Feedback and photos from WONY strategists Melissa Andrada and Amaris Singer’s brand workshop at General Assembly this past Tuesday!
What separates the best brands from the rest?
For the last couple years, we’ve been traveling the globe talking to leaders at some of the world’s best companies and trying to learn exactly what separates the best from the merely good. Today, we’ve published our analysis of what we’ve learned, in a report called Game Changers.
A key takeaway was that even though companies today recognize the important factors required to generate long-term growth, many are not investing resources and energy into them.
Recently, Wolff Olins CEO Karl Heiselman sat down with Co.Design to talk about exactly what we found and how it applies to businesses aiming to grow faster and do better.
Read Co.Design’s story behind the report and check out Game Changers for yourself. And most importantly, let us know what you think! We’ll publish and respond to your feedback.
Brand, Be Mine?
At Wolff Olins we’re enmeshed in the business of brand – consistently surprised, delighted, and challenged by what we see. While you can’t quite hold a brand or put one in your pocket, a strong brand – from chocolates to cleaning products – has the power to move you, sometimes to love.
This Valentine’s day we thought it right to express our love for our favorite ones and explain why it is they rock our world. Here’s to you, sweet brands…won’t you be ours?
The following were compiled in our New York and London offices:
I love Muji because they don’t impose their identity on mine.
I love Target because they democratise design.
I love Google for all the great things they allow me to do.
I love Jacques Torres ‘cause I use chocolate medicinally and they’re right around the corner.
I love the New York Times. I’ve been reading it since I was twelve.
I love Post-It because they’re still relevant and quirky in a digital age.
I love Vintage Seltzer for its blue and white label and because it’s so normal.
I (heart) Sol Moscot and Grenson. Two brands with a long line of tradition, both of which do not rest on that heritage while keeping their quality high and their brands fresh and contemporary.
I love Apple. The Mac and the iPhone changed my life, can’t live without my iPad.
I love Mrs. Meyer’s cleaning products ‘cause they smell so good and all natural.
Uniqlo. What’s there not to love about this brand? In a recent brand campaign in New York they focused on the aspect that no matter what age, gender, race, income, their products can be worn by anyone. Plus every aspect of their expression and experience is really engaging too!
I love TIDE detergent. I want my clothes to be washed with only that. It takes me back to childhood and maybe a field of flowers.
I love Trader Joe’s because their employees give the best, most honest, recommendations and are outfitted in Hawaiian shirts. WIN.
I love PBS Masterpiece Theater. Why? Consistency (in storytelling, high production value, great acting, and intelligent, witty, entertaining programming, and nice online content to complement the show and grow viewership). (read: I love Downton Abbey)
I love J. Crew because even though their vanity sizing is absurd, Mickey and Jenna are retail visionaries.
I love Urban Outfitters– the Starbucks of casual wear. It may not be cool to admit you shop there, but I can rely on them for the basics I need with a fashionable twist, at affordable prices. Any young-ish woman who denies shopping there is lying!
I have a thing for Aveda Hand Relief. There’s just something about pausing in the middle of your day to put it on. I still remember the first time I used it and the soothing voice of the saleswoman who gave me that first sample in the Aveda store.
Equinox. Cold eucalyptus towels, top of the line machinery, no waits, great classes. Who knew I’d actually be excited to go to the gym?
I really love Burton. With these guys, there’s an obvious authenticity that really comes through in everything they touch. From their solid products to the content on their website (snow porn!) to how their flagship stores are designed, the brand is clearly built for snowboarders, by snowboarders.
I love the Mets—but it’s a seriously dysfunctional relationship.
What are the brands you can’t live without? Share your favorites with our team @wolffolins.
The Bottom Line, The Social Way
How successful is social media’s impact on a socially responsible company’s bottom line?
This is the leading question framing a Social Media Week panel I’ll be speaking at this Thursday.
We know that social media has had a tremendous impact on society, but to what extent does it translate into real dollars? There are many metrics we can use to track engagement: number of followers, number of people writing about us, number of visitors, etc. However, it is still difficult to correlate the impact of social media on a company’s bottom line; it’s often an ecosystem of small, unordered interactions that lead to a click, a purchase, a donation.
However, for some organizations, the correlation is much clearer. There are many companies that would not exist without social media: Mashable, Kickstarter, Pinterest, Groupon. These platforms are social media, thus their entire business models are predicated upon it.
While not all companies can exist as social media, what we can learn from these startups is that social media has a greater impact on a company’s bottom line when it is treated as an integrated part of a company’s brand strategy, rather than just a marketing afterthought.
Social media should be less about platforms, more about people and purpose.
Being “social” means creating a brand of listening. It means creating a brand that engages in in dialogues rather than monologues, a brand that empowers people to do more. It means creating a brand that is driven by purpose rather than just the latest trends.
Your brand purpose, based upon the intersection between what people need and what’s special about you, should shape how and where you engage with your audience. Your purpose should be a unifying force that drives your entire business – from social media to business model to operations.
When social media is contextualized within the big picture, your brand presence on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms seems more authentic, human and individualized. When it is viewed as another tool for driving impact and profit, the correlation between a tweet and a new business prospect is much clearer. When social media becomes an embedded part of your company’s DNA, it becomes an even more powerful – and sustainable – force for good.
Here are a few guiding questions we ask our clients to ask themselves:
Given our brand purpose, what are the most appropriate channels for engaging with our audience?
How can we empower our customers to do more?
If we are trying to translate social media into real dollars, how can we connect the dots between action and impact?
Image via Thereza Rowe
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As part of Social Media Week, on February 16, WONY strategist Melissa Andrada (@themelissard) will join a panel on “Doing Well by Doing Good,” hosted by SCENEPR in association with Design for Social Innovation (DSI) at SVA. With Brian Reich, SVP/Global Editor at Edelman, and others from Purpose, Roadmonkey Adventure Philanthropy, and Mark & Phil, the panel will explore how purposeful businesses can use social media for both impact and profit. Sign up to attend here: http://dogoodsmw.eventbrite.com/
Doing Well By Doing Good @ Social Media Week
Social media is a powerful booster for brand authenticity and personality, but how successful is it in converting a good cause to sustainable dollars? In an atmosphere where customers’ trust and loyalty is increasingly earned through transparency and engagement there are new paths to the bottom line.
As part of Social Media Week, on February 16, WONY strategist Melissa Andrada (@themelissard) will join a panel on “Doing Well by Doing Good,” hosted by SCENEPR in association with Design for Social Innovation (DSI) at SVA. With Brian Reich, SVP/Global Editor at Edelman, and others from Purpose, Roadmonkey Adventure Philanthropy, and Mark & Phil, the panel will explore how purposeful businesses can use social media for both impact and profit.
Sign up to attend here: http://dogoodsmw.eventbrite.com/
Doing Well by Doing Good
Thursday, February 16, 2012 from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM (ET)
New York, NY
Image via Intel Museum of Me
To Fly. To Serve?
By Rose Bentley
It wasn’t British Airways fault that the snow fell last Saturday. And they weren’t solely to blame for the anaphylactic chaos at Heathrow. But for those of us who were caught up in it all, it was a ringside opportunity to experience a brand totally out of kilter with its promise.
Let’s start with that BA promise: To Fly To Serve. What does that mean to its people?
Not much to one BA steward who chatted to us during the hours we sat on the tarmac as the plane kept missing its slots. He shrugged and said that yeah, Management had done something with the brand but it didn’t mean anything to him: ‘ We just get on with it don’t we?’
Not by the BA ground staff who patronized us all as we were herded back through Terminal 5 when the flight was finally cancelled, aghast that we might want some more information rather than a vague wave towards the hotel bus. Or the ones who greeted us the next morning at Terminal 5 and replied to our questions with “No one tells us anything”.
And certainly not by the pilot of our second plane – which left 5 hours late and sat another two hours on the tarmac before take off – whose parting words as we landed at our destination were: “ It’s been a difficult time for all of us – especially for the crew. I hope all of you will agree that British Airways has fulfilled its contractual obligations to you.”
If BA had been true to its brand, that 36 hours could have played out so differently. I would not have reached my destination any sooner or less frustrated but my loyalty to BA would have strengthened thanks to a better experience.
But it didn’t. To Fly to Serve is not a promise, it’s a strapline. Its people don’t live by it, its consumers make a joke out of it.
That’s bad for the brand. Which means that’s bad for business.
Brand Shouldn’t Be a Dirty Word for Startups
By Melissa Andrada and Amaris Singer
A few months ago, we attended a class called “Making Something People Love” taught by Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit and director of marketing at Hipmunk. In his intro, Alexis admitted that the class was like a Branding 101 class, but he didn’t want to use the word “brand.”
Brand is a dirty word to many entrepreneurs, but their skepticism comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of what brand is.
Brand is a lot more than just your name, logo or visual identity.
A strong brand should crisply encapsulate the role your organization plays in the world, and it should act as a filter to guide your business decisions. While a clever name and logo can set you apart from some competitors, a strong brand is what gets you your funding, builds your engaged community of users, and creates a focused vision for the future.
Brand is a platform for action, not a marketing afterthought.
Too often we hear of startups who are so busy getting their products out the door, they don’t have time to develop a purposeful brand. A recent Fast Company piece points out that in the past, “brands were simply too hard and too expensive to create.” Today, expectations for startups have changed and there’s growing acknowledgement that brand creation can no longer be considered an afterthought.
If we look at some of the most successful startups that have emerged in the past ten years, a strong, purposeful brand is the common link that drives their success. In a world saturated with ecommerce sites, Etsy has set itself apart from the competition by building a brand that stands for craft, creativity and community.
Similarly, Zappos has differentiated itself by cultivating a brand that delivers happiness to itsemployees and customers. Mint crafted a brand around the idea of simplicity—an idea that guided its name, UX, visual identity, and voice. In all of these cases, a clear and focused brand maximizes the potential of a great productidea by creating a coherent universe around it.
In today’s increasingly crowded startup space, a single product is no longer enough tomake you stand out. Your product, UI, look and voice need to be unified with a common purpose that resonates with your users. Brand is that strategic glue. It should guide your every venture and help it stand out to funders and to the world.
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Join Wolff Olins for the Brand Strategy Lab, a four-part workshop series at General Assembly in NYC this March. This series is an in-depth introduction to the fundamentals and tools of brand strategy, developed specifically for a startup audience. We’ll teach you the tenets of brand strategy and facilitate workshops to guide you as you create your own brand. The series will culminate in presentations and critiques so you can test drive your new brand and refine the direction it will take in the world.
Advertisers: How To Win The Super Bowl
Between all the strategic pre-game leaks, Twitter’s Ad Scrimmage, and the NBC/YouTube partnership that created the Ad Blitz channel, the actual 30-second Super Bowl on-air spot is now the center of a more prolonged, immersive advertising experience. Often these experiences are so focused on the spectacle or story of a campaign that the real merit of the brand gets lost in them.
Marketers have done a great job of capitalizing on the one opportunity each year where people are actually anxious for commercials. And in turn, an estimated 54% of those watching last year’s game were actually more excited for the ad breaks than the game itself, according to a 2011 study by Harris Interactive.
But where advertisers think they’re speaking to people asking to be “advertised to,” most viewers are really just anticipating a series of performances. The commercials that people generally “love” (the ones that will appear on most bloggers’ “Top 10” list and the USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter) aren’t the most effective, they’re just the most entertaining. While raw amusement is awesome for viewers (who doesn’t want to watch a series of 30-second comedies?), most of today’s Super Bowl commercials probably aren’t getting the job done for brands.
For a spot to be at its most effective and worth its $3.5 million price tag, it has to do more than entertain. It has to tell a worthwhile story about the brand in a way that gets attention for an appropriate reason. It also has to teach us something about the honest values and unique feel of the company it promotes. And it has to do all this strongly enough to inspire us to engage with that brand in the future, not just re-visit its commercial on YouTube. That’s an important distinction that often gets overlooked on this night. Pure entertainment gets the most hype (and yes, leads to temporary brand awareness) but it takes more than that to win true fans.
After the game (or now, since you’ve probably seen most of the commercials already), we’d love to hear your thoughts on which brands had the most effective commercials (not just the ones that made you laugh the hardest). In turn, we’ll share our own thoughts in an upcoming post. Comment below, on Facebook or tweet @wolffolins.
To watch the commercials with a more critical eye this year, here are a few fundamental characteristics to consider:
Is it entertaining? Is this commercial captivating enough to get a million views on YouTube? Does it put you in a good mood? It could be funny, surprising, dramatic or just plain cute, but a Super Bowl commercial today needs to meet a baseline level of entertainment just to meet viewers’ lofty expectations.
At its best: Audi’s “Escape from Old Luxury” (2011)- This commercial was funny, a tiny bit suspenseful, and in the end, staked out a real position for the brand. It proved that a commercial can use comedy without being completely empty.
Is it emotionally on brand? Did watching the commercial give you the same feeling you get when you’re in that brand’s store, using/consuming its products, and reading about its actions in the news? The commercial should create expectations that are in line with the rest of the brand experience and make a case for the importance of the brand’s own values in people’s lives.
At its best: Google’s “Parisian Love” (2010)- In addition to showing how easy and helpful its search features are, this spot simply oozed of the optimism and delight that characterizes Google at its best.
Is it Inspiring? Did the commercial realistically change your behavior? Did you quickly look up the new Mercedes models after (or even during?) the game? Did you buy a Pepsi Max the next day because you remembered it has zero calories? Did you rethink the value of an electric car? A spot doesn’t need to lead directly to a sale but it should inspire a viewer to do more than just watch it again and again.
At its best: Chrysler’s “Imported From Detroit” (2011) - Though I didn’t buy a car last year, this commercial definitely changed my perception of the brand, as well as the American auto industry as a whole. The day after the game, I remember spending a few hours reading all about the revitalization of Detroit, almost entirely due to the fact that I saw this commercial.
Graphic by Mads J. Poulsen
America’s Favorite Store?
JC Penney announced it’s new strategy on Wednesday. At a highly anticipated, star-studded presentation, new CEO Ron Johnson promised to reinvent the “6 Ps” of retail (product, place, presentation, price, promotion and personality). Will it work?
In a world of seamlessly integrated, omnichannel, open commerce platforms, critics may fault this predominately bricks & mortar approach for being old-fashioned and stuck in the past.
However, this refreshingly honest, back-to-basics approach may be just what retail needs right now – a reliable, relevant, and easy experience.
From their spirited manifesto to their tongue-in-cheek TV ads, the JCP crew seems to be very in touch with who their customer is and what they need:
· In response to a growing distrust of institutions, JC Penney’s voice is human, honest and direct
· In a world where consumers demand more transparency and authenticity, their pricing strategy is simplified and predictable
· And during a time when our nation’s role in the world is at question, their Main Street and Town Square in-store strategy conveys a distinctive American pride and point of view
If nothing else, this strategy speaks to the promise of a visionary leadership. In stark contrast to last year’s logo “bake-off” which resulted in an identity redesign from a 3rd year graphic design student, JC Penney’s new strategy is decisive and bold – not to just be America’s favorite department store, but to be America’s favorite store.
The track records of the brand architects are hard to dispute. CEO Ron Johnson, former head of retail at Apple, did the unthinkable by translating the magic of Macs and iPods into over 300 worldwide stores and transforming our expectations of a good retail experience. And President Michael Francis, former CMO of Target, built a brand that turned a Midwestern mass merchandiser into a seductive, exciting cultural tastemaker.
Beyond their credentials, the speed at which they brought the strategy to life is also a tribute to their vision and focus. Johnson’s arrival was announced in June 2011 and madeofficial in November 2011. Francis came on board in October 2011. In less than three months, they were able to crystallize their thought, mobilize a huge internal and external team of partners, and captivate the retail industry with their announcement.
Initial reactions are mixed. Stock prices fell slightly after the announcement. But if anyone can do this, Ron Johnson is a good bet. Especially since he has financial skin in the game - $50 million to lose but hundreds of millions to win.
However, success depends on a lot of “ifs.”
IF the merchandising and in-store experience can deliver on the promise of the advertising.
IF the vendor community will play by their new pricing rules.
IF the customer understands and embraces the new promotional calendar.
This will be fun to watch – if they can really pull it off, the streets will be singing their praises as prescient retail gurus. If not, sadly there will be one more once-great retail giant put out to pasture.
Which outcome are you betting on?