watercolors. In each case, foundational Starbucks greens ground it all.

The way it all comes together feels quite poised. Starbucks’s drinks appear with a crystal clarity, their milky swirls frozen in time on top of sharp lettering. Sometimes the vibe is stoic, as three matcha drinks are lined up side by side with all of the excitement of a public transit sign. Sometimes it’s cheeky, like a meme-y Starbucks zodiac illustration. But broadly

speaking, any bohemian aura that was lingering from the bygone, ’90s-era coffeeshop culture has been ironed out of the updated global brand. Of course, a few things remain the same. If you stare long enough, those Caramel Crunch Frappuccinos still start calling your name.

Mark Wilson is a senior writer at Fast Company. He started Philanthroper.com, a simple way to give back every day. His work has also appeared at Gizmodo, Kotaku, PopMech, PopSci, Esquire, American Photo and Lucky Peach.

How to Know When Rebranding Is Right WHEN A COMPANY IS FORMED—AND THROUGHOUT ITS ENTIRE LIFECYCLE—ITS BRAND IS PIVOTAL TO SUCCESS.

By Point Park University Online

Sometimes, a brand doesn’t resonate with the target market or becomes stale, a company must consider a rebrand. That can consist of changing or updating the brand’s name, logo, or entire identity.

Companies big and small use rebranding strategies as a way to keep up or stay ahead in their industry. Rebranding can save a company in decline or maintain a company at the top. However, not all rebrands are a resounding success, and rebranding should never be undertaken on a whim.

Rebranding is a significant undertaking that should be given intense planning and thought.

When Is the Right Time for a Rebranding Strategy?

Major brands, such as Google, have undergone logo updates and facelifts to help them stay ahead in their industry.

Rebranding can keep identities fresh and create industry buzz. Rebranding strategies can also help you get to where

you need to be if you aren’t meeting goals.

Here are some reasons you might consider a rebranding strategy for your organization.

Not Standing Out Whatever industry your organization is in, there will be competitors that may affect your company’s ability to effectively stand out in the marketplace. According to digital marketing agency Blue Frog, “Rebranding your company to have its own voice, look, and feel will help establish your business as an industry leader with a personality that appeals to your audience.”

Merging When two companies merge, or one acquires another, there are many important decisions to make, including rebranding.

The newly merged company or acquired company needs to assess both previous brands’ value to determine which branding options they could take. If both brands are strong,

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it may be wise to capitalize on one or both existing brands. If neither has made a huge splash in the industry, rebranding is a way to start fresh with the merger.

Negative History I your organization’s brand evokes negative responses among consumers, by rebranding you can create a new brand identity that’s free of any dark marks from a previous executive or company decision.

Back in 2009, on the brink of collapse before being rescued by the US federal government, American International Group Inc. (AIG) rebranded to Chartis Inc. to distance itself from the bad reputation, according to Business Insurance. AIG has since returned to using its former name, but it has updated its logo and further rebranded to separate itself from previous mistakes.

Modern Trends Sometimes, your organization’s brand is performing well but it needs a facelift. All companies, no matter how successful, must keep fresh and relevant to stay on top of their game. If your company is in this situation, it might be time for a brand rejuvenation. A brand refresh can “develop and refine” your company’s brand voice and communication to consumers, according to Mightily chief growth officer Kelli Corney.

Examples of Successful Rebrands Knowing when to rebrand is the first step. Knowing how to successfully strategize a major rebrand is the next challenge.

Most rebranding successes have a few factors in common: • They create an iconic and memorable brand.

• They focus on providing their audience with what the audience wants.

• They have a successful brand launch.

Here are two examples of successful rebranding efforts.

Old Spice Facing competition from Axe, Gillette, and other men’s hygiene brands, Old Spice struggled to hold on to its place in the men’s personal-care industry—until a clever rebrand in 2010 sent the company’s fortunes sky high.

Old Spice’s parent company, Proctor and Gamble (P&G), contracted brand management firm Landor to refresh the Old Spice brand. A case study from Landor shows how the company refocused the brand’s identity. Landor created marketing campaigns with the goal of promoting products that appeal to men’s visceral feelings of hygiene. Also, Landor attempted to redefine masculinity, or manliness.

industry. According to P&G, the “smell like a man, man” campaign recorded more than 105 million views on YouTube, an 800% increase in traffic on Facebook, and 1.2 billion media impressions.

Apple It’s hard to imagine today, but more than two decades ago Apple was on the brink of collapse. Shares for the computer and technology giant were trading on public stock exchanges for less than a dollar, and the company was losing billions in revenue. In 1997, Steve Jobs made a triumphant return to the company and flipped its fortunes, in part with a classic rebrand.

With the company in need of a fresh look for consumers, Jobs approved a new, sleek version of the famous Apple logo. He ditched the multicolored logo in favor of a glass or chrome look that fit better with the company’s new iMac designs.

Along with updating the logo, Jobs focused on providing customers with product innovations.

At the 1997 MacWorld Expo in Boston, Oracle CEO and a member of Apple’s Board of Directors, Larry Ellison, called Apple the only “lifestyle” brand of all the tech giants of the late 1990s. The rebranding paid off. Apple’s stock soared 211% in 1998 after the rebrand.

When It Goes Wrong When companies ignore the lessons of successful rebrands, however, they can end up with an embarrassing situation of having to revert to a previous brand or causing sales to decline. Here are two examples.

Gap One of the best examples of a rebranding failure is that of Gap. In 2010, the company unveiled a new logo, featuring a dull typeface and a strange gradient box in the background.

The logo was immediately panned by customers and professional designers. Within a week, Gap had reverted to its original logo.

Gap didn’t realize the strong brand association that consumers had with its existing logo. By changing it, it severed some of those ties and upset customers who didn’t feel the new branding aligned with their perception of the brand. Gap announced in a public filing that sales fell 8% in North America in the three months after the rebranding mess compared with the prior-year period.

Tropicana

A marketing campaign went viral, speaking directly to men and their spouses about ensuring that their man would “smell like a man.” Old Spice labels were also updated with a sleeker look, and the ship in the Old Spice logo was made smaller and given a more classic feel.

In another instance of rebranding failure, Tropicana announced in 2009 that it was updating the packaging for its orange juice cartons. Instead of cartons with easy-to-read type and a candy-stripe straw poking into an orange, the new cartons were designed to show a glass full of orange juice.

The updated logo was displayed vertically, and it was less clear to consumers which Tropicana product you were buying as the products weren’t color-coded anymore.

By focusing on what Old Spice did best, as well as some creative marketing, it again emerged as a leader in its

Like Gap, Tropicana did not realize the attachment customers had to their products, including the labeling on the cartons.

While Tropicana tried to play up its mission to provide 100% juice, it sacrificed the clean, fun look that consumers enjoyed before. In response to the new branding, sales fell a reported 20%, costing Tropicana millions.

How Can My Organization Rebrand?

To avoid an unsuccessful rebrand, ensure that you understand the relationship consumers have with your brand and what they want from it; and successfully communicate changes with a good launch strategy.

If you’ve determined rebranding is right for your company, here are some helpful steps to follow.

Build a strong brand identity This is arguably the most important step—the most foundational. Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos has been quoted as saying, “Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room,” driving home the idea that a brand is much more than a logo or packaging.

Like the examples of successful branding noted earlier, when your company truly focuses on what makes them unique and special it can lead to positive business outcomes. With a strong, unique, and clear brand identity, your company’s brand can become a household name and evoke positive emotions when people think about it.

Develop an implementation strategy Deciding that you want to rebrand is easy. Executing that strategy is much more difficult. It’s up to your company team to create a comprehensive and clear strategy from the start so your company can accomplish the myriad tasks that need to be completed, ensuring the rebrand stays true to

what customer research calls for. To implement a rebrand, everything from logo design to the look of business cards needs to be carefully considered and rolled out.

Effectively market the rebrand You may have a great idea for a potential company rebrand, but the rebrand could fail if you don’t have an efficient and optimal marketing strategy. According to Hinge Marketing, knowing your place in your industry is part of your branding and marketing strategy—whether you’re an industry giant or an innovative newcomer offering different products. Keeping in mind the company’s business goals and customers’ perceptions of the brand in mind will help you successfully communicate and market your rebranding efforts. *** Developing a rebranding strategy will help you successfully recreate the way customers view your brand without damaging existing relationships. One way to be in a position to can lead your company into the future is with an online MBA from Point Park University. In Point Park’s MBA program, you’ll learn the foundational aspects of marketing, business strategy, and organizational management. All are crucial during the development and rollout of a rebranding strategy.

The program can be completed in as little as 18 months; and because of the online format, you can balance your education with your busy life.

Nestled in the heart of downtown Pittsburgh, Point Park University is a dynamic, urban, nonprofit university with a strong liberal arts tradition. As a student in one of Point Park’s online programs, you will benefit from small class sizes, convenient scheduling, and affordable tuition while engaging in a career-focused education.

What marketers can learn from indie filmmakers TODAY, MARKETERS’ JOBS HAVE BECOME INCREASINGLY MORE COMPLEX, SAYS ANNA JI. WITH SO MANY DIFFERENT CHANNELS TO CONSTANTLY HAVE TO CREATE CONTENT FOR, IT CAN BECOME A TIME CONSUMING AND COSTLY ENDEAVOUR.

By Anna Ji

The marketing role has evolved to include making YouTube videos, corporate videos, employee recruitment videos, product videos, explainer videos and a never-ending supply of Instagram videos, so much so that now their roles have evolved into being akin to an indie filmmaker.

But, while marketers may learn about messaging and strategy in university, most marketing programs don’t teach video production skills, which has now become an essential part of their day-to-day role.

And video production can be expensive. The digital video marketing industry has become a $135 billion industry in America alone, with the average business now spending $20,000 a year creating video content. It wouldn’t be uncommon to spend $10k on hiring an outside video production company to get a single two-minute corporate video, while other companies spend thousands of dollars for a few Instagram videos.

Not every marketer has that kind of budget to play with, but today, given the availability of new technologies and the

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right know how, marketers can embrace their inner indie filmmaker and master the art of creating great content on a budget. Here’s how:

Figure out what you want to say

are more enigmatic in front of the camera. Plan for the key questions you want to ask them during the interview that will get them giving the answers you want to convey to your potential employees, customers or investors.

Also, you may need to interview several people from the team to get plenty of soundbites that you can use to hook people’s attention.

Figure out your brand voice You also need to consider the visual language you’ll be using.

Are you a young tech start up that wants to appear hip and fun? Or do you want to present yourself as more serious and professional to get the attention of C-level execs and investors? Or do you feel you have your own unique voice, which can’t be compared to anyone else?

How will you convey this?

The first step is figuring out what you want to say and how you are going to say it. If you are doing an employee recruitment video, for example, what are the key messages you want to get across about the company? Who could you interview in the company to get that message across? What b-roll

(additional footage) do you need to shoot to convey that message – for example, exterior shot of the office, footage of the team working, footage of people playing foosball.

Apple’s employee recruitment video has shots of people working at a whiteboard, sit-down interviews, scenes of people working at their desks, Apple’s products being manufactured etc.

Not everyone is good in front of the camera. Some people freeze up or speak in monotone voices, so if you are planning these types of shoots, consider those in the company who

The legendary Fyre Festival promotional video wanted to create an aspirational, exclusive feel, which it did incredibly well. Even if the end result didn’t match the initial promise, the video got everyone wanting to go.

Figuring out your brand voice will touch everything you do – from the type of shots you take, the people you film, the music you use, your fonts and so on. You should consider creating a brand identity for your videos as early on as possible so they all have the same look and feel. Your customers will hopefully know what to expect in every video you make.

Before you watch GoPro’s latest video you know what to expect. You know you are in for a slick action sports video that looks cool and makes you wish you were hang gliding over the Amazon right now.

Successful Instagrammers and vloggers know all too well how to create unique branded content that matches their personal branding. You can always learn something from the masters. Scour YouTube, Vimeo and Instagram looking for content you love that you feel could work for your company – but try to put your own spin on it too.

It’s all about the team If you hire a full service video production company, they can be very expensive. But if you assume the role of an indie film producer – who are used to making films on micro-budgets – you can individually hire the team yourself and get the same content done for a fraction of the cost.

A key person for creating great content is a professional cinematographer. They also go by the titles of a director of photography (DoP) or videographer.

If you post a gig on Craigslist, ProductionHub or Mandy you should get plenty of bids from local cinematographers hungry for work. A top cinematographer working on Beyonce’s latest music video can charge $2000 a day, but you can also get a really good find for $300 to $500. There are also lots of talented, straight-out-of-university students who may even do it for $150 if you are working on a micro-budget.

Having a professional and experienced cinematographer to get those beautiful, well taken shots really ups the production value and your brand voice. As professional film makers, they can also bring creative ideas to the table. They may have some great suggestions of shots to takes and cool new angles that make your content look awesome.

One important consideration is sound! It is crucial to get crystal clear, good quality audio. If you can afford it, you can get a separate sound person in also. If not, work with the cinematographer to find the best solution. It may involve getting the intern in the office to record additional audio on their iPhone. It wouldn’t be the first time.

long. If you watch any ad, documentary or movie, the content on screen is constantly changing. When someone is doing a sit-down interview, we see them for a few seconds and then we cutaway to a different shot to visually show what they are talking about.

If you weren’t able to capture relevant footage to match what they are saying, Create has stock footage embedded into its platform, otherwise sites such as Ponds5, iStockPhoto and Shutterstock are just some of the many websites out there that offer great stock footage.

Media planning So after you have got the hang of creating your own content and have realised how easy and inexpensive it can be (when you know how), then you can start planning for the future. You can set aside filming days where you can hire your cinematographer for a day and film enough content for your various channels to last you several months. Consider the usual media events – Valentines Day, St Patrick’s Day, Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, Halloween etc. What kind of content can you create for all the different channels to stay connected with your customers?

The edit When you have all your footage shot, now it’s time to edit. It’s often said that the film is made in the editing room. When you add music, graphics and additional footage to tell your story, that’s when your video really comes to life.

While editing used to be something that was left to the professionals, with the advances in technology editing software, it has become relatively easier. And with readyto-go templates, now anyone can become an editor themselves.

If you personally feel it’s something you can’t do, then with today’s social media obsessed generation, you may not need look far within your existing team to find someone who can cut a really compelling video.

The trick with editing is to get your message across in as short, to-the-point, yet engaging way as possible. The most common considerations are: • Add intro and outro music • add graphics to introduce the purpose of the video – eg ‘why you should work for us’

Like most things, there is always a learning curve, but when you get beyond that, creating content can become one of the most fun parts of a marketer’s job. And the more you master it, the more ideas you will have. And who knows, one day you could be winning awards for your video that you made for under $300 up against agencies who had 50 times your budget. With video content, creativity is key and creative ideas win out every time against bigger budget productions.

But most importantly, make sure you have fun trying!

• add your company logo, and • if you are doing any interviews, add lower thirds – graphics that explain a person’s name and occupation People generally don’t like to watch the same shot for too

Anna Ji is director of product and growth at Clipchamp

Short form video is the new wave of storytelling

By Grant Munro

The videos audiences are consuming are getting shorter everyday. Grant Munro shows marketers how to capture attention, tell a story and create something visually engaging in just 2.7 seconds.

Grant Munro 150 BWCreating and integrating video content into our marketing initiatives is not a new tactic. What is new is the increased popularity of short-form video content and the constantly increasing number of videos consumers are getting served up daily.

As a result, marketers are placing a greater importance on the format due to the high volume of consumers engaging with video content.

The rise of social has given us more opportunities to talk to consumers through engaging thumb stopping video content in an accessible and affordable environment.

As consumers are becoming increasingly time poor, marketers today are being challenged with being equally economical with their messages. After all, if Ernest Hemingway could write a story in six words and capture the attention of his readers, it’s surely time for marketers to make use of the 2.7 seconds they have to engage their audiences.

The new wave of storytelling Big brands have reaped the rewards of embracing short-form video content, especially through social media platforms.

Brands across industries – from gaming to food to retail – have recognised the reach and scalability of video across

platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Social media has moved from just being a platform to connect with friends and family – it’s unlocked an avenue for brands to interact with their customers in an engaging manner, and can help shift perception and drive sales.

Today, consumers are suffering from content overdose. Video content is not only the perfect medium to help brands stand out on a cluttered timeline, but can also easily be shared by consumers. HubSpot found that 54% of customers prefer to see videos over other marketing tactics from the brands they follow.

Facebook is the first platform that comes to mind when you think about video marketing content. For example, Samsung’s Facebook page has a whopping 159 million fans and the brand engages with them regularly through video (from 10 second clips to three minute videos).

As brands move away from traditional means of advertising, short-form video has become vital in attracting customers while competition for attention continues to increase. It’s more crucial than ever to develop content that leads to engagement and shares, which in turn helps brands reach a new audience.

2.7 seconds to get the job done While consumers spend three to four hours a day on their devices, they are increasingly time poor and with fleeting attention spans. People scroll quickly, only stopping on truly

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eye-catching content. To stand out in such a competitive space, marketers need to be more proactive and identify the most strategic platforms for their audience. Whether it’s Facebook, Instagram or YouTube, users do not actively seeking out branded content.

This new era of digital marketing means that the content created must be highly visual and captivating – using bitesized snippets to tell a brand’s story in three seconds or less.

With just 2.7 seconds to grab someone’s attention, it’s imperative that brands make sure their message is clear and appealing, especially in video form. Marketers must make use of every part of that initial 2.7 seconds to make an impression on ad-skippers and show that their content is more than just another ad.

Why video?

•

Tell a real-life consumer story – a video case study helps showcase real results and build trust.

As technology becomes increasingly accessible for businesses regardless of size and technical ability, brands have been given the reins to create their own content which is both easily digestible and produced at a significantly lower price tag than ever before.

Cost and quality are incredibly important to the success of any video campaign. As camera technology and editing suites have become more affordable, the average marketer is able to develop filmmaking skills at the click of a button.

The barrier to being able to create interesting, high-quality content is being removed and now creativity and customer awareness are priced higher. Marketers can invest time into

Video content is great for every marketing challenge presented due to its adaptability. Here are some ideas on how you can start weaving video content into your plans:

truly understanding the desires of their customers and create

Allow consumers to learn and discover – content like ‘how to’ videos and ‘behind the scenes’ clips engage audiences and help develop more meaningful relationships with consumers.

that marketers have the power to become visual storytellers.

•

•

Brand credibility – expert interviews are a great way to showcase thought leadership; a quick ‘question and answer’ video can help communicate your expertise effectively.

video content that ticks all the boxes quickly and efficiently.

This newfound access to high-quality video equipment means For smaller businesses, this means that the video ‘game’ is no longer restricted to companies with massive budgets.

It’s crucial in 2018 for brands to create videos that complement their marketing initiatives – the key is to make it visually engaging with a compelling story arc and capture the consumer’s attention in three seconds (or less).

Location data is improving OOH ads in starkly different ways MCDONALDS AND REI SHOW MODERN ROADMAPS TO BILLBOARD SUCCESS.

By Brian Czarny

Unless you point out the occasional, super-leafy tree canopying all things around it, there are no ad blockers for billboards or other out-of-home (OOH) advertising. Indeed, OOH ads are almost always visible and seem to annoy consumers far less often than digital and TV ads. And that reality underscores why there’s been a renaissance in OOH, an $8 billion industry in the U.S. that’s expected to double by 2023.

OOH ads have seen notable growth because brands such as McDonald’s and REI are getting enviable returns from their campaigns. These types of big marketers aren’t necessarily moving away from digital—many, in fact, are increasing their digital out-of-home (DOOH) spend. Marketers are simply waking up to the fact that, when done right, out-of-home is inexpensive and effective compared to other channels.

Further, this trend is also about marketers moving away from linear TV and radio to holistic campaigns that mix digital and offline touchpoints to reach the mobile consumer.

Effective OOH ads zero in on context, which entails delivering a memorable message at an opportune place. “An opportune place” can mean multiple things, including locations where there is a lot of car or foot traffic or, purposefully, very few

people nearby. It can mean getting folks to walk into a nearby store, or it can mean social media branding by inspiring passersby to snap an Instagrammable pic.

No matter the marketing objective, OOH should be on practitioners’ minds for the remainder of this year and heading into the next decade. Therefore, let’s look at a few starkly different OOH campaigns that nail context by hitting the right notes around creativity and location.

Charting new territory for the Golden Arches Billboards, which make up 66% of the OOH market, have seen 31 straight quarters of growth. Even this space could soon be cluttered, so your creativity and overall campaign intelligence need to stand tall.

McDonald’s understands that need. In the last few years, it has put together multiple OOH campaigns that succeeded because of creativity and location. In late July, the burger chain began running directional DOOH ads in Paris that used colorful depictions of its iconic French fries to steer drivers and passersby to the nearest location.

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Distance, as people like to say, can be a factor. With that in mind, there are more than 1,000 McDonald’s with drivethru locations in France, while fast-food rival Burger King has around 20 drive-thrus. So, McDonald’s put up a pair of billboards for highway travelers approaching Brioude, a town of 6,700 people in south-central France that’s location was chosen because it’s 160 miles from the closest Burger King drive-thru.

One sign was a typically-sized, roadside billboard, and it promoted a nearby McDonald’s drive-thru. Next to it stood a towering billboard that flaunted how far away the nearest Burger King drive-thru was while displaying a humorously long list of turn-by-turn directions to get there. It looked like a giant groceries receipt for a family of seven.

The billboard made plenty of rounds on social media. Here is a video, which has been viewed 1.4 million times on YouTube, showing the last stages of construction of the Burger King sign.

From a longer view, McDonald’s fun juxtaposition represents how it and Burger King have constantly trolled each other by using location in recent years. For instance, last December, Burger King’s smartphone app offered people a Whopper for one penny if they were within 600 feet of a McDonald’s.

And then in recent weeks, McDonald’s used an outdoor ad in Belgium to take a shot at its new nearby neighbor, Burger King.

In a contrasting effort, McDonald’s showed how creativity and location can drive awareness in a purely positive way— and win a Cannes Lions. For a campaign in Canada, the company’s marketers deconstructed the iconic Golden Arches logo into a series of directional signs that helped drivers navigate toward its locations.

The campaign was also aesthetically pleasing and worked wonders: The retailer lifted purchase intent by 7% and got a 14% jump in brand awareness. What’s more, location data showed that REI’s retail outlets benefited from a 3.6X hike in-store visits.

As the Cannes Lions tribute indicates, this effort was artfully done. And it’s another example of how location can steer the creative process. (Here is a video detailing the campaign.)

Taking OOH to the next level While McDonald’s provides inspiration for clever billboards placed in opportune spots, the next-generation of OOH will include more digital components. A Nielsen study found that combining billboards with digital ads can lead to a 4X lift in online activation.

Location data is now powering digital billboards to, for instance, serve Chevy truck ads to drivers who just drove off of a Cabela’s or Home Depot parking lot. Such audience segmentation is made possible by anonymized data, which brands and agencies are leveraging more and more in DOOH campaigns. What’s more, location data can help measure a campaign’s effectiveness toward in-store visits.

As one example, outdoor clothing and gear retailer REI worked with Publicis Media to run DOOH ads in conjunction with mobile ads to reach past customers as well as attract new ones in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Location data and other intelligence helped home in on the places where they were most likely to spend their time. The DOOHmobile combo meant consumers weren’t just served with an ad when they were nearby an REI but also at other relevant times in their daily routines.

What these different examples have in common McDonald’s and REI’ “get” something not all brands understand—while context is always important to advertising, it’s crucial to OOH. Marketers need to use locational intelligence to enhance their creativity and the relevancy of their messaging, and they must use such data across touchpoints to reach the mobile consumer.

The brands and ad agencies that take context seriously also, by nature, take location seriously and then win customers and glitzy awards. “Location, location, location” is an old saying that defines how to succeed in real estate and the business world in general, and the phrase captures the essence of why OOH advertising is a burgeoning practice.

The end of search dominance?

Consult your marketplace

By Raghbir Rana

For many years, the role of search engines in digital shopping journeys has been virtually unchallenged. So dominant is the role search plays as the major gateway between the web user and whatever they are looking for online that its importance in product discovery has come to be accepted as a given.

And that has had a profound impact on how digital retailers approach the task of promoting their goods and their brand online.

An entire sub-industry of digital marketing has grown up around search. Its two most famous disciplines have become part of the everyday vocabulary of 21st century business – Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO, the art of crafting web pages so they index as high as possible in search engine results, and Pay-Per-Click, or PPC, a type of advertising that places paid-for ads on search results pages in response to certain search terms.

It’s a lucrative business – SEO alone is forecast to be worth $80bn a year by 2020. And Google by itself accounts for 3.5 billion searches a day. With these kinds of figures, it is easy to understand why some companies have been estimated to spend as much as 81% of their digital marketing budget on SEO and paid search.

However, we have recently found evidence that we may need to dampen down the hype about the role search plays in e-commerce. When it comes to how shoppers typically look for products to buy online, search engines are no longer king.

Amazon weighs in While search engines used to be the first port-of-call for online shoppers, Amazon is becoming the go-to place that consumers use to find out more information on products.

We found that just under half of shoppers said they used search engines for information such price, availability and reading reviews. But that fell short of the 56% who said they used Amazon – and with the expected increase in Prime membership we would anticipate Amazon to continue its growth in this share.

There are also signs that, if anything, the role of search in digital commerce could diminish further in the future.

While use of search engines to look for products was fairly consistent for shoppers aged 25 and over, the youngest age group 16 to 24-year olds (which captures Gen Z) showed less of a tendency to use it.

As a result, Amazon is becoming a major disruptor in the

SEO market, which is ultimately changing the way brands approach their SEO strategy.

What does this mean for brands?

Brands and retailers shouldn’t abandon their SEO and paid search campaigns completely. If half of all online shoppers still use search engines to find products, this remains a channel they need to keep a focus on.

But it does suggest that it might be time to rethink the balance of digital marketing budgets and strategies, and certainly that companies can no longer assume that strong SEO will lead to high visibility for their brands and products. As well as Amazon, other marketplaces like eBay, Rakuten, Etsy and so on also scored highly on product search, with 34% of consumers naming them as a regular starting point for their shopping journeys. Most marketplaces, through their vast assortments and product offerings, are now attracting more customers than many retailer and brand sites.

The message is clear: consumers increasingly see digital marketplaces as the go-to destination for looking up products they are considering buying.

This amplifies the importance of having a robust product information management (PIM) platform in place that supports rapid and convenient multichannel listings. It also suggests there is nowadays at least the same amount of value in optimising for Amazon as there is for search. Is it time we started seeing investment switched from SEO to Marketplace Optimisation or even Amazon Optimisation?

Aside from search engines and marketplaces, the other channels that returned significant results for how commonly they are used for product discovery were brand websites and retailer sites.

The fact that brand sites are used by almost a third of online shoppers demonstrates there is still plenty of value in brand building and driving traffic to your own website. When people know what they want, a good proportion are happy to go straight to source, cutting out the search engines and market places alike.

What is particularly interesting about this is the fact that it’s a trend most obvious amongst the Gen Z group. This may not be enough to suggest that brand provenance is enjoying a digital renaissance with younger shoppers, but it certainly validates the role of brand.com.

The future of marketing on Pinterest

By WARC

A different social network, Pinterest’s changing strategy will encourage users to transition from the site’s pinboard based inspiration, to a position further down the funnel closer to purchase decisions.

This is according to a new WARC Exclusive, Media owner spotlight: The future of marketing on Pinterest, in which Jon Kaplan, Pinterest’s Global Head of Sales explained how the company is looking to teach the market “a new way to think about media.”

Many brands continue to place Pinterest within the “social media bucket”, but Kaplan claims this “misperception” underestimates the role it can play in driving business results for advertisers.

They’re trying to plan something, they’re there to get to get good ideas, but they don’t have a preconceived notion of which brand to go with. “If you talk to a brand today about the mindset of an individual when they have high commercial intent, but they’re undecided, that’s the sweet spot.”

Marketers must think about their brands being “additive” to users’ experience of Pinterest rather than “interruptive”, Kaplan added. They can provide a vital “utility” for consumers at varying stages of the purchase journey – notably around 35 key “seasonal moments” when user numbers are greatest, including Valentine’s Day, Cinco de Mayo and St Patrick’s Day.

Consumers create billions of ‘Pins’ each month, with activity heightened around both personal milestones and public occasions. He cites the curious example of marriages: 30 million US users are using Pinterest to plan nuptials, but only 2.5 million weddings take place in the country each year.

As well as facilitating discovery, Pinterest is looking to become more central to users’ purchase habits. Kaplan is quick to admit that, compared with Amazon, users are unlikely to research and make a purchase in the same session – 75% of purchases occurring on or through Pinterest take place after seven days or more from first encounter.

“This [activity] is a manifestation of what consumers intend to do or buy in the future,” Kaplan said.

“The priority – for both Pinners and partners – is to make that connection from inspiration to action.”

How to capitalise on low attention

By Admap

Marketers might spend their time seeking consumers’ undivided and concentrated attention, but new research exposes how to get a brand message across in low attention environments.

This is according to new research by Professor Karen NelsonField and PhD candidate Kellen Ewens, both of the University of Adelaide in Australia. Their research in association with Dentsu Aegis Network global’s Attention Economy Initiative, forms the basis for a paper in the current issue of Admap (topic: smarter video planning).

“We gathered screen data (viewability/time on screen/ sound), eye-gaze tracking and STAS (Short Time Advertising Strength) measures from 17,000 video ad views in the UK, US and Australia (16 sets of data)”, the academics explain.

“This data enabled us to look deeper into the nature of low-attention processing and its relationship to sales.” The research carried over 2018 and into 2019.

How attention works In a literature review, Nelson-Field and Ewens isolate a handful of areas in expert consensus. One of them is the idea of the guidance trigger.

“As humans we operate in a default state of sub-consciousness (or pre-attentiveness) where we have a broad and un-specific focus to everything around us. Our state of consciousness, and our subsequent level of attention, can then change when guidance triggers surface.”

Guidance triggers can be either top-down (endogenous) or bottom up (exogenous).

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Endogenous: Top-down triggers are typically personal and goal-oriented, when you are web-searching, when we use “high and controlled attention”. Another example is when watching video and a personally relevant ad appears. In this case, the ad becomes the viewer’s main focus.

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Exogenous: Bottom-up triggers are more stimulusdriven. “For example, we pay low and automatic attention when an ad delivers unexpectedness such as being of high emotion or just plain loud – and therefore the ad becomes of incidental focus to the viewer.”

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Overall: “Controlled processes require us to think on a fully conscious level, while automatic processes occur at semi consciousness.” Most processes are the latter.

Methodology The study’s attention measure worked off raw data in the form of webcam/mobile camera footage gathered via an app installed on users’ devices. Through a machine learning model, the team was able to work out three types of attention that viewers were displaying: high, low, or no attention.

Each segment (along with a control sample) was correlated with Short Time Advertising Strength (STAS) scores, a sales proxy worked out by determining the proportion of viewers choosing the test brand from a virtual store after a short exposure to an ad compared to those who had not (the baseline).

Results The majority of viewing is low attention. On average 54% (+/-7) of all attention paid was low, while only 32% (+/8) was high. The remaining 14% (+/-5) of attention paid to advertising was pre/no-attention. As many as 96% of the sample switched between attention levels while watching the screen.

It’s not the shift from low to high attention that deliver lift, but the transition from pre-attention to low attention that matters.

“Low attention processing delivers more value than most people give it credit. We found the greatest uplift in sales impact occurs when a viewer moves from a pre-attentive state to low attention”, the authors write. “High attention is not the only valuable commodity.”

‘I have to fight to do my job’: Confessions of a copywriter

By Kristina Monllos

Copywriters used to be central to how an agency worked, but the rise of project models is putting a strain on the copywriterart director partnership. When the work is primarily projectbased, agencies are focused on making clients happy at all costs, lessening the role of a copywriter and making the art director more important. It’s causing a strain on the partnership, according to a copywriter at a creative agency who spoke to Digiday for the latest edition of our Confession series, where we exchange anonymity for honesty.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

What’s it like to be a copywriter at an agency today?

Going back to the golden era of advertising, there was a lot more weightiness to the role of the copywriter. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, it swung to that partner model. Now, it feels like the pendulum has swung even further. Art directors outnumber copywriters. That has reduced the role of a copywriter in a lot of ways.

How outnumbered are you?

I work with four different art directors. How are we that outnumbered? That’s how little they tend to think of copy. I can write a headline in eight seconds, that’s what they think.

Yes, technically, that’s how long it would take me to physically type six words. And it does take a lot longer to design an ad.

But it’s putting a toll on copywriters because we’re stretched

so thin between all the different art directors and projects. On paper, they don’t think we should take that much time writing.

Do you have any examples of how the role of copywriter has been reduced or devalued?

One of the most frequent ones would be the way people flippantly treat copy. The account team may tweak something before they send it to the client. Sometimes I’ll get a brief from the client and project management that is like, “They want it to say this but they thought it sounded boring so they want you to zhuzh it.” I’m not a zhuzher. I’m a writer. I get that a lot. The client doesn’t take photoshop files and change them. We don’t give them access to that. So why am I getting revisions from clients that say, “Just change it to say this.”

You’re messing with my work, and it’s not treated to with the same sort of value as the art director’s [work].

Why do you think that’s happening now?

We’re straying further from the agency-of-record world.

We’re getting more into projects. It’s becoming more about pleasing the client to get the paycheck instead of creating something meaningful. It becomes a “we’ll just do what they want” mentality because no one wants to fight with the client.

Instead of me writing something, it becomes me copy editing or proofreading it. We’re just swapping some words, or we’re trying to make it fit within a character count. That’s not my job. My job is to write things and to think of things; it’s not to make a client’s words sound fresher.

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How does that shift change the work environment?

It’s stressful because now I feel like I have to fight to do my job. I have to constantly be reminding people that they can’t change my copy because that’s my job. They don’t think about the copywriter’s presence as being a creative one.

They think well, the creative directors are going to come up with all the ideas, the art director will implement the idea and the copywriter will come in, slap a headline on it and call it a day.

How does that play out when it comes to being on-set?

[If] we’re over budget or there’s going to be too many people on set, the first person who’s cut is the copywriter.

They always say things like, “Well, you’ve already written the script” or “It’s a photo shoot, you’re not needed.” They don’t think a copywriter’s presence is necessary. To them, it’s the art director that picks out the props, sets up the scene, picks out the wardrobe, points out flaws. Everything is about the art director when it comes to shoots. That’s where the biggest challenge is because people don’t understand that I’m not on set to write on the fly. I’ve never written a word on a set before. That’s not why writers are there. People don’t know why writers are there.

What does a writer do on set? Why do they need to be there?

You’re not only making sure that everything is executed correctly or that the words coming out are the correct ones,

but you’re also making sure the story is being told in a cohesive manner. You’re having conversations with the art director and the creative director to make sure that it’s feeling like you want it to feel. It’s not just what you’re seeing but about the mood that’s being encapsulated. The problem now is that the art director is put on a pedestal. The writer’s [role on set is] you stand there, represent and chill out. You raise a finger if you see something going awry or if the photographer is accidentally forgetting to leave room for copy. The art director leads the charge, and you’re not supposed to say anything unless it’s going off the rails.

That sounds like it would fracture the relationship between the art director and copywriter.

Correct. The biggest eye-opener for me was that someone once referred to my partner as my boss on a set. They thought my partner was the one in charge of me and the whole production. That’s my partner. We are equals.

Do you think that perception has a greater impact on the copywriters?

My role has become confused within the industry. People don’t quite understand what I’m supposed to do. Even I don’t understand what I’m supposed to do half of the time.

When there’s a lack of understanding about your job role, it creates frustration and animosity. This industry has such a high turnover rate, especially for junior creatives, because they get in there and they’re like, “I’m treated like shit, so I’m not going to do this anymore,” and they leave.

Book,

&

Line

Sinker

Subscription Marketing: Strategies for Nurturing Customers in a World of Churn Kindle Edition

My Blogging Secrets: A guide to becoming a pro-blogger Kindle Edition

By Anne Janzer

By Amber McNaught

Subscription Marketing offers creative marketing strategies for sustaining the customer relationships that build long-term success. This book is a practical guide for marketers, start-up executives, customer success management professionals, and executives of establishing businesses adopting or transitioning to a subscription-based model.

Want to make a living simply by writing about your life? Here’s how one woman does it...

On a sunny day in April, journalist-turned-PR Amber McNaught walked out of her well-paid office job, and started a blog.

Beyond Sizzle: The Next Evolution of Branding

By Mona Amodeo

Bigger Than This: How to Turn Any Venture Into an Admired Brand Kindle Edition

Award-winning management strategist Dr. Mona Amodeo brings together the best practices of change management, marketing, and communications to give readers an actionable process for creating brands that matterorganizations that are redefining workplaces, reimagining customer experiences, and creating innovative products and services that are building healthier, more sustainable communities in turn, creating a better world for us all.

By Fabian Geyrhalter, Elaine Pofeldt (Editor)

How Cool Brands Stay Hot: Branding to Generations Y and Z

Influence

By Joeri Van den Bergh, Mattias Behrer The book reveals how Millennials think, feel, and behave, and discusses how recent developments such as the recession, mobile marketing and purchasing, and the adaptation and evolution of social media, have impacted Generation Y. All the chapters offer new case studies and interviews, from companies such as H&M, Forever 21, and Converse, as well as updated facts, figures, and research.

Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator

By Ryan Holiday I’m a media manipulator. In a world where blogs control and distort the news, my job is to control blogs-as much as any one person can.

Why am I giving away these secrets? Because I’m tired of a world where blogs take indirect bribes, marketers help write the news, reckless journalists spread lies, and no one is accountable for any of it. I’m pulling back the curtain because I don’t want anyone else to get blindsided.

In “Bigger Than This,” Geyrhalter analyzes brands that are based on commodity products – watches, socks, shoes, fish – yet they quickly turn into beloved brands. He emphasizes the importance of storytelling, encouraging brands to embrace 8 simple traits these brands showcase and offers specific, actionable commandments that any brand can implement – story, belief, cause, heritage, delight, transparency, solidarity and individuality.

By Bob Cialdini As useful to salespeople as it is to marketers, Bob Cialdini’s book is all about how people say “Yes!” and what you can do bring them to that point.

In a series of intensely practical observations, Cialdini reveals how your actions and words can profoundly effect the desires and needs of your customers, colleagues and even your competitors.

Essential stuff.

Eating the Big Fish: How Challenger Brands Can Compete Against Brand Leaders

By Adam Morgan The second edition of the international bestseller, now revised and updated for 2009, just in time for the business challenges ahead.

It contains over 25 new interviews and case histories, two completely new chapters, introduces a new typology of 12 different kinds of Challengers, has extensive updates of ...

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The 12 Powers of a Marketing Leader: How to Succeed by Building Customer and Company Value Kindle Edition

By Thomas Barta, Patrick Barwise

Subscribed: Why the Subscription Model Will Be Your Company’s Future - and What to Do About It Kindle Edition

The 12 Powers of a Marketing Leader, by former McKinsey Partner Thomas Barta and senior London Business School professor Patrick Barwise, is the first research-based leadership book for marketers in the 21st century. Based on the largest ever research study of its kind, with detailed data on over 8,600 leaders in more...

By Tien Tzuo, Gabe Weisert

Top of Mind: Use Content to Unleash Your Influence and Engage Those Who Matter To You

The Story Engine: An entrepreneur’s guide to conte Kindle Edition

By John Hall It’s the winning approach John Hall used to build Influence & Co. into one of “America’s Most Promising Companies,” according to Forbes. In this step-by-step guide, he shows you how to use content to keep your brand front and center in the minds of decision makers who matter.

Growth Hacker Marketing

By Ryan Holiday This book points out that many of the megabrands of today haven’t spent much of anything on traditional marketing. Instead, they figure out how to reach customers who “sell” other customers on using the product. While I’m not certain that the techniques Holiday espouses will work in every (or even many) business situations, the book is worth reading simply to understand how companies like Dropbox and Twitter suddenly burst out of nowhere.

Tzuo shows how to use subscriptions to build lucrative, ongoing one-on-one relationships with your customers. This may require reinventing substantial parts of your company, from your accounting practices to your entire IT architecture, but the payoff can be enormous.

By Kyle Gray, Tom Morkes (Foreword) Every entrepreneur has a story to tell, whether they’re running seven-figure startups or small personal brands. Your story is the most powerful asset you have at your disposal. It can cut through the noise and connect you with your customers.

Content marketing is one of the most affordable and powerful digital marketing tools available to tell your story at scale.

Netflixed: The Epic Battle for America’s Eyeballs

By Gina Keating Journalist Gina Keating recounts the fast-paced drama of the company’s turbulent rise to the top and its attempt to invent two new kinds of business. First it engaged in a grueling war against videostore behemoth Blockbuster, transforming movie rental forever. Then it jumped into an even bigger battle for online video streaming against Google, Hulu, Amazon, and the big cable companies.

Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics

Red Team: How to Succeed By Thinking Like the Enemy

By Richard H. Thaler

By Micah Zenko

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

Red teaming. It is a practice as old as the Devil’s Advocate, the eleventh-century Vatican official charged with discrediting candidates for sainthood. Today, red teams-comprised primarily of fearless skeptics and those assuming the role of saboteurs who seek to better understand the interests, intentions, and capabilities of institutions or potential competitors-are used widely in both the public and private sector.