WINTER IS COMING... Don’t get left out in the cold. Our experts show you how to win the ‘Game of Brands’.
ISSUE #13 Meet Brand Quarterly’s 50 Marketing Thought Leaders Over 50 Next Generation Brand Loyalty: Designing Digital Habits Trademark Strategies For Social Media Campaigns “Does This Brand Make My Butt Look Big?” The Art And Science Of Brand Influence ...and much more inside.
TM
Featured This Issue:
4
8
Brand Influence Is More Than Good Communication
Supercharging Your Sales With Body Language
Art Markman, PhD
Vanessa Van Edwards
12 Employee Advocacy Gives CEOs A Second Chance To Do Social Right Neal Schaffer
16
22 2014
Social Code: The Brand As A Village
We Unveil Brand Quarterly’s ’50 Marketing Thought Leaders Over 50’
Patrick Hanlon
Find out who made this year’s list
34 “Does This Brand Make My Butt Look Big?” Andrew Vesey
38 Next Generation Brand Loyalty: Designing Digital Habits
44 Avoid The Commodity Trap: Raise Your Price! Jeff Shore
Adrian C. Ott
48 Mobile Marketing: Stay Ahead Instead Of Keeping Up
52 Trademark Strategies For Social Media Campaigns Michelle Ward
Brett Relander 2
56 How Top Female Global Leaders Brand Themselves For Success Catherine Kaputa
Building Your Business From The Brand Up
60 Create More Profitable Promotions For A Stronger Brand
64 The Psychology Of Pricing And Your Brand
Use This Simple Button To Come Back Here Anytime
Graham Jones
At the top right of page spreads
Dick O’Brien
From The Editor Winter is coming… but first comes Brand Quarterly’s lucky issue #13 :) That’s right - three years have flown by! And thanks to the support from you our fantastic readers, we’re heading from strength to strength, launching into our fourth year, with this issue packed full of insights from 60 brilliant business and marketing minds. As one of our loyal readers, if you haven’t checked out the new BrandQuarterly.com yet, I’m confident you’ll love it! For just on 4 months now, in addition to the magazine, we’ve also been sharing new webonly content from our expert contributors there every week. Along with the lineup of world class contributors in this issue, we’re also proud to be sharing with you Brand Quarterly’s ‘50 Marketing Thought Leaders Over 50’ list. It’s been a joy to connect with so many wonderful people whilst compiling this year’s list, and I’m grateful to each of them for sharing their gems of wisdom with us all. As a little teaser... get ready to be enjoying more great lists like this one and awards in the future. Speaking of the future… no, I can’t possibly let any other secrets slip - let’s just say 2015 is going to be a big year. If you’re interested in joining us on this journey as a contributor, please take the time to read our Editorial Guidelines and Submission Process information on the website. Thanks again to everyone involved in making lucky #13 such a great resource for our readers - couldn’t pull this together without you. As always if you’re enjoying what you’re reading here, share, share, share :) Best,
Fiona Brand Quarterly magazine ISSUE #13 - Released NOV 2014 www.brandquarterly.com Publisher/Design: Vesey Creative Ltd brandquarterly@veseycreative.com
As the publishers of Brand Quarterly, we take every care in the production of each issue. We are however, not liable for any editorial error, omission, mistake or typographical error. The views expressed are those of the contributors and not necessarily those of their respecitve companies or the publisher.
Brand Quarterly
Copyright: This magazine and the content published within are subject to copyright held by the publisher, with individual articles remaining copyright to the named contributor. Express written permission of the publisher and contributor must be acquired for reproduction.
3
4
Building Your Business From The Brand Up
Brand Influence Is More Than Good Communication Art Markman, PhD
Great brands come to mind easily. You hear the product category, and these brands spring immediately to consciousness. You also get a mental image of product-related information, whether it is the image the brand hopes to convey, or the packaging that you expect when you encounter it in the world. Because of the amount of time that brand managers spend focusing on positioning a brand and thinking about integrated communications around it, it is easy to believe that developing the brand image and then finding ways to communicate about it are the two central forces behind creating successful brands. Ultimately, though, brands are a mode of influence. You create and nurture your brand as a way of affecting the behavior of customers. It doesn’t really matter how much people know about your brand if you can’t get them to buy it.
You create and nurture your brand as a way of affecting the behavior of customers.
5
And it turns out that communication is only one small tool for influencing people’s behavior, and it is often one of the least effective. Ask yourself: How often does someone simply tell you something that fundamentally influences your behavior? When put that way, the answer is often rarely, if ever. If you truly want to influence people’s behavior in order to build your brand, then you need to focus on five central tools for affecting behavior. These tools need to be integrated into your strategy for developing a brand. First, you need to help customers to develop goals that include your brand. The best way to frame these goals is to focus on the long-term use of your product, and not the purchase of that product. After all, you want people to remain engaged with you long after they have made a purchase.
You need to help customers to develop goals that include your brand.
The use of the product is just as important in developing the brand as the communication about it. Lululemon, for example, has done a great job of associating its clothing with yoga and working out, to help customers incorporate the brand into their wellness routines. But, you can also encourage customers to think about when and where they will engage in brand-relevant activities. Don’t just associate the product with a situation, get customers to add that activity into their routine. This continued engagement is crucial, because no brand can survive if it sells a product to people only once. Third, help customers to create habits and routines. It is a mantra of brand management that we want a brand to be “top of mind” for customers. But, the most successful brands are the ones that are so deeply entrenched in the lives of their users that they engage with the brand without thinking.
Help customers to create habits and routines. Ask yourself, what are the activities you want people to perform regularly that use your brand and strengthen their connection to you? Apple does a great job of having people connect not only to their phones, but also to the iTunes and App stores in order to keep people consistently connected to the brand. Tide detergent is packaged to be a visible element in the laundry experience, to remind consumers of why their clothes stay clean. Ultimately, the use of the product is just as important in developing the brand as the communication about it. Second, it is critical to help customers develop a plan to engage with your product. Communication can help with this, of course. 6
Creating habits means setting up consistent situations in which the customer engages with the product. For some brands (like detergents or toothpastes), this is easy, because there is a daily usage context that supports developing habits. For luxury and image brands, though, this task is harder. For these brands, you want to create a consistent relationship between situations that repeat in people’s lives and the presence of your brand. That leads to the fourth element of influence: the environment. We are all lazy creatures. That is, we do the things that are easiest for us to accomplish in our world. That means
Building Your Business From The Brand Up
that you need to help customers to arrange their environments in ways that support the continued engagement with a product. BMW is masterful at continuing their engagement with drivers. They send periodic gifts to drivers including sketches of the car and pens as a way of staying present in people’s environment. In this way, BMW is engaged with their customers, even when they are not in the car. The environment can also be used to encourage customers to use the product more often. As I discuss in my book Smart Change, Procter & Gamble had to redesign their product Febreze to increase usage. Febreze contains a chemical that binds to oderants in the air and ensures that those molecules can no longer be smelled. Consumers loved the product when they tested it, but they rarely used it.
the goals of the people around us. When we see other people engaging in an activity or using a particular product, it strengthens our own goal to do the same thing.
Brands need to engage with people to increase their influence on others. One reason why obvious brand markers on clothing are so successful, is that they subtly increase the goal for other people to engage with that brand. Returning to Lululemon, the ubiquitous company logo encourages other members of the community to engage with the brand.
A big part of the reason why they did not use the product often was that it was packaged in the kind of spray bottle typically used for glass cleaners. Consequently, consumers tended to put the bottle in the cabinet under the sink where it was used only on cleaning days. When the product was redesigned to have a bottle that was attractive and could be left out on a counter, usage and sales increased.
Ultimately, brand communication is the starting point to influence, not the primary means to make it happen. It is crucial to think through the factors that will change people’s behavior to engage with a brand more often, and then to structure messages around behavior.
Finally, brands need to engage with people to increase their influence on others. We are social creatures, and we are wired to adopt
Brand communication is the starting point to influence, not the primary means to make it happen.
Art Markman, PhD Professor of Psychology and Marketing, Author | University of Texas at Austin Art is the Annabel Irion Worsham Centennial Professor of Psychology and Marketing at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also the Founding Director of the Program in the Human Dimensions of Organizations. The HDO program brings the humanities and the social behavioral sciences to people in business. Along with Bob Duke, Art hosts the radio show Two Guys on Your Head for KUT Radio in Austin. Two Guys on Your Head is available as a podcast on iTunes and Soundcloud. He is also the author of Smart Thinking, Habits of Leadership, and Smart Change.
www.smartthinkingbook.com
Brand Quarterly
7
8
Building Your Business From The Brand Up
Supercharging Your Sales With Body Language Vanessa Van Edwards
When people hear the word “sales� they often conjure up images of a greasy car salesman or a sleazy insurance man. But selling is about understanding how to get buy in from someone. It can be getting someone interested in your product, in your service or just in who you are. Selling is about intrigue and there is both an art and science to effective persuasion that is NOT manipulative. My favorite approach to selling is using nonverbal science. This is because at a minimum 60% of our communication is nonverbal. Some say it is up to 93%! The problem is that most people focus on what they want to say in their sales pitch or elevator pitch not how they want to say it. In doing research for my course Supercharge Your Sales with Body Language, we found nonverbal patterns of effective salesmen and women. I want to share those patterns with you so you can use your body language to supercharge your sales.
Brand Quarterly
9
1. Fronting Fronting is when you aim your torso and toes towards the person you are speaking with. Nonverbally, this is a sign of respect. When you do this you look incredibly focused, put together and charismatic. So be sure to always keep your toes and torso aimed at the person you are speaking with.
were rated as more confident, intelligent and skilled. Most importantly, those candidates FELT MORE POWERFUL! So be sure you power pose before you walk into a pitch meeting.
Those who power posed were rated as more confident, intelligent and skilled.
2. Claim Territory Researchers at Harvard Business School found that the more expansive you are - roll your shoulders back, firmly plant your feet, open your chest and keep your head up the more confident you feel and the more confident others perceive you. This is called power posing - taking up space with your body. Putting your hands on your hips, doing the Rocky or even dancing are all forms of taking up space.
3. Use Your Trust Indicators Once you are in the meeting a great nonverbal cue for trust is showing your hands. Our hands are one of the first places our brain looks when we meet someone. This is because back in caveman days we wanted to see if someone was carrying a weapon or not. This kept us safe. Our brains still do this! When you walk into the room keep your hands out of your pockets, above the desk and reach in for a nice, solid handshake.
4. Emotionality
In mock-interviews, the researchers had participants power pose before they walked into the room. Those who power posed
Another aspect of nonverbal behavior is voice tone and vocal emotionality. This is an incredibly important aspect of Charisma. Here’s the problem, when we have given our pitch hundreds of times or memorized certain parts it makes us sound (and look) boring,
Vanessa Van Edwards Lead Behavioral Investigator | Science of People Vanessa Van Edwards is the creator of the course, Supercharge Your Sales with Body Language. She is lead investigator at Science of People, a human behavior research lab. She is a Huffington Post columnist and published author. Her innovative work has been featured on NPR, Business Week and USA Today. She regularly gives keynotes and appears in the media to talk about her research. She has written for CNN, Fast Company and Forbes.
www.scienceofpeople.com
10
Building Your Business From The Brand Up
uninterested and unengaged. Make sure that you add in vocal charisma by bulleting your sales and elevator pitch, not scripting it. This will make sure you say it differently every time. You can also try adding in a number of stories to your pitch. Stories are an easy way to add vocal variety and color to your pitch.
that in many offices someone is sitting at a high desk chair while the other person sits in a low couch. That low couch is not only low power (you are sitting more squat and taking up less space) but also gives you a perceived lower look. When you have a choice pick a nice high chair with a strong back and arm rests so you can take up space more easily.
Make sure that you add in vocal charisma by bulleting your sales and elevator pitch, not scripting it.
I hope I have shown you a few ways you can use nonverbal to make a killer elevator pitch, master a powerful presence and learn how to connect with clients immediately.
5. Take The High Seat This might sound silly, but height plays a huge factor in perceived power. The problem is
Here’s my promise to you: learning how to sell and improve your presence is an investment in yourself and your business so you can start selling smarter, not harder.
Looking To Make An Impact? Learn how to do it the right way from today’s industry experts.
Visit online for more articles and magazine back issues. Subscribe FREE for regular updates and exclusive download access.
www.brandquarterly.comBrand Quarterly
11
Employee Advocacy Gives CEOs A Second Chance To Do Social Right Neal Schaffer
Although the world is spending more time on social media, there is one demographic that continues to avoid it like the plague: Chief Executive Officers. It was recently reported that only 8.3% of Fortune 500 CEOs had a Twitter account. This is the same Twitter that just announced a major partnership with IBM with an eye on the future in which “every significant business decision will have Twitter input.� Despite the increasing importance of social media for 12
business as indicated by this announcement, another report stated that 64% of CEOs aren't on social media at all. On the flip side, we've seen an uptake in companies (see Google Trends data on the following page) either interested in or adopting employee advocacy programs in which employee are encouraged to share company messages to their friends on their personal social networks.
Building Your Business From The Brand Up
As you can imagine, the success of such an employee advocacy program will often depend on the understanding of and support from the executive team. If CEOs haven't done social media "right" yet, the emergence of the social business as embodied by employee advocacy and other cross-silo collaborative initiatives gives Chief Executive Officers a second chance not only to better understand social media, but more importantly, better leverage social as an essential business tool for the enterprise and reap the rewards that they have been missing out on.
The success of an employee advocacy program will often depend on the understanding and support from the executive team. "Every Employee Is A Salesperson." How many times have you heard someone say that and think to yourself that such a company simply doesn't exist?
Studies back up the fact that at most companies, those employees that are actively disengaged are nearly double those that are considered engaged, suggesting that only 13% of employees are engaged "salespeople." Despite this fact, social media-savvy companies are embarking on employee advocacy programs. Employee advocacy as a concept is not new at all; David Cole, then CEO of Honeywell International, said the following several years ago to the company's 120,000 employees: "Every Honeywell employee is a brand ambassador. With each customer contact, and whenever we represent Honeywell, we have the opportunity to either strengthen the brand or cause it to lose some of its luster and prestige." What has changed since then is that when an employee states that they work at a company in their social network user profile, they are now indirectly representing the way the world views your brand, whether they see that profile on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, or any other social network.
Google Trends
Brand Quarterly
13
Enter The Employee Advocacy In Social Media Movement It all started when social media began to become a mainstream communications channel used by nearly 90% of American companies with more than 100 employees:
People aren’t using social media to be marketed to, and social media as a communications channel is inherently two-way. In parallel with more departments utilizing social media to help them meet varying objectives, more and more of the general public are becoming social media users themselves. This includes your employees.
A more recent survey indicates that number might be as high as 97%. That outward-facing communication, however, has consequences in social media. People aren't using social media to be marketed to, and social media as a communications channel is inherently twoway. As brands begin to market to people, people begin to engage back, for better or for worse. It is now common for many consumer-facing brands, to have a dedicated customer service channel for social media for this reason. On the other hand, recruiters can gain visibility into potential candidates through social media, and that same visibility can also be leveraged by the sales department; thus, the birth of social recruiting and social selling initiatives. Slowly every corporate department is becoming a stakeholder in a company's social media program. 14
Social media marketers have now realized this huge potential: In addition to owned, earned, and paid media, the potential for your employees to share your messaging has seen the emergence of a new fourth type of media called Employed Media. Considering that there is surprisingly little overlap between the social networks of employees and those of the brand, as well as data that supports the view that employees are trusted more than CEOs, you can see the huge potential that an employee advocacy program can have in spreading a brand's message in social media. This is why I like to think of employee advocacy as being the final frontier for social media marketing. How does a company actually create an employee advocacy program? Technology has kept pace with the evolution of social business, and now a number of software platforms have emerged to support enterprise-wise employee advocacy efforts. Finally, through the advent of social media becoming mainstream and the potential inherent in an employee advocacy program, every employee really can be a salesperson now.
The Problem There's a big problem, though: Just like any other company-wide initiative, the true success of employee advocacy programs
Building Your Business From The Brand Up
require the support - and participation - of the executive team. If the CEO won't share our company's message on their social media accounts, why should his or her employees? Furthermore, employee advocacy has the potential to touch every department but will require true executive leadership in order to be implemented company-wide.
True success of employee advocacy programs require the support - and participation of the executive team. Of course, there are a number of savvy enterprises that have already invested in social media centers of excellence and have executive buy-in. Some CEOs actually have more Twitter followers than their company's branded accounts. These are the exceptions to the rule, however, as 99% of global businesses probably haven't created such a formal center of excellence organization for their social media efforts.
The Opportunity For CEOs It is clear that social business is a natural evolution for enterprises and not a trend that will simply fade away. The social networks themselves will always be fighting for customers, so the names might change,
Social business is a natural evolution for enterprises and not a trend that will simply fade away. but as a new communications channel which truly represents the convergence of information and communication, online social networking is clearly here to stay. CEOs who have not been participating in social media or ignored utilizing it companywide as a strategic tool now have a second chance to adopt social media, both personally as well as professionally, at a much more mature stage of development. With a CEO's strategic focus, additional resources can be strategically applied to growing social business efforts to leverage the potential that social media has for their company. The bigger opportunity, though, is that when the top becomes involved in such a program, not only will it encourage more employees to get involved, but you can imagine how indirectly increased employee engagement can have on productivity and profitability from one's workforce. That is the potential for CEOs, and if they miss out on another golden opportunity to get social media right this time around, they just might be forced to do so in the future for a different employer.
Neal Schaffer Author, Consultant, Speaker | Maximize Your Social A Forbes Top 50 Social Media Power Influencer & Top 5 Social Sales Influencer, and creator of the Maximize Social Business blog, Neal is a social media strategy consultant, global speaker, and teacher as part of the Rutgers University Business School Mini Social Media MBA Program. As an author, Neal is best known for his definitive book on social media strategy “Maximize Your Social� (Wiley) but has also written two other books on LinkedIn. Neal will soon launch his newest venture, the Social Media Center of Excellence, to build and educate a community surrounding best practices in using social media for business. Download Neal’s free co-authored guide to creating an employee advocacy program here.
http://maximizeyoursocial.com
Brand Quarterly
15
Social Code: The Brand As A Village Patrick Hanlon
Times have changed. The so-called “gateway” method of Branding where goods and services were marketed, distributed, ‘vouched for,’ and deified by corporate via a deluge of advertising and marketing support are over. The public is no longer unsuspecting, and advertising has never had less influence.
16
Building Your Business From The Brand Up
Today, people gather as communities around the products and services they like through a host of participatory activities as they post, pin, share, Like, poke, Yelp, text, upload, download, Skype, stream, chat and more. As we try to discover the longitude and latitude of brands in today’s market, looking at them as actual civic communities - little villages - is a useful exercise.
The first question for communities of every size is, How did we get here? The origin mythos or creation story is the foundation of all brand narrative. Dublin and London were founded by Vikings, as was Moscow; New York City was founded by Dutch merchants; Beijing was founded by Mongols. The village of Google AdSense™ started while a group of Google engineers chatted playing pool.
Polly Wolly Doodle, the largest retail enterprise on Facebook, started when founder Brandi Temple shared a photo on her Facebook page of an outfit she had sewn for her daughter. A friend of a friend asked if Brandi would make the same outfit for her daughter. Today, Brandi has revitalized the textile industry in her hometown of Lexington, Kentucky, USA, as well as manufacturing designs in China.
We think different. We just do it. We imagine.
These stories are foundational. They begin the community narrative and hint at utility, purpose, and future-forward possibilities.
Our community pings these markings, sights, sounds, smells, taste and feelings to the outside world. And the outside world determines whether they should approach or avoid our community. Some of these iconic signals are hard-wired to our internal survival mechanisms. The smell of fire. Police sirens. Barking dogs. The smell of a baby’s skin.
The next question is, Why are we here? We make steel. We make cars. We make porcelain. We brew beer. We are a port town. We have a bridge. Because we have these things we believe in something slightly different than the people who live on the other side of the river - or on the other side of the country, continent, or planet.
All communities have rituals that are not only everyday activities like getting up, brushing your teeth and going to work. Rituals also mark the things that we celebrate as a community. The harvest. The beginning of spring. Independence Day. Christmas Day. Boxing Day. Market Day. The London Marathon. World Cup.
We are attracted together by a common sensibility: we feel the same way about things, we have a common thread that brings us together. Whether we make oaths, pledge allegiance, sign contracts, or agree to privacy policies and terms of use, communities implicitly or explicitly agree to common bonds, interests and goals.
For centuries, rituals have guided the spiritual and economic health of communities. It’s no secret that Christmas Holiday sales have the biggest retail impact of the year. And it’s not just in the Western capitalist world where the sacred and profane collaborate. In Nepal, the holiday Dashain is celebrated by slaughtering hundreds of goats to the god Kali. Each year, drovers from distant remote villages in the Himalayas guide their goatherds down dangerous mountain passes to Kathmandu. The high altitude villages depend on the sale of these goats for their economic survival.
Nike sales started with Phil Knight selling their new-fangled running shoes from the boot of his car.
We think different. We just do it. We imagine. After we know where we’re from and what we’re about, we identify ourselves. We hoist a flag. We have a crest or coat of arms, a mark that identifies us for trade or war. People understand immediately from these iconic signals if they want to approach or avoid. They understand the marked difference between Burberry and Gucci. VW and Mini Cooper. The Economist and The Wall Street Journal. Manchester United and Arsenal. 18
For centuries, rituals have guided the spiritual and economic health of communities.
Building Your Business From The Brand Up
Sliding centuries into the future, today’s 21st century villages are online. Rituals bring members of the community together as they post, share, pin, poke, Like, Yelp, text, upload, download, Skype, stream, and more. Searching on Google is a ritual. Selfies are a ritual. Next. All communities have their own lexicon, their own verbal village. Their own idioms known to those who are a part of our community, and verbal traps for those who are not.
Searching on Google is a ritual. Selfies are a ritual.
their own point of view. Examples of leaders vary, from Ghandi to Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page and Sir Richard Branson. Together, these pieces of social code: creation story, creed, icons, rituals, lexicon, nonbelievers and leader, form a construct that designs and attracts social communities online and off. The Internet has redefined how we view societies, as we create a webbed complex of tiny villages online. These communities include not just the friends we already know, like Facebook - but also those aligned to our interests: the family of fandom. We are not only brothers, sisters, friends, spouses, parents, we are also fans: book lovers, sports enthusiasts, technophiles, music fans and more. Enterprise builds bricks of online delight to tease, propel and succor our enthusiasms.
One universal example of this is ordering an “iced grande skinny decaf latte,” words we all had to learn if we wanted to enter the community of Starbucks drinkers. The anagram LOL (laugh out loud) is used similarly in Moscow, Beijing and elsewhere around the world. It has become the lexicon of a transglobal village of digitally adept young persons who go forth from Moscow to Manhattan to Singapore to San Francisco to London. And back. The next building block of community is the nonbeliever. The people who don’t want to live in your village, they want to live somewhere else. On the far side, this “We're not like them” thinking can be xenophobic. But understanding what we are not, and what we never want to become, helps reinforce our own values and reminds us of who we are as a people. At the moment of this writing, ISIS is a strong example of a community of nonbelievers. Finally, all communities have a leader. Think mayor of Four Square. This is someone who set out to recreate the world according to
The Internet has redefined how we view societies.
Each village has its own rarified language, customs, legacy, leader, nonbelievers, aspirations, and things we celebrate. Connected, reinforced, and energized by the gluey attachments that individuals have for people, places and things - those things that move people, that embrace people, that are sticky - are created not only with digital code. They are derived from something far more primal, far more powerful. They are designed to create and attract communities with a construct we call the social code. The makings of community are more volatile than ever before. In today’s informationloaded environment, quality and quantity are assured. Which means that distribution and marketing blitzes are useless. Communitymaking has flipped from corporate marketing
Brand Quarterly
19
Patrick Hanlon Author, Founder & CEO | Thinktopia® Patrick is one of the leading brand practitioners in the world. He is ceo and founder of THINKTOPIA®, a global strategic and brand transformation practice for Fortune 100 companies and startups. His book Primal Branding: Create Zealots For Your Brand, Your Company And Your Future, is the seminal work that looks at brands as belief systems that people opt in to if they are attracted to those Brand beliefs. His Primal Branding® construct is now recognized by YouTube, as their recommended construct for designing and attracting social communities. Hanlon’s new book The Social Code builds on the concept of Primal Code outlined in Primal Branding, for the digital age.
http://thinktopia.com
Brands must understand their strategic brand narrative.
and advertising solutions to consumerist reviews, yelps, thumbs up, and cheering enthusiasm. Brands must understand their strategic brand narrative: they must implicitly know where they’re from, who they are, what they believe in, the language they use to differentiate themselves, what they’re not and never want to become, and who leads them.
We have been testing these principles with Fortune 100 companies for the last seven years, designing both strategy and community. The next stage is to apply metrics to each piece of social code, measure their effects, and adjust accordingly. Hashtags, pins, likes, and attendance are the rites of belonging. And when those rites are embedded with more and other pieces of code, they become more powerful and more connected to your strategic narrative - all of which makes your community more relevant, resonant, noteworthy and powerful.
Why?
Hashtags, pins, likes, and attendance are the rites of belonging.
Because these are the emotional touchpoints consumers are using to make the decisions where they work, live, shop and play. They are a collection of seven data points that connect and attract social community, at the deepest levels of human behavior. Strung together, these pieces become the core of fandom and advocacy. They create a strategic narrative that moves ideals from being meaningless to becoming meaningful. And the magnetic core that attracts others to your beliefs - the community of fans, advocates, zealots and citizens who believe in and belong to your beliefs and become so passionate about your success, they are willing to create it themselves. 20
Those who employ the social code gain an unfair advantage over those who do not. In most categories, this advantageous leadership is worth billions. The future is here. It’s time to find your village.
Building Your Business From The Brand Up
Feel A Little Invisible? Need To Stand Out?
Talk to the experts
Proud sponsors of and Brand Guardians for the Brand2Global conference series
The creators and production team behind Brand Quarterly magazine
Combining their well deserved recognition with adding value for our readers, we asked each finalist to share their insights on these 2 questions:
2014
1. What’s the biggest change you see occurring in the marketing industry over the next 5 years?
We all know age has little to do with ability; that you’re never too young OR too old, if you’ve got talent. In the Marketing world, as with many other industries, there’s a focus on the up-andcomers, a fascination with how successful you can be at younger ages. While it’s wonderful to celebrate success… we also see a number of gaps that need to be filled in the eco-system of recognition. The first of these gaps is made up of highly experienced Marketers – they’ve been doing it for a while and have a ton of wisdom to share with the business community! We are of course, talking about our Marketing Thought Leaders who are 50+. Each of the Marketing Thought Leaders highlighted over the following pages have a wealth of experience and knowledge to share; and have gained the respect of their peers through their words, actions and achievements, in print, online and in person. 22
2. What’s your top piece of advice for management/marketing professionals to make their social media presence as engaging as possible? One of each of their answers is published on the following pages, with the full extended coverage of this feature including both answers by each of our 50 Marketing Thought Leaders being published on BrandQuarterly.com (live Mon 24 Nov). You can also easily keep up-to-date with everyone on this years list by following our ‘50 Marketing Thought Leaders Over 50’ Twitter List HERE. Thanks to each and every one of the 50 experts on this list, for taking the time to share your insights. While a couple of you mentioned nerves on unveiling your age group - hold your head high, know that you’re awesome and remember; if Brad Pitt was a marketer he’d qualify for this list :) So without further ado… it’s time to meet Brand Quarterly’s 50 Marketing Thought Leaders Over 50.
Building Your Business From The Brand Up
Brand Quarterly
23
Jeff Sheehan President | Sheehan Marketing On the next 5 years for marketing:
The marketing industry is becoming ever more complex. Due to the daily emergence of new tools and ways of doing business there is no rest for the weary. It will become impossible for any one individual to keep up with everything. Only with a team of qualified professionals with expertise in limited disciplines can a marketer expect to succeed.
Ted Rubin Social Marketing Strategist, Acting CMO Brand Innovators, Keynote Speaker On an engaging social media presence:
Engage, interact, and build relationships. BE Authentic, don’t just ACT it. This might seem obvious… but authenticity is on the verge of becoming just another buzz word. TRUE authenticity (not just using that word often in your tweets and posts) will set your brand (product or personal) apart in today’s highly competitive market.
Don Peppers Founding Partner | Peppers & Rogers Group On the next 5 years for marketing:
Over the next five years I would expect the line to blur between marketing, sales, and service even further, as customers take full charge of seeking information, comparing experiences, and even helping each other with service questions.
Marsha Collier Author / CEO | The Collier Company, Inc On an engaging social media presence:
Please stop broadcasting and non-stop self-referential posts. Take time to join in conversations and thank your community for supporting you. If their posts fall in line with your brand, why not share them? When selecting Brand Ambassadors, be sure they reflect the brand culture, numbers mean nothing if they are not relevent. Combine your data with human intuition.
David Meerman Scott Marketing Strategist On the next 5 years for marketing:
Gone are the days when you could plan out your marketing and public relations programs well in advance and release them on your timetable. It’s a real-time world now, and if you’re not engaged, then you’re on your way to marketplace irrelevance. To be successful, marketers need to develop a real-time mindset.
24
Brand Quarterly’s 50 Marketing Thought Leaders Over 50 - 2014
Mark Schaefer Executive Director | Schaefer Marketing Solutions On an engaging social media presence:
Have the courage to be human. Show yourself. People buy from those they know and trust, not an ad or a jingle.
Steve Farnsworth CMO | The @Steveology Group On the next 5 years for marketing:
Over the last 5 years we have seen many marketers, who grew-up in traditional marketing practices, become irrelevant because they failed to learn and become digitally savvy. Over the next 5 years a thinning of the herd will happen again to marketers who fail to welcome and embrace marketing analytics.
Alan See Chief Marketing Officer | CMO Temps, LLC On an engaging social media presence:
Focus on the 3 Big C’s. Character: Proactively search for interesting business characters and connect to them first. Make sure you maintain a level of personal brand consistency that helps your audience quickly understand what they’re getting. Cadence: Create a consistent flow of relevant thought-leadership material; without making it feel over- the-top or spammy. Callout: Look for opportunities to mention or retweet your connections in order to help them build their social capital.
Jill Konrath CEO | Jill Konrath, Inc. On the next 5 years for marketing:
Marketers being held accountable for revenue goals. When marketing and sales are tied together by similar goals, everything changes -- for the better! (Note: I’m from the sales side of the house!)
Cheryl Burgess Chief Executive And Chief Marketing Officer | Blue Focus Marketing On an engaging social media presence:
Today, every professional needs to tweet. Period. If an executive or manager cannot publish a valuable 140-character tweet about the brand they work for, then they shouldn’t be in their job. Focus on building a community. Extend your reach. Grow your audience, and share your thoughts and ideas. Twitter is a win/win.
Brand Quarterly’s 50 Marketing Thought Leaders Over 50 - 2014
25
Gary Schirr Associate Professor | Radford University On the next 5 years for marketing:
Staying relevant and communicating effectively over a series of platforms will be a major challenge for most of the next decade. Can an organization engage people effectively and create useful content that works in very different platforms and communites? Can the organization maintain a consistent message while effectively engaging those communities?
Janet Fouts CEO | Tatu Digital Media On an engaging social media presence:
Think about who you are talking to and be mindful of what they want instead of pushing your message on them. (Don’t put words in their mouths. Listen.)
Gina Carr Chief Tribe Building Officer | Gina Carr International On the next 5 years for marketing:
I think the biggest change will be how to get the attention of their customers in a world where people are constantly bombarded with too much information. Choosing the right channels, engagement strategies, and offers will be critical for success.
Terry Brock Supreme Commander | Achievement Systems, Inc. On an engaging social media presence:
Listen first. Find the pain others are going through and then provide solid answers in video, text and audio formats. Focus on helping others rather than “blasting” your message out. We don’t need your blasting. We need caring!
Mark Burgess President | Blue Focus Marketing On the next 5 years for marketing:
The biggest change is the continuing shift from outbound to inbound marketing. The impact is gathering momentum as marketers find lack of trust and authenticity in traditional marketing programs. This lack of trust is a significant barrier to success. Look for more brands to be focused on the creation of social employees as the new marketing channel. 26
Brand Quarterly’s 50 Marketing Thought Leaders Over 50 - 2014
Trevor Young Founder & Principal Consultant | Authority Partners On an engaging social media presence:
Ensure your social media feeds are as ‘human’ as possible - put faces and names to the people behind the Twitter account or Facebook page; take followers ‘behind the velvet rope’ of your organisation with photos of staff/partners, shine the spotlight on your customers, tell stories, interact with your audience, retweet often, follow other people’s accounts - get involved!
Ardath Albee CEO & B2B Marketing Strategist | Marketing Interactions, Inc. On the next 5 years for marketing:
Getting marketers the training and education they need to deal with the continuous change and evolution of marketing. According to research, 82% of marketers receive no traininng, yet marketing has changed more in the past few years than in the last 50. I don’t see that stopping, so ongoing training and education must become an investment in a company asset - marketers.
Kent Huffman Global Vice President of Marketing | Servergy On an engaging social media presence:
I would suggest that marketers concentrate on listening, developing relationships, providing useful information, establishing trust, building communities, and helping others succeed.
Adrian C Ott Chief Executive Officer | Exponentialedge Inc. On the next 5 years for marketing:
Every business will become a software business. Winners will offer new products that augment their core business based on tech. Traditional companies like P&G and GE are already making this transition. Harnessing the deluge of data spawning from IoT and wearables (like the Apple Watch) will enable predictive customer insight and new app opportunities to serve customers.
Paul Greenberg Managing Principal | The 56 Group, LLC On an engaging social media presence:
PTI - personalized targeted interactions - know who you are communicating with, to the extent you are able. Interact with the individuals that you are trying to reach. Not in a tedious way - it can be that - but by identifying those things that resonate with a larger group - personally, not only demographically. The data exists.
Brand Quarterly’s 50 Marketing Thought Leaders Over 50 - 2014
27
Drew Neisser CEO | Renegade On the next 5 years for marketing:
The promise of 1:1 marketing will finally be realized on multiple levels. From Addressable TV to retailers use of beacons, marketing will become more relevant, more timely and more effective than ever before.
Kirby Wadsworth Chief Marketing Officer | Limelight Networks On an engaging social media presence:
In our new book, Recommend This! Deliverying Digital Experiences that People Want to Share (Wiley), we outlined nine characteristics that drive social media success. The same characteristics also drive success in building face to face relationships. Out of all nine, I believe authenticy is the most important. Turns out we can smell a phony a mile away, online or in person.
Brian Kardon Chief Marketing Officer | Lattice Engines On the next 5 years for marketing:
Powerful, real-time analytics are no longer a nice-to-have for marketers. We are seeing rapid acceptance of marketing analytics - with marketing technologists joining marketing teams, greater use of both internal and external data, and software to build models and push analytics into marketing workflows. Not all marketing teams are prepared for this.
Eric Fletcher Chief Marketing & Business Development Officer | Liskow & Lewis On an engaging social media presence:
Worry less about what your message should be and more about listening to relevant audiences; this will inform your message beyond measure. Value is not in followers, fans, page views or likes, but in the conversations in which you engage. Social is the backyard fence, the town square, the water cooler for the communities you care about. Resist evangelizing. Deliver value. Build bridges. Effective social is a longterm investment in relationships.
Tony Zambito Founder Of Buyer Persona | Tony Zambito On the next 5 years for marketing:
I believe the overwhelming deluge of content currently, will spark significant changes. Marketing will eventually have to leave the orientation towards “mass� marketing behind and develop new ways to connect with consumers and business buyers on a more personal as well as human level. This includes an emphasis on humanizing branding and brand meaning. 28
Brand Quarterly’s 50 Marketing Thought Leaders Over 50 - 2014
Loren McDonald VP Industry Relations | Silverpop, An IBM Company On an engaging social media presence:
Social media success has always been about the conversation, about dialog. There will always be a role for pushing out content in social media channels, but executives need to embrace the idea that social media is really about listening and responding; and creating, enabling or being a catalyst for compelling conversations. Consumers want to talk with and about your brand, and in positive terms, if you solve problems and use a human and authentic voice.
Larry Weber Chairman & Chief Executive Officer | Racepoint Global On the next 5 years for marketing:
The biggest change occuring in the marketing industry over the next five years is integrating software as a service into marketing. All types of organizations, regardless of size, segment or category are purchasing marketing automation technology to help their companies accompany their prospects through the sales cycle as well as nurture leads with personalized content.
Eric Weaver Chief Social Officer, G-14 Region | IPG Mediabrands On an engaging social media presence:
Whether for your company’s presence or for your own, you need to dedicate time, energy and creativity in order to inspire customers or fans to interact with you. Decide what your business objectives are and from those objectives, determine the best use of your time. Is it video? Creative content? Thought pieces? Or stirring the pot in a forum?
Laura Patterson President | Visionedge Marketing On the next 5 years for marketing:
More channels, competition, and distinct segments to manage, shorter product lifecycles, greater price transparency, and higher customer experience expectations, converge to create an exponential increase in marketing data. Which requires increased investment in technology and marketing operations to glean business insights and drive long-term growth.
Jeff Ogden President | Find New Customers On an engaging social media presence:
Keep adapting to the fast changing world. Build your presence on all social media sites, including Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube. As my friend Jay Baer once said “Content is fire. Social media is gasoline: so be everywhere and create your very own bonfire.” You can do it.
Brand Quarterly’s 50 Marketing Thought Leaders Over 50 - 2014
29
Jay Deragon Digital Strategist On the next 5 years for marketing:
Marketing as a silo department will be dead. Marketing teams will be made up of cognitive psychologists, mathematicians, data scientists, sociologists, and software developers. This will create the biggest change in terms of talent demands in the marketplace. Intimate knowledge of buyer preferences and the ability to fulfill those preferences, will be the winning strategy.
Lynne Jarman-Johnson Chief Marketing Officer | Consumers Credit Union On an engaging social media presence:
Be Yourself. Don’t pretend to be anything you are not. Let your voice shine in your work when you post and plan. And Always, Always, Always #SimplyBeKind
Kieran Hannon Chief Marketing Officer | Belkin International On the next 5 years for marketing:
A return to story telling across all touchpoints as part of the brand conversation. Brands need to have “DNA” elastic enough to traverse the various avenues Fans will engage through. That means the classic marketing Funnel is dead as Fans will enter and depart in non-conforming behaviors. For instance, “unboxing” bloggers might be the first brand connection.
Joel Book Principal, Marketing Insights | Salesforce Marketing Cloud On an engaging social media presence:
Social media represents the beginning of the conversation with the customer – an opportunity to listen to the customer’s needs and respond with content that is helpful and aids the decision-making process. The currency of brand advocacy is TRUST and brands that use tools like Social Studio to listen and respond to the customer’s needs will earn their trust and confidence. When managed properly, social media represents a powerful channel for attracting, engaging and serving customers.
Barbara Fowler Partner And CMO | Chief Outsiders On the next 5 years for marketing:
The biggest change I see in the marketing industry in the next five years is outsourcing. With all of the new marketing technologies coming out, different expertise is needed. Knowing when to rely on outside experts and when to bring knowledge in-house is key. Keeping up with the changes without becoming overwhelmed and trying every new idea will become even more important. 30
Brand Quarterly’s 50 Marketing Thought Leaders Over 50 - 2014
Jay Brokamp CEO | Docustar, Inc. On an engaging social media presence:
It’s a matter of staying at it and finding your social media voice. I think the most important thing is getting started, being diligent and sharing ideas and topics you are passionate about.
Vince Ferraro Executive Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer | Attenditus Digital Networks On the next 5 years for marketing:
The world is becoming mobile-centric. Mobile payments, digital currencies, beacon technologies, etc. will have huge implications of how we will shop and pay for goods in the future. In addition, there are real opporunities for companies to deliver new and better customer experiences that include highly targeted content and offers tied to location and shopping habits.
Michael Libbie Owner/Host | Insight Advertising, Marketing & Communications On an engaging social media presence:
Focus on the consumer. We find it amazing that so many businesses and marketing professionals view social media as a “broadcasting tool” when it should be an engagement tool. Also, keeping customers is less costly than creating new ones…
Heidi Lorenzen CMO | Cloudwords On the next 5 years for marketing:
The development of a truly global mindset supported by targeted local execution. Marketers are being inundated, with demands for more personalized communications, by fragmented audiences, in more markets. Managing this complexity across different stages of the buyer’s journey, in different languages, with skyrocketing amounts of content across numerous channels will be one of marketing’s top challenges to solve. Maximizing global opportunities and engagement will move up the priority list.
Christine Moorman Director | The CMO Survey, Sr. Professor | Duke University, Fuqua School Of Business On an engaging social media presence:
Invent your own ways to reach your most valued customer. Don’t follow the competition and don’t try to be everything to all customers. Create value from engaging with these customers and then ensure you are capturing value for your company by harvesting the benefits of a strong brand and strong customer relationships to grow your company over the long-run.
Brand Quarterly’s 50 Marketing Thought Leaders Over 50 - 2014
31
Bill McCloskey Founder | Only Influencers, LLC On the next 5 years for marketing:
In my field, email marketing, we are undergoing a consolidation sea change. The longstanding brand in the ESP space, ExactTarget, has been absorbed into Salesforce and other mergers are being announced. This trend will most likely accelerate in the next five years.
Saul J. Berman Partner, VP & Chief Strategist | IBM Global Business Services On an engaging social media presence:
Invest the time to engage and explore the latest social media platforms, as the cycles of platform innovation will continue to accelerate.
Linda Ireland Partner | Aveus On the next 5 years for marketing:
The biggest challenge marketing leaders will face is to help their organizations agree upon and implement a customer experience that makes money. The industry must get better at big data to anticipate unmet needs. It must change to help marketing leaders use technology to redesign the product, process and emotional moments that have a disproportionate impact on customer success - and support and celebrate those who build on the values mutually shared by customers and company.
Shaun Smith Founder And Author | Smith+Co On an engaging social media presence:
Be clear about your brand purpose and tell the story to your customers in a compelling way, that motivates them to participate and add richness to the story. For example, Burberry’s Art of the Trench. Stop being driven by the meaningless quest for more ‘Likes’ and start creating true meaning for customers.
Patrick Hanlon Founder, Chief Executive Officer | Thinktopia® On the next 5 years for marketing:
A decade ago, I wrote “our only constant today is change.” This is still true, and it has accelerated. The middle man has been wiped out: disintermediated by new words, new values, new vision. Every category of our life is effected: home, family, education, economics, race, values, energy, war, medicine, food, transportation. But with great change comes great opportunity. 32
Brand Quarterly’s 50 Marketing Thought Leaders Over 50 - 2014
David Newberry Founder | Market-In360 On an engaging social media presence:
The content needs to be helpful, to serve a purpose. It needs to solve an issue, impart knowledge, provide a new perspective or even lighten the day, but it needs to have value. In addition if you are sharing content from others, always try and add your perspective, why it is worth sharing / why it is of interest as social content should always be personal.
Jeffrey Peel Managing Director | Quadriga Consulting Ltd On the next 5 years for marketing:
The continued move towards digital marketing. We may not like it but it’s inevitable and it’s good. And marketing strategy will be impossible without deep knowledge of digital.
Barnaby Wynter Owner | The Brand Bucket Company Ltd On an engaging social media presence:
Define your Value Proposition clearly and then use social media channels to express this insightfully and appeal to your ideal prospects.
Gary Katz Chairman | Marketing Operations Partners & Marketing Future Forum On the next 5 years for marketing:
Our focus will shift from marketing optimization to marketing innovation. Most of our resources today are dedicated to feeding the machine - content, campaigns, leads, pipeline. As we move toward 2020, our strategic vision will motivate us to put greater energy and commitment into building the marketing organization of tomorrow.
Brad Shorr Director Of B2B Marketing | Straight North On an engaging social media presence:
What’s worked best for me is trying to be responsive and helpful at all times. I only share content that is really, really good. I try to answer questions and thank people for mentions quickly and genuinely. These things are pretty basic, but are at the heart of any good business relationship.
Brand Quarterly’s 50 Marketing Thought Leaders Over 50 - 2014
33
34
Building Your Business From The Brand Up
“Does This Brand Make My Butt Look Big?” Andrew Vesey
With technologies advancing at such rapid rates and attention spans getting shorter by the day, the average length of a brand’s lifecycle has been heavily reduced. We’ve all had that horrible thought before: Is our brand out of date? Are people talking behind our backs? Or worse – are people not talking about us at all?! Just how long your brand’s lifecycle is, is dependent on a number of different factors. Of these, the four that have the most impact are your industry, target market, brand values and your branding history. If you’re in an industry that’s seen as cuttingedge, Hi-Tech, active or fun, chances are, you are going to have a much shorter brand stability window than those industries considered
slow moving. The same can be said for a brand’s target market. If you’re currently targeting baby-boomers, you can expect a reasonably long branding cycle. Oh, you’re targeting Millennials and beyond? Then I guess you’ll be starting to plan for your next brand iteration almost as soon as this one is implemented. Your brand values and branding history both work in similar ways, to make smaller adjustments to the timeframes set by the first two factors. You’re in a fast-moving industry and want to extend your brand lifecycle? Then ‘tradition’ and ‘stability’ are great values to work with. Likewise, building on the values of ‘fun’ and ‘innovation’ will result in a shorter time between brand updates in a slow-moving industry. Your branding history boils down to what people have come to expect from you. The more regularly you make major brand adjustments, the more often your target audience will begin to expect them. Once the expectation is there, you need to take care if you plan on pushing that timeline back out again – especially if your cycle of change has become shorter and shorter every time. In this instance, you will need to ‘wean’ your brand off the changes slowly, extending the timeline out over a number of cycles. If not, you run a high risk of joining those brands that have gone ‘stale’.
So is your brand making your butt look big? Or is it just in your head? How can you tell if it’s time for a change? I wish I could tell you there was a simple answer to this age-old question, but with so many variables in play, one size fits all just isn’t possible. The first thing you want to do is consider your brand’s lifecycle, based on the factors discussed earlier. What’s considered the norm for your industry? Does your target audience expect stability or change? Do any of your brand values lengthen or shorten the lifecycle? This will give you a basic starting point – but remember; this is only giving you a glimpse at your expected lifecycle with no other influences. These influences are the next things to look at. First and foremost – does your current brand still resonate with your target audience?
First and foremost – does your current brand still resonate with your target audience?
On the flip-side of this, if you change things up less often, each rendition of your brand can hold its’ effectiveness for much longer. If you’ve never made a change before, then your first one has the chance to last for quite a while (as long as it’s done right of course).
Over time, things change. People change. Brands change. Your brand’s values are its’ foundation stones, and even foundations need to be checked if you’re looking at doing a renovation. While I would almost never recommend a wholesale change in brand values, there are times where they need to be redefined (or defined more clearly) to remain relevant today.
If you change things up less often, each rendition of your brand can hold its’ effectiveness for much longer.
This is by far the most important influence to consider. If you are unlucky enough to receive a ‘no’ on the brand relevance front, then the rest really are moot points. If your brand isn’t connecting anymore, you need to take action quickly – even if the budget isn’t there. Find
36
Building Your Business From The Brand Up
If your brand isn’t connecting anymore, you need to take action quickly. the extra resources from somewhere, or work out how to make the biggest impact with the resources you do have.
If your major competitors all seem to be making brand adjustments, ask yourself (and your experts) why. Do they know something you don’t? Are they trying to be more like you, or completely different? Don’t instantly get caught up in ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ – making the wrong changes at the wrong time, can have a long-term negative impact on your brand.
The longer you remain in brand purgatory; the harder (and most likely more expensive) it will be to pull yourself back out again. Spending the resources now, will mean saving more later – and increasing sales sooner – adding up to improved ROI. If the answer is “yes, our brand remains relevant”, then you can move on and make your choices based on what your competition is up to and finding different ways to stay ahead in the game. A word of warning here – always as yourself ‘Why?’ If you find out your brand doesn’t resonate anymore, ask your target audience why. This will be a deciding factor in the level of change you need to plan for. Perhaps it’s just terminology that needs changing to dispel confusion and reconnect with your brand values. Maybe your visuals are dated but your message is still sound. It could be that you’re trying to connect in the wrong ways. Your target ‘generation’ may have changed - People in your target age-group are now Gen-Y instead of Gen-X.
Don’t instantly get caught up in ‘keeping up with the Joneses’.
And don’t forget to ask yourself why you want to update your brand to begin with. Is it as simple as sales are down? Well, you should first check to see if your branding is actually the culprit. Do you want to ‘Make a statement’? Then you need to decide if a rebrand is the best option. Are others telling you it needs to be done? Or is it just feeling stale to you? Whatever the reason, make sure you do your homework to find out the why. This will help you to determine whether you actually need a change, and what sort of change is needed – who knows, you may even find out that your target audience likes that fact your butt looks big.
Andrew Vesey Chief BrandMan, Founder | Vesey Creative & Brand Quarterly Andrew is an experienced brand and marketing expert with over 15 years in the industry - a majority of those have been as the Chief BrandMan at Vesey Creative, which he co-founded in 2003. In 2011, driven by his passion for branding, business and education, Andrew made the move into publishing by launching Brand Quarterly - this very magazine - and now the new BrandQuarterly.com. When not writing or developing partnerships and new initiatives for Brand Quarterly, Andrew works with a select number of clients - spanning the globe, from New Zealand through to the United Kingdom and the United States - developing, refreshing and implementing brands for both products and companies.
www.veseycreative.com
Brand Quarterly
37
Next Generation Brand Loyalty: Designing Digital Habits Adrian C. Ott
Gone are the days of simple brand loyalty: You purchase Tide or Cheer because it’s what your mother always used and she might be personally offended if she found out that you switched. Today’s savvy marketers know that nothing can be taken for granted, beginning with Mom’s favorites. So what’s changed? 38
In an era of fading loyalty and competitive advantage, digital habits have become one of the most powerful tools in the CMO quiver today. Just consider the way we are off and running on a Google search before we even know it. Google has maintained more than a 60 percent market share in search since 2009, despite the billions Microsoft has spent marketing and developing Bing.
Building Your Business From The Brand Up
How’s that for brand loyalty, when Google’s nearest competitor is just a URL away? With the advent of technologies such as social insights and wearables, digital marketing professionals can reach, measure, and reinforce customer behavior in unprecedented ways.
Brand Quarterly
Digital habits have become one of the most powerful tools in the CMO quiver today.
39
The digital space now offers several ways to connect and build digital habits that keep customers coming back: a) Social enables brands to tell a story, engage their audience, and encourage them to share their views, to be part of (and sometimes drive) the conversation. Bonnie Raitt may have expressed this best: “Let’s give ‘em something to talk about.” b) Engage customers via convenience because they know it is the fastest way to get the job done and move on with their lives. People return to Google because they trust it will find what they need the fastest.. c) Quiet loyalty: Work in the background on your customers’ behalf. Think of subscription models and automatic bill pay services that automatically provide services and bill you every month. d) Attract through targeted promotions. So if content is king, what are some techniques for creating interesting material, engagement, and experiences for your community that form digital habits that lure customers back to your brand? The most successful campaigns operate across a variety of channels that work in concert to form digital habit ecosystems. When Apple made the revolutionary move to allow external developers to build apps for its App Store, it led to market leadership and opened countless new on-ramps into their ecosystem. To operate optimally in this new paradigm, it’s important to not only be concerned with the features, but also to always be designing digital habits.
The most successful campaigns operate across a variety of channels that work in concert to form digital habit ecosystems. 40
Triggers In a world of fleeting attention, triggers are on-ramps to your brand. A trigger is a behavioral prompt that kicks us into action in an unthinking way. (e.g. You put on your shoe and automatically tie your shoe; you have a question, you Google it.) The goal could be to get in shape, to influence, to save money, or to learn something useful each day. Saving your customer time, money, and increasing their productivity are all things that tap into what motivates us all. A wellconstructed trigger masterfully engages the consumer, pulls them into your ecosystem, and inspires them to return for more. Take the short form Vine video as an example. The haiku of advertising at six seconds long, Vine reinforces the idea that less is more. One of the most successful brand Vines is Lowe’s “Fix In Six” series, which uses stop-motion animation to deliver time saving tips on how to remove a stripped screw or remove a price tag sticker with a blow dryer. According to Adweek, brand Vines are shared four times more than brand web videos. No one wants to be the person to bog others down. They want to be the person who posts a pithy clever tip or ‘life hack’ that their social media network will appreciate and repost. This is how relevant content drives brand preference.
Technology The goal is to move from one-off transactions to delivering experiences through a set of well-designed triggers that are built upon quality content and services, encouraging customers to engage at several touch points along a journey that increase in value over time. Dependency is what an ecosystem is built on. Look no further than Apple to illustrate this - a Mac is needed to run Yosemite, which is needed to use Mac mail, iCal and iTunes. To be fully integrated, you will also need to use Safari as your browser.
Building Your Business From The Brand Up
More technology on-ramps means more customer interactions. Consumers engage more and more with the ecosystem across channels - web, mobile and social media and each new customer becomes part of the ecosystem. Each new product and or partner (Apple’s App Store) attracts more customers to the ecosystem. This productive cycle results in increased market share. The Apple Watch is yet another on-ramp onto their ecosystem of engagement.
Habits As you know, there should no longer be any distinction in any marketer’s mind between traditional media and new media. All channels are important in the customer journey. Therefore, finding ways to be present and relevant at each digital touch point is critical.
Finding ways to be present and relevant at each digital touch point is critical. Job one is to consider your customer’s Timeographics (pronounced Time-ographics) mindset at each touch point. (Timeographics are similar to demographics except customers are profiled based on time and attention constraints instead of age and income.) For example, you may be best friends with the executive you are contacting,
however if your communication catches him right in the middle of a critical deadline at work, your request will likely go unnoticed. Digital technologies increasingly enable the measurement of customer Timeographics. For example, consider click-paths and timeon-site website analytics. Such capabilities will become even more in-depth as the Internet of Things (IoT) unlocks more insight into human behavior patterns. Unlike regular habits that form by repetition, if you rely too heavily on one type of digital reinforcement, this may lead to a customer breaking the habit with your brand. Imagine if an e-tailer sent the exact same email every day to your inbox. You’d unsubscribe, right?
Applying Habits To The Customer Journey Along the timeline of the customer journey, a reward should follow the trigger at each touch point. And content should be consistent with customer time priorities (Timeographics). Through design techniques such as these, marketers are able to leverage the synergy of technology and human motivation in order to form digital habits that will distinguish and grow your brand. Assessing and designing digital habits as part of your customer journey should be part of every CMO strategy. Are you going to Bing that fact or Google it?
Adrian C. Ott Speaker, Author | Exponential Influence® and The 24-Hour Customer Consulting Magazine called Adrian C. Ott, “One of Silicon Valley’s most respected strategists.” In addition to her latest work in the Exponential Influence® book series which explores several metrics for measuring and mapping triggers and rewards that build digital habits, she is also the award-winning author of The 24-Hour Customer (HarperCollins, 2010) which won best business book of the year awards from Library Journal and USA Book News. In 2014 she was honored as a top inspirational leader in N. California by the Harvard Business School and was also named a 50 over 50 Marketing Thought Leader by Brand Quarterly.
www.ExponentialInfluence.com
Brand Quarterly
41
More Interviews
More Great Articles
More Industry Insights
Meet Our Contributors
Full Copies Of Every Back Issue
Oh Yeah... And It’s All FREE Visit and subscribe today: www.BrandQuarterly.com
Avoid The Commodity Trap: Raise Your Price! Jeff Shore
I recently suggested an unconventional idea to my consulting team. I proposed that we tell our clients and prospective clients this:
We are the high price leader. NOBODY charges more than us. In fact, if you find a company that charges more, we will gladly match their higher price AND add an additional 10%! We will NOT be over sold!
44
Building Your Business From The Brand Up
My team enjoyed a good chuckle ‌ until they realized that I was serious. I suggested this scenario because I wanted them to think long and hard about how we can continue breaking out of the commodity trap.
What Is The Commodity Trap? Suppose you own and operate a wedding cake business. You hone your baking craft to a sweet science. You develop an extensive catalog with designs that range from traditional to ultra modern, complete with
Brand Quarterly
45
pricing options. You build a great website. You join the local chamber of commerce. You educate yourself about what your competitors are doing and how much they charge.
an inescapable part of making a purchase decision is seeing through the fog of stress in order to make a creative choice. If there too much stress exists, making a choice becomes very difficult or even impossible.
In other words, you do exactly what every other wedding cake business is doing.
Our brains default towards cognitive ease. Our subconscious self asks the question, “How do I make this decision with as little pain as possible?” and our conscious self acts in response to that question. This is how we become victims of the commodity trap. Our own brains make us commodity trap targets!
Now, suppose I am in the market for a wedding cake. I am considering buying from you as well as from two other legitimate companies. To me, it’s all just cake. You all offer great options that suit my needs and the online reviews report that all three businesses offer high quality and great service. Everything appears equal. In this scenario, how do I choose? It’s simple. I defer to the most obvious delineating factor: price. Now you, the conscientious business owner who pours heart and soul into their work, find yourself unwittingly stuck in the commodity trap. The commodity trap occurs whenever a buyer encounters value vagueness. If a buyer cannot distinguish a true value advantage, they default to a price-based decision.
If a buyer cannot distinguish a true value advantage, they default to a price-based decision.
Why Does The Commodity Trap Exist? To understand the phenomenon of the commodity trap, it helps to understand how our brains function when we face a purchase decision. The decision making process - for any decision - is a creative exercise that employs our creative right-brain capacities as well as our left-brain logic. Stress hinders and ultimately constricts creativity. Making a purchase decision is, to one degree or another, stressful. Therefore, 46
In his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, Dr. Daniel Khaneman calls the human tendency towards the path of least pain “the law of least effort.” The founder of behavioral economics defines it this way: “… if there are several ways of achieving the same goal, people will eventually gravitate to the least demanding course of action.” It is as simple as that. Making a purchase requires a decision. Decision-making is stressful. Our brains inspire us to avoid stress. So, when it comes to sales, what is the “least demanding course of action?” Absent a clear value advantage, we make decisions based solely on price. In other words, if all else is equal, I will take the cheapest cake.
It is as simple as that. Making a purchase requires a decision. Decision-making is stressful.
How Can Your Business Escape The Commodity Trap? When I announced the plan for my company to become the “high price leader” my intent was not solely to raise our prices (although we do regularly raise prices based on market demand).
Building Your Business From The Brand Up
I was making the point that we must provide such overwhelming value that prospective clients will easily realize that this is not an apples-to-apples comparison. Yes, we may charge more, but only because we provide substantially greater value.
Yes, we may charge more, but only because we provide substantially greater value.
I know nothing about wedding cakes, but I know a great deal about adding low-cost value in order to promote a high-price product and service. If I operated a wedding cake business, I would ask past clients to send glowing email referrals to prospective clients, complete with detailed testimonials about the quality and service I provide. I would constantly research the latest recipes and design trends and techniques. I would give tours of my kitchen and tout my awards. I might offer to communicate with the wedding coordinator, florist, and photographer in order to ensure coordinated motifs and designs. And I would definitely post gorgeous cake photos with personalized captions on Pinterest and Instagram, and feature specific cakes (and corresponding stories of the couples I made
them for) on my website or blog— all to enhance my customers’ sense of personal, customized care. And, I would charge more than my competitors. This approach equips customers to make purchase decisions for the right reasons. It takes guts to choose a higher priced option, but when the greater value is glaringly obvious, people will make that choice and they will feel good about it. When customers make a buying decision based purely on price, they de facto choose to live with the regret of knowing that a better option existed and they failed to choose it. Of course, you can’t really say this to a customer. But, you can provide clear and indisputable proof of how much additional value your company has to offer. As they say: “Buy the most you can afford and you will only cry once.” It’s true! Do not become another unwitting victim of the commodity trap. Give your customers so much value that price becomes a non-issue. Dare to become the high-price leader!
Give your customers so much value that price becomes a non-issue.
Jeff Shore Sales Expert, Author, Speaker, Coach Jeff Shore is a highly sought-after sales expert, speaker, author and executive coach. For more than three decades, Jeff has worked with executives and sales teams across the globe to inspire them to peak performance utilizing his innovative BE BOLD methodology. Jeff doesn’t just teach you how to sell, he shows you how to change your mindset and change your world. His latest book, Be Bold and Win the Sale: Get Out of Your Comfort Zone and Boost Your Performance, was published by McGraw-Hill in January 2014.
www.JeffShore.com
Brand Quarterly
47
48
Building Your Business From The Brand Up
Mobile Marketing: Stay Ahead Instead Of Keeping Up Brett Relander
Mobile marketing is no longer a somewhat hazy glimpse into the future. It is the present and here to stay. It is also raising the bar for marketers. According to statistics released by Marketing Sherpa, 25 percent of all search volume stems from mobile devices. Furthermore, Google and BIA/Kelsey estimate that mobile searches will exceed desktop searches within the next year. Latitude found that 61 percent of consumers have a better opinion of companies when they offer superior mobile experience.
49
As mobile marketing has emerged and developed, it clearly raises the bar for marketers. Engaging customers through mobile marketing is no longer a luxury; it has now become a necessity. In order to stay ahead of the competition, not only should you have a mobile marketing campaign, but you must also ensure that your brand stands out from the throngs of competitors trying to attract the attention of your customers.
customizable. No longer is it necessary to launch a broad marketing campaign and hope that something sticks. Mobile marketing provides the ability to truly hone in on a target audience. Despite these benefits, few companies actually take advantage of the opportunity to deliver a personalized experience on mobile. This gap opens a clear opportunity for brands to stand out from the competition.
Engaging customers through mobile marketing is no longer a luxury.
Despite these benefits, few companies actually take advantage of the opportunity to deliver a personalized experience on mobile.
What can you do to ensure that your target audience pays attention to your mobile marketing messages? First, recognize that mobile technology has grown at such an exponential rate that it is no longer limited to a single device. In light of the worldwide adoption of mobile devices, it has become necessary for marketers to focus on the individual who is consuming the content rather than just the device. At one time it was enough to just have a mobile version of your brand's website. Today, this is no longer the case. Besides being available on mobile, you must also personalize the content to each user.
It has become necessary for marketers to focus on the individual who is consuming the content rather than just the device. The more personalized you can make a user's mobile experience, the higher the likelihood of catching his or her attention. Among the greatest benefits of mobile advertising for marketers is the fact that every function, every sound, and every feature is completely
50
The good news is that while building a personalized mobile experience can take time, you can begin implementing some strategies right now in order to personalize your customers' mobile experience. Take advantage of the opportunity to utilize opt-ins. With opt-ins, your brand is able to leverage unlimited options for personalization. In terms of mobile marketing, opt-in is the golden ring. Do not be afraid to reach out and take hold of it. Encourage your customers to sign in, authorize push notifications, and enter their phone numbers to receive mobile alerts. In planning your mobile marketing strategy, think about the consumer's journey and how he or she uses a mobile device. The beauty of mobile marketing and mobile devices is that they truly allow you to go everywhere with your consumer. If your brand is not taking advantage of this, you are truly missing out on an incredible marketing opportunity.
Think about the consumer’s journey and how he or she uses a mobile device.
Building Your Business From The Brand Up
Brett Relander Founder | Launch & Hustle Brett is a thought leader and power influencer in the social media and mobile marketing space. He is the Founder of Launch & Hustle, a valued digital marketing consultant for various brands and marketing agencies, and the author of Imperative - How any business can quickly and easily leverage mobile marketing for radical success. Brett is privileged to contribute his knowledge and expertise to Entrepreneur.com, is a featured blogger and Best Thinker on SocialMediaToday.com, and he has over 100,000 followers on Twitter, which ranks him among the top digital marketing professionals online.
http://LaunchandHustle.com
The key to succeeding with mobile marketing is to create a personalized experience for the consumer. Location triggers, used in conjunction with push messages provide the basis for establishing stronger connections between your brand and consumers. The most common area in which many marketers struggle, is determining how to use location to their advantage. This is accomplished by keeping it simple. For instance, send out a message in the morning based on consumer time zones, or send out sale notifications or specials based on the time of day. Consumers can be surprisingly willing to provide location information provided you clearly demonstrate the value offered in your call to action. While driving opt-ins is vital, it is also important to ensure that your brand does not fall into the trap of getting stuck in a single channel. Consumers today use multiple channels. Likewise, you should not rely on a single channel to disseminate your mobile marketing message. Integrate a variety of mobile channels as part of your marketing strategy, including mobile apps, SMS, the Web, and social media.
You should not rely on a single channel to disseminate your mobile marketing message.
Be sure to take advantage of the ability to give consumers the choice over the type of personalized experience they wish to receive. Not only is this a good way to give consumers the chance to provide input into the type of experience they wish to have, it is also excellent for your brand to conduct critical A/B testing. Finally, take advantage of the opportunity to utilize video in your mobile ads. Video advertisements offer better engagement than static ads. This is a strategy that the bourbon brand Jim Beam has tapped into for targeting millennials while launching a new product, according to Mobile Marketer. The video ads that you utilize should have the capability to run on all types of mobile devices. Get creative with features such as countdown timers, play buttons, control bars and more, in order to optimize your ads for higher completion rates.
Video advertisements offer better engagement than static ads.
Mobile marketing continues to expand and evolve. In order to stay ahead of the competition, rather than simply keeping up, implementing a dynamic mobile marketing strategy is now a necessity.
Brand Quarterly
51
Trademark Strategies For Social Media Campaigns Michelle Ward
Social media has become an integral part of marketing strategy for consumer products, with many phrases, straplines and brands being devised specifically for targeted campaigns using media such as Facebook and Twitter.
52
Building Your Business From The Brand Up
But in a highly competitive world how does a brand owner protect the effort put into such campaign branding? In fact social media is simply another medium through which companies can advertise their product offering, in much the same way as in the past “doing business online� was new and exciting; but this still sits alongside traditional advertising media such as radio and TV advertising, paper advertising and word of mouth.
So do businesses need a whole new strategy to protect their social media campaigns, or should this simply be treated as part and parcel of existing brand protection strategies?
Brand Quarterly
Do businesses need a whole new strategy to protect their social media campaigns? 53
Many advertising campaigns, whether on or offline, are short lived, so the value of putting in time and effort into the registration process is likely to be entirely obliterated by the short life of the campaign. But some campaigns take on a life of their own and really begin to develop an identity with an everincreasing following, and as this happens, the association of the campaign with the brand owner grows, as does the value of the branding and get up used in the campaign. The desire to maintain exclusivity and control grows, and the brand owner needs to start considering the options available for protection.
Some campaigns take on a life of their own and really begin to develop an identity. Wyke Farms have recently announced that they have obtained a UK trade mark registration for “Free Cheese Friday”, which they have headlined as the first trade mark for a social media campaign. In fact it is likely that many brands used in social media campaigns are the subject of trade mark registrations, but most likely as they are part of a company’s core branding activity rather than something which is a brand purely devised, and successfully employed, for a social media campaign. In the case of “Free Cheese Friday” this was devised for a Facebook campaign, also used as a Twitter hashtag, and took on a life of its own developing a cult following. Such was the recognition with the Wyke brand that they decided to seek trade mark registration so that they had the tools to control and protect their investment and consumer following. So, if a brand owner devises branding and get up purely for a social media campaign, should they also automatically consider trade mark registration?
54
There are perhaps three separate issues to consider. Of course the primary issue, whether for a traditional or social media campaign, is actually the question of whether or not there are rights already in existence that can impact on the ability to use the chosen branding - just because use is going to be in the medium of social media this does not change the risk of infringement - in fact it means that it is even more likely that an infringement will be noticed as social media campaigns will feature in internet searches - and competitors will of course also be monitoring social media for exactly the same reason. The next hurdle is then the question of whether or not protection, through the form of trade mark registration, is realistic. It is not possible to simply register anything and everything, and there are some critical hurdles that need to be overcome, that could be very relevant to elements of social media campaigns, such as Twitter hashtags. •• Is the branding distinctive? Will consumers realise that the elements involved are supposed to distinguish the brand owners offering from those of its competitors? If the answer is no, then registration may not be possible. •• Is the branding descriptive or laudatory in some way? Will consumers think it is merely a description of some element of the product or the offer being made, or that it is mere advertising puff? Would it be fair for other businesses in the same sector to be barred from using genuine descriptors for their products? Of course not. •• Is the branding simply a generic term? For example #soap for soap simply cannot be protected. Other soap manufacturers need to know they can create discussions or campaigns around the use of the generic term without fear of being sued for infringement.
Building Your Business From The Brand Up
•• Is the branding being used in respect of specific products or services? Ultimately, a trade mark is registered in relation to the specific goods or services for which it is being used, or used in relation to. If this is not clear then registration will either fail, or will not remain valid. Since trade marks can be used to protect many aspects of get up and branding, the scope for potential registration is fairly broad, and so a brand owner should carefully consider the different visual aspects of any social media campaign to determine what elements may be protectable. This can include the more traditional names (including potentially Twitter hashtags) and logos used as part of campaigns, through to movements and sounds – although these more unusual forms of trade mark are far harder to register, and generally the authorities (the UK Intellectual Property Office for the UK) will need some convincing – generally through extensive evidence of use and recognition by consumers. The next issue for the careful brand owner is, if they obtain a registration, how they monitor the use being made to ensure that the registration remains valid. Many social media campaigns by their very nature encourage sharing and discussion using the elements of the campaign, the Twitter hashtag being particularly relevant here.
This is entirely contrary to the usual rules of trade mark ownership. This is entirely contrary to the usual rules of trade mark ownership, where use should be by the registered owner, or under the control of the registered owner. By encouraging third parties to use, for example, a Twitter hashtag, how does the brand owner exercise control? The one advantage of social media in this regard is that a brand owner engaging in careful monitoring of different social media avenues, and having a specific policy in place, should be able to monitor for appropriate and inappropriate use. This can include where derogatory comments are posted using the social media branding, as clearly this can seriously impact on the integrity and value of the brand and trade mark registration. A policy of careful monitoring at least ensures that a proactive brand owner can quickly respond to any inappropriate use. However, the ease of use and accessibility of this medium to all makes this a constant challenge for brand owners. The Internet and social media continue to present an ever-changing brand landscape, with constant new challenges for the brand owner. However, in many instances, it is simply a case of applying basic principles to the situation.
Michelle Ward Trade Mark Attorney | Wynne-Jones IP With nearly 20 years experience, Michelle began her career working in the IP department of a major international law firm where she gained a wealth of experience in the complexities of IP in commercial transactions. Along with specialising in commercial trade mark protection strategies, Michelle has developed significant expertise in the field of trade mark oppositions and disputes, both in the UK and at EU level before OHIM, as well as finding practical commercial resolutions. Whilst Michelle’s main area of expertise has been focused on trade marks, she has also developed a specialism in designs, and regularly advises on registered designs and their protection, unregistered designs and copyright.
www.wynne-jones.com
Brand Quarterly
55
How Top Female Global Leaders Brand Themselves For Success Catherine Kaputa
Why are there more highly successful men than women? A key reason, I believe, is that women are not as aware as men are of the power of personal branding, whether it’s self promotion, projecting confidence or strategic networking. After all, success is not just determined by how smart and talented you are, but by how smart and talented you feel in comparison with others and your ability to act on your goals. 56
Building Your Business From The Brand Up
In doing research on top female global leaders and talking to dozens of highly successful women for my new book, I was struck by five personal branding habits that separate women who achieve great things, that all women should adopt:
1. Don’t Hesitate To Network And Market Yourself Highly successful women don’t leave things to chance. They build networks and go after what they want. Case in point, Christine Lagarde, the first woman to head up the International Monetary Fund and the first women Finance Minister in France. What is interesting is that she became the first women to head up a G8 economy and lead the IMF yet she didn’t have a degree in finance or economics, but in law. Lagarde is no doubt a master networker. Being appointed the French finance minister gave her finance bona fides that she leveraged to be considered to be head of the IMF. But Lagarde didn’t leave things to chance. She led a proactive marketing and networking campaign for her IMF candidacy, crisscrossing the globe to drum up support with leaders in developing economies like India, China and Brazil as well as with Western leaders to make her case. (Viva la France.)
than Facebook COO, Sheryl Sandberg and her book, Lean In. Sandberg’s book and her TED talk was good personal branding for her too, since it gave her an important platform - promoting women’s leadership - that no other high level business women was addressing as boldly as she did. Now Sandburg is a global business icon who is inspiring women and girls around the world.
3. Be Visibility Minded Despite things we’ve been told like “talent wins out,” the reality is more like, “visibility wins out.” Talent is important, but visibility separates those who are wildly successful from those who are just doing okay. Marissa Mayer was employee number 20 at Google and its first female engineer, a distinction that Mayer made the most of in her self-branding. Besides her gender, Mayer stood out in one other very important way at Google, she was an “articulate geek,” two words that rarely go together. So Mayer was tapped as the spokesperson and public face of the company.
Talent is important, but visibility separates those who are wildly successful from those who are just doing okay.
2. Stand For Something Different The cardinal rule of branding is “Be different.” Marketers put together a unique selling proposition (USP) for each brand, and successful people do too whether they do it consciously or instinctively. Having a different idea for your brand is powerful. No woman has done more in recent years to put women’s leadership front and foremost in the world’s consciousness
This made Mayer not just the highestranking woman, she was the most visible person at Google. She was soon perceived as a Silicon Valley superstar and the leading force behind the design of the Google home page and its search product. Today, Mayer is the CEO of Yahoo charged with turning the company around.
Brand Quarterly
57
4. Pay Attention To Style Successful women are scrutinized more, so you might as well turn it into an advantage! Michelle Obama is too savvy a woman not to use the powers of visual identity to her advantage. We haven’t talked about a U.S. First Lady’s clothes this much since Jackie Kennedy was in the White House. From Obama’s arm-bearing dresses to her love of bright colors, Michelle has a distinct fashion sense and uses the power of her style to communicate confidence and personal power. Christine Lagarde is often found on top ten lists of the most powerful women in the world and also on top ten lists of the best-dressed women in the world. 5 feet 11 inches tall and with striking silver hair, Lagarde has a visual identity that projects style, gravitas and power.
Successful women are scrutinized more, so you might as well turn it into an advantage! Of course, Lagarde’s brand isn’t based on looking the part (though it helps her tremendously), she has strong communication style as well. Interviewers have gushed over her eloquent, even seductive, communication style with large intakes of breath to make important points. Others have commented on her propensity to cite Voltaire or Rousseau to make a point.
Quoting philosophers might not be your style but always remember, it’s not just what you say, but how you say it.
5. Don’t Go Off Brand Smart women who brand, are consistent at every touch point just like the top brands in the marketplace. Look at Angela Merkel. Merkel’s image has a certain nurturing quality reminiscent of a practical, hardworking mother. So it’s not surprising that early in her career her political enemies poked fun at her somewhat matronly image calling her “Mutti” (“Mummy”). Merkel didn’t change her brand or her image. Now Mutti is a term of affection that Germans use for Merkel though she has no children of her own. Another popular phrase, reflecting the belief that she will make the right decisions, is “Mummy will sort it out.” Merkel’s brand emphasises her pragmatic philosophy and “step by step” approach to problem solving. Whether her leadership can solve Europe’s problems remains to be seen, but her strong and consistent leadership brand is already proven. All of these personal branding principles are easy to understand, but highly successful women act on them. After all, if you don’t take charge of your brand, who will?
Catherine Kaputa Author | ‘Breakthrough Branding’ and ‘You Are a Brand’ Catherine Kaputa is a brand strategist, speaker and author. Her latest book is Women Who Brand from Nicholas Brealey Publishing. Breakthrough Branding: How Smart Entrepreneurs and Intrapreneurs Transform a Small Idea Into a Big Brand (Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2012), was winner of the Silver Medal, Book of the Year Awards, 2012 (Business category) sponsored by Foreword Magazine. She is also the author of You Are a Brand! (Nicholas Brealey Publishing 2012), winner of the Ben Franklin Award for Best Career Book.
www.selfbrand.com 58
Building Your Business From The Brand Up
Let’s Connect. Via the Twitter and LinkedIn stamps above
Escape The Promotional Vortex Create More Profitable Promotions For A Stronger Brand Dick O’Brien
It should come as no surprise to even the most casual observer of retail trends that promotional activity has increased substantially over the past few years. What may not be as apparent is that the increase in promotional activity has not had the desired results. The frenzy of promotions may, in fact, be driving retailers into a downward spiral - a vortex of increasing promotions, which can decrease sales and margins and damage a company’s brand. 60
The Christmas season of 2013 is a case in point. Retailers took the traditional Black Friday sales events and moved them up, in some cases right into Thanksgiving Day. Rather than increasing sales, it simply moved the transactions to an earlier time and, no doubt, cost the retailers margins because of increased selling costs due to being open on a day when most major retailers were traditionally closed.
Building Your Business From The Brand Up
Consumers spent an average of $407.02 from Thursday, November 28 to December 1, 2103, down from $423.55 during the same period in 2012 (source: NRF). Black Friday (or Thursday) saw the first year-over-year decline since 2009. In short, the promotional event starting the holiday shopping season was a failure (source: Time). Not only did the promotional activity not produce additional sales, it may have reduced overall sales dollars by over-promoting.
In addition to the overall promotional activity, the increasing growth in on-line shopping created more uncertainty around customer behavior and price sensitivity. The high-growth online channel has an effect on promotions through the bricks and mortar channel, but no one has yet figured out exactly how impactful that effect is. While Black Friday was moved forward into Thanksgiving Day, the Cyber Monday deals extended into Tuesday. Nowhere
Brand Quarterly
61
in this scenario was there any indication that forecasting was used to determine the best mix of tactics. Results of the two promotional events revealed lower revenues, thus indicating an epic failure.
were waiting until the arrival of 70% off sales before they’d buy (source: Time).
So What Created This Damaging Vortex?
Use promotions offensively rather than defensively.
The growth of promotions is rather like the old fable of the tortoise and the hare. The hare, in this case the over-promoting retailer, surges ahead in the short term, taking away sales from competitors and achieving shortterm top-line sales targets. While the tortoise, the more disciplined retailer moves along at a more sedate pace, focused on the long-term goals of brand image and customer loyalty. Pursuing the hare-like tactics of unrestrained promotions has created an unfortunate customer mindset. “The deal is not so special anymore,” according to Alison Jatlow Levy, a Retail Strategist at consulting firm Kurt Salmon (source: USA Today). “The deal has become the norm. And if the deal is the norm… it actually just trains the consumer to never buy at full price.” Even more compelling is the fact that a couple of weeks before Christmas of 2013, nearly half of all shoppers said they
How To Escape The Downward Spiral
Some basic tenets of good promotions must be followed for optimal success, including*: •• Promote the right products for the right consumers. Promotions should be designed to appeal to the highest value and most price sensitive customers. •• Measure incremental sales and profit from individual promotions. The goal is not to maximize sales “on deal,” but to generate sales, acquire new customers and increase profits – all results that a retailer would not have been able to get achieve otherwise. •• The advertising exposure of some promotions is as important as the redemption effect. That is why it is called a promotion and not just a temporary price cut. *Excerpts from “Retailers, Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Skimp on Promotions” by Kusum Ailwadi, PhD. (Tuck) and Paul Farris, PhD. (Darden)
Use promotions offensively rather than defensively.
Answer The Big Questions First: What Is Your Value Proposition? If you can answer this question, then you are well on your way to creating smarter, more effective promotions. Overall, a retailer needs to focus on the value proposition they are presenting to the market. Factoring in the service component of the value proposition
62
Building Your Business From The Brand Up
will move a retailer further away from competing on price. With the brand image factored in to your planning, your promotional strategy and tactics should perform better. While it will provide strategic guidance and a tactical discipline, determining a value proposition and adhering to a consistent brand image will not, alone, make for better promotions. So what has to be done to become the smart tortoise of the fable? Take advantage of tools available that enable retailers to plan, optimize, measure and analyze promotions in a virtuous loop. •• Define your goals
•• Supports cross-functional planning, on-going analysis and effectiveness measurement. •• Simulates uplift and forecasting performance of alternative offers and vehicles in a highly visual and userfriendly interface. •• Creates optimal offers across the promotional matrix of channels, media markets, touch points and shopper segments.
Success Is In The Testing And Simulations
•• Plan your promotions •• Execute precisely •• Measure the results and adjust going forward
Strategies And Technology For Optimal Promotions A promotion optimization software solution can help retailers adopt more strategic promotions and ensure they are offering the right price, to the right customer, at the right time. This type of solution enables retailers to plan and execute optimized promotions with science-based analytics. Effective promotions require effective planning through science and analytics. This solution supports this activity through a user friendly, interactive environment that:
“Black-box” optimization solutions are a thing of the past. Newer, more advanced solutions provide transparency into the optimizations, enabling users to understand the ‘why’ behind the recommendations. Just as post-event analysis is important so is pre-event analytics. With these types of simulation capabilities, the user can generate multiple scenarios to enable better planning by comparing and contrasting the results of different promotional strategies and tactics prior to execution. With the solution’s forecasting and measurement capabilities, retailers can finally create and execute promotions that improve margins, profitability while strengthening brand image and building stronger customer loyalty.
Dick O’Brien Director of Product Marketing For Social Commerce And Promotion Optimization Saas Solutions | Revionics Dick has a strong track record leading product development and strategic marketing efforts for leading technology organizations such as Revionics, Bazaarvoice and Marketech. He has in-depth background and expertise in the following areas: product marketing, product management, market research, competitor analysis, strategy development, market analysis and planning.
www.revionics.com
Brand Quarterly
63
The Psychology Of Pricing And Your Brand Graham Jones
Mention any brand name to someone and the chances are they will have a good idea of the prices they would be expected to pay. Say “Lidl” or “Aldi” to supermarket shoppers and they will think “low prices”, even “cheap”. But say the word “Waitrose” and they will think that prices are likely to be higher than in other supermarkets. You can play the same “brand price game” with other names. Say “Crowne Plaza” and people expect high prices, but say “Premier Inn” and they do not. Brands, of course, do everything they can to associate price expectation with their brand name. One key question for any brand is whether they are luxury or commodity. Which end of the spectrum do they sit at? This is the psychology of “framing” - putting a buyer’s mind into the right position in the first place and setting the scope within which they can make purchasing decisions. You can see framing from almost all of the supermarkets because it so obvious. They constantly remind people of low prices. Their slogans and straplines emphasise low prices, as does almost all of their advertising.
65
The problem with framing people into expecting low prices is that it leads to a downward spiral - no matter what prices you have on offer, people expect them to be even lower because you have made them subconsciously concentrate on low prices. It doesn’t matter what price a supermarket displays, the shoppers perceive it to be too expensive. Sometimes the message gets confused because of the psychology of prices themselves. The way brands display their prices and the numbers themselves can have a significant influence on the way people perceive the brand. Use the wrong numbers or display prices poorly and people can have an altered perception of the brand. The digits you use and the way you display them need to be consistent with the framing of the price expectation.
The way brands display their prices and the numbers themselves can have a significant influence on the way people perceive the brand.
It is no good having a low price framing expectation and then using numbers and displays people associate with high prices. That just leads to a phenomenon called “cognitive dissonance”, which basically means the brain is confused. In turn, that means people do not buy.
Choosing The Right Numbers Many retail brands will display prices ending in a “5”, as in £9.95. Or they might choose a “9”, such as £599 in a furniture store. But why do they opt for such numbers? When the last digit in a price is something like a 5 or a 9 it forces the first digit to be lower. 66
So when we see £599 our brain starts the price analysis in the 5 arena, not the more expensive setting of 6. It’s a sofa in the £500 range, not a £600 one. But the sound of the digits in our head is also linked to how much we expect to be paying. So “five” is a long vowel sound, whereas “six” is a short vowel sound. We associate short vowel sounds with a feeling of lower pricing. In this example “six hundred” sounds cheaper than “five nine nine”. What this means is that you can associate the right prices with the framing for your brand. “Five nine nine” is an expensive sounding price that would work better when framing is aimed at high prices. But if the brand is aiming at low cost expectations then those digits will not work. Instead, the brand would need short sounding digits, such as “five six six”. Even though there is a long five, it is followed by two short vowel sounds, which would emphasise the low cost. There is also research, which shows that the direction of the digits has an impact on our perception of the price. You will find many stores with items on sale for prices such as £7.89. The problem with this selection of digits is that they are rising. The last digit is higher than the first and this affects our price perception. That’s great if your brand has framed people to expect higher prices. But if you are framing people to expect low prices, the rising digits work against you. Hence a price of £7.65 would be better in this instance because the digits go downwards, emphasising the lower price nature of the brand. The sound of a price and the direction in which the digits go - rising or falling - has a real influence on the way people perceive prices. That means, in turn, that selecting the right digits is an important consideration in ensuring that the price perception matches the brand framing in order to avoid cognitive dissonance. Pricing is not just a matter of getting the maximum you can charge for
Building Your Business From The Brand Up
Graham Jones Internet Psychologist, Author of Click.ology Graham Jones is a leading Internet Psychologist, based in the UK. One of the first psychologists in the world to investigate the way human behaviour has adapted to the online environment, Graham speaks regularly at conferences, as well as consulting with businesses, helping them understand and engage more fully with online customers. He is also a regular guest on TV and Radio, and is frequently interviewed by journalists from around the world about online behaviour. Graham is also the author of “Click.ology: What Works in Online Shopping”.
http://click.ology.biz
are being made. So if a brand needs to emphasise low price because it is comparing to a competitor or a former pre-sale price, the new lower price needs to be in a smaller type size than the old or competing higher price. This is counterintuitive because designers want to emphasise the better, lower price by making it stand out. The problem is that buyers subconsciously perceive the smaller type as lower, simply due to its size. This makes them think the new low price is higher than it actually is.
The sound of a price and the direction in which the digits go, has a real influence on the way people perceive prices. an item, but also of making the maximum number of people keen to buy. If the digits selected cause cognitive dissonance then fewer people will buy.
Displaying Prices Appropriately One of the elements of a price tag that is immediately noticeable is the typography. This also needs to match the framing of the brand price expectation, otherwise it will also lead to cognitive dissonance. Framing people to expect quality and having a price-gun sticker using a monospaced font like Courier, is not going to create the psychological connection a brand requires to get people to buy. One of the key areas in which brands consistently make an error is in the area of comparative pricing, where they want to show buyers how much money they have saved. Here they often put the old, original price in small type, crossed out, with the new price nice and big. But the problem is that buyers perceive big type as representing higher prices, especially when comparisons
Of course, if you are at the luxury end of the market, then having larger type sizes for prices, compared with surround typography would have the impact of suggesting high prices, thereby confirming the brand expectations of the buyer.
Pricing Is More Than Saying “How Much” The prices you display – whether in real world stores or online - have a profound impact on buyers and their perception of a brand and their likelihood of making a purchase. Use the wrong digits, create the wrong sound in their heads, have mismatching typography and type sizes and you are heading in the direction of confusing your brand perception. Not only that, you are reducing the chances of people buying from you.
Brand Quarterly
67
TM