Insights
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Insight Snippets
Tech and Trust
Technological optimism is being replaced with technological realism. There is now growing worry that tech is out of control and AI chooses artificiality over intelligence. Moreover, technology loses its trust advantage as it has compromised the quality of information and overlooked humanization.
Reputable Brands
Lego has topped a list of the world’s most reputable companies for the fourth year in a row, according to an annual survey, closely followed by Disney, with both firms appearing in the top 10 every year since 2011. Such brands know that integrity shines from inside out, from the internal culture to the external world.
How to Evaluate a PR Firm
Not every company needs a third-party firm to support its public relations and marketing initiatives. However, many companies do hire external agencies to support their initiatives. Here are three simple steps that serve that up for you easily and arm you with the best chances for success.
Present Your Data Like a Pro
With so many ways to spin and distort information these days, a presentation needs to do more than simply share great ideas — it needs to support those ideas with credible data. This is how to present it.
Corporate reputation is ‘omnidriven’
The role of reputation increased. A new worldwide report from Weber Shandwick has found that companies must be willing to work on a wide range of reputation drivers rather than focussing on one or two.
Effects of Rebranding
Can Rebranding Help Shift In-House Attitudes? This article is about the reset in organizations and how it can help you reposition your organization or reframe opinions that exist surrounding its existence.
How To Create Brand Advocates
Building a brand is not enough to attract high-paying clients. You need to create brand advocates. They become ambassadors and representatives of a brand and deliver the brand message in the right place at the right time and often to the right people.
The Godfather of Influence
Have you ever wondered how to optimally respond when someone thanks you? Guy Kawasaki and Dr. Cialdini are having a conversation about the psychology that powers influence and persuasion and what seperates effective communicators from successful persuaders.
How to Spot a Fake Influencer
Influencer marketing can produce incredible results for brands when used effectively. As a brand, you don’t want to associate yourself with fake influencers, nor do you want to waste your money on them. This article is about how to identify fake ones from the herd.
Century-Old Brands: Betting on Long-Lived Assets
If you believe in the Lindy Effect as an investor, you may want to bet on long-lived assets such as brands that have survived for more than a century. In this article you can find a list of century-old iconic brands that are still meaningfully.
What Carlos Ghosn’s escape teaches us about reputation management
Carlos Ghosn’s escape from the Japanese justice system is truly remarkable, not just because of the circumstances themselves, but also because of what it tells us about owning the narrative in modern reputation management.
When Community Becomes Your Competitive Advantage
It’s been said that one doesn’t buy a brand. One joins a brand. Some brands build a product and then find the community for it while other brands build a network first. This article is about when community becomes competitive advantage.
Leveraging Nostalgia As Powerful Ally For Brand Relevance
Nostalgia can be a powerful ally in building brands. A recent report reveals some interesting ways how for example music superstars are turning back the clocks to strengthen their brands and win over increasing numbers of fans.
Why brands must use emotions, not euphemisms
Brands are having to face up to the fact that consumer trust has been broken. But all is not lost. A clear trend has emerged in which people are choosing to buy from companies that share their moral, social and political beliefs.
How to Win the War for Talent in 2020 – Here’s The Checklist
No matter which workplace predictions or forecasts you read, people are the focal point. The need to attract and retain talent in a competitive labour market will intensify regardless of technological innovations.
The Universal Purpose – A New Manifesto
What is the purpose of a business? That question echoed throughout 2019. The new Davos Manifesto addresses key points for companies entering the 4th Industrial Revolution.
Preparing The End Of The Instagram Like
Instagram’s impending removal of likes from public view — now in the testing stages — is forcing advertisers to reassess how they judge the popularity and reach of influencers.
Why Brands Matter, And Always Will
At a time when better, less expensive products and services are just a click or two away, the conventional wisdom might be that brands are less important than they once were.
The Rise of Smart Airports: A Skift Deep Dive
After years of being stuck in the past, new “smart” airports are embracing technology and data to improve the experience for passengers and vendors.
Traditional versus digital PR: Which one takes the cake?
Having to choose between traditional and digital PR can be a difficult process. Here are some valuable decision-making points to simple up this task.
Dreaming Up A World – How Luxury Brands Create Desire
There is no luxury that comes cheap. But is the price really what makes a product valuable? You could argue that “if you can’t afford this, then it is a luxury.”
Meeting Customers Can Be Better Then Press
For startups, media coverage is good – but meeting customers is better. In the beginning, it is important for target customers to experience the product.
Why Luxury Brands Need Mystery Shoppers
Customer advocacy is crucial for the success of any industry, but it is even more critical for the luxury sector where consumers expect exceptional services.
More And More Brands Get Rid Of The CMO Role
The CMO role has been evolving, with responsibilities extending beyond traditional marketing. CMOs must now demonstrate the value of still having a chief marketer
Should Luxury Brands Target 25-Year-Olds?
There is often the misconception from high-ranking brand managers that say “millennials don’t have money, so it’s useless to target them.” But in reality, nothing could be further from the truth.
Promote LinkedIn Page posts via Hootsuite
Optimize your ad spend by targeting specific professional audiences. Add a LinkedIn account to the Hootsuite dashboard, and in a few clicks, turn organic posts into Sponsored Content on LinkedIn.
Future Returns: Why Luxury Stocks Are Timeless
Trade tensions with China, ongoing protests in Hong Kong, and a global economy that seems to be sitting on a precipice. At first blush it doesn’t seem like an auspicious time to invest in luxury. But is that true?
Embracing the Role of Romance in Luxury Marketing
Romantic love and a night at the opera might seem the stuff of chick flicks and cheap paperbacks sporting Fabio’s bare chest. But one expert says luxury marketers should pay heed to both subjects if they want to build deep and lasting relationships with their clients.
Put Purpose at the Core of Your Strategy
A global study about high growth in companies, investigated the importance of three strategies known to drive it: creating new markets, serving broader stakeholder needs, and changing the rules of the game. Although there is a fourth driver that wasn’t considered at all: purpose.
Instagram’s algorithm favors more realistic content
From early on, Instagram has portrayed a world that is slightly altered, depending on the user’s mood. The advent of influencers boosted the app’s highly-edited look, bringing to feeds professional-grade photos, sculpted and meticulously posed. But something is changing.
Top CEOs Have Realized Companies Need a Purpose Beyond Profit
This group of of influential and prominent CEOs is united by the fact that the purpose of a company is far more than the demands of its stakeholders.
Potential for Tons of Magic: Many industries still lack design thinking processes
Rory Sutherland – speaks about how this process can be approached from the right perspective and which tools are best suited for this purpose to be sucessful.
Goodbye influencers — Hello traditional PR!
It’s the height of the digital age, and one public relations industry has decided to wave goodbye to social media and influencers and say ‘hello’ to traditional PR practices.
The Magic That Makes Customer Experiences Stick
The most memorable experiences are suffused with emotion — not extra features or value for money. A guideline how to build Emotion Into Customer Experiences
Demystifying dealmaking: Lessons from M&A veterans
Two longtime experts in mergers and acquisitions describe what works—and what doesn’t – in corporate dealmaking, including how to approach the role of activist investors.
The Digital Enterprise: moving from experimentation to transformation
The Digital Enterprise: Moving from experimentation to transformation is a practical guide on how to envision, structure, and sequence successful digital transformation efforts.
Brands are replacing sectors (and what this means)
“The lines between sectors are blurring” Learn how nowadays fast growing companies are changing the turn from supply to demand.
Why PR and IR must collaborate
Key insights on why the close alignment of IR and PR is essential: Get to know the top 5 arguments and their benefits for your company
Instagram will now hide likes in more 6 countries
Would the internet be a better place if we pay less attention to fake internet points? Instagram started a deisgn tweak to remove “likes”.
The Power of the Employee Influencer
Was the key to successful marketing on social media already there the whole time? Employee-posted content generates more reach and response, but its also seen as more authentic.
Building a Startup That Will Last
How to “start-up” in today’s world? What can start ups learn from long standing companies? The best tips to build a company in times of enormous digital growth that can survive in the long run.
CEOs Face Heightened Risk to Personal Reputations
There was a time when the reputation of a company was related to the company itself. However, recent legal events show that reputation risk, has become now both a corporate and personal matter.
Personalized & Influencer-Driven Content Strategies For Live Events
As Schoening wrote in this artice “todays buyers crave personalized experiences – and events are no exception. In fact, 74% of marketers say personalization should be a bigger business priority.
Reputational risk ‘biggest’ perceived threat to charities, report reveals
Charities need to take a longer term view of risk or face “increasing threats” to thier properity and security, according to a new report by a specialist insurer Ecclesiastical Insurance.
How a Brand Name Becomes Generic – “Pass the Kleenex, please”.
Some brands become the default example of something, then it focused definition and the word/verb for it. Different languages adopted different brands as the word for something i.e ‘postit’ for small paper.
Brand Managers Focus Internal Recruiting
The competition for talent shows no signs of slowing. Companies can stay ahead in the talent war by recruiting from within. More and more companies are investing time and money in training their existing workforce.
How Does Anything Become Famous?
Wharton School Professor Jonah Berger is a world-renowned expert on social influence, consumer behavior, and why things spread. He explains in this podcast the characteristics of word-of-mouth, invisible influence and going viral.
Apple and the Post-Facebook Era.
Apple is designing for a post-Facebook world. As FastCompany reports the brand debuted a series of new features for its upcoming iOS 13 operating system that put users and their existing social networks at the center of the Apple ecosystem.
Why People Need Print
In a world of endless screens, branding author Martin Lindstrom explains why there is a growing need for more tactile experience. Print media and advertising has a lasting influence, with up to 70% better recall than any other channel.
Travel Brands
Travel brands need to know their place. R. Curtis, CEO at FutureBrand Asia-Pacific, wrote in Campaign Asia about how the global travel sector is reaching a confusing saturation point, so winning brands must differentiate through experience.
(Cult)ure of Luxury
Luxury brands, intent on keeping their wealthiest customers, are offering experiences that drip with exclusivity. Fundamentals of true luxury brand management stay unchanged no matter what the mainstream media claims.
Hidden Teams
The topic of deep organization remains implicit and unspoken almost as if it is the same as ‘deep government’. However, the issue of hidden teams was re-emphasized recently in an article of HBR.
Creative Industries
During the Cass MBA London Symposium Dr. Sionade Robinson stated that “last year was a record breaking year for the creative industries in the UK, which are undoubtedly a real success story.”
A History of Influencers
The fear of being influenced affects our sense of reality and our ability to trust our own judgments about what is true. This article reveals exciting similarities between plays of Shakespeake and today`s reality.
Place Branding as a Strategy for Cities
Thought to boost tourism in cities, design studios are being called in to create visual identities, in the hopes that a strong brand will bring a range of benefits. But how effective is this place branding really?
Common Mistakes in Naming
Forgetting that naming is as strategic as it is creative and ending the verbal identity process at a name are some of the most common mistakes in the naming process. This article focuses on what mistakes to avoid.
The Industrial Subscription Economy
“Changes in consumption are remaking the economy. Consumers increasingly value access and usage of a product over ownership.” Read more about what Jeff Wilkins, CEO and Co-Founder of Motili wrote recently.
Internal Thought Leaders
Vyas and Nannicini are raising the following key questions in their article: Is your enterprise dominated by passive thinking and prescribed routines? Or is it one that generates fresh thinking and unlocks insights into the future.
The Banking Sector and their Reputation Issues
According to Nir Kossovsky, “the banking sector and its regulators have been grappling with the issue of reputation since the last economic collapse, but only recently have come to a clear understanding of what reputation means.
How to Earn Response as a Publisher
It’s important to understand the topics each publisher wants to cover – and then how to pitch that content – to earn the best response. This article is about what lessons could be learnt on digital PR from a study based on a year’s worth of publisher responses.
LinkedIn Introduces “Lookalike Audiences”
LinkedIn now lets marketers target ads to ‘Lookalike Audiences’ – meaning they reach people who are similar to the ideal customer of a business. By doing so, they extend the reach of campaigns to more qualified prospects and engage new target accounts.
Asking the Tough Questions
In this article, Chuck Saia, CEO of Deloitte Risk and Financial Advisory, explains why leaders need “courage” to avoid reputational and culture risks. In particular, Saia asks leaders courage to admit they don’t have all answers and he requests them to ask the right questions.
Creativity is Crucial for Future Branding
Isn’t it wasteful how despite unprecedented level of access to knowledge, ideas and examples, the level of creativity is diminishing? Imaginativeness, outside-of-the-box and independent thinking are key for securing the future prosperity of industries and professionals.
Brand Trust 2.0. through Blockchain
In this article Christian Purser examines and analyzes whether the next generation of internet technologies heralds a new era of trust for brands. Can blockchain provide the trust layer wherever there’s a potential trust issue?
Enhancing Credibility through Reputation
Brand reputation management has been one of the most strategic practices for enhancing online visibility and customer loyalty. Why is brand credibility particularly important in reputation management? How can brand credibility scale a business?
Healthcare Brands Need to Change
Sunaina Sharma explains in this article why it would be wise to look to their counterparts in the tech and finance sectors in order to avoid the same pitfalls. Have a closer look to understand why healthcare brands need to change their approach.
The Best PR Hacks with Abnormal Attention
PR hacks can only be a sub branch of the more general tree of guerrilla PR tactics that are able to hit the viral spiral. Here are few PR hacks that exceeded some entrepreneurs’ expectations.
How does the Future of Retail look like?
Get some News from the Retail Panel at the Big Bang Event! Will the retail sphere survive its Amazonization? What strategy does retail need to implement to be able to offer customers what Amazon cannot offer?
#1 Product Discovery Platform: Influenster
Influenster periodically sends their members VoxBoxes of free products to test and review. It is considered North America’s #1 product discovery and review platform with over 25 million reviews.
The Super-Bowl as a Platform
This year too the ad spendings during the Super Bowl reached astronomical numbers. The widespread comment on this year’s game is that actually the game was much less exciting to watch than the well-prepared ads.
The Most Valuable Brands
Brand Finance has released its annual report for the world’s most valuable brands in 2019: Ferrari is on the top. Meanwhile Chines companies are on a rising star – Especially WeChat shows an extraordinary performance.
The Potential of Podcasts
Podcasts, like radio, have the potential to bring the theatre of the mind to life. Therefore, Spotify as a music streaming platform wants to become a podcast company by investing $500 million in podcast startups.
Investor Updates
This article describes why investor updates are an opportunity to be accountable, to stay top-of-mind, and to remind investors why to back one’s organization.
Job Creation Strategy
Insights from World Economic Forum: “A job creation strategy for the Fourth Industrial Revolution is critical. Machines in the workplace could lead 58 million more jobs if the right labour policies are applied.”
PR vs. SEO
Public relations firms and SEOs have been duking it out over who’s better at online reputation management for decades. So who’s right?
Activist Move
HSBC has become the center of attention with its latest creatively activist message. Championing cultural openness and global citizenship, the brand showed that it doesn’t only stand for something but it also stands against something.
Humanization
Humanist values, humanization of technology, human-centric communication and education, prioritization of the human dimensions need stay among the priorities in order gain lasting and substantial competitive advantage.
PR Disasters of 2018
PRmoment.com released the list of the worst PR disasters of 2018. PR pundits vote for what they believe to be the worst PR crises of the year, with TSB being the winner (or should that be loser?)
Consumer & Purpose
All multinational consultancy corporations agree on the beneficial nature of a purpose-led strategy. Read this interview with Bill Theofilou, senior managing director at Accenture Strategy, to learn more about the relationship between consumers and purpose-led brands.
On Spreading Behaviors
The latest thinking on social networks explains why new technologies and innovative behaviors really spread. It’s not about “going viral.” Starting locally or with a specific niche, having few but strong bridges rather than many but weak bridges are the ways to go.
Social Media Responsibility
The consumers’ and customers’ expectations from the CSuite are evolving. Executives are expected to be more accountable. These expectations for businesses to lead are not only tied to a company’s reputation, but also to its bottom line.
Many-Model Thinking
Interdisciplinary thinking needs to be complemented with intercultural thinking because diversity of authentic sources for data, advice, business intelligence or ideas strengthens the decision-making process and the decision-maker’s mindset.
Time Allocation of CEOs
What’s a day in the life of a CEO like, and how do they deal with the constant demands of the top job? This article explains the time allocation of CEOs in an infographic created by Raconteur.
Retention is the ‘New’ Currency
Retention may be the ‘new’ currency for many industries but for the luxury industry it is nothing new. Cult-like loyalty, membership, long-term relationships and retention has always been among the priorities of luxury brands’ business models.
Activist Brands
In this interview with Prof. Philip Kotler, the necessity for purpose is further emphasized as the global commercial order goes through a transformation from marketing-driven Cause Marketing to corporate-driven CSR to societal-driven Brand Activism.
What Data is & Isn’t Good for
Leaders today increasingly turn to big data and advanced analytics in hopes of solving their most pressing problems. But when it comes to uncovering the motivations and rationale behind individual behaviors within a social system, data can only do so much.
Reputational Risks in Banking
Banking thrives on trust that is so hard to cultivate and so easy to lose. As in the case of Maltese banks, when one bank is affected by negative publicity, the whole sector suffers. But there is a way to overcome this.
Nothing New Under the Sun
Many leaders create resistance to change without realizing it. The research findings in this article suggest that to get people to embrace change, emphasize what will stay the same.
Start-Ups of Europe
Investment in early stage technology companies in Europe has risen four-fold over the last three years. If this progression is combined with the growing European tendency of intrapreneurship then the resulting general picture is one that is filled with opportunities for impact investors.
Psychology of Sound
For top-flight car and watch brands, every single tick and rumble is an opportunity to provoke an emotional response. Here’s how they do it.
Segmentation is Multifaceted
Customer segmentation is not just a revenue tool, but also a way to achieve excellence in execution. Sophisticated segmentation is one of the most beneficial and least understood instruments in industries of strategic communications, brand management and PR.
Making Goals Meaningful
As Brett Steenbarger wrote “Why is it that we can be so sincere and motivated in formulating goals and so bad at sustaining their pursuit? Research in psychology suggests two important factors at work: turning goals into habits and making goals meaningful.”
Perceiving Reality
Knowing in-depth the keys to perception management and how we perceive reality is an imperative. This article provides useful advice about this however it definitely depends on the segments a brand addresses.
Social Media Comms of High-Profile Events
High-profile events are important to a business’ future success, and having strong communications strategies in place for the event is an absolute must. In this article the expertpanel of the Forbes comms council share some of the firsthand insights on the matter.
Brand Reputation Study
Reputation management has become a top priority for communications and marketing leaders according to the Inaugural Brand Reputation Study. The survey reflects the views of 174 senior communications leaders representing top brands and PR agencies conducted between April 3 and May 4, 2018.
On Customer Touchpoints
As brands juggle more and more channels to try and interact meaningfully with customers, are all these touchpoints helping or hindering? 4 Keys to Organizing Brand Interaction.
The Best & The Rest
Interbrand’s Best Global Brands 2018 report that came out recently shows that it is a seismic year for luxury brands. There are lessons to be learnt from today’s leading-edge luxury brand ecosystem.
Corporate Reputations
Whilst big corporate CEOs have billions of pounds at their disposal, they still make mistakes when it comes to brand reputation. SME bosses can learn from their lessons.
Holistic Sustainability
“Sustainability” is an overused word in the mainstream media, but understood by very few. In authentic luxury brand management holistic sustainability means more than just going green.
Expertise First. Influence Second.
Those PR professionals that are aware how influence should be a by-product of expertise and not the foundation for it are the ones who make the real lasting impact. The influencers need to prioritize expertise.
Brand Ambassadors in Academia?
A growing number of teachers are using their social media savvy to help tech firms influence and brand their products in public education. Should teachers moonlight as brand ambassadors for tech firms?
Handling Reputation
Handling a brand’s reputation requires thinking ahead and planning. As the enlightened polymath Benjamin Franklin said: “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”
Coaching a CEO
Although “the horse-whisperer” analogy or metaphor might not be the most thoroughly though out way of framing the matter at hand, consider this : “Successful coaching involves working with – not against – an individual’s resistance.”
Comparatives and Superlatives
As Mark Ritson put it “There are two ways to position a brand. – ‘about’ something and ‘versus’ something – and the most powerful examples of positioning do both.” Indirect razing can in some cases be more strategically right than overt criticism.
Treasuring Reputation
Reputation is the current currency as it always has been. Financial professionals play a growing role in efforts to manage reputational risk and maintain brand value through ethical business practices.
Youtube’s new strategy
YouTube is slowly joining the subscription market with its big new strategy for premium content service. After multiple rebrandings and strategy shifts, the video and music behemoth wants to make its for-pay services as international as YouTube itself.
Brand Placements X
Subscription Business
Amazon, Hulu, Netflix & Co: The future of product placement and brand integration has only begun and, as any insider would agree, this is just the small visible side of the giant iceberg.
Facebook for Mobile
First Ads
The Creative Shop team at Facebook developed a framework to approach creating lightweight video ads from still images. Instead of being a social networking platform, as it promises, it leans more towards a random content machine.
Do You Mean It?
The latest cover of Harvard Business Review focuses on what happens when work has meaning and on turning purpose into performance. According to the authors of the article: ”People who find meaning in their work don’t hoard their energy and dedication… They grow rather than stagnate. They do more— and they do it better.”
Taking Risk to Build Trust
Integrity in some cases is about making the right decision to take the right step which can be unpopular. Serving humanity as a whole must be prioritized over serving the mass market’s needs in communications strategies. This means building trust might require taking particular types of risks.
High-Value vs. High-Worth Brands
Mark Miller compares the highvalue brands with the high-worth brands in this article. Basically, “on one end are brands with high value (attractive at a low price), and on the other end are brands with high worth (worth it at almost any price).”
How many is too many?
How many versions of a product do consumers really want? Sarah C. Whitley, Remi Trudel and Didem Kurt attempt to find the answer to this question by conducting research on this specific matter. As the authors wrote: “Consumers’ perceptions of how many choices they prefer change depending on whether they intend to use an item for pleasure or to meet a functional need.”
The Winners of Cannes
In this article one can view the list of all the Grand Prix winners from the 2018 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. There were both positive and negative reactions about the event itself. If one compares the 5-day videos with highlights of this year with those of previous years it seems there were more speakers who had substance and depth in their core messages and responses in the past.
Deep Brand Equity
During an interview at the Financial Times Luxury Summit in 2015 Dr. Johann Rupert, Chairman of Richemont, explained the brand equity imperative saying: “our role is to protect the DNA and the brand equity, because if we can have desirability and brand equity then we can have pricing power.”
Transitioning to New Leadership Roles
Leadership changes are more common than ever. But most companies don’t get it right. Every leadership transition creates uncertainty. Will the new leader uncover and seize opportunities and assemble the right team? Will the changes be sustainable? Will a worthy successor be developed? These questions boil down to one: Will the leader be successful?
Are Your PR Efforts Falling Flat?
According to Richard Lorenzen, a well-executed public relations campaign has the ability to take a business to the next level and grant exposure to new markets and audiences. A solid checklist for managing a public relations campaign will include setting clear goals, pitching the right reporter, finding creative solutions and so much more.
The Studies of Purpose
Higher returns on equity, more fulfillment at work, lower risk of death, higher employee retention are among the many benefits of discovering and applying Purpose for organizations and individuals. However, for higher effectiveness this whole process needs to be framed as the Guiding Purpose Strategy (GPS) rather than just ‘finding purpose’.
YouTube’s Streaming Service
Google-owned YouTube is entering the crowded and competitive music streaming market with its own subscription service set to launch later this month. According to the Google-owned company, the service will include “official songs, albums, thousands of playlists and artist radio, plus YouTube’s tremendous catalog of remixes, live performances, covers and music videos.”
Reading a CEO’s Character
Most of the research on profiling leaders that have been conducted thus far uses tools that are outdated compare to the ones used in High Psychographics R&D. Using solely psychoanalytical instead of applying the interdisciplinary methods of high psychographics to reading CEO’s style is far from sufficient to reach the goal.
Naming Strategies
It is said that a name that is too on the nose could hamper future business direction changes. What’s in a name? What immediate and non-immediate associations come up to mind from the name of a brand? Is it better to give a brand a literal name or a non-literal one?
Making It Happenstance
Many have experienced how good luck comes to those who are prepared for it and how luck is something one builds and it is different from chance. Dr. Carl Jung, for instance, thought that there is no such thing as coincidence. If there is then, according Dr. Jacques Vallee, there are significant coincidences and insignificant ones.
Future(s) of Apps
It was found that consumers spend 85% of their time on smartphones, within apps, but only five apps see heavy use. What will apps look like with streaming / non-downloads / voice interface / AR / VR? What three core areas the future of mobile app lies? What could digital marketers and app-developers expect over the next decade?
Creator Side of Influentialism
Brands that want to implement an influencer strategy are too preoccupied with the general reach of influencers rather than the creative potential and the precision in targeting. Brands seek to message ‘through’ these influencers using them as a means of distribution instead of working ‘with’ the insider influencers, the creators that make the mind move the matter.
Techniques of PR
According Al Ries, in the past, almost every new brand was launched with a big advertising campaign. In today’s media environment, that’s not a good idea. Advertising is expensive and not very credible, especially when used on behalf of a new brand. That’s why many of the most successful new brands were launched with PR.
New Industries for Blockchain
The world is unraveling new use cases for blockchain technology each day. In this article, a blockchain investor and co-founder of Coin Clear Steven Buchko writes about how blockchain technology is entering the over $50 billion online gaming market.
Learning from Boutique Brands
How can big businesses capture some of the personal touches of small businesses? It is necessary to loke at brands like Zappos who have been learning some of the key communication techniques from boutique brands and then implementing within and without their large organizations.
For the Talent-First CEOs
Last time the secret of discovering and investing in the right talent was discovered Europe had a Renaissance which started in Florence, Italy. There is a strong relationship between impact investing and the global talent agenda. Diversity of talent within a company is key. Today, the word ‘talent’ includes the ability to develop nonordinary competencies too.
Meaning of Brands
There is still much confusion about what a brand is. Contrary to common view, not every famous company has a brand. According to Rebecca Robins, co-author of Meta-Luxury,“Great brands begin from within. They are sustained and continue to grow through the strength of a powerful purpose and crystal clear and common culture.”
Net Promoter
Brand ambassadorship and endless referral systems are part of the same equation of brand culture. According to D.Darnell and R. Markey: “One of the most important lessons that Net Promoter® companies taught us was that the system’s success in unlocking customer loyalty relied on its ability to inspire deep commitment from employees —harnessing their energy, enthusiasm and creativity.”
‘Made in Britain’
It is a waste of investment to invest in place, nation or city branding without a thorough understanding of the role of cultural identity which is much deeper rooted than national identity. Cultural capital, culture codes, soft power, the face and the character, culture’s contribution to humanity (purpose), diachronic vs. synchronic identity and so on make up some of the aspects of branding a country. In this article, the author briefly analyzes the current reputation of Brand Britain from interesting angles.
Signature Stories
One of the best ways of utilizing a strategic narrative is by looking at it through the angle of signature stories. Some of the questions that lead to the creation or discovery of a brand’s signature story are: What does the brand stand for? Who are its customer targets? What organizational values or core codes provide substance and clarity to the brand?
The Inner Age
In a world where some segments of consumers that are young live like old consumers and old ones live like they are young demographic data insufficient. In a world where some CEOs began to behave as start up entrepreneurs and young entrepreneurs adopt an attitude of conglomerate CEOs big data is not big enough. In this article Martin Lindstrom speaks of a psychographic dimension of segmentation and targeting, more specifically, of appealing to the inner age.
Humanomics
In a paper published by MIT Sloan Management Review with the results of a global study of more than 1,000 large companies that are using or testing AI and machine learning, it was found that the emergence of new roles and categories of jobs that are uniquely human is clear. This is only one of the dimensions of the matter tied with brand culture as the workplaces of the future will be way more human, not less.
‘Framing Mark’
Perhaps, for the sake of comprehensiveness, it is sometimes better to invent a new notion. How about replacing ‘the question mark’ with ‘the framing mark’? Is there a way to get it right in the first place and ask the original question in such a way that it is solved without the necessity of a chain of solutions? It’s best to keep in mind that a well articulated question can contain the elite of the durable and mature responses inside itself.
Beyond Digits
As Rory Sutherland, Vice-Chairman of Ogilvy UK puts it: “A lot of incredibly important information particularly to do with attitudes, hearts and minds doesn’t have a mathematical measure attached to it.” In marketing, HR and R&D such processes as optimisation, quantification and efficiency by themselves are more insufficient today than ever.
The News Feed Goes Back to Its Origins
Mark Zuckerberg has recently outlined the new focus of the developments in his social media platform. The focus will be on taking the News Feed back to its original purpose which is based more on meaningful content and more content from friends and family than from corporations. The implications of this is that there will be less room for cheap entertainment and more room for authentic influencers and creative deep narratives.
Thought Leadership & PR
From the standpoints of general systems synamics and holistic brand management, influencer marketing, personal branding, content development, network relations, pr and thought leadership are all components of one and the same clock. In this article the author explains why thought leadership that is on-brand works so well in today’s data cluttered environment.
The Culture Factor of Brands
The days of the world’s witnessing the uncultured brands’ fall are very near. FOr a brand to have a cultural consciousness has nothing to do with having a cultured consciousness. Culture is the priority of purpose-led brands and it is a fundamental management tool for leaders. Culture beats powerpoint and eats strategy for breakfast. Cultural capital boosts financial capital for brands and makes them outlast the brands with semi-culture or pseudo-culture.
Place Branding
A traveler has one home to return to but what’s important is to know that a traveler can have several second homes or third places. Becoming their third place or second home is the meaningful way of managing the brand of any place and elevating the quality of relations in the experiental and therefore human dimension.
Weather Marketing
Marketers will spend more time relying on weather triggers for ad targeting in 2018 because as L. Sullivan wrote “Unseasonable and seasonable weather impacts how much consumers buy, along with the types of products they purchase, how consumers shop, and the price they’re willing to pay.”
Brand vs. Branding
One of the main confusions in the global economy is related to not being aware of what can be changed and what needs to stay firm in holistic brand management systems. This article can lead one to re-center their brand and ask questions about the important difference between brand vs. branding.
Influencialism 2.0
Influentialism 2.0 indicates a transition in what it is to be influential in the first place. This transition stems from the need for depth in the way that if an influencer isn’t deeply involved in what he/she claims to be influential in then their influence will be measured as low.
Growth & Prosperity
The 9th Global Drucker Forum 2017 was, as always, full of interesting and thoughtful insights. The necessity for more purposeful organizations was emphasized this year. In this SlideShare, there is a collection of some of the top quotes about growth and prosperity from the great gathering.
NextDoor
In addition to Apple buying Shazam, the other news was Nextdoor raising $75 mln in its funding round. As described by Crunchbase, Nextdoor is the social network for neighborhoods. Neighbors create private neighborhood websites where they get to know one another, ask questions, exchange local advice and recommendations, and organize virtual neighborhood watches to reduce crime.
Brand Journalism
The majority of content created by brands is having little or no impact on business results or people’s lives, according to Havas’ latest ‘Meaningful Brands’ study. So long as brands don’t transform or make the shift from content marketing to brand journalism, this picture will remain the way it is.
The Conscious Capitalist
The research on the advantages of consciousness in a capitalist system just keeps pouring in: self-aware leadership, sustainability, a higher purpose and other companion practices elevate human wellbeing and at the same time benefit the bottom line. Here is an interesting infographic that shows the results from the research.
Influencialism
Here is an interesting article about the decision-making of a segment of investors. Dr. Robert Cialdini is famous for turning persuasion psychology into a science and this article remembers about one of his findings in his book called Influence from the year 2006. A potent weapon of influence, he explains, is the principle of social proof.
Living the Organizational Purpose
This recent roundtable was about making the brand purpose something that is lived out everyday within the organization. The falling levels of trust in business in today’s overcommunicating world and this could be permanently cured only by a genuine application of a Guiding Purpose Strategy. Studies show that purpose-led leadership unlocks long-term growth.
Rise of Podcasts or the Return of (new) Radio
Amanda Kreuser from Inc. says: “There’s good reason podcasts are supplementing blogs as a major marketing tool. Around 67 million people ages 12 and over listen to podcasts each month, according to a study by Edison Research. And a whopping 85 percent of people who start a podcast listen to all or most of it.”
The Segment of Affluencers
According to the Fall 2017 Ipsos Affluent Survey released in October, affluencers are a powerful grouping of Affluent consumers who also influence others’ shopping and buying behaviours. The new report found that the influence of this segment is felt nearly in every category rather than only in high-priced ones.
Brand Casting & Placement
Product placement is a combination of epos and referral systems. It’s the only or one of the very few kinds of advertising that will be able to continue its existence in the future. The upcoming challenge in the branded entertainment industry will be based on mastering the art and science of brand casting and integrating the brand to the narrative in a subtle way that doesn’t interfere with the mise en scène, the character (as the influencer) and the plot.
No Segmentation = No Mapping
Segments do not change over time. Their size may change but they don’t change over the long term. The process of accurate segmentation not only remains to be of fundamental importance,
being one of the first steps before proceeding in anything for strategic communications but it also is more important than before due to rapid changes in economy, the overabundance of choice and information. Today, no segmentation equals to no mapping.
A Return to Banking Secrecy
The establishment of a crypto currency cluster in Zug now provides a welcome boost to the industry and a potential way to return to Switzerland’s good old banking secrecy, a finews.com analysis shows. It is one of the ideal economies with best conditions for businesses with crypto-currencies. As it was said in the novel of H.Hesse ‘everything returns’.
An Ode to Creativity
As Sir John Hegarty emphasizes, technology may be useful but human creativity is priority. A creative message is not only memorable and effective, creating the right associations with the brand in the minds of consumers, but it also can go deep into the soul and touch the very heart of the viewer, reader, or listener.
The Essential Authenticity
Kathleen Hall, CVP Brand, Advertising and Research from Microsoft reminded the marketing community that “The key to brand authenticity is to uncover your essence. Figure out who you are and what you stand for”. Discovering the Guiding Purpose Strategy is essential for brand DNA and authenticity.
Teachers as Brand Ambassadors
Teachers, Professors and Scholars can be one of the ideal brand ambassadors and ethical influencers for those new goods, ideas or initiatives that are beneficial both for society and add educational value. Similar to the way the communication of luxury brands often carries educational value, this approach too can be a true win-win.
Philosophy is Humanized Software
All the extraordinary leaders and enlightened advisors to those leaders were aware of the phenomenal practicality of philosophy during their journeys. Quotes, sayings, maxims and mottos are the condensed cells of a philosophical body of knowledge that accumulated over a long time in the minds of various types of leaders. Here is an interesting collection of thoughts from 100 business minds.
Competing on Social Purpose
Aligning a brand with a social purpose is one of the most beneficial steps to take however knowing which purpose the brand is to be aligned with is where the real sophisticated process lies. A good way to start is to focus of the deep and actual needs of humanity rather than of the masses.
Tracking Meds Via Blockchain
As J.J. Roberts reports “the pharma industry may be on the verge of solving a longtime problem: How to stop a flow of stolen or counterfeit pills entering the supply chain and trickling down to patients.” The solution is in blockchain technology that creates tamper-proof, indelible record of transactions.
Founder’s Weltanschauung
As Bain&Co.’s Chris Zook who authored this HBR article plainly wrote: “Few forces in business are more powerful or do more to shape the dynamics of an industry than the energy, focus, and ability of the great founders of companies. That founder’s mentality can create enormous value for a company. But lose the founder’s mentality itself, and a company can see its value rapidly destroyed.”
Perennial Wisdom for a Leader
The words of Socrates about handing over the mindset torch were: “I cannot teach anyone anything, I can only make them think.”. Although not all points are agreeable, universal and wise in this article, the great leadership thinker Manfred Kets de Vries reminds us of the fundamental inner-workings of sincere, meaningful and authentic leadership.
Quality of Bonds
Powerful Relations (PR) are not about the quantity of relations but about the quality of relations. As it was found in this study that focuses on how structures, networks and interaction patterns can promote cooperation in biology and in society, for cooperation to thrive, a few strong ties are better than a million of weak ones.
Questions in Content
The title of this article is the following question: ‘Should your content marketing strategy have more questions than answers?’ Right directions derive from accurate questioning. What is the right question to find out what the right question to ask is if the right question is the one that contains the elite of the answer(s) in itself?
Brand Singulartity
According to Mark Di Somma many companies struggle to balance the strategic need to move things forward over the longer term with the plethora of more immediate demands for response or action. Brand Singularity is hard in today’s world of distractions. Brand singularity needs to be more about overcommitting than about over-devotion.
Future of Banking
New technologies like artificial intelligence, blockchain, the Internet of Things, open banking APIs and robotic process automation will rock the banking ecosystem down to its very core, disrupting the way people bank and the manner in which institutions deliver financial services. The largest global banks are one thing the global banking system is another. New technologies go straight for the systems.
Systems Thinking
Peter Senge explores how we have shifted in to a new generation of systems thinking. He asks us to think about how we use technology and how that technology influences, for better and worse, the ways we communicate and connect.
Hidden Players
There is a number of hidden realities within the business that are shaping it without being televised. There are hidden champions, silent paradigm shifts, deep entrepreneurial systems that influence the direction of the global commercial exchange in ways that the mainstream media is not even conscious of. In this interview, Hermann Simon speaks of only one of the aspect of these hidden realities – hidden champions.
Swiss Cryptocurrency
According to Darryn Pollock from CoinTelegraph, Switzerland is enticing financial technology companies and startups to its already booming Crypto Valley by stripping down its regulations for services surrounding digital currencies and other financial services.
Ultra High Net Worth Individuals
The fifth edition of the UHNWI report analyses the state of the world’s ultra high net worth population, or those with $30m or more in net worth, and this year revealed global growth of 3.5% to 226,450 individuals and a 1.5% increase of their total combined wealth to $27 trillion…
Potential Means Future
This is an important study from the standpoint of psychographics and semiotics. The study is about how when people seek to impress others, they often do so by only speaking of individual achievements from the past. Despite the intuitive appeal of this strategy, the researchers from Stanford and Harvard Universities demonstrate that people often prefer potential rather than achievement when evaluating others.
Driverless Cars in the UK
As it is reported in this BBC article a demonstration of driverless cars in Nuneaton will be followed later this year by trials on public roads. UK government research suggests that the market for automated vehicles in the UK only will be worth about £28bn by 2035.
“Houseparty”- The new Skype
Houseparty is the group video chat app that is simple, synchronous and social. Given that Skype’s group video chat isn’t free of charge, Houseparty continues serving as the ideal alternative.
First Election for Space Nation
The first elections for the space nation Asgardia began on June 13, 2017. The day before that, a new press conference about the next steps of Asgardia was held in Hong Kong. The founder Dr. Ashurbeyli said it simply: “We are not the best, we are the future.”
Humanization of the Future
Apple’s purpose of humanizing technology is an important one to pay attention to and to learn from. Without the esthetes, aestheticians, prioritization of beauty, humanity won’t have a bright future. Human creativity is the art of selecting out of the select and employing original intelligence that could not be replaced with artificial intelligence.
“Build a Brand”
The clear advice that Sir John Hegarty, co-founder of BBH, gives to start ups is “don’t start a business, build a brand”. He is known among ad people for his sophisticated thinking and being ahead of time. When he speaks, instead of merely ‘listing’ buzzwords he chooses to enlighten listeners about the matter at hand.
Google Lens
More and more people are speaking about how promising Google Lens is. Google Lens is seen as one of the key ways for the global search giant to expand on its original purpose statement: “to organize the world’s information”. It is viewed by many as one of the devices of the future.
PR Spendings
It is stated in this new article of AdWeek that marketers plan to increase both internal staffing and overall spending on public relations over the next five years, according to a new report conducted by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and the USC Center for Public Relations at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
Branding Products vs. Services
The global services industry is among the fastest growing industries but at the same time, we are witnessing another return to the real (tactile, analog, physical, print, authentic etc.) as the role of senses is important in branding. In this article Irene Etzkorn provides her answer to the interesting question: is it harder to brand products or services?
Facebook’s World Content Feed
There are more and more complaints and criticism about Facebook’s increasing loss of focus. It is departing too far from its original purpose. It has added a new button for ‘world feed’ that, in some ways, tries to imitate 9GAG but fails to do so as 9GAG works with the Internet’s cultural mind whereas Facebook works with an algorithm.
Impact of Micro-Influencers
One of the most effective sides of promoting through micro-influencers is that their audience tends to be a more targeted and focused one. The promoter, then, avoids the gamble of reaching randoms segments. The other effective side of certain micro-influencers is that some of them that may have small numbers online are more effective offline (or in the real world) than the influencers with large-scale nose-counting online.
Microsoft & Connected Cars
Being aware of the growth in demand for connected car services Microsoft continues taking steps in that direction. As Korosec says in this article: “cars are increasingly morphing into computers with wheels, and Microsoft sees the same opportunity that a number of other tech companies do, including Intel, Google, Qualcomm, and NXP”.
Mad Men’s Product Placements
After 50 years Heinz approves Don Draper’s ‘Pass the Heinz’ ads and is actually running them. The protagonist of the profound American series presented the ad campaign based on selling an idea rather than merely selling a product. As a master ad man and storyteller, his focus was on persuading the consumers rather than the client that doesn’t know anything about advertising techniques. This is a very original move by the brand as it goes from product placement to advertising employing storytelling in between.
Futurists and Clairvoyants
The ability to foresee in the way a clairvoyant does requires constellating holistic and concentrated ways of thinking. Successful futurists also take into account that what’s an esoteric fringe today can be tomorrow’s normal. The ordinary man’s Atlantis, so to say, is the extraordinary man’s normal.
Basics of Personal Branding
Online personal branding is replacing resumes and cover letters. As the author of the article Lucas Pesa says: “The goal in using these strategies is to sell your skills like commodities, and the target audience is potential employers around the globe.
Aligning Brand, Purpose and Culture
Carolyn Ray, Managing Director at Interbrand Canada, says: “after many years of studying the world’s best performing brands in our Best Global Brands report, a shared characteristic is clear: brands with purpose rise to the top.” This is an interesting article that sums up and brings together the key benefits of Purpose, with a capital P, for brand managers and strategists.
Entertaining the Masses
Despite democratizing valuable content, the masses still go for the mainstream ‘stu ’ that tends to lack substance. The ways of entertaining the masses haven’t changed much. Not knowing what one really likes leads to liking what the masses like. However, it is important to remember that even though it may be true in relation to the masses, it could not be generalized to all the classes of society which make up another large share of the global audience pie today.
Coursera for Governments
The online distant education brand Coursera has launched a new offering aimed at working with governments and nonprofits, as the brand intends to “close current and emerging skills gaps in the global workforce.” The purpose-led brand Coursera continues to grow as ed- tech is one of the key industries of both today and tomorrow.
Product Placements of Pepsi
Interbrand’s brandchannel interviews Brad Brown who has done various works in the field of product placement. As he explains certain products are way either to place than others because they fit right in very naturally being in harmony with the mise-en-scene.
Investors and Entrepreneurs
Debi Kleiman, Executive director of the Arthur M. Blank Center for Entrepreneurship, Babson College, unpacks the studies that is of interest to both investors and entrepreneurs. The important finding of these studies is based on the fact that investors want to back entrepreneurs who they can mentor because several academic studies have demonstrated the impact coachability can have on an entrepreneur’s chances of securing funding.
Instagram Live Video is here
Instagram too now joins the live video club. The live feature is now available for all countries. Going and being live is one of the key macro-tendencies of 2017 and it is strongly tied to the global snapchatization effect of the social media today.
Apple is for Original Content
Apple will be joining the content creation industry by creating its own original content without buying Netflix or Time Warner. After years of negotiation and numerous attempts to become a entertainment programming company, it seems, this time the brand will actually make it happen.
Psychographics and CA
Cambridge Analytica is one of the key firms that were in President Trump’s digital team that figured out how to win. The short speech video inside the article summarizes the very simplified version of the method. Majority of the people were always interested in watching D.Trump rather than in listening to him. What the media analyst Dr. McLuhan used to say back in the 50s is still relevant today. The electronic media makes images take over policies in elections.
Sophistication and Taste
Johann Rupert and Franco Cologni co-founded the Michelangelo Foundation which can be an almost tailor-made body for solving the macroeconomic problems of today’s world. These global issues related to how quality is still being silenced by quantity.
Apple’s Artificial Intelligence Research
This article about Apple’s AI research is creating desire about the findings and the state of the most valuable company’s R&D. As stated in the article: “A bragging point for Apple was the efficiency of its algorithms on graphics processing units.”
Destination Branding and PR
Bill Baker, Chief Strategist of Total Destination Marketing, shares his expertise in this interview about the key challenges of destination branding for small cities. As travel is further democratized and as the documentation and sharing of travel experiences becomes more frequent the function of place branding and PR gains momentum in today’s globalizing world.
Blockchain Technology
This article provides answers but, more importantly, inspires smart questions about Blockchain technology. For the uninitiated, the term might seem abstract with little real meaning on the surface. However, blockchain technology is a critical element of cryptocurrencies — without it, digital currencies like Bitcoin would not exist.
Skills Gap in Social Media PR
There seems to be an enormous and an increasing amount of companies “doing” PR in digital and social media but those who do it in a skilled way are still a very small minority. As Francis Ingham puts it: “our industry needs a flexible, learn-while- you-work, way to build skills, or it won’t succeed. Our training offering must be dynamic and flexible to equip PR professionals with the right skills in a convenient manner.”
Charging Network in Europe
German high-end automotive brands BMW, Audi and Porsche are working together to build a high-powered charging network in Europe. Construction will begin in 2017 at a projected 400 locations throughout Europe and the network will be ready by 2020.
Future of Marketing
Dominique Turpin, President at IMD, wrote about the trends and tendencies that will affect the future of marketing. These are just some of the trends that could be happening in marketing over the next few years. It’s important to keep in mind that there will also be other macro and micro tendencies as well.
World’s AI Talent
Global giant corporations are after the world’s AI talent. As it said in the article: “The cost of acquiring a top AI researcher is comparable to the cost of acquiring an NFL quarterback.” The talent pool in this area is a shrinking one but the forward-thinking companies that invest in this direction are establishing their advantage.
Brand Positioning
When we forget the definitions and the semiotics of notions we tend to forget their original purpose. This article reminds the managers and leaders behind brands the definition of brand positioning in a summarized way.
Sensual and Sensory
In a study by Nike – it was discovered that by adding scents to their stores they increased purchase intent by 80%. The key is to know which smell is in accordance with the brand. Looking at a monitor or an ad is only about one sense – sight. The omni-sense experience that can be communicated during a PR event or inside a store/office cannot be replaced with anything else.
UHNWI Prospecting
One of the golden rules of targeting the Ultra High Net Worth Investors is being able to treat every one of them as a segment of one. Understanding that their notion of space and time is completely different from the conventional perception is key. Thus the research toolkit of luxury brand managers needs to be improved with the methodology of high psychographics.
PR Entrepreneurs
The one important advice for PR entrepreneurs be about focusing on building and strengthening relationships. Powerful relations is the new definition of PR because the quantity of relations is not more important than the quality of relations.
Global Industrial Espionage
This is a fascinating HBR article about corporate espionage. Prof. Meyersson defends his research that shows investing more on industrial espionage or spying is more effective than R&D but at the same time Prof Meyersson says ‘I don’t recommend it, given what happened later.’
The Invisible Bank of the Future
As it is stated in ‘The Financial Brand’s article “according to a new report published by KPMG, “Meet Eva – Your Enlightened Virtual Assistant and the Future Face of the Invisible Bank”, technologies like Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa or Samsung’s Viv will enable an even greater shift in banks and banking by 2030.”
Brand Equity vs. Brand Value
This article written by the branding expert David Aaker elaborates on Brand Equity and Brand Value. In an age where business strategy is often confused with brand strategy, it is better to review the real branding thinking and its relationship with business management strategies. In this piece Aaker concludes by quoting Tom Peters who said ‘winners will find a way to create lasting value in the customer’s mind.’
Visual Public Relations
There are contexts and mediums which are overloaded with visuals while at the same time there are other mediums and contexts which have lacked visuals for a long time. The article mentions an interesting case by a company called Higherglyphics that did a large visual project for and in public space.
Meaningful Technology
Technology can and should be used for meaningful projects and innovations. It is different from using technology for technology. Rare books that are centuries old are often too delicate for museums to open, read, or explore without causing damage. This MIT camera can read books even when they’re closed. Without a past, there is no future.
Motives and Investments
It is striking how a large number of ‘professionals’ are still working with stereotypical market-based motives instead of real motivations. As mentioned in the article the purpose motive breaks the bad habit of following the mass markets. Aligning investment with inner motives is one of the most important components of Impact Investing.
Global PR Agencies Summit
The winners of the Global PR agencies of 2016 will be announced on October the 26th at the Global PR Summit. There were more than 400 submissions in total. The five finalists are listed in this Holmes Report article.
The Blockchain Revolution
Metaphorically speaking, Don Tapscott, Canadian author and consultant, can be considered a one-man think tank in the area of blockchain. He is one of the interesting thought-leaders whose words are often quoted. Here is a list of some of them.
Teslas Driving Themselves
Few days ago Elon Musk promised that every new Tesla will be fully capable of driving itself. The brand will make the transition from advanced cruise control to a more fully controlled self driving automobile. All the signs show that Elon Musk wants to bring the future sooner than the futurologist tend to predict.
Relevance & Timelessness
What’s old is perceived as expired. What’s classic stays timeless. Aiming to be relevant regardless of the changes in zeitgeists is one of the keys for the work being accepted as timeless both in future and in the far future. The tone-of-voice and the mindset used by Prof. Drucker when he was giving advice or authoring the next magnum opus of his were strategically timeless.
The Subtle Fall of ‘Nudge’
The nudge movement began showing signs that it isn’t flawless on certain segments. Motivation research didn’t go anywhere it only took a short nap. After letting the nudge-marketers make their move, we can reason that motivation research’s Renaissance is near. Motivating will soon replace nudging as it is way less risky and doesn’t lose its function in relation to market trends.
PR
for Brand Love
The customer service branch of PR focuses on managing both the offline and the online communities of a brand. This includes loyalists and all other stakeholders. Allison Sitch, Vice President of Global Public Relations for The Ritz-Carlton shares her thoughts on how companies of any size should can view this particular branch of Public Relations.
PR Agency Repositioning
During the H+K Strategies’ Creativity+Science conference in London, Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP, said data and digital are driving PR agency repositioning and the definitions of creativity has broadened. Semantic interpretation of his words can be guiding.
Brand Reputation Management
Alan Hall wrote an interesting article about some of the very fundamentals of brand management. As the ancient tradition tells us, your name is one of your most important assets. Asking oneself ‘do I really care about the name of my organization or of my own?’ is more vital than it seems at first sight. Prof. Roebuck’s ‘I Care’ leadership needs to be applied to brand management strategies too.
Twitter
as CRM
A new Twitter study confirms that responding to tweets pays off for businesses. This is particularly beneficial for brand’s post-purchase relationship management processes. The customers who send a real question or request and receive a response are 44% more likely to share their experience and 30% more likely to recommend the brand.
Developing Employees / Talent Management
The global talent agenda plays a role of utmost importance for the entire world of commerce. The decisions made about this matter will either make or brake the future of both large and small brands throughout the 4th Industrial Revolution.
Emoji Use and Small Data
Martin Lindstrom writes about the intersection of big data and small data by exploring the way consumers in different culture use emojis. As he puts it “no matter the method of data mining, causation and correlation are needed to truly understand the information and verify trends.”
The Global PR
Market
The research study covers the present scenario and growth prospects of the global public relations services market for 2016-2020. The market is expected to show steady growth. Growing focus on brand management are one of the factors that are highlighted in the analysis of the report.
Raison d’être
of PR
This article reminds us the forgotten side of PR. The meaningful role it is capable of playing needs to be remembered. The challenge of proving the real value of public relations today can be overcome by looking closer at the very original raison d’être of PR in a more frequent manner.
Long-Term Value Creation
According to Sir Win Bischoff, the chairman of the Financial Reporting Council, trustworthy information isn’t enough anymore. Today trustworthy behaviour in a company is equally as important. Growth in accordance with long-term value is strongly related to culture par excellence. The increasing need for improved internal culture of corporations in creating long-term value cannot overstated.
Snapchat
Glasses
Snapchat unveiled its first hardware product – sunglasses called Spectacles. They’re connected sunglasses that record 10-second video snippets that get saved to your Snapchat. This will eliminate the step of taking out the phone from your pocket to take a ‘snap’.
Conventional vs Digital PR
Jess Camp, a Digital PR Specialist at Blue Fountain Media, attempts to identify some of the differences between ‘traditional’ public relations and digital public relations. Some of her points are very meaningful but, for clarity in this context, the word ‘traditional’ needs to be replaced with ‘conventional’.
Self-Driving
Ubers
A self-driving car of Uber is roaming in Pittsburgh and A. Davies from Wired takes his first ride to reflect on it. Autonomous cars still aren’t as common in this city as they are in Silicon Valley but it is, of course, a very futuristic experience that adds meaning to Uber’s brand in a different location.
Social Classes
Pyramid
Prof. Henrich Greve from INSEAD shares with us an interesting case study about a new product in the alcohol industry. It is about how an Italian entrepreneur positioned her family’s artisanal grappa as part of a larger cultural turn toward home-grown authenticity and away from mass- produced more-of-the-same realm. It is a story of a new brand of grappa climbing the social ladder. This is real world elevationist growth as opposed to the expansionist one.
Art of Living
Aston Martin opened its first lifestyle experience boutique in London’s classy Mayfair district. These are the right times for making such investments for luxury brands. Such emphasis on the high lifestyle factor puts AM’s psychographic strategy in action.
Respect in PR
In this new interview Grant Somerville, Consultant at Hanson Search, sits down with David Carter, Head of Practice at Ogilvy PR, to speak about his journey within the industry. Respect, he says, is that single personal attribute which has most helped him succeed in his PR career.
Purpose Transforming
This short article begins by asking the key question that holds the answer for it within itself: Why are forward-thinking companies rushing to incorporate Purpose deeply into their corporate culture? The new fascinating stats and studies show us that Purpose, with a capital P, is changing how people think about professional life and engage in work.
Business Thinker
Being in the beginning of the millennia of think tanks means that there won’t necessarily be demand for a larger number of business thinkers but the demand for higher quality business thinkers will start growing in the near future. The question is what makes for a top business thought leader in today’s over-communicating world?
Brand Guardianship
Brands need to begin measuring their progress with qualitative performance indicators or QPIs. Prior to this brand managers are required to have a strong sense of brand guardianship. One side of this process is explored by A. Vesey in his new article.
Wider World Web
This year is the 25th birthday of the world wide web. Sir Tim Berners Lee who is the inventor of the web that is getting wider in a faster way than before says we should choose the web we want so that we are in a world we want.
Meaningful Internetwork
As Tom Cohen from Berggruen Institute puts it “few online communities seek to create meaningful conversation and share ideas in a rational and dialectical manner.” There is a growing demand for authors and content developers who can produce meaningful, original, and sincere content. From the brand management standpoint decent quality text continues to outperform low quality hypertext in the long term.
PR for Place
Branding
Place branding is gaining momentum in an unprecedented way. Events, experiences, visual and verbal identity – all of these are important parts of the equation. In an era of digital and cultural diplomacy, the management along with the micromanagement of a place’s perception and essence for both insiders and outsiders are becoming vital for growth.
Roots of a
Word
Prof. Paolo Quattrone, Chair of Accounting, Governance and Social innovation at the University of Edinburgh, explains why the new entrepreneurial citizen must look at etymology and remember the roots to account for an uncertain world.
10 Public Relations Principles
Craig Cincotta, Senior Director of Marketing Communications at SAP, lists the 10 public relations principles every PR practitioner should consider as they go through the process of assembling an effective plan. It is important to remember that failing to plan is planning to fail and as Dwight Eisenhower put it: ‘Plans are useless but planning is essential.’
What is Quantum Computing?
Which brands are involved in quantum computing R&D? What should marketers learn from this type of computing? Will this technology help us make the computational transition from the quantity- dominated business world to a more quality-oriented one ?
Personalization: Key for Content Marketing
The message of the article is prepared with the right intention but the recommended approaches on achieving personalized content are very insufficient. It is necessary to master data- interpretation and psychographics because the end requires a more relevant internalized means.
PR in Space – NASA’s Apollo program
This article reminds us how NASA’s Apollo program changed public relations. It was very challenging for the PR team to convince those in charge that the video shot in space needs to be organic and live for the full humane impact rather than televised after several days from the landing. It was not this decision but the motivation behind this decision that began the transition from meaningless PR to meaningful PR.
The Internet of Forgetting
Instagram introduced the new feature called Stories which is very similar to Snapchat. It is a way of targeting the segments that are interested in sharing ‘imperfect’, ‘in the moment’, ‘not worth remembering’, ‘single use’ content constantly.
Big Banks and Adding Value
The banks are one of the very few key institutions that can make or brake the society they operate in. They can be key in increasing a country’s cultural capital (art, science & business) by investing in projects that are more focused on adding meaning and value in a timeless way.
10 Years of Doing PR for Apple
Cameron Craig, a communications professional, who has done PR for Apple for 10 years reveals the lessons he learned from this journey in his new article. He states in a clear way saying: “Most importantly, respect your brand. That’s the biggest lesson of all that I learned at Apple. It’s your biggest asset and you have to protect it.”
Taking It Back To Basics
As Sir Martin Sorrell said addressing marketers several years ago: “Social media needs be seen as a social platform rather than a marketing platform.” This HBR piece reminds us that it is sometimes better to go to basics to fix a ‘broken’ social media strategy.
Fintech’s General State Of Being
Here is a short interview worth reading: The internationally recognized financial industry strategist Jim Marous discusses fintech’s general state of being.
Digitalism in PR
Jacqueline Qin reminds us the important questions in her article: In this digital era, what direction should public relations develop? Who tops the PR sector in the digital age? Given the backdrop of increased digitalisation [and digitalism], is Public Relations currently experiencing a “revolution” or an “evolution”?
PR & Contentology
Why public relations and content marketing are part of the same revolution? What’s the difference between a good content marketing campaign and a solid public relations effort? Diane Bégin unpacks content-ology.
Blending Tech
The global and silent industry of product placement is headed towards a curious direction. The more subtle the strategies become and the more technology advances, the field of product placement begins to evolve in the ways that aren’t discussed by most thinkers within the marketing world. This article is only a small sign of an aspect of this ongoing process.
Blue Ocean Strategy & PR
Over 3,000 participants from all over the world will gather this summer during a three-day long International Conference on Blue Ocean Strategy. In this PR event they will share their knowledge and ideas on how to inject creativity and innovation in the formulation and implementation of national policies and initiatives.
The Blockchain Revolution
Ignore Bitcoin’s challenges. In this interview, Don Tapscott explains why blockchains, the technology underpinning the cryptocurrency, have the potential to revolutionize the world economy.
4 Target Audiences For Your Luxury Event
Though lacking psychographics, the 4 key audiences to keep in mind for a brand’s PR events are expressed in this article by Thomas Serrano from Havas Luxe.
Cannes Lions 2016
As M. Sachs writes: “Related to purpose and launched at the Festival was Edelman’s 2016 Earned Brand Study. Aline Santos, Global Senior Vice President Marketing at Unilever, took the stage with Richard Edelman, President & CEO of Edelman, and talked about moving brand purpose from awareness to activism.”
CEO’s Energy
This interesting BCG article explores how CEOs who harness energy accelerate value creation, while those who deplete energy or allow it to dissipate struggle to achieve their goals.
PR Academics
It is very important to build stronger bridges between PR practitioners and PR academics. There are two major reasons why it is so: 1) We are in the beginning of the millennia of think tanks 2) we need to learn to look past operational dimensions. Long-term partnership of the two sides will be beneficial for both sides. There need to be more PR academics doing business and more PR practitioners delivering lectures.
Macro-Trends: Smart Cities
Alphabet’s think tank Sidewalk Lab is only one of the many examples that are working on further digitalizing the cities. The continuous trend of digitalizing cities is part of the fourth industrial revolution. Such developments improve the overall infrastructure of city life and boost cooperation between government/public sector and private sector.
Friends above Publishers
Facebook began putting friends above publishers in “News Feed Values”. The world’s biggest content site is changing its news feed algorithm by making values a priority this time. This means that the already strong word-of-mouth messages are even stronger now.
Sharing the Innate
While most branding projects are carried out behind closed doors, Mozilla is taking the unusual step of documenting the creative process online. Mozilla invites discussion at each stage of the rebranding and has already made posts introducing possible themes for its new positioning.
Reporting PR & Marketing Results
This is a simplified description of effectively reporting PR results to a CMO. Rebekah Iliff, Chief Strategy Officer of AirPR, says: ‘Take a peek at your last report, think about what you could have done differently, and remember to put yourself in your CMO’s shoes.’
Social Media & Culture
What are the key components to harnessing social media for the creation of a better culture? What if our online presence could also help build a healthier and more unique company culture? What is the nature of the relationship between social media and internal modus operandi?
Latest Study ‘Online Video Engagement’
Key influencers have more capacity to play the role of agents of influence than mainstream influencers. The same is so for online video engagement.
Small Data
In this radio interview Martin Lindstrom talks about how he gathers key data by observing the small details of daily life – valuable information which could lead to the development of a new product, or improvements to products that already exist. He shares some of the interesting insights drawing from real life cases.
Microsoft-LinkedIn
YouTube and Google. Instagram and Facebook. Tumblr and Yahoo. LinkedIn and Microsoft. Twitter and … ? The new deal between Microsoft and LinkedIn ignites speculations about Twitter.
PR & Media Relations
The State of the Media 2016 report used a survey of over 300 journalists and Cision’s own media experts to provide insights into how to build better relationships with the media and earn more coverage.
Growth Hacking Your Brand Strategy
As K.Luck says “Growth hacking is a new term for many branding professionals but a long held practice among the best marketers and product managers in Silicon Valley.” Purpose plays an integral role in this particular approach to growth.
Digital Strategy Into Your Event Marketing
There are both basic and sophisticated ways of integrating digital strategies into your event marketing campaigns for PR. This article summarizes some of the basic ways of combining the online with the offline of event marketing.
Can ‘Deep Work’ Really Work for You?
Developing the ability to do deep work is intimately related to one’s ability to have access to the world within. In a world full of distractions and impatience a deeper need for deep work arises. When brand communications lack depth they most likely lack meaning and purpose. Lack of depth in meaning leads weak perception management. This is why today the mindful strategists that make meaningful decisions and moves win.
A letter to PR students
There are stories with a sense of reality and there are narratives with a touch of sincerity. This article is particularly impressive as it actually does what it says should be done.
Best Times to post on Social Media
The best times to post, to tweet, to share aren’t exact science because of regional differences, content style and target audience. Nevertheless, this article attempts to make sense of the matter.
How to handle a High-Profile PR client
How do you handle a high-profile PR client? This piece summarizes the interesting questions and tips to take into account when handling a high-profile PR client like a politician, a celebrity, a public figure, a star and so forth.
Language of PR
It is important to be able to translate the magical words that the photographer used when meeting Vladimir Putin. On the structural level they said more than what they said on the content level. This case shows us how learning the language of advanced PR (powerful relations) is essential.
PR & Legendaryness
The ancient Shamanic tradition of storytelling has been here with us for thousands of years. It may have slightly changed its appearance in some ways but its essence is the same as it originally was in the very beginning. This article reminds us that, as always, we are better off integrating storytelling to PR strategy.
Media Effects
Dr. Leonid Matsih, prominent philosopher and theologian, once told an interesting story that is more relevant today as ever. The civilized man asks the savage man ‘what is 2 + 2?’ and the savage man asks, with a confused face, ‘two fish or two horses? Two of what + two of what? Can you be more specific?’ The findings of this new study serve as another wake-up call to how digital media may be damaging our ability to make room for abstract thought.
Your Online
Identity
Here is an interesting interview about establishing a digital footprint and the growing influence of online brand identities in the present day. Your profile’s presence online can create significant competitive advantage compare to those who are half-present or non-present.
New Instagram Analytics
Instagram’s new analytics tools will be launched in the coming months. The question will be how much do these measurements really matter on a psychological level? How instructive are the numbers that these tools show from the angle of PR?
Integrated Marketing Strategy
According to a new report, a significant number of asset management firms use content marketing, an essential component of PR, as part of an integrated marketing strategy, but face challenges in producing enough content.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution
Ubiquitous, mobile supercomputing. Artificially-intelligent robots. Self-driving cars. Neuro-technological brain enhancements. Genetic editing. The evidence of dramatic change is all around us and it’s happening at exponential speed.
Budweiser’s New Campaign
Budweiser renames it’s brand as ‘America’. This move is quite on code with the collective unconscious of beer consumers in the US. However, a sensationalist strategy is always weaker than a viralist strategy in the long term. This is a move of bluntness rather than of the much adored simplicity.
The Real Purpose of PR
When the time is right, it is useful to apply the alchemical maxim of solve et coagula (dissolve and coagulate) to the very notion of public relations. This means to deconstruct it into parts and then not to merely connect but to unite all the parts together.
Sophistication and Patronage
According to Guy Salter, chairman of the London Craft Week, growing sophistication rather than raw wealth is becoming the main driver of how the luxury clientele consume, shifting luxury spending to craft or brands with craft credentials. He eloquently says: “If I had to pick one word to capture this zeitgeist, it’s neither “luxury” nor “craft,” but “patronage.” “
Oversimplification is a foolish move
Oversimplification is a foolish move. As Einstein put it “We must simplify things as much as possible but not more than that.” Many writers, marketers and communication professionals still tend to oversimplify strategic matters these days.
Motivation. Not Nudging.
Marketing Professor Utpal M. Dholakia explains why motivation researchers’ techniques (developed in post-WWII era) are still better than the new tendency to ‘nudge’ and why nudging your customers can sometimes backfire.
Musings on Best Swiss Brand
Interbrand has just released the new Best Swiss Brands 2016 study. The top brands are predominantly luxury brands. Among the luxury watch brands Audemars Piguet shows double digit growth, with an 11% increase in brand value.
Elon Musk hints at magic bus
“We have an idea for something which is not exactly a bus but would solve the density problem for inner city situations,” – said Elon Musk at a conference in Oslo on the future of transportation. He was hinting at a magic bus “that’ll actually take people to their final destination and not just the bus stop.”
Sustainable Brands 2016 San Diego
Elevate courage and culture within to make your personal or corporate purpose thrive. Sustainability, innovation, branding and leadership will be approached from the more Purpose driven angle this year in California.
Product Placements – Reviewing the brand
Batman vs. Superman inarguably did create the global hype among the fans even though it wasn’t directed/written by Christopher Nolan this time. It is worth reviewing the brand and product placements in this motion picture: from the very stealth to the too apparent ones.
Soft Power and Place Branding
Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP, explains in his article how and why the role of national branding is important in the global economy. Government leaders that seek to attract capital need to think about themselves and nations in a new way: as brands. As the world becomes ever more connected, developing and maintaining a country’s brand will be an essential ingredient to success.
New Market of Iran – First shops opening
Italy few days ago became the first European country to take steps to help its fashion industry build a stronger presence in Iran following the lifting of Western sanctions. Brands like Versace, Roberto Cavalli are opening their first shops.
Youtube for Luxury Brands
Luxury marketers—which have traditionally been slower than others to adapt to digital—are working Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook, but unlike others, they’re still trying to nail down digital basics like YouTube and search marketing.
The Radical Transparency Era
Leo Bonanni, founder and CEO of mapping company Sourcemap, with clients from sectors ranging from pharma to electronics, recently remarked to Al Jazeera that “there are no remaining technical barriers to supply chain traceability” and that “in less than 10 years, it will be possible to scan any product on a store shelf and be connected with the people who made it.”
Neuromarketing & Mind Deciphering
Emotion detecting, reflexive response measuring and neuromarketing science in general is in its growth phase in correlation to the increase in information clutter and advances in medical technologies. For instance, MediaCom launched global partnership with Realeyes. Here is an article with some measurement results and an interesting eye-tracking video of Budweiser’s ad.
Twitter’s New Timeline
Twitter has changed its timeline algorithm. Users can now choose to view best tweets first atop their own chronological timeline. It will be interesting to see how will Twitter’s “relevancy” over recency affect the mass-marketing-dependent FMCG, entertainment and media brands.
The costs of being the default
Being the first or the only is analogical to being “the default”. Sometimes it is worth investing a billion dollars to being default.
This article shows court documents that unveil the case of Google and Apple. Google paid Apple 1 billion Dollars for the Safari default placement. Sounds like a lot of money but when taking into consideration that Google earned 12 billion dollars in 2014 in mobile search revenue alone, with 75 percent of the users coming from iOS, it suddenly changes the perspective.
Blue Ocean Strategy in Politics
In October 2015, Justin Trudeau had been elected as Canada’s 23rd prime minister. This came as big surprise, only few people would have bet on Trudeau. How comes that he managed to chance public opinion in such a short time? „Blue Ocean Strategy” is the magic word – it worked perfectly well for him. Even though he’s not a business man but a politician.
Guerrilla Campaign Goes Viral
Every year the creative behind the Quebec City Magic Festival comes up with guerrilla campaigns that go viral. This year’s work is no exception. It is no doubt that such works make someone’s day everyday. This is a good example of 21st century advertising that avoids the boring, imposing, monotonous messaging style.
10 Fields to use virtual reality
Virtual reality headsets are the one thing to notice in 2016. Against the common believe that this technology is for gamers only, mashable shows ten other fields where this innovative technology will leave its footprint. These fields also include health care industry, automotive manufacturing, shopping behaviours and educational programs.
