The blind leading the blind

27/10 2010

Way back in 1994 I enrolled in a brand new university course entitled ‘Interactive Art’. It was, I am led to believe, one the very first courses of it’s kind in the UK, and was designed to look at how the new emerging technologies could be used in art and design. To place that in a context; Macromedia Director 4 was the power tool of the day, which was delivered on an amazing 18 floppy disks.

At the time the web was rudimentary at best, with the new kid on the information-super-highway being the ‘animated gif’. But all that was about to change with the introduction of ‘shockwave’. This software allowed the integration and playback of animation and video across cross-platforms and more importantly in-turn the World Wide Web.

Being at the pointy edge of the new media had its downfall. The majority lecturers on the course came from the traditional and art design backgrounds. It became apparent that they had no hope in hell in keep-up with us students, when it came to discovering and pushing the new media boundaries. So more often than not we the students learnt from each other and in-turn, the lecturers learnt from us.

My point behind this technological reminiscing is that, during that time it was very much ‘The blind leading the blind’ and after all these years I feel as if I am back in the same situation again. This time however it is not students and lecturers’ battling it out but rather the brands and the ad industry.

To quote Bo Bäckman from in his last Superbrands post ‘we socialize [and] entertain ourselves on the net.’ Through social media the web has now become awash with conversation and advice via a dizzying array of channels. This has of course turned the web into the best platform for the integration, amplification and of-course advocacy of any brand. To make it as a Superbrand you have to embrace this potential.

For today’s digital natives or ‘Millennial’ (anyone born between 1980 and 1993) Social media is not something that is happening in certain channels of the web, it is the pulsating heart of it. Failure to see it that way will only leave brands sitting in front of yet another PowerPoint presentation wondering how to get on the ‘band-wagon’.

The phenomena of web 2.0 / Social Media has been here from some time now, the term blogging came to the public eye around ten years old, Facebook is six years old and Twitter was launched around four years ago, and yet, for every successful Superbrand social media campaign, I also see a collection of brands that don’t even have a grip on their digital presence. The majority of brands are still having a hard time coming to terms with these media channels. However it is not usually for the want of trying, but is born more from the fear of doing.

So why after all this time are some brands still not getting it? I am staring to wonder if it is not, in part, an ad industry problem. A few years ago if a brand wanted to re-design their website, they contacted their web agency, for bought media they called their AD agency and for PR… well you get the idea. However now as the web has matured into a central communication channel, all types of agencies are boosting their digital offering. Leaving the clients slightly confused with who to turn to or trust with their digital channels.

The web, through integration, amplification and advocacy can help integrate multiple brand-building approaches by being a common component and forum where they can appear together. The bump in the road is that there are now a multiple of different agencies running different aspects of any one brands web presence all of who are far from being integrated. Many brands still do not have a clear and guiding digital strategy, which takes in to consideration how a brand governs all of these new channels, or the different agencies running them.

By Steinar Danielsen

Steinar is the Digital Brand Director at Grow. Grow is a strategic, holistic and creative brand development partner, a hybrid consultancy whose expertise ranges from strategy to multidisciplinary execution. Merging the practices of management, brand and consumer insight consulting with the capabilities of design, architecture, digital and creative marketing communications.

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Social media: Enthusiast, analyst, researchers, political activists and vendors. (And me)

22/10-2010

For me social media is still somewhat strange and a new world for the brave and young. I have approached it by:

Listening to performers/enthusiasts

Listening to analysts, academic researchers

Reports about social media

Marketing Promises

Please notice that an ordinary article about social media is multifold longer. This is just a beginning for me. But I might be back. Just as social media are here to stay.  Below I will go through the knowledge chain. What do the enthusiasts tell me, what do the analysts/researchers say. They might have a more neutral view. Reports on how social media can be used – preferably with a hindsight. And what are the implications for me as a market researcher.

The prime input from me came from the Insights days by GfK in Stockholm. The GfK Group is one of the largest market research companies in the world and deliver the knowledge on markets and sectors which our clients need for their decisions. The GfK Group is headquartered in Nuremberg, Germany. The Swedish office is in Lund.

Enthusiast

There are enthusiasts like Dr. Robin Teigland, Associate Professor, Stockholm School of Economics. I tried to learn from her fascinating presentation at GfK:s Insight seminar. This is (below and borrowed from her) what I can do with social media. I have started climbing up the social ladder.  I guess that today it is no good to fall down – you end up alone in cyber space where no one can hear you scream.

Analyst

Norbert Wirth – Global Head of Innovation CR at GfK was the second presenter at the Insight day. My thoughts were that he must have the solution to the research problems today. How do you catch the people that just have mobiles and get their information (commercial, commercial in disguise, pure knowledge or colored knowledge) on the net? It turned out that there is no holy grail. It is just hard work and diverse methods depending on the target group. (The tables below come from his presentation)

HOW TO REACH JOHANNA 18 YEARS

Academic researcher

Kristina Widestedt, academic researcher in journalism, media and communication at the University of Stockholm. This was a lecture on the elections in Sweden. What impact did the social media have? Very intriguing considering Obama’s often cited success with social media. It turned out that she did not have much penetration results. Just home pages for the parties with links to the party leader and his/hers social media conversations (and self enhancement). I am still waiting for facts about social media during the election. Listing to the speeches after the election the leaders talked about how many face-to-face contacts were made. No thank you to the bloggers, twitters ….(organizers or partakers)

Social media as a political, activist tool

Searching the web I found an article in The New Yorker (October 18 2010, by Malcolm Gladwell) about social media and political impact.  He compared what happened in the deep south Greensboro, North Carolina, when four blacks entered a café with a sign “Whites only” :

“I’d like a cup of coffee, please,” one of the four, Ezell Blair, said to the waitress.

“We don’t serve Negroes here,” she replied.

Some seventy thousand students eventually took part (in sit ins, demonstrations, marches). Thousands were arrested and untold thousands more radicalized. These events in the early sixties became a civil-rights war that engulfed the South for the rest of the decade—and it happened without e-mail, texting, Facebook, or Twitter.

The kind of activism associated with social media isn’t like this at all. The platforms of social media are built around weak ties. Twitter is a way of following (or being followed by) people you may never have met. Facebook is a tool for efficiently managing your acquaintances, for keeping up with the people you would not otherwise be able to stay in touch with. That’s why you can have a thousand “friends” on Facebook, as you never could in real life

Read more here.

Report

Yes we do it! We socialize or entertain ourselves on the net. The following chart is based on Nordicom -The Swedish Internetbarometer 2009.

Marketing Promises

Webtrafic.se has information that promises to find the right target group on the net. Interesting promises that need more looking in to. Who knows more?

Of course this is the important turning point for marketers and researchers. Facts for targeting. And facts on how stories, information spread on the net.

My summary

Of course I will climb higher and higher on the social ladder and with more knowledge I am not afraid of falling down. As a market researcher I must understand and utilize the impacts on marketing, on social affairs that social media will have in the future.

By Bo Bäckman

bo.backman@gmail.com Linkedin

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The intersection between corporate and personal branding

14/10-2010

Many companies invest a lot of money building their brands and work on the company values, but they miss one very important part. They don’t pay enough attention to the personal brands of their employees. And without any doubt, it is the employees who have to live the brand in every contact with the customers. We must keep in mind that the way the customers see the employees – that’s way they perceive the company. And in the era of Facebook and Twitter – how many chances do you get to repair a bad customer contact?

What is a personal brand? To me it is the same as your professional reputation; it’s how you as an individual are perceived by your professional surrounding, including your customers. And if you as an employer are not distinctly aware of the professional reputation of your employees, then you are blindfolded and it will be hard to develop really good customer and business relations. When you develop the personal brands of your employees, you strengthen the company culture and potential and the value of the company will be higher. In my opinion this is more valuable than traditional marketing.

Your most important question. Richard Branson, founder of the successful Virgin companies recently said in an interview something of great significance – ”I think reputation is really all you’ve got in life – and it is something you have to fight to preserve”. Your professional reputation and personal brand is without any doubt your most valuable asset. But frankly, how well – in detail do you know yours and your co-workers professional reputation? That is probably the most important question you can ask yourself today.

Many are eager to build their personal brand, but I think that they forget that you have to be really good at something first. But after that, there is so much to gain. As I discussed earlier it’s the best way to develop good customer and business relations.

It’s a way to create the strong teams. Many are discussing how you can build strong teams. The main question is how you can do that when you don’t know the individuals strengths when it comes to factors like passion, ambition, the ability to inspire, creativity and so on. These are the real success factors and it’s absolutely necessary to put adequate words to them because linked to your expertise they create your professional reputation.

But there is still more to gain. Marketing is not about logical arguments; it’s about inspiring with your passion and ambition. Companies that grow more than 15 percent per year inspire their customers. Unfortunately instead most companies markets what the customer actually assumes that you have, not what they are buying. Do what you love and make the customers love what you do – that’s the simplest and most effective marketing strategy today. Your passion, your ambition and your ability to inspire, that’s the real success factors and vital parts of your personal brand. And when you are aware of your professional reputation, you don´t have to be concerned about your image.

Your personal tagline. For a company a tagline is the most powerful and unique expression of a brand that you can have. The same actually go for you as an individual. Others rapidly form a picture of you, and your personal brand is constantly valued and the result of how you are performing will be your professional reputation. It’s your professional DNA. Imagine what it would mean if you could present that in one sentence, your personal tagline.

Your personal tagline has to be built on your professional reputation; it is nothing you can put together yourself. It will capture what you stand for and help you make decisions. It will inspire others and create attention. Your tagline should also present what you do, not your title, who you are and what your ambition is. All in one sentence, or at least in Twitter format.

The problem arises when your personal brand is associated with image. We see it differently! It is not something that you put on, a glittering surface that can crack any moment. It has to be genuine. But without any doubt in my mind your personal brand and professional reputation will decide your success at work, how you succeed as a leader, employee or entrepreneur. It also decides who your customers listen to and trust.

Can anything be more profitable to analyze and those who first understand the intersection between corporate and personal branding will be the winners.

By Per Frykman

Per Frykman, an entrepreneur working with building strong personal brands. Dagens Ledare call him guru in personal brands. He has helped hundreds of people developed their careers or successful companies.  He is author of three books in, where “Myth of the efficient recruitment” (“Myten om den effektiva rekryteringen”) was nominated among the best books on leadership area 2005^th. Per’s third book, “You – a trademark”(“Du – ett varumärke”) reached the book stores in March.

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Place branding is all about people

6/10 2010

Places are not what they used to be. Growing up, I got picture postcards from all over the world. Quite a few postcards became my first impression of that place. Today we are flooded by images from every corner of the world and one more or one less does not really make a difference for us. Nevertheless, many place marketers go about their business as if we still had all tb he time in the world to consume brochures and leaflets. In this article, I suggest a more people oriented perspective on place branding.

First things first, what makes a place brand different from other brands? The brand component is not all that different. A place brand is what you feel when you think of a certain place, not just what you think of it. That definition could fit any brand. It is the place bit that makes place branding a different species altogether. I open many of my lectures on place marketing by asking the audience one simple question: »What is a place?«.

More often than not at least one person gives a quick answer and it is always half right. The most frequent answer is »space«. When I say that we are missing one part, another person usually says »people« just as quickly. That sums it up since a place is a function of space and people. The problem is that many place marketers tend to concentrate on the space component during the branding process. Most marketers regard people as a passive audience instead of activating them and bringing them into the process. However, there is a lot to be won if you manage to do that at an early stage. Let me give you an example.

I have just put forward a new brand strategy for Söderhamn, a municipality a two hours train ride north of Stockholm. During the process I realized that they felt they had a huge image problem on YouTube. Searching for »Söderhamn« they had found out that a quite a few of the clips were made by tweens and young teenagers. Since they did not want to let the teenage perspective—partying, drinking—be the only impression of Söderhamn, they considered producing a film to present the official version of Söderhamn. With the Queensland incident fresh in my mind, I talked them out of it, arguing that you cannot really compete with teenagers’ desire to express themselves in that way. Instead I suggested a film competition, letting the youth of Söderhamn make their own movies and thus creating a wider perspective of what life in Söderhamn is all about. So far, quite a few clips have been uploaded and more are on the way since the contest is open for entries a few more weeks.

Early on in 2009, Tourism Queensland launched its highly acclaimed and successful campaign »The Best Job In The World«. That social media campaign made waves all around the world and as far as I can tell it attracted very little negative feedback. In the autumn, Tourism Queensland released a bunch of traditional commercials based on the old Monkees theme song , now reading »Hey Hey This Is Queensland«. This immediately drew bad blood between the tourism board and some Queenslanders who did not accept this sunny and polished version of Queensland. A parody was produced, showing some ostentatious headlines and live footage not exactly suited to make people want to go to Queensland. To this day, the parody has had more than ten times as many viewings as any of the official clips on YouTube.

Last year we conducted a survey of how Swedish municipalities market their place brands. 255 (of 290) municipalities took part in our survey. Almost 70 per cent of them are using core value based strategies. For some reason, core values like »closeness«, »innovation«, and »qualitity« are still believed to create passion in people. The truth is that neither citizens nor visitors care one iota about »security« and »openness« until they experience it for themselves. Therefore, first hand experience is far superior to advertising when it comes to creating brand involvement. The next best thing is word of mouth along the same lines.

All this goes to show that you really have to care about people first in place branding. If you manage a brand on the FMCG market, you do not normally run the risk that the target audience will talk back if they do not like your communication. Most of them are not that interested in what you are saying anyway. Since place brands concern people, chances are that they will beg, scream and shout if they don’t agree with you. If you manage to bring them along at the heart of the process, you tell a whole different story.

By Michael Nilsson

Michael Nilsson is a Brand Strategist and Founding Partner of Manifesto, specialists on place branding and social media. Michael is a frequent lecturer, so far key-noting in Sweden, Denmark, and Spain. Writing this article, he was asked to go to Vilnius, Lithuania. He is the author of The Social Revolution: The Brand Manager’s Guide to Social Media (Den sociala revolutionen: Varumärkets guide till de sociala medierna, ISBN: 9789197889506).

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The value of personal branding

1/10 2010

There’s one type of branding that gets very little exposure in the marketing debate – the personal branding. But that has to change, personal branding is far more valuable for all sizes of companies and personalities than ever before and since the rise of social media also something we can regulate. Fuck logotypes, it’s time for faces.

So, let’s start arguing why and how you as person should start building on your personal brand. Then I’ll tell why companies should encourage people to build on their personal brands and why that’s a ingredient for success.

The brand Me

There are millions of successful people that are using their own personal brands to do business in many different ways. Great examples are authors, artists, public speakers and journalists but also self-employed consultants, evangelists for big corporations and probably your own CEO. What these people do when they build on their personal brand can be explained in three points:

-Sharing their experience with others, which gives them reputation and attention (example: blog)

-Meet and discuss with people in all possible ways, which gives them fans and contacts (example: Twitter)

-Belonging to and being a leader in a niche, a community or a branch, which makes them authorities in their niches world (example: fotosidan.se, a community about photography)

Everyone working with marketing in some way knows the importance of sharing information, it’s what drives attention. Likewise to meet and talk to other people, the easiest ways to get somebody trust you are by talking to them. But what I do think not so many understand is the last point, the importance of belonging to a group of people.

What’s your thought about Bill Gates, for example? I would say rich, Microsoft, entrepreneur, nerd about him. These words automatically make me group him together with other people like Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and Jerry Yang. I would probably not group him together with Richard Branson or Ingvar Kamprad of the easiest reasons – they’re not founders of a tech startup. And this is also what makes his brand so strong, when I think of the most interesting founders of tech companies Bill Gates is definitely one of the first names I think of. By being a leader in a predefined community, the brand becomes much stronger than without a context.

By accepting being put in one box instead of in many different makes your brand stronger. People love to put stuff in categories, even it’s harder to do with people than with companies or products. So make sure to make it easy for them! If it doesn’t feel like your personal brand being stronger of it, I can assure you that journalists love you for it. Finally someone they know to call for a interview about a certain topic!

It’s not hard to find arguments of the value of a great personal brand but to make a long story short it’s about opportunities. The better, more well-known, personal brand you have, the more opportunities you’ll have. For me my own personal brand has been the opportunity to choose between great jobs and less great jobs, fun clients and less fun clients, fun tasks versus boring tasks and so on. To build your own brand is not just a smart way to get a good job, it’s crucial for your career and life situation.

When a personal brand is stronger than the company it represents

It’s quite obvious why it’s important to have a strong personal brand for self-employed consultants or for example public speakers and how it generates business for them. But for a company with ten, hundreds or maybe thousands of employees, what’s the purpose of letting people build their own brands instead of the company’s? I would say there are plenty of reasons. Let me explain a few:

-By giving employees tools and permission for doing personal branding, they’ll feel more engagement about their work and the company they work for. Why? The feeling of being a rock star. People love attention.

-It creates value for your employees much more worth than any pension insurance or salary increase. Their own brand. They’ll be thankful and much more careful before leaving your company. Few companies let the employees be the rock stars, let it be an advantage of working in your company!

-Growing sales numbers. It’s nothing new really, but by having more evangelists and people representing the company in several different ways more people will trust, being interested in and in the end buy the company’s products.

-Hiring will be easier than ever. It’s very expensive to hire people and to find the right candidates but by letting the employees be evangelists for their workplace, colleagues and company it will be a lot easier. Often the best employees also have the best network and personal branding is the easiest way to reach these networks in a natural way.

-In times when transparency is something more and more companies are trying to work with, peoples own voices are the necessary ingredient for success.

I truly believe it’s nothing wrong to give reasons and possibilities to let people build on their own personal brands while still working in a large organization. The wise PR consultant Niclas Strandh said in a lecture a few years ago that a brand isn’t a logo, a vision or a motto. It’s the people – the employees and the customers. I can’t agree more.

Everyone wants to be a rock star. Does your organization encourage them to become one?

By Anton Johansson

Anton Johansson is a web entrepreneur working with product strategy, business development and communication at Twingly. Except this, he is a popular public speaker about internet trends, which also is the topic of his blog fyranyanser.se.

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So you want to be number one?

22/9 2010

What does it take to be a leader? What is the one, single quality that separates the mediocre, self-declared leaders from the true leaders, such as Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi, John F. Kennedy, Steve Jobs and Ingvar Kamprad – people who actually changed things? The answer is inspiration.
Now, what is the true source of inspiration?
Where does it come from?
Smart people?
Not necessarily.
Does it emanate from risk-aware cultures?
Not very likely.
Does it come from the nice and humble?
Nope.
Does it come from the safe and sound?
No way.

Inspiration always comes from the bold and the daring. Why? Because they dream of things that others find impossible, wrong or downright silly.
They are fearless of being depicted as failures, of being ridiculed, of being rejected, of being embarrassed, or being played for a fool.
There are four questions that are essential for success as a leader whether you operate in a corporation, or in a political party, or in media.
What are you doing?
How are you doing it?
Who are you?
And why are you doing this?
Take a look at the picture above.
97% of the world’s population gravitates towards the question on top.
Is this because it’s the wisest thing to do?
No, truth is it’s because this is the easiest question to answer – whereas
successful leaders are more attracted to the questions at the bottom.
The reason for this is quite simple.
We live in a world where the majority tends to like things that they can see, grip,
grasp and drop on their feet, while true leaders are attracted to the opposite.
They seem to like things that are more abstract.
Stuff that´s meaningful. Questions that are much, much harder to answer.
It’s like the popular iceberg metaphor.
Most people can only picture the tip and fail to see the whole picture.
And that’s probably why so few of us become succesful leaders.

So how do you answer these four questions?

The first question »What?« is purely descriptive.
As in »I’m selling cell-phones«, or »I’m in computers«.
»How?« Is about creativity: how can you make a difference?
The answer could be »Think different«, or »a really beautiful product design«.
»Who?« is a question of identity.
By this I refer to cultural and psycho-social mirroring.
Because it’s far more important who’s selling than what’s being sold.
Now it’s getting really interesting.
How do you relate to this: »I’m a former hippie from California and I rage against big corporations that
enslaves individuals. This is my quest and I hope you sympathize«.
This statement reveals a personal, heroic story.
As in all biographies the story should be woven around a few dichotomies:
Love vs. hate.Fear vs. bravery. Good vs. bad.
The trick is to know what you stand for and know what you oppose.
If you fail this, no one will be able to identify with you or your cause.

And by »Why?« I touch on intention and aspiration.
The purpose of this question is to know, deep down, why you’re doing whatever you’re doing.
Sometimes it’s called »a mission statement«.
But this is an expression that has been watered down for ages, so let’s drop it.
Instead, I prefer to talk about meaning, or purpose.
Meaning always outperforms information, like emotion trumps rationality.
When your quest is based on a bold aspiration, it will make hearts pound faster.
People will be moved.
People will start to act and participate in your mission.
Here’s a formula to keep in mind:
Somebody (you) should want something really, really bad.
Unfortunately, something (an evil force) keeps standing in your way.
How should you go about it (the creative challenge)?
Make sure this struggle goes on forever.
How do you recognize a meaningful quest? Here’s an example:
»I will always fight stupid conventions, wherever it rears its ugly head…
Just bring it on!«

You know what I’m talking about, and whom I’m referring to.
I’m talking about Apple, of course. And Steve Jobs.
They don’t sell their stuff because it’s innovative or of excellent quality.
These are by-products of a lifelong, meaningful quest.
They sell because they have the urge to challenge the stale and the stupid.
And this makes them living heroes.

A really smart guy I know wrote in his blog the other day about the endless
question of what makes us most happy: money or meaning. Most people think that rich
people are driven by money, and that this is the reason
why they’ve become rich.
Not true.
If you read the book »Obliquity. Why our goals are best achieved indirectly«,
by the British economist John Kay, you’ll see that many of the best performing
businesses were built by people who didn’t strive for money, but for meaning.
Kay shows that companies like Boeing, Ford and Microsoft were driven by goals
other than profit, and that money often is a by-product of much bigger and
stronger incentives.
The need to achieve.
To change.
To become at ease with oneself.
Or to leave a mark on the world.
That’s why they ended up making fortunes.
Ironic, isn’t it?

By Per Robert Öhlin

Brand developer, copywriter, speaker.

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What consumer brands can learn from politics

15/9 2010

On Sunday, the Swedish people place their votes in favor of their political preferences. From where I sit, at a café in one of the suburbs of Stockholm, I can see a string of small wooden cottages placed on the local high street.

Within and around these small campaign cottages, local politicians are shaking hands, talking vividly about public policy with bypassing members of the community, and abundantly offering complimentary coffee in paper cups. Selling an ideology is not exactly the same thing as pushing trendy and superbranded consumer goods. An Xbox or an Iphone are sexy products, whereas public policy – for most people – isn’t.

In some ways, consumer brands are on the opposite side of the spectrum from political organizations. On one hand we have the choices we make with our wallets every day, multiple low-level decisions where wrong choices can be corrected quite easily. On the other hand we have the elections, often characterized by few alternatives, outcomes that can’t be reversed that easily and individual votes always overridden by the dominant majority. The spectrum ranges from low to high involvement. But what does that mean?

Well, for politicians, this means meeting people face to face. Connecting with them. Listening to them. It means a clear understanding of the conflict element in news media logic – and leveraging it fully. You need to take a stand and make room for your voters to engage in your quest for a better world.

Do you want to participate? Please do. Happy with just casting your vote? Hey, that’s just fine too. The important thing is that we do this together. See, I’m just a human being like you and I can’t do this alone – please help us!

It’s quite the dynamic. The majority rules, but the majority feeds of the uniqueness of its community individuals. They must be given individual space to help the movement forward. It’s like the starfish analogy; cut of one arm and the starfish will grow a new one and the arm will grow to a new starfish. Because every vote, every effort is individual.

But what about that spectrum of individual involvement, then? Is politics confined to the one hand side? Actually, no. We can see how classical branding strategies are being integrated in political campaigning. Barack Obama is the president of the United States of America, but he is also a superbrand. And so are the political leaders in Sweden. Casting your vote has always been a lifestyle choice.

In fact, politicians are becoming increasingly aware that they need to go to market all across the spectrum of voters, no matter of level of involvement.

How about consumer brands, then? Are you choosing your future when you buy an Xbox or an Iphone? If we regard every purchase as casting an individual vote on what corporations to prosper in a free market, yes. In fact, that is what really constitutes a superbrand; you choose the product or service because it’s a conscious lifestyle choice. Politicians are fast-learning marketing strategies from superbrands, but brands in general need to learn faster from the politicians. Every purchase can’t be a life altering decision, but the level of engagement must be up to the customer.

I choose Iphone because it gives me access to a vibrant open source community who provides me with infinite options on what level to engage with a variety of causes. I choose Xbox because I can do everything from passing time to conquer challenges and gain social status. The choice is up to me – even after I’ve chosen to buy the product.

The arenas for political involvement state their case unanimously: The higher the level of involvement, the higher the level of individual social interaction and community.

So ask yourself this: When it comes to different levels of engagement, does your brand offer individual social involvement on the whole spectrum, all the way from deciding to buy to actually change the world?

Jerry Silfwer

Jerry Silfwer is a PR pro working at Springtime, Stockholm. Interested in PR for your brand? Check out his blog, Doktor Spinn and follow him on Twitter.

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From Global Blanding to Greenwashing – Trends in Brand Visual Language

8/9-2010

How Trends in Visual Language Impact the Interpretation of Meaning for Brands

As the world spin faster, technology and information accelerates towards the speed of light and the ocean of marketing and brand messages roars ever-louder, we continue to sharpen our ability to filter. We filter ads, we filter web sites, we filter emails and Facebook invitations, we are becoming highly attuned at high-speed information filtration. One of the tools we utilize for filtering is pattern recognition. As we form our views and preferences, we use cues that identify ‘good messages’ from ‘bad messages’ to help us make educated guesses as to what we should explore and what we should ignore. These cues relate to our sense of sight, taste, touch, smell or hearing. By committing the cue to memory we create ’somatic markers’ – points of meaning by which we can assess related cues quickly and efficiently.

When it comes to the visual language of brands, our somatic markers work in the same way. All brands have a visual language which is centers around the brand mark and includes brand colours, typefaces, photographic style, packaging, retail interior styling – in fact every visual element that represents the brand combines to create it’s visual language. A well designed brand is one where every single element of its visual language communicates culturally consistent cues such as a sense of tradition being communicated by as serif type face, or a certain colour of green indicating environmental credentials.

Often visual cues are anchored in authenticity. We understand that Pasta traditionally comes from Italy, and so associate a pattern of Italian visual cues with superior, authentic pasta brands. When Apple’s iPod exploded into a global revolution of cool technology, it created a new somatic marker in the minds of millions of people around the world. A swarm of me-too technology and music brands sprung into action, mimicking the lowercase iPod phonetics in both name and visual language.

In this way trends in the visual language of brands form over time. Sometimes trends are driven by a powerful market leader like Apple and other brands that dominate their market, other times they’re driven by significant social factors across markets such as the global financial crisis, an increase in standard of living and personal wealth, or global warming. Whatever the driver of the trends, they tend to spread in a similar fashion; as market leaders adopt a certain visual language, other brands sit-up and take notice. Initially this can be localized, but eventually it reaches a tipping-point, accelerated by the global spread of visual language via the web. Usually, at their origin, trends have both relevance and freshness, a new look for an organization that is communicating a unique brand proposition through a combination of culturally understood cues. However, as the trend becomes more wide-spread, organizations and their designers begin to adopt the visual language of a trend with out understanding the inherent meaning. This is the point where effective brand communication becomes ineffective trend following.

For this reason, trends in brand visual language can either provide an organization with great opportunity to leverage relevant cues of meaning that have wide-spread currency and momentum, or a brand image that lacks relevance, meaning and unique visual properties the brand can own. Our trend report tracks the major trends impacting brand visual language and provides organizations with the context to make an informed decision on which trends offer opportunities for their brands and which do not. Link to our report.

An example of a trend that offers great opportunity for positive leverage for relevant brands is the trend we’ve titled ‘The Signature’.
Part of the wider trend of Authenticity, the trend towards the use of a signature in brand visual language has regained popularity. Growing from a base of established signature brand marks, over recent times we’ve seen an acceleration in this trend, possibly as a response to the GFC, which has seen consumers turn back to brands with trustworthy and traditional values. This visual language trend is well suited to brands with claim to an artisan or craftsman proposition, brands wishing to take a boutique positioning relative to their competition, or brands wishing to link their current values to a historical or founding figurehead.

An example of a trend that has become so wide-spread that we now see many more poor examples of its application that good is the trend we’ve named ‘Global Blanding’.
Global ‘Blanding’ is the homogenization of brand visual language that we have seen occurring in brand identity design. Like many trends, it was started by re-branding of some of the largest global brands including; Xerox, British Telecom, AT&T, HP & Mastercard, before being picked-up by a multitude of second and third tier, medium and small enterprises. This visual language trend now winds its way across almost every conceivable category from telecommunications to airlines to petroleum, to sporting teams and fast food.

Global ‘Blanding’ describes the trading-in of unique and usually meaningful symbolism for a shared and meaningless visual language of spheres, colour blends and transparencies, and three dimensional shapes. Whilst the visual style achieved by combining these elements provides a sense of ‘international or globalization’ often combined with a suggestion of ‘cutting-edge technology’, this is typically achieved at the expense of individuality, brand differentiation and brand messaging. This is not only the strongest trend identified, but also the one we believe to contain the greatest risk of compromise to brand differentiation and uniqueness. Due to over-use and mass misuse this trend has the potential for inappropriate or confusing visual messaging.

What does this mean for Brand Owners, Custodians and Managers?
Whilst the first step is ensuring the visual language of your brand identity is communicating the right cues to market, trends in brand visual language also impact powerfully – both positively and negatively – on the associations your market connects with your brand. Once the code of your brand visual language and the relevant trends are understood, negative associations can be avoided and positive ones leveraged your advantage.

By not investing time and energy into understanding your brand’s visual cues and the impact of trends on brand meaning, you can be confusing and eroding the value of your brand messaging. Of all brand management and brand building activities, gaining clarity around these critical drivers of brand communication must be given primary importance.

By Dave Ansett

Dave Ansett is a co-founder and the Creative Chairman of Truly Deeply Brand Consultants. He has advised and continues to work with many of Australia’s leading public and private organisations on brand identity and communication related matters. David has judged a host of design awards and regularly speaks on matters of design and brand. David has lectured in design studies at the Swinburne National School of Design and written on the subject of brand design for marketing publications and on-line brand and design sites around the globe. This year David published the Research Report; Global Trends in the Visual Language of Brands. The report and excerpts from it have been re-published across North America, Europe and Asia in both the mainstream and on-line press.

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We are all checking in

1/9 2010

One of the big trends in social media is the check-in frenzy. The big wave has yet to come, probably when Facebook Places is fully implemented. But the trend isn’t only in the area of localization but also in the status updates where you can follow the life of your friends through the choices they make i.e. tv-shows he or she watch, the places where he or she hangs out, find out where the beautiful photo is taken, what they are shopping and what music they listen to.

To truly understand the check-in culture you need to broaden your scope both on what can be defined into it but also by understanding what drives us to update out status and to check-in our daily where abouts.

We see a check in culture growing where our digital life is integrated with our physical life. The analogue reality is not separated from our digital life and our social connections from the net are making their way into our physical space. The separation of atoms and bits are less significant the more our day-to-day life let the two realities connect.

“Checking in” in is a natural continuation of the “what are you doing”-status updates used in Facebook and Twitter since a couple of years. But why do we do it? Do we really have this urge to know all this about our friends? Do we really need to report everything we do to our social strata online?

Yes and no. Firstly: we do it consciously and by free will. We do not need to do it but do it because we want to. That is an important stance. We do it since it makes us set our tag in the reality of our WHAT?  A mark: time or place has become a point of orientation for us. We do it but choose where to check-in and in that sense the content of our check-in creates a bit of our personal brand: show who we are through our choices. The check-in culture is about that: the profile of our personal brand. The status updates and the check-ins tell who we are and give small pieces of the puzzle that builds up our personality.

People often repent the thought that we all have a personal brand but that is when you do not want to accept that our life is a stage play where you are the script maker. We do not automatically show off everything of our true self in any relation but do play different roles and differentiated characters depending on the context we are in. The check-in culture is just continuing this behavior of deindividuation where we do live a more chameleon-like life.

The check-ins of our social graph does have the function of not only making the marks of time and choice for ourselves but also for our friends. We tell each other that everything is in order that we do exist and therefore the world is in place. The check-in culture is a way to create order in a disruptive reality and make it graspable and understandable. It strengthens our social values and gives room for the chit chat, creates incentives for a stronger social connection between the individual and his/hers social circle.

Since the check-in culture do intertwine both our personal brand, a way to create order of our reality and to strengthen the social connections between the individual and the social graph of his or her life. We marketers need to understand this and when using the new trend take all this in account when working on campaigns and the brand’s digital image: people are embracing the check-in culture not because of their interest in your brand or to get information but mainly to set themselves in a context.

Simply we do need to find ways to chip in on this rather than using that old safe mass market information tactic.

1. Appreciate a check-in by showing it: thank the people that check-in, show that people are checking in on your platforms and use it as medals of honor of you.
2. Let the individual get something in return: if using Foursquare get a badge or integrate check-ins with limited offers and ways to interact with your business.
3. Make your spot worth talking about. Create an appearance that strengthens the individual’s incentive to check-in at your place. The incentives have to be targeted the individual’s need of using the check-in as a mark of his/hers brand or as a bit of the daily life puzzle.

For the marketer and the brand owner you need to learn this. You do have tried it and in full respect embrace the check-in culture to be true and worth nothing for people that live it.

The check-in culture is here to stay and we need to use it in our marketing mix, with full understanding that it is a part of the individual’s way to live.

By Niclas Strandh

Niclas Strandh is Creative planner ans brand & social media strategist at CEO Strandh Digital PR, affiliated with JMW Kommunikation. Working mainly in the area of digital branding, social media and integrated marketing.

Writing on http://digitalpr.se

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Can you transform a living area for the ”small people” into a Superbrand of residential areas?

25/8-2010

It has happened before: New York – SOHO, Berlin Charlottenburg and in Stockholm Söder.  In Stockholm Östermalm is getting older and more and more for the noble people in financial businesses that thrive around Stureplan. The creative professionals want to live “på Söder” and vote for “Miljöpartiet” and lead an environmental life.

New areas start to pop up on the waterfront from Saltsjökvarn to Kvarnholmen. You can put your feet into the water and stroll along the quay meeting dogs that walk their owners.

Hammarby Sjöstad is getting cramped with babies in strollers and a cup of café latte for the parent.

And what does it cost for a small family needing three rooms:

- Hammarby Sjöstad. With a free view ca.60 000/m^2. And with an intriguing view of your neighbors sitting room, ca. 45 000/m²

- Kvarnholmen with a free view of the sea and little sun as it faces north – 60 000/m²

- Söder gone up from 30 000 to 60 000 in a few years (add 5 000 for renovation)

What drives the establishment of a new living area for hipsters?

- The cost of living – probably the prime driver?

- You feel you are the starting something new

- You notice your likes are moving there

- The environment is cool: Shops, restaurants, people in the streets

- Service like daycare, supermarkets.

How can you establish a pretty run down area that:

- Is 5 minutes by bike to the heart of Söder.

- Is 5 minutes by buss to Slussen

- Is situated high and surrounded by Hammarby Sjöstad, Saltsjökvarn, Finnboda, Kvarnholmen

- Where a flat of 100 m² cost half of what most flats cost in Söder

- Has a view almost like Lisbeth Salander had from her flat: A view over Stockholm Waterways and much of the inlet for cruisers. Much of Skeppsbron, Strandvägen, Skeppsholmen, Gröna Lund, Skansen, Djurgården and Svindersvik.

- Has a roof on which a creative architect can build ”New York like” roof gardens or maybe small villas.

You have probably seen it when you drive over Danviksbron. But you have to bend your neck because it is high up and big. It is called Henriksdalsringen with newly formed Condominiums. How do you start the process?

By Bo Bäckman

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