How rethinking brand expression influenced Microsoft products and vice versa
Imagine a sheet of paper with a couple dozen tiny dots spread out on it. Their placement doesn’t seem random. You can sort of make out a shape, but there’s no obvious way they go together.
Now imagine a sheet with identical tiny dots, only each one is numbered. The dots may still look like a jumble, but the numbers indicate how they link together. You draw a line from one to two, two to three, and so on. Oh look, you’ve drawn a seal balancing a beach ball on its nose! Gold star.
Working for a big company sometimes feels like staring at thousands of dots and having little idea how to connect them. I’ve been with Microsoft since 1995, but I don’t think I understood how these dots could work together until 2015.
That’s when we changed our marketing strategy. Before, the product design team would build and design the experiences, and the marketing team layered a brand identity on top to sell it. With the 2015 change, branding was no longer a “layer” of marketing disconnected from the product experience. Instead, branding became directly tied to and influenced by the product. And maybe, just maybe, the brand could influence the product in return.
In the heavily siloed world of giant corporations, that was practically crazy talk.
One dot at a time
Simplicity became our mission. We first needed to build brand principles and the brand story (in other words, why we exist in the world). Then, we’d figure out how the principles and story inform the product experience. We theorized that connecting experience and expression among product, brand identity, and marketing, and extrapolating those principles into meaningful guidance across the company, would create a better experience for customers.
Numbers started to appear next to those scattered dots staring me in the face. The trick was getting other people to see them, too.
To show people the value of brand creative teams in marketing, we needed to have a lot more conversations with product design. First, we needed to understand what they were building and where they were headed. Second, we needed to create a visual identity closely tied to the product’s visual language, which a worldwide marketing organization could later implement.
Easy enough, right?
Thankfully, our senior leadership encourages us to work together for the greater good of the company, pushing away our own egos as much as possible to bring success to all. We call this One Microsoft. Particularly in our area, acting as One Microsoft is a necessity: we have a tiny creative team and can’t succeed without the assistance of other great creatives, so we need to understand each other’s business and create together. When it works, it’s magical.
Case study: transforming Microsoft Office
Rebranding Office was one such magical example. For the first time, we looked to product teams for cues to lift the brand identity and create simple, scalable guidance. We worked directly with product design, an approach that we’d take later with Azure and HoloLens 2.
Our approach had five steps:
Create the brand story working across brand strategy, engineering, and marketing, including a deep dive into product design principles and future principles.
Conduct an end-to-end visual audit of the entire customer journey.
Identify visual patterns and cues from the product, and from the parent Microsoft brand, to create a visual identity for the brand expression.
Build creative principles and theories around color, illustration, typography, and photography, then stress test across all communication touchpoints in the marketing funnel.
Create a simple design system that designers could scale worldwide without much creative oversight.
Boards from one of the many visual audits done in 2016 for Microsoft Office.
Our audit concluded that Office needed a more sophisticated yet simplified visual identity connecting our product experience and marketing communications. The marketing teams were doing their best; they followed the Microsoft brand guide for reference, but the broadness of the guide and visual system made it difficult to implement. We pared down the brand system in the name of simplicity.
Pages from the Microsoft Office Brand Guidelines.
Our collaboration effectively linked the pre-purchase marketing communications to the post-purchase ones. For example, we used our marketing expertise at engaging users to improve the first-usage experience (for example, the “how to” videos that introduced users to Office online). In that space, the product team focused more on UX, not the kind of branded moments within the product where you can tell a story.
The fifth step in that process was perhaps the toughest, simply because of scale. Several hundred marketers worked on Office, each with their own budget, each choosing their own creative. Because of that, and their concern that we’d just scold them for doing things wrong, none of their work went through a creative review process. We not only had to change how people worked, but we also had to assure them we had their best interests in mind.
In time, people from other teams understood that we weren’t focused solely on creative, that we wanted to help them meet their business objectives and performance metrics. Again, it comes back to that One Microsoft principle of trusting each other and helping each other succeed. Product teams started seeking out our involvement, and marketing trusted us to make more things on their behalf.
Keeping a good thing going
We emulated this turning point elsewhere. We worked directly with principal designers Paul Cooper and Lance Garcia to build creative principles (for everyone keeping track, that’s step 4) that ended up changing the patterns and UX of azure.com. Functionality informed brand choices, which reflected back on the site itself.
Azure.com
The same goes for HoloLens 2, which was perhaps our most daunting task. The product team had worked on it for two years by the time we stepped in to begin branding, so we had catching up to do. (Yes, not ideal.)
HoloLens 2 works in mixed reality, a new medium for most users. Because of that, people need more than product photography or UI to understand how it works. So, I partnered closely John Nguyen and David Wolf from the product design team to come up with a solution. We were inspired by prismatic light in holograms and by the way the product sensors understand the world and generate a 3D map. We believed that this prism and map would tie the marketing and the product experience together in a beautiful way. The product experience largely informed the elegant brand we created for HoloLens 2 and subsequent marketing materials.
HoloLens 2 Prismatic Color Blend used in illustration, full-bleed backgrounds, and HoleLens 2 wordmark logo.
These marketing materials turned out well — so well that they influenced the product. Romiro Torres, the creative director for HoloLens 2 UX, was working out the visual expression and experience of how the device maps a room. He integrated the same visualization into the product experience, so users see the same visualization we created for marketing when HoloLens 2 maps the room they’re standing in.
HoloLens 2 Room Mapping from the launch announcement in Barcelona
Chances are that doesn’t sound like a big deal to you, but it felt huge — that “maybe, just maybe” moment I mentioned earlier. If you listen closely, you can hear silo walls cracking.
Those are the kinds of moments we strive to create every day. They become a lot more likely when teams spend the time to truly understand each other. Branding makes that easier. It provides that layer of customer clarity, connecting the dots so that marketing and product can take a step back, look at the lines, and say, “Wow, a seal balancing a beach ball!”
Microsoft Brand Creative Director. I don’t believe creative that has commercial success tags it with an odious suggestion that is stinks. Views are my own.
In today’s business-savvy world, it has become vital for ventures and brands to set themselves apart from their competition. Businesses nowadays face a daunting task of presenting themselves in the virtual world in such a way that they attract more customers. Creating brand awareness and doing so in a way that it not only attracts customers but also builds a pool of prospective clients is the crux of running a business online.
There are many key components to building a stable and attractive brand image to run your business. In this blog, we will go through the 5 major components that will help your venture skyrocket its brand image and utilize the potential of online marketing to its fullest.
1. Branding
Branding your business is more than taglines and logos and flashy posters or ads. Finding the purpose of your business and conveying it to the customers is called branding. Creating brand awareness is perhaps one of the most important components of running a successful business.
The more innovative and reachable your branding strategy is, the more people will get acquainted with it. For creating a branding strategy, businesses often rely on a good digital marketing to elevate their brand image. Hence, vetting and engaging with a good digital marketing company that can take care of developing comprehensive strategies for online marketing and coming up with innovative ideas to expand your brand’s reach is imperative for this component.
2. Segregating features and benefits
Contrary to popular belief, highlighting the benefits of your business will attract customers to engage with your business. Features your business has are just attributes, but the benefits your business provides your customers are the real shining star in attracting them. Highlighting benefits will retain your already existing customers. It will also bring in a slew of new customers who would want to reap the benefits of your business. This component plays a key part in digital marketing, and often includes client testimonials and customer reviews.
3. Customer experience
What is a business’ purpose other than catering to their customers’ needs? The focal point of any business is keeping its customers satisfied. A customers’ journey starts with your business as soon as they book an appointment or enter your premises. From that point, until they leave your premises and use your products/services, you must keep in mind to heed to everything the customer is feeling or saying.
Using a Customer Management System is imperative in tracking customers’ activities and takes their feedback, so you can keep them satisfied throughout their engagement. Moreover, this increases customer loyalty and improves your brand image, which makes customer retention easier. This data can be leveraged for digital marketing and attracting new customers.
4. Consistency
Aiming to provide services that are consistently good makes sure that your brand shines brighter than your competitors. If a customer is returning to your establishment, they are not doing so because of your product, but your service. Big brands make it their goal to present their customers with a journey that they will remember every time they use your product.
Leveraging this consistency by highlighting it in your online marketing is the best strategy your business can adapt. An established and good digital marketing company knows how to present customer experience as an asset of your brand to the new audience, which persuades them to engage with your brand and experience your exemplary customer journey themselves.
5 . Promotions and scale
Once your business has built up a loyal customer base, you have to set it up for an upward trajectory if approached in the right way. Using targeted strategies like promotions can help elevate your brand and also attract a multitude of new customers who were engaging with your competitors. You need to make them see that engaging with your brand would be more beneficial for them.
This would also help your business build potential partnerships with various other businesses which will further help in increasing your customer base.
Once this is done, all you have to do is serve these new customers as you did with your loyal customers, and you will attain a colossal mass of promoters of your brand who would vouch for your brand through reviews and testimonials.
Conclusion
Working with an efficient digital marketing company can help you majorly scale up your brand image and business in a lesser time than handling everything yourselves, which leaves many rooms for errors that can affect your brand negatively.
A professional and expert digital marketing company can help you navigate through the digital world and increase your brand awareness by a huge margin. Taking your brand and converting it into a luminary in the marketplace is the sole purpose of your venture’s marketing strategy, and hiring a good digital marketing company like SEMrush where you get all your Marketing toolkit under one platform can take you a long way in the digital world and elevating your brand image to the highest standards.
The most successful brands aren’t created, they are unearthed. Successful branding is based on authenticity. So how do you reveal your own brand? First, by searching yourself for answers to questions like these: What do you do better than anyone? What are you most proud of? What makes you lose track of time?
In Digital You: Real Personal Branding in the Virtual Age, branding authority William Arruda describes the 21st century world of personal branding and guides you to define, express, and expand your personal brand for the virtual world. Branding is not about being famous, Arruda explains; it’s about being selectively famous. It’s about more than social media excess. When you understand the true value of personal branding, you can use it as a serious career development strategy.
Digital You offers a deep dive to understanding and defining your unique promise of value—making a great first impression, mastering multimedia, and, ultimately, expanding your network and promoting thought leadership. You’ll learn how to develop, design, and sustain a personal brand throughout the fluid movements of any career. Understand how to be clear about your digital brand and your unique promise of value so you can increase your success and happiness at work and in life. It’s time to stop worrying about career extinction and start crafting a brand of distinction.
If you’re one of many business owners and entrepreneurs out there who thinks that ’brand’ equals the company’s name and logo, we strongly encourage you to think again. In today’s business world, it’s not uncommon that people make mistakes such as this one. And while it’s true that brand is tightly connected to these instances (the company’s name and logo), the story doesn’t end there.
If you aim at successfully running your business, you need to realize just how important your brand is. We’re not very fond of strict definitions of terms, but if we had to sum up what ’brand’ actually encompasses, we’d have to roughly say that it involves (and revolves around) all the experiences that people have with your firm. You’ll notice that the keyword here is the term ’experience’. This means that you need to worry about how your company is being perceived by others. Your customers and prospects should ideally have a pretty good all-around experience with your firm, which usually means that your brand is doing alright.
But often, this is not the case. For various different reasons, it happens that companies stop being the customer’s favorite. Sometimes it’s the competition and in other cases, it’s bad marketing decisions that led to this situation. Whatever it may be the case, if you realize that your company is struggling on its way to the top, or things have suddenly started to go downhill for you, maybe you should consider rebranding. That’s why, in this article, we’re going to talk about these things more thoroughly. We’ll guide you through the process of recognizing if your company needs a rebrand, and if it does, how to do it the right way.
Distinguish Yourself From the Rest of the Peers and Competitors
One of the most crucial things you must do is to differentiate yourself from the competition. You can’t expect to retain old customers and gain new ones if people can’t really tell what your brand is exactly about and why is it so special.
In order to do this, a prudent thing to do would be to rebrand. This is especially important if you realize you have some generic logo or a name that doesn’t resonate in people’s heads. Customers like to see when businesses care about these things because it also shows that they care about them. So, if you’re using stock images in your marketing materials, it’s best advised to stop this practice. People recognize these generic images and this tells them that you’re not as involved as you should be in making sure they get the best experience when dealing with your product.
If You Suspect Your Brand Is Outdated – Rebrand ASAP
There’s a pretty simple rule in marketing: if you even suspect that your brand is outdated, you should rebrand immediately. Sometimes this is also advisable in situations when you’re not really suspecting anything, but if and when in doubt, make sure to breathe a new life into your existing brand.
Some of the clear signs that you possibly should consider rebranding is an outmoded font or flash-based website, for example. These things belong to the past. You might think that this is not as important, but since so many things happen online, it’s paramount that your company has a fresh, modern-looking website that’s going to visually match today’s marketing trends and criteria. You need to realize that your company’s website, logo, name, and the whole visual identity can be either a deal-maker or a deal-breaker.
Any Sign of Poor Reputation Requires Rebranding
On the other hand, if you start seeing that your business is slowly going down the drain and it’s getting a poor reputation, it’s essential to do something pronto. You can’t expect to live from old glory days, and you need to learn how to adjust accordingly. Don’t sell your business if you don’t have to since there are other ways you can try to save it.
Rebranding is clearly one of those things that, if done properly, can make your business rise again to its previous blissful days. Overcoming negative reputation is never easy, but if there’s a proper way to try, it’s making sure the customers start seeing you in a completely new light.
It’s Essential to Rebrand When Your Company Evolves
But it’s not crucial to rebrand just in case your company starts to struggle. On the contrary – even if it starts to grow rapidly, it’s of utmost importance to think about different strategies and ways to rebrand. Many people make the mistake of leaving everything as it is in a situation when the business starts making progress and becomes a success. But this is one of the errors you definitely need to avoid.
And in those situations when you’re trying to expand your business to other markets, it’s also of prime importance to make sure there aren’t any other companies or businesses with similar brand names, logos, and that their visual identity doesn’t match yours in any way. You clearly want to avoid people associating your brand with someone else’s, or mistaking you for someone else. If this happens, you could be looking at potential problems that revolve around patent disputes, or other legal issues. We’d strongly advise you to make sure that this doesn’t happen and to spare yourself from going to court over these matters.
A Huge Part of Successful Rebranding Is Having Clear Goals
This is something that applies to all companies, no matter if they’re in the process of rebranding or not: you need to have clear goals in mind. If you want to be successful, you have to know what is it exactly that you’re trying to accomplish. The way you approach your company’s mission and values is going to set the tone for the entire venture.
That’s why it’s so important to ask yourself and try to honestly answer the questions that revolve around the reasons why your company exists, what values does it promote, and what is it that you can offer that’s rather unique. Having clear answers to these questions will most definitely help you to rebrand successfully.
Consistency is Key – Make Sure to Rebrand Accordingly
Speaking of successful rebranding, you need to make sure to go through this process accordingly. This means that you have to pay attention to the way your brand has been perceived in the past. If you’re not rebranding because of the poor reputation, there’s no need to take the entirely different route. On the contrary, it’s better to stay on track and develop a strategy that’s going to work effectively with your existing brand.
Even if you have the luxury to start from scratch here, it’s better to be consistent. You don’t want people to have troubles recognizing your product or services – you only want to give them something that’s going to show that you care (for them, as well as your position in the marketplace). You want to attract customers with higher retention rates, but you also don’t want to lose any old customers in the process.
Pay Attention to Your Competitors
We’ve already indicated how important it is to set yourself apart from the competitors. One of the ways to properly rebrand has to involve doing your due diligence and researching what the competition does. Ideally, you want to create the brand that’s so powerful that everyone else looks at and mimics what you’re doing.
But the truth is, even if you’re a trailblazer and a trendsetter in this regard and other companies try to recreate your strategies and methods, you still have to watch closely what everyone else is doing. It’s ok to play that bushwhacker role in front of the consumers, but when the doors are closed, you simply have to know what your competition does. If you don’t do this, you might find yourself in the position of having to rebrand due to some other reasons, like the poor reputation that we’ve already talked about, for instance.
Be Open to Different Ideas From Your Team
Being a company leader or manager isn’t the easiest task. Often time you have to make all the big decisions concerning your company. But in some cases, this creates a certain problem: people who are in high positions within the company tend to neglect other people’s opinions. If you want to (continue to) have success, it’s strongly advised to have people who your trust on your team.
Other voices need to be heard and you can all profit from this. Not only can you hear some good new ideas about the proper way to rebrand, but you’ll also show everyone that their opinion matters. This is extremely important if you’re looking to create good office vibes and an environment that values good ideas.
Don’t Underestimate the Complexity of the Task
If you’re looking to rebrand the right way, don’t underestimate the complexity of the task. It may sound like it’s not that big of a deal – you just take care of your visual identity – but remember what we’ve said at the very beginning: your brand is much more than this. It’s not enough to have a new logo, name, or a company website that follows latest web-design trends. You have to pay attention to the whole user experience.
Many company owners don’t realize just how lengthy and serious this process is. You need to plan everything carefully and manage the entire endeavor from start to finish. If you neglect certain parts of this process, the whole thing can be deemed a failure. That’s why a well thought-out project plan is crucial here. As we said, don’t try to micromanage every step, but trust your team to make sound decisions.
Ensure to Timely Launch Your Rebrand
Another important thing you have to make sure is to launch your rebrand on time. This is also connected to closely watching the market. You need to see what your competitors do and, like it or not, follow their pace from time to time.
For example, if you realize that your competitors are preparing to do something big, you need to assess the situation properly. If you launch your rebrand before they make their big announcement, you can potentially find yourself in a bad situation, especially if their surprise outshines yours. Customers could completely forget the fact that you’ve rebranded, or think that it’s not a particularly big deal (compared to your competition).
On the other hand, if you wait too long to launch your rebrand, you’re putting the entire operation in jeopardy. It wouldn’t be the first time that a company has put valuable resources into rebranding without ever actually launching it. You need to do whatever it is in your power to avoid this scenario. On top of this, you also need to avoid any confusion – the potential customers and consumers should know exactly why you rebranded. There should be a clear logic behind the idea and they need to see the improvements right away.
The Bottom Line
Every company needs a rebrand from time to time – this is something that’s inevitable because of the simple fact that things change rapidly. You don’t want to have an outdated brand: this reflects poorly on the entire company. And once you gain that reputation, it can be pretty hard to make it go away. And one of the ways to make this negative reputation go away is exactly through rebranding.
In this article, we’ve talked about how to know when your business needs a rebrand, and how to do it properly. The most important thing to remember is that you need to take care of your customers at all times – that way you’re actually giving enough space to your company to potentially become a huge success. Constantly growing, evolving, further progressing, and expanding your business to other markets should be one of your top priorities, but just make sure you’re protected from patent infringement. You don’t want any legal issues to stop you from reaching your full business potential.
By Nick Brown
Nick is a blogger and a marketing expert currently engaged on projects for Media Gurus, an Australian business, and marketing resource. He is an aspiring street artist and does Audio/Video editing as a hobby.”
Weirdly, every entrepreneur wants to be like Jobs but they don’t bother to master the basics.
In my experience, marketers don’t frequently start their own companies, which is a pity, because most startups from the get-go make these three basic branding errors that hobble their growth:
1. A head-scratcher brand name
A brand name that needs to be explained is a liability rather than an asset. Ideally, a brand name should create a positive emotion that ties into the product or service. The classic example here is Apple Computer. (It’s a computer, but it’s small, tasty, and easy to use.)
One of the worst brand names I’ve encountered is Deuce Productions. The term “productions” could mean anything, and the word deuce refers to a playing card with two pips. Turns out, it was an events production company run by a pair of twins. Even when explained, it’s a head-scratcher.
If I were rebranding them and they really thought (for some reason) that being twins was a competitive advantage (I’m not at all sure about this), I’d advise them to go with something that actually has a positive and meaningful twist, like “Twice-as-Good Events.”
2. Launching with multiple brand names
Over the weekend, a friend asked me to look at his branding plan, which included a corporate brand, a product brand, and a personal brand, all of which were different from each other.
It’s very difficult to establish a single brand in the minds and memories of investors and customers. Three brands? Not gonna happen. I told him to focus on one brand and dump the other two.
I learned this one the hard way. When I first launched myself as a writer/speaker/consultant, I tried to promote “Geoffrey James” and “The Institute for Business Wisdom.” I quickly learned that two brands was one too many and rebranded as Geoffrey James LLC.
Startups should ideally launch with a corporate brand that’s also its product brand. Once again, the classic example is Apple Computer, whose first product was … you guessed it … the Apple computer.
3. Adding new brands rather than extending existing brands
Many companies seem to think that the more brands the better. (I think this belief might be a leftover from the “Heinz 57” days.) The worst example of this was General Motors, which was a brand-name salad until the company wised up and dumped half of them.
When expanding your product set, it makes far more sense to extend your existing brand than to launch a new brand name. That way, you take advantage of whatever momentum your current brand has acquired. Again, the classic example is Apple, with the Apple I, Apple II, Apple III, and then Macintosh (still building on the small, tasty, easy meme).
Let’s apply this principle to a real-life startup.
I recently purchased a full-body motion-capture suit (for doing SFX like Gollum) called Perception Neuron PRO from a company named Noitom. Just to be clear, I have no relationship with this company; I just happened to buy one of its products.
Both Perception Neuron and Noitom are head-scratcher brand names, but they’re also disjoint. Noitom recently launched a new product called the Hi5 VR Glove. That’s a decent brand name (if you know what “VR” means), but it has no obvious connection with the original two brands.
A better approach would have been to start with a corporate and product brand name like Hi5 MOCAP and a first product named the Hi5 MOCAP Suit. That would then be followed by the Hi5 MOCAP Glove, etc.
This simplified brand scheme would have made the company and its products more memorable, easier to promote, and easier to combine and package.
On April Fools’ day no one is safe from brand PR stunts. Where Microsoft has just initiated a blanket ban on 1 April humour, other companies have decided to uphold the tradition of capitalising on the event with some fake news of their own.
In a memo to staff last week, Microsoft noted how April Fools’ pranks had a “limited positive impact”, pointing out that ill-judged jokes can even result in “unwanted news cycles”. But while big tech might be cynical about filling journalists’ inboxes with fake news for a day, consumers aren’t as uptight.
In the UK at least, research indicates 86% of people think humour is one of the best ways a company can connect with them. 68% even say they think April Fools’ campaigns were funny.
Though some admittedly miss the funny bone, this year’s lot of brand executions is a mixed bag of inspired ideas, millennial product parodies and a few clumsy rebrands.
Among the efforts is a ‘height verification tool’ from Tinder which has already proven to be divisive despite its aim of bringing “truthfulness back into the world of online dating”. British retailer Boden, meanwhile, has riffed off the current Brexit chaos with a tongue-in-cheek Breton top ban.
Scroll down to see the rest of this year’s tongue-in-cheek stunts, campaigns and product launches from around the world, from Singapore to Scotland.
Tinder: Height verification badge
Recognising that height is a valuable currency in the world of online dating, Tinder has trolled users by announcing plans to introduce a ‘height verification badge’. “Simply input your true, accurate height with a screenshot of you standing next to any commercial building. We’ll do some state-of-the-art verifying and you’ll receive your badge directly on your profile,” it teases.
Durex: Fish skin and mala hot pot flavoured condoms
Durex is inviting couples to unleash the heat with a special new flavour:”Spice things up and experience the taste of the fish skin condom with mala hot pot flavour. Packed with handpicked ingredients for your tasteful experience. Let ’em pleasure your mouth…” it insists on its Facebook page.
Jameson: A glittering deterrent
Jameson has launched a clever (and sparkly) way to deter would-be whisky thieves from stealing a dram of the good stuff. Jameson Catchmates comes complete with ‘glittershot’ technology. One twist of the cap sees any sip-stealing roommate or relative met with a wave of green glitter, turning their sticky fingers into shimmering ones.
Boden: Brexit Breton top ban
Breton shirts are the latest casualty of EU upheavals according to Boden. The retailer claims consent has been withdrawn for it to continue producing the French-inspired sartorial staple in the UK, and that anyone owning a Breton top will now need to apply for a special EU shirt license to wear one or face a €1000 fine. As such, it’s offering a thoughtful solution to customers: a Breton stripe removal service. The complimentary postal service erases illegal stripes by screen-printing, a technique the company calls ‘the Bret-off’. Boden’s founder has been giving interviews to the media this morning.
Travellodge: Bedshare service
In its bid to compete with sharing economy rivals, Travel lodge is taking sharing to the next level with a fresh ‘bedshare’ service that makes travelling a little less lonely and cheaper. Guests will get a 50% discount if they are willing to share half their room with another guest, and the company will clearly mark everything down the middle to make sure each person gets their fair share.
SodaStream: A wind-powered innovation
American astronaut Scott Kelly, best known for having spent the most time in space on a single mission, is the face of SodaStream’s newest innovation; SodaStream.ME, which turns people’s excess CO2 into sparkling water on the go. One small burp for man, one sparkling leap for mankind.
Discussing the campaign with The Drum, Scott Kelly said: “I have a SodaStream and really like the product. As a lover of our planet, I appreciate partnering up with a brand whose environmental values fall in line with my own personal beliefs.”
He clarified that: “You can’t burp in space. On earth – or in a gravity field – the gas in your stomach is lighter than air, so it rises opposite to the force of gravity. In space – in microgravity – there is no weight and hence the gas isn’t “lighter” than air, so it doesn’t rise. It stays mixed in with the food in your body, so it’s eventually expelled another way.”
Maryland: Avocado cookies
Forget smashed avo’ on toast, Maryland has taken the millennials’ favourite food craze one step further with the launch of its brand-new Avocado Cookie. Promising an “Instagrammable snack” like no other, the snack maker claims to have used “refined avocado powder” in lieu of flower, creating a super-food alternative to original cookies.
Hello Fresh: A bold unicorn box
What do brands think millennials love more than avocados? Luridly-coloured foods and Unicorn-themed products apparently. That’s why Hello Fresh is adding the ‘The Unicorn Box’ to its meal subscription box options. The first-of-its-kind experience contains three colourful recipe kits that will let diners eat “like a mythical creature with a box full of farm-fresh rainbows, smiles, and joy right at your doorstep”.
Honda: The polite horn
Sometimes drivers need to get the attention of others. But do they have to be so rude about it? In its mission to make roads everywhere more civilised, Honda Canada has launched a solution: the polite horn.
Origin: Sun power
Solar panel business Origin has announced it’s literally going the extra mile for customers and heading to the sun to power the entire planet, in a world first mission to capture solar power in its purest form. It says the traditional method of waiting for sunlight means we lose around 98% of its power before it hits earth. So, in order to capture the energy in its purest form, Origin has engaged some of the world’s greatest engineers to head into space to carve off a bowling ball size of the sun – which alone will be enough to power the world for the next 60,000 years.
Caring Skin: Astronaut facial
Space is a recurrent theme this year, with Singapore facial spa caring skin revealing it will be sending customers into outer space to clear blemishes and treat sensitive and inflamed skin. The 150-minute suborbital ‘pop-up’ treatment, dubbed ‘The Astronaut Facial’, is endorsed by influencers Camira Asrori and Cassandra Tan.
Google: Snakes on a map
Google prefers to celebrate April Fools’ day instead of tricking people. Last year, you might’ve seen Waldo peeking out of your Google Maps to invite you to find him on a scavenger hunt: This year, it’s revived another nostalgic game that takes people back to a much simpler, pre-Fortnite time: Snake. Confusingly, the ‘snake’ is now a train. Regardless, the twist on the 90s Nokia classic lets players ‘travel’ to different locations across the world—including Cairo, London, San Francisco, São Paulo, Sydney and Tokyo – straight from Google Maps.
Jägermeister: Introducing the Jägerbong
Just ahead of the 4/20 celebrations, Jägermeister has announced that it’s joining the cannabis market with the launch of the Jägerbong. Coming in at a clever $42, customer can light up the party with a kit which includes a 1L bottle of the aperitif they can recycle and turn into a bong, a bong carb, a hacky sack, eye drops, a lighter and grinder.
Aaron & Partners: Animals need lawyers too
UK law firm Aaron & Partners has launched an employment law service for pet influencers. Dogs, cats, fish and tortoises are just some of the species the firm hopes to work with. Standard employment contracts will be drawn up to suit the needs of each animal, including key clauses such as fixed nap times, allocated time for belly tickles or petting, and remuneration in snuggles and favourite treats.
BMW: Lunar paint
BMW has unveiled an innovative new feature that helps to “push the limits of electric driving”. From 1 April, BMW drivers will be able to add Lunar Paint as an optional extra to their i series vehicle. The product uses “revolutionary photovoltaic technology to harness the power of the moon and passively recharge your battery in the hours of darkness.” It’s what Neil Armstrong would have wanted.
Deliveroo: Crustless wonder
Delivery giant Deliveroo has revealed its plan to remove all crust options from the app, due to overwhelming anti-crust feedback from customers placing pizza orders across all of its 14 markets.
Like Tikes: Big Tikes
Kids toy maker Little Tikes will now be known as Big Tikes. The announcement reflects the brand’s “new found maturity” and is a nod to its fresh and grown-up approach. The new logo will appear across all brand channels and on social media.
KitKat: Tea time
After four years of intense research, Nestlé has crafted the optimal blend of tea leaves for the perfect brew to accompany its famous KitKat break. This tea has been developed in the brand’s very own Teaology labs and comes in tea bags inspired by the signature KitKat range: two-finger, four-finger and KitKat Chunky to fit every break occasion.
Amazon: Audible for fish
Amazon is giving Aussies the chance to get their fish hooked on literature with Audible for Fish – a three-second audiobook designed to keep underwater friends company while their owners aren’t around. It says research has shown that marine life is stimulated by short bursts of audio, sounds a little fishy to us.
London Dungeon & HSBC: Rugby torture chamber
Organisers of the HSBC London Sevens rugby tournament have announced a collaboration with macabre tourist attraction London Dungeon. The London Dungeon has installed a replica of its infamous torture chamber within a dungeon-style sin bin at Twickenham Stadium, where players will be sent on receipt of a yellow card throughout the duration of the nail-biting two-day event.
Zava: The Meata-blocker
Following a record-breaking Veganuary, it’s the dietary trend on everyone’s lips, and from today Brits can simply pop a pill to help them lead a plant-based lifestyle. Online doctor Zava’s Meata-blockers have meat-suppressing properties, diverting blood flow so that hormones involved in creating meat cravings can’t circulate around the body as efficiently. The pills also cause a decreased sense of smell and therefore less temptation when a tasty bacon sandwich is nearby.
Foodpanda: Jetski deliveries
A new mode of food delivery via jet blades has been revealed by Foodpanda Singapore. The innovation will “shave delivery times by half”, reducing it to 15 minutes or less. Not to disappoint Singaporeans, Foodpanda will be rewarding one lucky customer with a personal jet blade session (valued at S$198) with Ola Beach Club on Sentosa, with those who include ‘fpjetblad’ into the voucher code box until 5 April in with a chance of winning.
Wilkinson Sword: Casting Ken
Wilkinson Sword has appointed Ken Carson as the face of its Hydro 5 Sense product range.
Otherwise known as Ken Doll, clean-shaven Ken now can grow a beard… in seconds.
Le Chameau: Muddy boots
Building from the insight that people want an authentic outdoor experience, Le Chameau has launched an exclusive Pre Muddé service.
Pre Muddé offers boot lovers the desirable, well-worn country look, without even stepping outside. The boots arrive in soil curated by the brand’s expert pedologists (soil specialists).
Shutterstock: AI-serviced library
Shutterstock has announced plans to build the world’s largest brick-and-mortar library. The library is to house over 250 million volumes of imagery, a full-floor of 14 million reels of film and a listening bay where visitors can enjoy over 20,000 music tracks.
AI-powered robots call Cyanotypes are to replace traditional librarians, to ensure the building is open seven days a week, 24 hours a day.
Construction of the building is to commence in 2020 and will be designed by the world-renowned Belgian architect, Alexandria VonPixel.
Sainsbury’s: Pink avocados
Sainsbury’s is to stock a limited edition run of ripe and ready pink avocados – a naturally grown hybrid of different avocado varieties.
The supermarket has worked closely with a supplier in Peru to grow the exclusive Rosa-vo, which will go on sale as an initial trial to gauge popularity among UK customers and Instagram hungry millennials.
Nakd: Takeaway flavours
Nakd has expanded its range of bars with a series of savoury snacks inspired by Indian Takeaways.
The Indian ‘Flakeaway’ comes in four flavours: Vindalover, Poppadom Paradise, Korm-azeballs and Pilau Nice.
Cineworld: 4DX movies
Cineworld has done the impossible and brought snowfall in London, in Spring.
To celebrate the countdown to the arrival of its 4DX screens, visitors exiting North Greenwich station were met with an unexpected snowfall.
Snow is one of the effects 4DX can stimulate in the screening room, as well as wind, lightning, bubbles, water and scent work.
Hotels.com: Pet passports
With Brexit still up in the air, 75% of pet owners do know that their EU pet passports are in jeopardy.
To ensure pets don’t miss out on the beauty of the continent, Hotels.com has launched its first European Pup fakeation. It is a themed pet stay where dogs can enjoy European destinations without leaving the UK.
Royal Caribbean: Air space
Who says cruises can only be enjoyed on water? Not the Royal Caribbean, who has launched its first ‘cloud-class’ plane called ‘Master of the Skies.
Set to take off in 2020, the plane offers guests the chance to enjoy all the hallmarks of its cruises at 35,00 feet in the air.
When the seatbelt sign turns off, the plane turns into a dedicated entertainment zone that hosts an air-hockey table, a library of video games, as well as a whirlpool and dining area.
Subway: Listening in
As paranoia mounts around smartphone listening and ad targeting, Subway is the first brand to openly admit it makes use of covert research techniques.
In dramatic new footage released today, a Subway Sandwich Artist has been caught on camera, capturing overheard conversations in an unknown part of Great Britain. He can be seen hiding in bushes, behind a newspaper and dressed in state of the art military-standard disguises.
Benson for Beds: A royal visit
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle shocked shoppers at a central London store after they were spotted testing out mattresses.
With their ‘newly born’ baby in tow, the couple were seen browsing the Benson for Babies cot mattress section.
Spam: A vegan treat
Spam has jumped on the plant-based wagon, by launching a new variation of its iconic tinned food.
With a quarter of 25-34-year-olds identifying as vegetarian or vegan, Spam is re-positioning itself towards those decreasing their meat consumption, with ‘Vegan Spam.’
Duolingo: A passive aggressive owl
Learning a language takes a lot of work, perseverance and motivation. With this in mind, Duolingo has launched ‘Duolingo Push.’
Duolingo’s Duo is an online passive aggressive owl that sends you reminders when you need to practice your language skills, but this year, Duo will remind people to practice their language skills – in person.
Duo will turn up at your work, when you are on a date when you are at the gym to make sure you practice your French, Spanish, Korean, Klingon, High Valyrian or Chinese.
Muuna: Cheesy cannabis
Muuna has introduced a new flavour to its cottage cheese range. Muuna cannabis cottage cheese is a limited-edition variety, using milk from grass-fed cows.
Muuna’s limited edition Cannabis variety features cottage cheese as a base with a sprinkle of food-grade cannabis on the bottom.
Designed to create an element of carefree relaxation, while delivering an earthy taste, its latest offering will leave customers relaxed while keeping the munchies at bay.
Isobel: Brexit stamps
As the UK still looks set to exit the EU, a series of six stamps commissioned has been leaked ahead of their official release.
Created by isobel, the six first and second class stamps capture six Brexit ‘icons’ who are presented as famous historical figures complete with a relevant line of copy.
Theresa May is presented as the lady with the lamp – the UK’s first woman of nursing Florence Nightingale, while Boris Johnson has adopted a rotund Churchillian guise.
John Berkow, leader of the house is seen donned a suit of armour as Henry V with the line “Once more unto the lobbies!”
Virgin Atlantic: A sing-a-long
Virgin Atlantic is going back to their musical roots and trialling sing-alongs on key routes.
As part of an extension to the airline’s ‘depart the everyday’ campaign, passengers will be encouraged to join the crew for in-flight karaoke from shortly after take-off.
Highlights of the schedule include a Saturday Night Cabin Fever disco on weekend flights, mile-high hip-hop during flights to LA and non-stop Sinatra on flights to New York. Start spreading the news…
Digital publisher Joe Media has unveiled a new logo and identity as the brand looks to deliver a more coherent look across its numerous sub brands.
The company, founded in 2010 by Irish entrepreneur Niall McGarry, has largely held the same identity for the last decade. Its look has been updated by an in-house team to run better on mobile and evolve to better reflect the intent of the company.
In particular, it has expanded from Joe Media to also encapsulate verticals such as Football Joe, Sports Joe, Politics Joe, Comedy Joe, MMA Joe, Fit Joe and Rugby Joe. As a result, it required an identity that can better adapt across numerous platforms and audiences.
Rebecca Fennelly, head of brand and communications, told The Drum: “The new design reflects our heritage as much as it does our growth, evolution and big ambitions for the near future. We are still the same Joe – same mission, values and personality. We want to enrich lives by entertaining and inspiring through our original content. We still pride ourselves on our continuous investment into legacy journalism and modern-day storytelling. But we are always innovating.
“It is something we’ve become known for. When it comes to new logo designs, there tends to be knee-jerk assumptions made that they mean a ‘rebrand’ or a move away from a previous identity. When others may need to change up shop in big ways, Joe is building on something we’ve been working hard on from day one. ‘Brick by Brick’ as we say here. We are very proud of our roots and the distinct brand heritage we’ve built for Joe, and it is all enveloped into the carefully calculated subtleties of the new logo design.”
The project was led by Joe’s head of design Jack Homan, having previously worked at Channel 4 and Channel 5, and was delivered by an in-house team.
On the work, Homan said: “Breaking out from Joe’s old box means we can be more playful with our logo. For big editorial and commercial features we’ll look to build bespoke artwork featuring our logo, using the word-mark itself as the boundary box. The old Joe logo was boxed in, we wanted to break out and let the typography speak for itself.
“The logo now has a balance that the old did not. The ‘J’ and the ‘E’ are the same width. The aperture of the ‘O’ is the same size as the top bar of the ‘J’ and the middle appendage of the ‘E’. Turn both the ‘J’ and the ‘E’ in on themselves and they will meet in the middle of the ‘O’. This balance allows us to more easily lock our new logo up with commercial partners and our sub-brands.”
He concluded: “Whilst a lot of work went into this new design, it was important we didn’t move too far from our original logo, but rather embrace the best of it in the new iteration.
Late in 2018, The Drum sat down with the title’s, head of content Evan Fanning, to learn about how it is scaling up promising talent in order to take on more-established media players.
He said: “Going to a place like Joe with the freedom to attack things without the newspaper deadweight was really exciting. We say we do ‘traditional media, but digitally’.”
It is your unique combination of skills and experiences that make you who you are, and what others will recognize you for, so effective personal branding should differentiate you from other professionals in your field.
Effective personal branding is of pivotal importance, especially if it is essential to advancing your career. Therefore, one should be aware of what it is that you are communicating that may be preventing you from breeding a successful career.
Two critical factors result in effective personal branding: authenticity and credibility.
Authenticity and credibility arise when consistency occurs between what you say and what you do. Like any brand, your own will also come with expectations and should clearly communicate your values, skills and personality. Personal branding is about leaving a mental and preferably indelible impression in the mind of others, which positions you and makes you stand out from the crowd. Continue to adjust your brand strategy to match the changes in your life and objectives. You’ll need to communicate yourself to others in a simple and easy-to-understand manner –making yourself heard in the midst of all of the information and messages they receive every day.
Think of a few people who you feel possess a strong personal brand and ask yourself the following questions:
Why did you choose these people?
What do you find strong about their brands?
What are you learning from them?
You should take into consideration people you want to be connected to—selecting your target group, your channels and the frequency of your self-marketing is very important in the direction you would like to go. Also, keep in mind that many years of branding work can be easily destroyed with one adverse action. It is crucial to continuously nurture your brand regularly in order to stay connected with those who can positively impact your brand. Some people choose to hire a brand or PR (Public Relations) managers who can assist in the upkeep of their personal brand and also provide them with exposure.
Impressions, Imprints and Expression
If you want to convey your message to your audience, you need to operate within these three dimensions.
Impression – what people experience when they first meet you.
Imprint – what you leave behind after the conclusion of a conversation.
Expression – what everybody says about you and how individuals perceive you as a person.
If you are having a hard time mapping out a personal brand strategy, then try to establish an overview of what you do well and identify areas that require improvements. Additionally, write down what people say about you. Take some time to discuss your image with people you trust or who you feel will provide honest feedback. Asking someone you have a close personal relationship can be misleading and bias, so attempt to find people who are not afraid, to be honest with you, however, they must know you reasonably well.
Once you’ve found your chosen “brand advisors,” you can start by asking them what kind of impression you believe you’ve made when you first meet them. Try to be as objective as possible and do not take the feedback personally. A first impression is formed in the first 15 seconds, so knowing what kind of impression you make on others is essential to brand and or rebranding yourself.
Find your audience
Why should people listen to you? What makes you and your message worth listening to? Where is your audience? Who are they? And where can they be found?
Being creative and paying attention to the location of your target group is crucial. Try to communicate in places where your audience is present. Once you find where your audience is located, create a plan of action for the topics (subjects) and messages you want to communicate with them.
You should be able to share with your audience three explicit messages about who you are, what you stand for, and how you can help them, but you can only communicate these messages once you’ve gained their attention and trust.
The internet is an obvious choice to find your audience and communicate your message. Social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter makes interacting with your surroundings considerably easier. A few years ago getting in contact with many people within a short period was difficult or, at the very least, very expensive. The internet offers you the opportunity to create a free or very cheap branding platform. All you have to decide on what you would like to say, how and when.
Your personal network will also be helpful in gauging your new audience. People like to see that other (credible) people are recommending you. Therefore, you should ask for a testimonial when you have finished a project for a client. Make it a habit. These testimonials can be from your teachers, fellow students, colleagues, bosses and clients who know your personality and work ethics well.
I am a motivational speaker, philanthropist and author, with approximately 200-plus global talks per year. I advise major companies on topics such as sales and service and customer loyalty, strategic relationship-building and change management, employee motivation and the MORE
To understand the difference between these concepts, simply apply them to you
In my work with entrepreneurs and business students, I often hear marketing strategies explained as “having social media,” “having an online brand,” or “advertising a lot.”
These explanations make me cringe because while they might be part of a plan, they grossly oversimplify the deeper and more complex concepts behind a truly effective marketing strategy.
In order to explain and help others understand marketing — namely the difference between marketing, advertising, and branding — I ask them to apply each of these concepts to themselves personally. When you do, this is what it would look like.
Marketing is how you see yourself.
Marketing is the image that you are trying to present to others. It starts with how you dress, the colors and patterns you choose, and how you groom. We all have a strategy for this — yes, everyone, including your unkept second cousin who rarely showers and wears the same Star Wars shirt he’s worn since college.
Even not having a strategy for your personal appearance is a strategy itself.
You choose your image to portray yourself as a business professional, a punk rocker, a tech nerd, etc, and by doing so, you are expressing to others through your appearance your character, lovable attributes and in the end the value you offer to others.
It isn’t fun to admit that appearances are as important as they are, but let’s be honest, first impressions are driven by appearance. Impressions can evolve and be molded later, but as we all know, they require time and effort to change, so we do our best to get it right up front.
For a business, a marketing strategy considers how you want others to perceive your company. It should convey the vision and values of the business and express these in a way that the public will recognize and associate with your company.
How you “dress” your company will determine how effectively your message and image will be accepted by consumers.
Advertising is how you act in public.
If marketing is how you see yourself, advertising describes your actions.
How you carry yourself, where you hang out, and what you say are just as important as how you look. All of this should be considered with your marketing strategy to assure that you have consistency between your image and your actions.
For instance, imagine that you wear a New England Patriots jersey and get a “I Heart Tom Brady” tattoo, but during the Super Bowl, you cheer for the Philadelphia Eagles and celebrate their victory. You will confound — and probably infuriate — all of your friends and likely be exiled from future Sunday game days.
Your business advertising strategy is the same. If you execute it in the wrong places, with the wrong message and tone, at the wrong times, or to the wrong audience, it will ultimately confuse consumers and could turn them away.
Branding is how others see you.
While marketing is how you want others to see you, branding is how they actually do.
Your marketing strategy should assess and consider your personal brand. If you have a strong brand, you can spend more time building on it. If you have reputation problems, however, you need to focus on rebuilding or changing perceptions.
As an example, if your professional network believes you to be fraud or slacker, then it will require more than just dressing professionally and mastering your LinkedIn profile to change this perception.
Similarly from a business standpoint, understanding how consumers perceive your business is crucial for how you decide to execute a marketing and advertising strategy.
Now, I understand I just over-simplified complex marketing concepts — exactly what I critiqued at the beginning. I find, however, that applying these concepts to ourselves creates an effective and simple way to explain how each concept can and should be applied to your business.
The race to be a prospective customer’s top choice is only going to become tougher as the competitive landscape increases. More and more businesses are starting up, there’s tougher competition for top talent and brands constantly have to account for algorithm changes on social media platforms. Current leaders have to be committed in ways unlike their predecessors to achieve success and level the playing field.
So what can you do to achieve brand recognition?
Connecting with the right people at the right time will determine success or failure. The right people are those who align with your purpose and actively support it. A focus on building community with people and organizations that will participate in your vision should be at the forefront of growth. In spite of a technological revolution, people still make the world go round.
Focus on these five things to further develop your brand and establish your position in the marketplace.
1. Make customer discovery a priority.Learn what works for your competitors and identify contributions to brand loyalty. These key activities, in addition to properly identifying your customers, will aid in growth. A successful brand will have customers promoting and sharing its offerings as a result of their satisfaction.
2. Create a crystal-clear mission. Brands will be called on to relate their mission to their customers in changing times. In the face of controversy, be prepared — like Nike — to substantiate your goals, purpose and brand message and actively invest in the transformation of customers’ day-to-day lives. If companies plan to stay relevant despite the shifting preferences of millennial and Gen Z consumers, they should create an internal guide referencing how and when to address social issues affecting employees and customers, even if it is outside business walls.
3. Leverage social media platforms for growth.Social media is constantly changing — however, incorporating it for brand awareness and business growth will always be crucial. Not only does your brand need an active presence online but a consistent message and pattern so that followers can actively engage with it. It is not enough to post timely messages, especially when preparing to meet or exceed goals for year end. An investment in ads and influencers is necessary to build credibility, especially as decision makers become younger.
4. Link up with other brands in your community. Great brands are not built alone. I personally have found it highly beneficial to network at my local co-working space, as it houses an active community of influencers. Community-focused locations provide your startup the opportunity to build rapport and trust with like-minded brands and those working to transform the way we do business. In addition to hosting a variety of social activities, a co-working space gives you the opportunity as either an established or developing brand to meet fellow entrepreneurs on common ground and network, and collaboratively work with them to alleviate growing pains related to lack of resources.
Regardless of whether you are an established brand or one that’s just starting out, investing in customer identification, social media and unconventional spaces will pay off. It’s no fun to stay the same, so embrace change to grow your brand.
