Managers of premium brands face a perennial dilemma. How do you grow a premium brand without killing its soul?
By MediaStreet Staff Writers
A unique brand cachet attracts its core high-price-paying customers. But what happens when you seek to expand sales to the masses by offering lower prices? In recent years, outlet stores located hours away from glitzy shopping districts have sprung up everywhere. They are selling off-season and lower-tier merchandise at a fraction of regular retail prices. They have become significant sources of revenues.
The conventional wisdom is that relying on revenues from outlet stores can destroy the brand’s prestige over time. But according to a forthcoming study in the journal Marketing Science, outlet stores may actually help improve the brand’s cachet.
The study, “Why outlet stores exist: averting cannibalisation in product line extensions,” was authored by Donald Ngwe of Harvard Business School.
Ngwe analysed five years of customer sales data covering over 16 million customers and 27 million transactions from a major high-end fashion firm with hundreds of regular and outlet stores around the country. He found that the brand’s core customers are picky about wanting the latest products and are willing to pay premium prices, but are unwilling to travel very far to buy the brand.
In contrast, the larger mass of customers who aspire to consume this brand, but are price sensitive, are not only willing to travel the long distances to outlet stores, but are also not very picky in their tastes for the latest products and willing to tolerate lower quality. Therefore outlet stores expand revenues with limited cannibalisation of revenues from the core high paying customer base.
Taking into account this strong negative correlation between taste for quality and new products and willingness to travel for shopping among the core and mass segments, Ngwe modelled the firm’s product introductions in regular and outlet stores. He found two key results. First, the availability of outlets for selling older products to mass consumers means that firms can take more risk and introduce more new products at faster rates at its regular stores. Second, as outlet stores absorb the customer base of price-conscious customers who need less service, the firm can invest in greater service at regular stores. New product introduction at regular stores increases by as much as 16 percent. Ngwe said, “Here is the kicker. Even as outlet stores generate significant revenues from the masses, they help the brand increase its cachet among its core customers through more new products and higher service.”
The conventional wisdom that outlet stores can be detrimental to a premium brand’s health arises from failing to recognise the positive spillovers from outlet stores on regular retail stores. Ngwe noted, “For the brand we studied, there is little cannibalisation of regular store revenues by outlet stores. Moreover, outlet stores have positive spillovers in terms of higher service and more frequent new products in regular stores. So the net effect of outlet stores is to increase brand cachet.”
However, Ngwe cautioned, “Critical to our conclusion is that core customers would not shop at outlet stores due to their aversion to traveling long distances. This may not be true for customers of other brands, particularly lower end ones. Also, pure online brands cannot use travel distances to separate their core and mass customer segments. Online premium brands will need to find other means to differentiate their upscale and mass offerings.”
Millennials are the most educated, open minded and dynamic demographic that exists.
They are independent and have started making their purchasing decisions. For a marketer, they are the most lucrative set of audiences for marketing any product or service.
However, the set of characteristics and traits they possess make them the unique people to market or sell. One can’t use the same marketing strategies to lure them into a brand or acquire, convert and retain them for long. Since they form a huge part of the population, the opportunity is magnanimous.
A marketer can never ignore Millennials and become successful in marketing a brand. Initially, you need to create an excellent brand worth reverence and then implement marketing strategies which millennials respond to.
Let’s see how you can do them right.
Although millennials aren’t as loyal as the older generation is, but they stick to the brand they love.
If they like a brand, they’ll be vocal about it and spread the word. And if they don’t, they’ll be equally expressive about it in any medium they get.
Thus, branding for millennials is a tricky path to tread, but by keeping a few important things in mind, you’ll be able to create a brand they find awesome.
Be authentic to the core
Authenticity breeds trust and trust breeds business. Authenticity matters.
The truthful words said by top LinkedIn influencer and best-selling author, Dave Kerpen.
This stands even truer for millennials who possess an innate ability to sense brands that are fooling around. They look up to brands which are highly authentic in all what they do.
It is very important to create a genuine bond with each of your customers as it helps to evoke a feeling of trust.
Instead of trying to fabricate your brand image, focus on being your self and gain respect for it.
As per a recent research by Cohne & Wolfe, who are known to conduct studies to measure the authenticity of brands, these are the top 100 authentic brands.
If you notice, they truly have worked hard over the years to create an image which people, majorly millennials think as authentic.
Position yourself to please them
Creation of a great brand depends on its positioning in the market. There are several examples of companies failing miserably just because their position wasn’t right.
To reach your target audience and ensure that they are attracted towards your brand, you need to create a desirable position for it.
Millennials are highly diverse, and most of them have unique choices. While building a brand, you must consider their needs and position accordingly. Good positioning also helps in highlighting the characteristics and core attributes of the brand.
Tesla Motors is a great example of positioning a brand to appeal a particular section of people. Electric cars were quite uncool before Tesla came in and took the market by storm. Right from the beginning, Tesla positioned itself as a high-end electric car maker with exemplary aesthetics, all of which the other brands lacked. Rest of all, as they say, is history.
Exude uniqueness
Millennials believe themselves to be unique and they want their brands to resonate their personalities. No matter what products or services your brand offers, the branding needs to be unique in order to appeal the millennials.
Uniqueness depends on perception, but it takes a lot of efforts to stand as a purple cow in a herd full of common brands.
Staying relevant in an age where people have the lowest attention span needs your brand to exude uniqueness and as a marketer, it is your job to make it happen.
Uber has been a fine testimony of unique branding; their service is as simple as it gets. Millennials are always on the move, and Uber has become their go-to app for whenever they are out of the house. Their product as well as the brand they have created widely captures the instinctive nature of millennials.
This TVC by Uber brilliantly empowers every common man to make their dreams come true through Uber and shows a message to #EmpowerAMillion Entrepreneurs by 2018. This is something millennials immediately connect with.
Be admirably interesting
Being interesting as a brand is a different ball game altogether. The Gen-Y simply can’t stand something boring because they live in a world where the most interesting thing gets all the attention and that is all that they crave.
To seek positive attention – which is one of the core aims of marketing – is to become admirably interesting.
A brand seems alive only if it is interesting enough and keeps making efforts to be so.
Google is one of the most interesting brands in the world, and it’s difficult to imagine the internet without it. Although the product seems like the simplest tool for consumers, it takes a lot of efforts to make this simple brand admirably interesting.
Millennials have strong opinions, and they like to stand up for what they believe. When a brand does the same, the instantly start liking it.
The reason is the resonance of personalities, when your brand believes in something and advocates it through various campaigns, people who believe in the same thing will form an inclination towards your brand.
Standing up for your brand’s beliefs is a sign of strength which has become necessary in the current times.
Global brands which are loved by millennials have made it a point to strongly voice for the causes they believe in.
AppleInc. has openly supported the LGBT community by various means, and it won the hearts of many for standing by what it believes in. Although it wasn’t related to the brand or their products the cause affected their consumers, and they showed their unwavering support for it.
This is all you need to build a brand for millennials; these unpredictable personalities can be the biggest source of revenue for your company. Put all your efforts and build a brand which your customers will be proud of.
Top 6 Strategies for Marketing to the Millennials – Acquire, Convert, Retain!
Once you have created a stellar brand, you need to implement marketing strategies specially designed for millennials. They have a blind eye towards cliched campaigns that are uncreative and don’t ring a bell naturally.
Trying to impress millennials through marketing is no easy job, but with the right tactics, you will be able to acquire, convert and retain them in the long haul.
Let’s see some of the most useful ones.
a) Be where the millennials are
Marketers must have a keen eye on all the places where their customers are. This includes venturing into all the exciting platforms millennials share their daily lives on.
If you want to market your brand to millennials and don’t have a presence on social platforms like Instagram and Snapchat Inc., you are doing it all wrong. These platforms provide enough marketing avenues already, and they will keep upgrading their platforms to offer marketers the ultimate value of their efforts.
Thus, they are huge customer acquisition mediums as far as millennials are concerned.
Taco Bell is widely known for their creative and expressive social media campaigns.
Recently, they came up with some unique strategies to reach out to their target audiences, the millennials. This detailed case study shows how they leveraged the power of social media to tap into the lives of Millennials.
Also, their Twitter handle has been very popular lately owing to a superb interactive presence on the platform.
b) Build a relationship
Relationship marketing is an old technique but works like a charm for millennials.
They are always up for a deep bond which needs nurturing, and brands can use the same humane qualities for building a relationship with their customers like they would do for a person.
Although it takes a tonne of efforts to maintain a good relationship, it is well worth in the long haul.
The core aim of relationship marketing is to allow more customer retention and satisfy them with your product or service instead of focusing on sales transactions.
Building a genuine relationship with your customers or users is the best way to retain them for years. Though Coca-Cola just sells flavored sugary water, they know how to build a long-lasting relationship with their customers better than anyone else.
Over the years, they have consistently tried to build a unique rapport with the customers and succeeded in it.
The TVC shows one of the historical brand campaigns ever done. It was majorly targeted towards millennials since they had started losing market share of that age group in Australia.
After the campaign, their sales saw a huge rise, and it proved the prowess of a nicely executed relationship marketing campaign.
c) Content (marketing) is still the king
Many marketers believe that the era of content has passed and they need new techniques to reach customers. This is far from the truth and content or content marketing for that matter is still one of the most effective ways to reach, educate and convert users.
Although mediums of content have evolved over the years it is still as relevant as it was in the initial days, even more.
The rise of social media along with the increased viewership of videos has led to a shift in the way content marketing happens.
Nike is probably the best brand that gets content marketing right for millennials. It owned the top two spots of the most watched videos on YouTube in the year 2014.
They have diversified their content marketing strategies into videos, manuals, fitness tips and much more.
In fact, it began with content marketing right in the 1960s when it came up with a manual titled “A Jogger’s Manual” which is widely termed as the reason for the growing jogger’s culture in the US, ultimately leading to more sales for Nike.
d) Build an awesome product/service
The best marketing one can do for a brand is to create a superior product or service which speaks for itself, majorly through word of mouth.
Although different techniques of marketing are required to ensure a widespread reach for a good product, nothing beats the authentic praise of a customer.
Millennials believe their friends and family more than what any brand’s marketing campaign conveys. Thus, if you want to impress them, better build an awesome product/service and then let them spread the word.
WhatsApp and Truecaller are two outstanding examples of how a good product successfully acquires, converts and retains users without much marketing efforts. Both these brands had barely marketed their apps, but they both turned out to be revolutionary services which we use on a daily basis.
Word of mouth is a huge advantage any brand can have, and it is only possible by creating a product…
e) Provide an amazing customer service
Providing great customer service is a necessity in a time when customers have become knowledgeable and won’t tolerate someone treating them in a frivolous manner.
Your customer service is put into test when a customer faces a bad experience and the way you handle it shows how good you are. Such responses decide how loyal the customers will be in the future. Nailing such situations is one of the core things a brand can do to retain customers.
Amazon is a champion in providing an exceptional customer service.
You will seldom see a customer switching from Amazon because of a delayed or bad experience; they always make sure you have a good time while shopping at their site.
Non-surprisingly, their mission statement reads that they want to “become the most customer-centric company in the world”.
This amazing TVC by Amazon depicts exactly how they are trying to position themselves when it comes to customer service. They are equating themselves with the people of India, who love helping and it strike a chord with many.
f) Offer something in return
Probably every brand these days uses the strategy of providing discounts, cashback or offers to acquire and convert users.
Although this is not a good long-term strategy to retain users, it can work wonders to acquire new users and give them an opportunity to try your product or service.
Millennials are lured by such deals and would probably give your brand a try which can then convert them into regular customers.
Consider all the big e-commerce sites, payment wallets, ride-hailing apps or probably any popular internet service in the recent years, and you will find that this is the major strategy they have leveraged to acquire users because it works.
In fact, there are companies specially built to show the most valuable discounts and offers through many verticals of services.
Conclusion
Branding and marketing are two of the most challenging aspects that every business faces and now you have mastered them both.
When it comes to millennials, creating a successful brand and marketing your products to them in a unique way is essential and non-negotiable.
All the above mentioned popular brands which millennials love have rightly adapted to these branding and marketing strategies over the years to be successful.
However, with ever-evolving consumers, you need to evolve as a brand and advance your marketing strategies consistently to stay relevant.
Now that you know the effective strategies for both, simply create an awesome brand and successfully market them to millennials.
It is great to meet triumph right after facing the challenge. But it is much better to share such experience with others so that they could also learn something and take advantage from that experience.
There are management books about establishing a brand to boost businesses. But there are small business entrepreneurs who still ask for advice in obtaining the profit or expertise. They bear in mind that knowing the right tips will start a new captivating brand identity for their firm.
Within a continuously developing marketplace, it is important to find a way to drive the business forward while staying responsive and bold to the clients. Here are the top ways to do it as effectively and efficiently as possible:
Identify the positions and promises
Designing a particular brand starts with a careful consideration of who are the customer, what they need, and how to position the brand uniquely just to satisfy them. It might sound like usual business planning, but this mindful process should drive the brand identity.
It is important to have connectivity with a difference through providing excellent customer service, providing the most appropriate products, fulfilling promises and to having a better deal to set a new brand position. “Connectivity without Compromise” is a must.
Placing pins with precision
Some small business owners don’t have a big budget for branding, and it is not an affordable option to splash the brand everywhere with flyer printing just to cause a buzz. The best thing to do is to focus the spending on the things that are important for the customers.
It’s not only about the logo
It may be tempting to spend a lot for a new attractive logo, brochure printing or for a huge sign on the roof that only a few customers can see. It might be nice to have these things if there are enough funds.
But if there is none, it is much better to focus the expenses on the strategic plan to recognize the right-fit brand for the business and the marketing strategies that will influence the brand. After such, expect a great impact from the mass.
Develop stability at every touch-point
Investing in a brand is money down the drain if the customers don’t receive that same experience each time they click or call. It is necessary to think through every ‘touch-point’ the customer has with the business.
Aside from having a friendly customer service representative, it is essential to consider everything from the voice mail system to the client statements and forms. Be mindful whether they are user-friendly and how can they prove the brand promise.
Any entrepreneurs and business owners should provide every employee with the rationale goals for the change, an outline of the brand’s position, and the equipment to integrate it easily into their daily activities.
Prove the promise
A well-written brand promise is tempting. However, how would you interpret those words into emotional benefits and real functional for the customers? And how to provide products and services that fulfil the promise?
It is much better to base the brand on the things that did well, such as providing innovation to customers for a great value. Entrepreneurs and business owners should carefully consider on how they will deliver credibility on their promise to their consumers.
Build a real culture
The most successful companies and businesses make an employee culture which is ineradicable to being true to their brand each day. Then, from every personal meeting to team assembly, they support the message internally at each opportunity.
Mostly, it is the employees who provide the best customer experience, that’s why it is important to make it clear to listen to their feedback and suggestions to help the business stand out. They played an essential role in every aspect of the business transition, from developing the brand up to its launching.
Takeaway
Every brand promise should remind entrepreneurs and small business owners on how they are different from the large enterprises, as well as how they can be able to give smarter connectivity and provide better selections to individuals and businesses.
For any small business owners and entrepreneurs, looking to overcome new markets and fight large competitors, the competitive advantage is the brand that is carefully-executed, consistently delivered, well-thought from each customer touch point, and accepted internally by every employee.
Partnering with influencers is turning out to be a better pay-off than other traditional forms of advertising because of how emotionally invested the community of followers are.
By MediaStreet Staff Writers.
Oh the places you’ll go, and the things you’ll see. Never have Dr. Seuss’ rhymes made more sense to adults today than when you start to examine how influencer marketing has turned the travel industry upside down.
Travel writing was relegated to stuffy travel guides written by yesterday’s travel wordsmiths. Now, influencers …social media stars on all manner of platforms are striking deals with destinations, and with brands, and bringing the places they go and things they see to their dream-filled followers.
Chanel brought Stephanie Liu of Honey & Silk to Grasse, France to experience and share the making of their iconic No. 5 fragrance.
Take Tommy Lei, the Hong Kong born / LA raised photographer behind MYBELONGING for example. In the last six months, Tommy has already travelled to Iceland, Punta Cana, Mexico City, New York, London, and Morocco.
Tommy Lei, cashing in on his trip to Morocco.
Tommy partnered with sandal brand Teva on his last trip through Marrakech to the Sahara, where the goal was a ground-swell of destination specific content – Morocco is an Instagram-worthy destination right now. The program was a smashing success, whereby his branded content generated over 40% engagement from his fans, and he was able to use his talent in photography to deliver a robust package of digital content to the brand. These kinds of collaborations are becoming the new win-win for influence deals, and they will only increase in velocity.
Brands who work with influencers get to be part of aspirational journeys across the globe, capturing audiences in a very visual way. Partnering with influencers is turning out to be a better pay-off than other traditional forms of advertising because of how emotionally invested the community of followers are.
Influencers are using wanderlust apps like Sherpa to share guides with their fans, bringing their trips full circle by establishing themselves as travel experts and brand ambassadors – all rolled into one incredible package.
On the other side of the spectrum, destinations themselves are turning into the clients that want to partner and bring groups of influencers to build the buzz. As David Hoffmann, host for popular YouTube travel channel David’s Been Here, noted, “Influencer marketing has branched out beyond fashion into the travel sphere, giving audiences a taste of what it’s like to quit their jobs, travel the world and create a personal brand doing something that was once considered a far-fetched luxury. Now that millennial influencers have taken Instagram by storm, places like the Maldives and Bali have become some of the hottest destinations, triggering flight deals and affordable hotel packages like never before.”
This is a massive shift in marketing dollars for destinations, and brands are seeing the returns in the form of booked hotels, booked flights and exploding local business. Influencers make travel, that often seems like a far off luxury, real and accessible.
The shift is also changing how other related trades are checking off their own bucket lists. Photographer Champagne Victoria has gone from shooting fashion editorials around Los Angeles to spending a better part of her year across Europe and island chains, because of the global impact of influencer marketing. By bundling trips with several brands projects, Champagne has been able to fully fund these trips, allowing her creativity to expand through different settings, and giving brands – many of which don’t have the big budgets of major labels – the opportunity to be shot in desirable destinations like the islands of Greece, Iceland, St. Lucia and so on.
If you imagine yourself waking up in the south of France, exploring the flower fields of CHANEL No. 5 – well, follow Stephanie of Honey & Silk, and see the dream become a reality. If you wanted to take the best Americana road-trip of your life, say from New Orleans to Boston and back, follow Courtney of Pretty Little Fawn. Influencers + travel are creating an exciting new wave of exploration – and thankfully with so many fashion influencers involved, you’ll finally know what to really wear.
For further reading, you can dig around the content of digital influencer management firm, God & Beauty. They discuss how travel is the new currency of influence and branded content.
Just like the everyday social media user, a successful brand should have its own story and personality.
Brand storytelling, when done properly, allows marketers to build personality and associate emotion with a brand to create (or, at least, attempt to create) a personal connection with the consumer. The prevalence of social media today has driven an interest in leveraging the convergence of content creation and programmatic advertising to tell the story behind a brand.
As co-founder and president of Track Marketing Group, I’ve helped different brands socialize their story using strong visual narratives and integration of live experiences to build engaged communities. Here are five tips to creating your social brand narrative, and hopefully, inspiring your community.
Use Powerful Imagery
It’s often said that good public speakers take their audience on a journey, hopefully leaving it feeling motivated and inspired. Leveraging the power of photography to take the consumer through a visual journey is one of the most powerful ways to tell your brand story across all social platforms.
Use original images. Storytelling is most effective when it’s personalized. Stock images will never do your brand story justice. Make the investment and create original visuals that tell the exact story in your brand voice.
Use social platform-specific visual tactics. With the number of social platforms consumers are using today, it’s safe to say that one size does NOT fit all. Instagram profile grids, the act of taking one single image and sharing it as a grid of several broken images to create a big picture when viewed on the main user profile, might work well on Instagram but lose their effectiveness on Twitter and Snapchat. Know your community and apply the best visuals that work within the confines of the different social platforms.
Limit The Use of Hashtags
Being on the agency side, clients are always looking to sum up their entire brand ethos using one hashtag. Unicorn hashtags — simple premises that the consumer can immediately understand and connect to the brand — are far and in-between.
Use hashtags as a way to corral and enhance your brand story along with the extended consumer chapters and plot twists. The hashtag should not be your brand story
Empower Your Community
One of the most popular story structures is called the “monomyth,” also known as “the hero’s journey.” In monomyths, heroes are called to leave their home and set out on a journey to an unknown place. After overcoming a trial, they return home with newfound wisdom or a reward that they can share with and ultimately help their community.
Social media and the power of user-generated content allow marketers the unique opportunity to allow the consumer to finish the monomyth. The brand’s journey into the unknown can be open ended and completed by the consumer in his or her own words and visuals.
Tactically, we can do this two ways:
Crowdsourced Content. Leveraging crowdsourced images to show the pillars of the brand story through the consumer’s lens and, in turn, bring the brand story into the real world.
Social Listening. Utilize social tools to identify and listen to your brand advocates and engage with them on a one-on-one basis to amplify the story beyond your reach.
Expand Your Message
The greatest stories are those that are broad and relatable to a wide group of people. The best TV shows in history all transcended their specific subject and captured a moment in time in our culture. “Star Wars” is a box office juggernaut because it tells a story that the consumer easily understands.
The best stories are relatable by the average person. Telling your brand story on social means that you have to be unique yet still attainable by the average social media user. If your entire story is only for the one percent on social, that’s not a story – that’s only a chapter.
Let The Words Tell A Story
Storytelling on social media is ultimately driven by words. Whether we are looking to inspire, motivate or galvanize the consumer and community, the copy that we use either as standalone text or as captions to our visuals will dictate the brand story arc(s).
New Balance, one of our agency clients, recently launched its “Always In Beta” campaign telling their brand story of being in a state of relentless improvement — that there is no finish line to what’s possible and that you can always improve with determination.
New Balance has taken its ‘Always in Beta’ brand story to social by creating original content that visually speaks to its performance heritage, yet with words that are broader than footwear and apparel. This has allowed it to become more than just a footwear brand but to enter its consumer’s personal storyline.
Great brands rely on stories to define their brands. With society driven by social media and an “always on” mentality, today’s brand journey must begin, build and extend onto social. Approach your storytelling with an authentic yet broader lens than your brand-specific filter, and you’ll give your consumer the social authority to make your brand story into their personal folktale.
This article is courtesy of BusinessCollective, featuring thought leadership content by ambitious young entrepreneurs, executives & small business owners.
One of the most challenging part in public relations (if you are a startup or a small business) is on how much money you are willing to spend in PR activities to encourage people to talk about your products or services.
Since budget in PR is often limited, you have to find other alternative ways to create awareness about your brand. Fortunately, social media is easy to acquire and has been proven as a very effective PR tool if you are on a budget.
Since social media is very popular and almost all those who have internet access often use it, the need to get your brand in the very centre of where the action happens should be your top priority. The good news is, in social media you can do PR activities within your budget. Because traditional PR is very costly, social media websites are now the best places to make people talk about your products or services.
When people talk about your brand in social media the probability of increasing its visibility is higher because anything that is hot and trending can always spark interest and discussion. It’s just like, when a social influencer talks about your brand and their followers talk about it as well, in no time, you’ll just realise that your content becomes viral and everyone starts talking about your brand. And, you know that this kind of buzz can help you a lot in building your PR.
Now, the important question is, how do you encourage people to talk about your products or services in social media if you are not a well-known brand? This is probably quite challenging because you can’t force people to create a buzz about your business just by asking them. This is where a bit of strategy and understanding your target audience come in a handy.
Create a compelling and controversial content. Compelling in a way that it has the power to grab people’s attention and stick in their thoughts that would prod them to talk about it to others. Controversial in a good way that it would encourage them to discuss about it for days. A good example is featuring current hot and controversial issues that are highly relevant to your target audience. If you are a SEO company, creating and publishing an Infographic that features studies that show how Fortune 500 businesses managed to earn billions through search engine optimisation is definitely a winner.
Blog about a very famous person most of your target audience love. Have you ever asked why entertainment websites are quite popular? It’s because their main topics revolve around very famous celebrities most people love and idolise. Featuring a very famous SEO celebrity and letting your target audience know the most surprising facts they haven’t known about them yet is a good example.
Start a social media contest and encourage influential users to join. This is quite popular and very effective as well. You can start by listing social media influencers whose interest are within your niche. You can start by tapping influential bloggers to join a contest that would measure their online popularity through total number of likes in Facebook. In the entire duration of the contest, people would surely talk about your brand and will become curious that even their favourite bloggers are patronising the contest you organised.
Pioneer a social cause that is highly relevant to your brand. A social cause such as a campaign for “free internet everywhere” is highly regarded by many and would surely catch the interest of your target audience. Pioneering social causes is a way of reaching out to them and making a good impression. In your campaign, you should encourage social media users to use your official brand hashtag every time they mention about your cause.
Promote the use of your official brand hashtag. People won’t talk about your brand if you remain invisible. In social media, hashtags are very powerful features that would allow users to become more familiar with your brand’s name. For example, every time you share a status, a tweet, or a post, always make sure to include your official hashtag and encourage your existing customers to use it as well.
Encouraging people to talk about your brand is no easy task. It would take more effort and time and there’s no absolute formula to do it right the first time. The tips above are not direct solutions but just a few ideas on how you do public relations even with a very limited budget.
“Fake news” and “Failing NYTimes” are the two phrases Donald Trump tweeted most in his first 100 days in office, showing just how much the president used Twitter to target the media at the start of his administration, according to Temple University researchers.
Temple faculty members Bruce Hardy and Heather LaMarre and doctoral student Connor Phillips studied every new tweet from the @realDonaldTrump account between Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20 and his 100th day in office on April 29. Excluding retweets, Trump tweeted 491 times during this period.
While several stories quantifying the president’s Twitter use have already appeared, the Temple researchers went further by using word association techniques, density charts and other tools.
According to their findings, Trump’s tweeting in his first 100 days “translates into a deliberate and targeted war on news.”
Trump tweeted “fake news” 32 times in his first 100 days, topping his list of favourite phrases. “Failing NYTimes” was second at 16 times. By comparison, Trump tweeted his campaign slogan “Make America Great Again” only 11 times.
Attacks on the media dominated Trump’s Twitter account. While Trump tweeted regularly about job creation and border security, and increased his tweets on healthcare during a push to pass new legislation in March, criticism of the media was consistently the topic he tweeted about most.
The correlation of words Trump used also shows how much he focused on the media. On a scale of 0 to 1, the words “failing” and “NYTimes” were highly correlated at 0.87, while the words “fake” and “news” were correlated at 0.82 and “fake” and “CNN” were correlated at 0.47.
Trump tweeted more positive words than negative ones, and the overall sentiment on his Twitter account was positive. The Temple researchers say this is largely because Trump tweeted the word “great” 86 times in his first 100 days. His next most frequently used positive word was “honour,” at 15 times.
So what’s the take-home for this? Be sure to be enthusiastically positive more than you complain, and you might find the same success as brand #TrumpforPresident.
We live in a fast paced world. Businesses change direction, companies grow, markets contract and new competitors arrive on the scene. No brand remains the same forever, it has to evolve to keep ahead of the competition.
For those of you who have an existing business, it’s important to take some time and evaluate your brand to highlight what you’ve been doing right and what needs to be improved upon.
Too many small businesses will refresh their logo and leave it there. But what they don’t realise is the impact having a complete brand can have on their business and how they differentiate themselves to stand out from their competition.
If you feel you already have a strong brand that fits with your business that’s great! It may just mean looking at refreshing your brand or tweaking elements within it so it stays relevant. (Try the Free Brand Worksheet at the end of this article to figure out how to improve your brand)
“Your brand is the single most important investment you can make in your business”
Steve Forbes
But if your company has grown, taken on a new direction with a new suite of products or services, or has merged with another company – you will really need to consider a rebrand.
Remember it’s not a quick-fix, so don’t follow the latest trends in design to match what everyone else is doing. You need to stand out and create a brand that will hold up over the years.
So how do you know if it’s time to rebrand?
A rebrand can mean anything from a change to your logo or image style to a complete review of your brand and strategy – which may include a new company name and logo design.
There are many reasons why a business needs to rebrand. Below are eight of the most common questions that come up when considering a rebrand:
1. Are you looking for a way to grow your business quickly?
You may be just starting out and want to create a big splash within your marketplace so investing in a professionally designed brand can help position your business quickly and stand out form your competitors.
2. Have you merged with another organisation or have been acquired?
This could require a new name, new logo design, and reviewing all brand materials, but with a clear brand strategy in place, and working with an experienced brand designer, can make the process easier.
3. Have you introduced an innovative new product or service?
When starting out, your business may have offered one type of product or service and a brand was created to fit, But as you business has grown or changed direction, its products, services and aspirations may have grown too, which means its branding may need to be refreshed to reflect these changes.
Britannia Quickmove Removals came to us to look at how they could setup a new Quickmove brand, separating away from the established Britannia brand so that they could target and grow a niche, local marketplace:
4. Are you developing a new strategy that will change the direction of your organisation?
Your target audiences, brand positioning and market share can all change over the years. What was once a highly impactful brand is now starting to lose it’s effectiveness and your business is slowing. This means it’s time to update its branding and reach new target audiences. If you feel you’re not sure where your brand is, a Roadmapping consultation may prove a worthwhile exercise.
When approached by Next Door Consulting they were developing a new strategy to define their business and wanted to refresh their brand identity, we looked at their brand name, logo design and website, updating the design to fit their new strategy, including a new logo strapline.
5. Do you need to introduce your products or services to a new audience?
As you expand and diversify, your original brand design may not fit a wider demographic. Perhaps your new product ranges or service offerings can be redesigned within the brand style or rebranded to fit each target audience.
6. Has it been more than 5 years since you reviewed your brand?
Changing marketplaces, evolving trends increasing competition will make it harder to stand out. You may find that rebranding may help. But be careful and research well before launching onto your existing audience.
Zedcore needed to update their brand identity after six years in business. Their original logo looked dated and didn’t fit with their current client base.
7. Does your brand tell the wrong, or outdated story?
Stories have always captured the human heart, ever since we all huddled round a fire and related our stories to each other. A brand story connects you with your ideal customer. If you have expanded and grown into other markets, you may have lost this connection. If you’re not sure how your story sounds today, then it may be time to look at your brand strategy and your true brand story.
8. Do you struggle to recruit and retain the best talent?
More and more businesses struggle to hire and keep the best people. Having a clear, open and honest brand promise that communicates to not only your customers but your team will help to retain the best people. From about us webpages that talk about your workplace to Employee Welcome packs – all go towards building your brand for the better.
If you feel any of the above rings true, it may be time for a rebrand. And if your situation doesn’t appear in the list, you may not need to do a complete brand overhaul, but It’s important to take some time and evaluate your existing brand to clarify what you’ve been doing right and what needs to be improved. A roadmapping session can help you get clear and align your business goals to your branding.
A brand is much more than just a logo design
Having a beautifully designed logo on its own doesn’t make your brand great. A brand is much more than this. You need to consider the ‘bigger picture’ as a brand, and this can involve a range of customer ‘touchpoints’ – a logo, suitable tagline, a responsive website design along with relevant content, and how you are viewed on social media.
We conducted roadmapping session with Quickmove Removals to help clarify their brand strategy and identity before rebranding and building their new lead generating website.
Your branding also reflects how you communicate with your customers, your staff and suppliers through online and offline activities. This can be down to how you answer your telephone, your email, your invoices, even how you meet and greet. (Limp handshake anyone?)
It’s not just about your products or services you provide in their respective elements, but the overall impact your company creates in a customer’s life. A strong rebrand will connect with your customers, unify your business, inspire your employees and ultimately increase sales for the long term.
Before committing to a rebrand, have a think about where you business is now and where you want to go.
FREE Brand Worksheet & Questionnaire!
To help you out I’ve created this worksheet and questionnaire just for this rebranding article. So take some time to answer the questions as best as you can. It will really help you get to the heart of your brand and figure out your business mission!
Ready to rebrand your business and take it to the next level? If you need help with your rebranding let me know 🙂 I offer free 30min brand consults to discuss your brand with tips and advice on how to improve it.
Designers predict the major branding trends of 2017.
At a time of tremendous political and cultural upheaval, one thing remains certain: Companies will keep trying to sell you stuff, and they’ll keep coming up with new ways to do it. Design is, of course, a major part of that pitch. We spoke with designers and design leaders at nearly a dozen agencies to identify the major branding trends of 2017. Below, find their five key predictions. And stay tuned for part two, in which we discuss branding trends for 2022.
Brands Will Radicalize
Conventional wisdom has it that brands shouldn’t talk politics. Why risk alienating potential customers? That was before Donald Trump.
“With the rise of political authoritarianism, brands will face fundamental choices.”
Now that a sneering, orange man-child is sinking his tiny fingers into every aspect of American life, experts believe activism will become nearly as ubiquitous in the brand world as it is on college campuses. “As a reflection of the changing political tides, many brands will evolve from ‘mission-driven’ to ‘activist,’ encouraging consumers to go beyond simply subscribing to a set of core values and driving them to participate in actions to defend them,” says Geoff Cook, partner at the branding agency Base Design. “In choosing sides, brands will alienate certain consumers, yes, but will galvanize an impassioned constituency in the process.”
To Melanie McShane, head of strategy at Wolff Olins in New York, activism isn’t just about tapping into the zeitgeist; it’s a business imperative. “With the rise of political authoritarianism, brands will face fundamental choices,” she says. “About whether to take a stand on issues that offend them and their users, risking the wrath of politicians and their acolytes. Or stay quiet and seem complicit.”
Which raises an important issue: It’s one thing to take action on matters that reflect a company’s values. It’s another to exploit a fragile electorate to garner attention. Now is not the time for shameless opportunism. We have plenty of that in the White House.
Brands Will Finally Stop Trying To Trick You
Trump’s pathological lying could affect brands another way: It could actually persuade them to tell the truth.
Consumers are sick of the bullshit. And brands will have to adjust.
“2016 was one expression after another of an unprecedented collapse of people’s trust in established institutions,” says John Paolini, partner and executive creative director at Sullivan. “In 2017, this macro-societal trend will impact brands, creating pervasive skepticism among consumers in how they perceive the messages and promises companies are making to them. This sense of distrust and suspicion will catalyze a brand neo-traditionalism.” Brands will be stripped down to their essential parts, their narratives made simpler and more transparent. “Honesty will reign,” Paolini says. “Successful branding will have fewer tricks and more truth.”
How or whether that would apply to mega-corporations shilling morally questionable goods is anyone’s guess (will McDonald’s commercials start looking like clips from Super Size Me?). But the larger takeaway remains: Consumers are sick of the bullshit. And brands will have to adjust.
Symbols Will Become More Than Graphic Icons
Consider the most iconic logos of the 20th century: Nike’s swoosh, NBC’s peacock, Apple’s bitten fruit. These were testaments to the power of symbols. But Sagi Haviv, partner at the graphic design firm Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv, believes the era of traditional symbol-based logos has drawn to a close. “When my partners Tom Geismar and Ivan Chermayeff were designing logos in 1957, the year our firm began, practically any conceivable geometric shape was available for trademarking,” he says. “Today it seems like every conceivable shape has been done. . . . As a result, both designers and clients have started to associate graphic logo design with trademark infringement, and many of them are deciding to play it safe by simply rendering the name alone, without a distinctive graphic icon.”
Haviv believes designers will still find ways “to create new, original graphic icons.” Indeed, we’ve already seen symbols take on new, unconventional forms. The hotel booking app Hotel Tonight turned its logo, a bed-shaped “H,” into a user interface element that consumers swipe to confirm a purchase. Wolff Olins recently designed an open-source mark that’s nothing but a colon and two slashes—a code string that can be rendered and remixed in text, on a web page, or anywhere else a brand might live. Expect more experiments that bring symbols to life in 2017.
The Visual Language Of VR Will Creep Into Meatspace
Branded virtual reality “experiences” are every company’s favorite new marketing tool, which is a pretty good sign they’re headed for the graveyard. But once you get past all the gimmicks, you’ll start to see VR used in some unexpected ways. “Right now, companies are approaching [VR] in a computer game way,” says James Trump, creative director at Moving Brands in San Francisco. “But there’s so much more that can be done. It’s new ground, and we haven’t really scratched the surface.”
Trump envisions brands experimenting with new forms of typography and layered visuals that capitalize on the 360-degree perspective wearing a virtual reality headset affords. Perhaps most intriguingly, he thinks the visual language of VR will inform branding in the real world. “Brands will start to be influenced by and borrow from the visual style of VR,” he says. “I can imagine this playing out in lots of ways—combining flat and 3D elements, more spatial-feeling typography, and more layering to imagery.”
AI Will Force Brands To Examine Their Ethics
The trend with the greatest potential to transform how brands reach consumers in 2017 and beyond is the rise of artificial intelligence. Whether through chatbots or voice assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri, brands can now speak directly to customers. On one hand, this lets companies cater their message to individual consumers, which could potentially reduce the annoying, spray-and-pray approach of most marketing today. As David Schwarz, partner at the experience design agency HUSH, puts it: “Much like your Facebook or Instagram timeline is both personally and algorithmically curated, branding will be more in the eye of the beholder than in the eye of top-down business leadership.”
On the other hand, AI gives companies unprecedented access to consumers’ lives. My colleague Mark Wilson paints a dark picture of such a future: “Have we evolved to be such inherently social creatures that when we have the opportunity—and eventual necessity—of talking directly to companies all day, will we all just be consumer pinballs, being knocked around a manipulation machine? Will regulators be able to keep up? Will social niceties allow big data to meld with big manipulation, so we’re sweet-talked into supersizing before we’re shamed by a drill instructor into exercising it off?”
These are troubling questions—ones that brands will have to grapple with before embracing artificial intelligence, and all the moral and ethical responsibilities attached to it. As for consumers: If we’ve learned anything from 2017 so far, it’s that even though brands may sound more and more human, they’ll never be our friend.
We revisit the highs, the lows, the most-Tweeted about. Here are our picks for the best and worst identity design this year.
It has never been harder to design a good visual identity. Brands live on dozens of platforms, so they have to look as good on a billboard as they do on a phone screen. Armchair critics emboldened by the ease of the web attack change no matter how necessary, skewing clients toward less ambitious work. And yet the companies below managed to eke out thoughtful, even occasionally daring, new visual identities this year. Of course not everyone hit the mark. Here, we take you through a year of branding—the good, the bad, and the most controversial.
The Best
Grubhub
Grubhub may have started out as a small startup, but in 2016, the 12-year-old company services 7 million people and 44,000 restaurants. It needed a grown-up redesign: a look that was authentic yet polished and one that would work on both a national and hyper-local level. Wolff Olins took on the task and rebranded the company, populating ads with lifestyle photos (think Airbnb ads and Apple commercials) and hand-drawn lettering, and adding chef highlights, animated food items, and a custom keyboard of GrubHub “mmmojis” to the site. Overall, the new look is fresh and professional, but retained some of the scrappy personality of its earlier paper cut-out illustrations. The hope is that it will persuade the shrinking, but still sizable population of people who still prefer placing delivery orders over the phone to switch to the web.
MasterCard
Before this year the MasterCard logo hadn’t changed significantly in 20 years, but the way that we buy and pay for things certainly had. Tasked with the company’s first major redesign in two decades, Pentagram partner Michael Bierut and designer Hamish Smyth refrained from making drastic changes to the familiar overlapping yellow and red circles in the logo—instead opting to modernize it by removing the comb effect in the center and placing the wordmark outside of the symbol. With the option to just use the familiar symbol without the wordmark, the system is flexible enough to work across multiple products and platforms, like the MasterPass digital payments and Priceless rewards program. The logo is also optimized to work well on mobile, the direction most of our bank transactions have been going.
Helia
Sometimes it’s the lesser-known companies that pack the biggest punch with a stellar redesign. Such was the case with Helia, a data science and analytics company whose client roster includes companies like Unilever, easyJet, IBM, Diageo, and Sony PlayStation. Designed by the New York-based design firm Form&, the identity system centers around a simple circular logo imbued with a gradient that changes colors based on weather and geographic data. In that way, in both the print and digital form, the color of the logo serves as a unique data stamp. The eye-catching redesign brings a company that typically works behind-the-scenes front and center.
Instagram
In May, Instagram shocked the internet when it unveiled a pared-down, rainbow-gradient upgrade to its Polaroid icon. But the new icon contained some clever details: an image that referenced photography’s evolution away from film-based cameras to phones, and a rainbow gradient that made the icon pop in a sea of other icons (and subtly referenced the rainbow stripes of the old icon). Not surprisingly, the fervor quickly subsided. Now your thumb gravitates instinctively toward the icon on your phone dashboard without a passing thought given to the skeuomorphic old one (there’s no need to reference analog cameras in an app for your iPhone cam).
Zendesk
The customer service software provider Zendesk offers one of the most drastic before-and-after logo stories: from a cartoonish smiling Buddha on a chat headset to a sleek system of geometric shapes. The identity retained its playfulness, though, with each Zendesk service receiving an iteration of the logo that has its own animated personality. The Help Center, for example, is two arrows, one leading the other. The logo for Support is a tall rectangle leaning on a shorter one. The best part might be when you realize why this charming shape system is so familiar: It was inspired by wooden toy blocks from the founder’s Danish childhood.
Zocdoc
Health care platform Zocdoc launched in 2007 with a staid, traditional logo that the company’s founders bought for a mere $80. Now that the business is valued at $1.8 billion and is rapidly expanding its model to connect patients with hospital systems as well as individual practitioners, it figured it could afford something new. Wolff Olins did the redesign: a friendly, human-centered identity with a cute little anthropomorphic logo that turns the letter Z into a emoticon-like face, who goes by “Zee.” The responsive Zee gets it: He can look puzzled, sad, relieved, happy. He too experiences the roller-coaster ride of emotions you go through when you’re sick and struggling to recall the details of your health care co-pay, all while trying to book an appointment today, not three weeks from now.
VSCO
VSCO, the popular image editing app, got a major redesign this year, of both its user interface (launched in June) and its visual identity (launched in February). The identity redesign was based around a custom-made VSCO Gothic typeface and a system of slick yet emotive symbols that construct a visual alphabet of sorts. The new circular logo is meant to embody the global community that now uses the app not just for editing, but also as a photo-sharing platform. VSCO is like an artier Instagram, with a user base of mostly professional and amateur photographers. The new black, white, and dusty pink design reflects its trendiness, but in a way that is crisp and polished.
The Most Controversial
The Met
This year, the award for the rebrand that drew the most outrage goes to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Met overhauled its logo and identity system—much to the chagrin of many design critics—and revealed a new logo that rebrands the museum as “The Met.” The two words, stacked on top of each other in large scarlet lettering, replaced the stylized M logo originally taken from a woodcut by Luca Pacioli. Wolff Olins did the identity, but the rollout was botched when the museum sent out press materials with the new logo before it was announced. Identities tend to get judged harshly when they are launched sans explanation—especially changes as major as this one—but it’s been 10 months and the logo has already worn in nicely. We like the bold new design, and we’re glad it stuck around long enough for the dust to settle.
The Worst
Uber
When Uber’s new icon came out in February, it was widely ridiculed. It looked like PacMan. An asshole. A “little kind of bluish sideways ass.” Wired dedicated considerably more words to the icon with a behind-the-scenes look, during which Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said he kept the design in-house because he didn’t trust anyone else to do it for him. Bad call, Kalanick. The icon managed to look both soullessly corporate and overworked. It was also poorly executed. Yet, just like the (better, more thoughtful) Instagram redesign, the Uber icon shows how quickly these controversial rebrandings are normalized—particularly with apps we interact with so much that their use becomes almost subconscious.
Trump-Pence Logo
Well, here we are: the absolute worst brand design of the year. We wish we didn’t have to bring this pair up, but there’s no getting around the fact that the Trump-Pence logo takes the prize. The animation above says it all, but Twitter said it pretty well, too. The campaign buckled under the online mockery, pulled the logo, and replaced it with something less suggestive, but it was too late. The image is seared into our minds forever. With Trumpistan looming, you’ll want to keep this GIF close—a memento from simpler times.
