By Rob Wu The internet and 24/7 connectivity to the world around us have changed our relationships with people, businesses, and nonprofits in ways we couldn’t have imagined just a few years ago. Today, the ways in which we eat, drink, shop, and travel are shaped by companies like eBay, etsy, Airbnb, Craigslist, Uber, Lyft, […]

CBS joins Hulu’s new live-streaming service, Spotify offers Obama a job, the Minnesota Mitsubishi White Bear makes it big, and more.

New findings show TV is still the most trusted, and most viewed, medium out there.

Dan Jaffe, group executive vice president of government relations at ANA, provided an overview of the political environment since Donald Trump’s election and what advertisers need to watch as the new President and Congress formulate their agenda.

In 2017, are you looking to grow significantly?  Expand your scope?  Hit a new milestone?  If you’re a small- or mid-sized business that’s planning to grow into a larger enterprise — or maybe you run a later-stage start-up that’s headed toward a Series C or even an IPO — you need a solid strategic brand platform.  To help you, I’ve developed a new workbook, Scale-Up Your Brand:  How To Set Up Your Brand for Success in 5 Steps.  This new workbook is a step-by-step guide to help you develop a strong, valuable, sustainable brand strategy.  In it, I lay out the five steps plus a bonus brand assessment tool.   Available in digital ($6.99 each) and print ($9.99) form, you can get your copy of this new Scale-Up Your Brand workbook here.

You may recall last year, I ran a series of posts on this very topic — it was one of the most popular series I’ve published.  Now, I’ve compiled all that content and improved on and synthesized it into 36 pages packed with exercises, instructions, and helpful tips, plus room for note-taking and documenting your progress and decisions.  In addition to the workbook, I’m also introducing a workshop in which I will take you and your team through the workbook exercises and other valuable content in a experience custom-tailored to your specific needs.  Learn more about this one-day, hands-on, fast-paced workshop here and special introductory pricing here.

I’ve spending so much time and energy on helping companies that want to scale because I’ve seen too many organizations fail to cross the chasm between their humble beginnings and their grand aspirations.  While many different dynamics cause such a high failure rate, one of the most critical is the lack of a clear, robust, vital brand strategy.   When you don’t have a strong strategic brand platform, you end up with problems of scaling companies like these:

• Over reliance on product strategy.  In this scenario, your first product is a hit but you have nothing else to sustain that initial bump — or everything else in your pipeline fails to match initial demand levels.  To establish your brand, you’ve relied on product attributes or functionality that can be easily copied or de-valued by the next new thing, so your brand hasn’t developed deep customer connections and doesn’t sustain resonance.
• Lack of alignment in your organization.  Your employees, investors, and sometimes even partners disagree on how to grow and evolve the company.  You think everyone is on the same page about where you’re going and how to get there, but now people are making decisions that detract from that vision or contradict each other.  It’s only going to get worse as you add people who are being recruited, trained, and directed at cross-purposes.
• No true north to guide your own decision-making.  Founders in this scenario struggle with decisions about what to say “yes” and “no” to.  You had an original product idea and for awhile that seemed to be the right track, but now it seems you might be better off going in a different direction.  Or maybe a new opportunity has arisen and you’re not sure if it makes sense for you to pursue it.
• Competitive vulnerability.  You started with a unique value proposition, but now there are many more players and your brand is getting lost in the clutter.  You no longer know the optimal position for your brand in the competitive landscape — or even who you should be competing with.
• Disparate communications and offerings.  You’ve added lots of different products, programs, channels, and/or touchpoints.  Each has a slightly different emphasis and some seem to be more relevant to their context than to your core brand idea.  In this scenario, your customers — and sometimes your employees — get confused about what your brand stands for.

Maybe you see yourself in one — or all — of these scenarios?!  Please understand that my intention is not to shame or scare you into developing a strategic brand platform.   On the contrary, my goal is to help you do it.

Thankfully, brand strategy isn’t as complicated as brain surgery.  I’ve found almost every business leader is capable of developing a strong brand strategy, but a little experience and perspective does help.  So I’ve taken all the learnings I’ve gleaned from working on brands for the past 25+ years and packaged them into this workbook and workshop.  I’ve actually learned a lot more — and am still learning — so I hope to add to and improve these resources going forward.  But for now, I hope you will find them helpful.

Please let me know about your experiences working through the workbook and any questions you might have about scaling.

related:

brand book bites from “Scaling Up” by Verne Harnish

VCs Are From Mars, Female Entrepreneurs Are From Venus

Startup With Passion, Purpose, and People

The post a new scale-up your brand workbook to solve the problems of scaling companies appeared first on Denise Lee Yohn.

Each year at this time we gorge ourselves on the dazzling tech developments coming from CES. And heading into SXSW season this March, we should expect to see more about connected technology, conversation platforms, virtual and augmented reality, connected devices, and how marketers can leverage all of it. But, set against the melodic line of innovation is an equally interesting counterpoint in the form of techno-resistance.

While such resistance is not new, these sentiments are becoming more mainstream in a more discerning, more mature, and less polarized way. Mobile-phone free zones, tech-less travel, and mindful living have been buzzing in the background as emerging trends for a few years. But, the general mood of more people seems to be making the modern techno-resistance question not one about “whether to tech, or not to tech.” It’s all about balance.

A few brands are taking aim at our technology-obsessed society in clever ways.

Nike’s new “Time is Precious” campaign takes aim at smart phone and social media users, reminding them of how much time they spent glued to their screens (when they could be outside running). The videos use a Siri-like voice to tell us how much time we’re wasting “watching other people’s picture of their cafe macchiato, or their dog, or their baby,” while single words flash up on a black screen.

All topics are fair game — hashtags, cat videos, photographing food, reality shows, Tinder, and online petitions – which come off as refreshingly human and authentic. And while it is likely many Nike customers use technology to track their fitness, technology is not the target, obsession with technology is. The message shows the brand understands people.

We’re hearing a lot about virtual reality and augmented reality. Despite the technology continuing to advance in leaps and bounds, Jaguar New Zealand showed that technology still can’t replicate the acceleration, speed and thrill of experiencing an F-TYPE.

In a clever ambient ad called “Actual Reality” Jaguar invites passengers to step into what looks like an F-Type mounted on 6 hydraulic arms. Passengers put on a head set and strap in, while unbeknownst to them, a Jaguar Precision Driver takes the driver’s seat and then takes the car on an actual racing track hidden behind the platform. The passenger is wearing the headset the whole time and thinks the experience is totally virtual. At the end of the journey, the surprise on passengers’ faces is priceless. Jaguar shows us that while there’s a lot of hype about what VR can do, there’s still a lot of value in experiencing real reality.

Finally, in the news last week, Medium’s founder and CEO Evan Williams laid off one-third of the staff and closed two offices. Williams (who co-founded Twitter) created Medium as a new model for media on the Internet. But when they began rolling out native ads and sponsored content in October, they realized they were off-mission. Williams said, “Upon further reflection, it’s clear that the broken system is ad-driven media on the internet. It simply doesn’t serve people. ….so, we are shifting our resources and attention to defining a new model for writers and creators to be rewarded, based on the value they’re creating for people. And toward building a transformational product for curious humans who want to get smarter about the world every day.”

It’s likely they took a page from Facebook’s playbook where there’s been more and more a decline in original sharing which no-doubt correlates with the increase of professional and promoted content. It’s changed the nature of the platform from conversation, to content aggregators. Users still visit Facebook daily, but are moving their conversation to other apps and platforms.

It remains to be seen how Medium will fund itself, which is itself a separate discussion on developing a platform without understanding how it can be business-viable. But what Williams observes is key: Ad-driven media does not serve people.

For brands capitalizing on techno-resistance, consider the following:

• Have a point of view on technology: Where does it fit into your customers’ lives? Can your brand find a way to acknowledge the reality of how humans use technology in a memorable way? Nike goes for the candid and witty direct dialogue with runners. What about parents? Google Wi-Fi launched in October includes a “family pause” switch to disrupt Wi-Fi signals during ‘family time’. The more real the POV, the better it will resonate.
• Don’t innovate, Invent: As digital platforms (like Medium) look for better ways to support their communities, what is the role brands might play in connecting with these platforms. To some extent, sponsored content and native ads can be indistinguishable from fake news. Medium knows there is a better way (even if it doesn’t know what that looks like). Brands should find ways to create that ‘better way’ in partnership with the platform to offer the best experience for customers.
• High-contrast reality: Explore ideas that allow real-life to be contrasted with technology in fun ways. Play off current technology trends in fun ways that encourage customers to do the real thing. I recently wrote about how France’s Monoprix ran a counter-technology ad versus the Amazon Go concept, “You don’t need an app to go shopping. Just put your phone down, and shop.”

Don’t let the future leave you behind. Join us in Hollywood, California for Brand Leadership in the Age of Disruption, our 5th annual competitive-learning event designed around brand strategy.

The Blake Project Can Help: The Brand Positioning Workshop

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Licensing and Brand Education

FREE Publications And Resources For Marketers

By Jen McClure JEM Consulting & Advisory Services is conducting a survey to measure organizations’ awareness of and maturity regarding digital and social media risk management. The study, which is supported by the Society for New Communications Research of The Conference Board (SNCR), will explore trends and best practices for digital risk management, measurement, training […]

The third quarter 2016 Nielsen Total Audience Report revealed the technology habits of stay-at-home versus working mothers.

A close examination of the winning entries from 2016 ANA Genius Awards reveals that The Clorox Company, Hilton Worldwide, Turner Broadcasting, and Syngenta have a lot in common — what you might call the habits of highly effective marketing analytics experts. Here are five that stand out.

As more and more consumers (particularly Millennials) choose to support brands whose values align with their own, companies are realizing the importance of “Cause Marketing.” While it was once sufficient for a brand to cut a check to a charity for publicity, now they must form a partnership with organizations that have some relevant connection to the business, and create robust programs that actually affect positive change in their communities. The ANA curated the top Cause Marketing campaigns of 2016 to identify trends and best practices in this insight brief.