New research from the ANA reveals how marketers are dealing with industry disruptions using technology.

Last Friday Samsung launched a new flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S8, its first product launch following last year’s Galaxy Note 7 debacle.  It’s loaded with ground-breaking features and functionality and has been called an “early favorite for the best phone of 2017,” but it’s probably not enough to re-galvanize the brand.  Samsung needs more than a cool phone, it needs a new perspective on brand relationships.

Samsung needs to restore people’s trust in the brand not simply because of the faulty batteries that caused Galaxy Note 7s to ignite, but even more so because of the company’s poor communication and finger-pointing during the product recall.   Samsung also needs to distract people from the political scandal that currently ensnares its founder’s grandson, Lee Jae-yong.  And if those weren’t enough tall orders, the company needs to seed enough demand now to offset what is likely to soon generate far more interest:  the next new iPhone.  The iPhone “8,” scheduled to come out in September, will mark the iPhone’s 10th anniversary and is sure to be a dramatic redesign with real breakthrough innovations.

It won’t surprise anyone if Samsung fails to achieve these goals with the Galaxy S8.  Samsung needs to catapult its brand past its history, its founders, and its competitors.  It needs to achieve brand leadership apart from its products.  Regardless of how awesome the Galaxy S8 is, at the end of the day, it’s just a product — and you can’t win a brand war with a product.

You can’t win a brand war with a product.Click To Tweet

Samsung’s dependence on products is not entirely its fault.   The whole smartphone industry (with the exception of Apple, the ultimate brand unicorn) seems to be built on an adage that a brand is only as good as its last phone.

And to Samsung’s credit, it hasn’t put all of its eggs in its product basket.  The company’s advertising has adopted a more inspirational tone in recent years and its campaigns that incorporate virtual reality demonstrate real marketing creativity.  Samsung also opened 837, a brand experience location in New York City’s Meatpacking district (named after its address on Washington Street), where people can interact with Samsung’s newest products in a highly experiential environment, attend concerts and special events that showcase Samsung’s cultural relevance, and get product support a la Apple’s Genius Bar.

So Samsung is on the right track — but perhaps it needs to “think different” (pardon the pun) about inspiring people’s love and loyalty and explore a new perspective on brand relationships.  My colleague Ed Lebar and his associate Max Blackston, of Blackbar Consulting, present in the textbook Strong Brands Strong Relationships, a construct of brand relationships that could help Samsung.

They discuss the importance of the kind of relationship customers develop with a brand and they describe five relationship types:

1. Identification: The brand is experienced as expressing the customer’s own values and aspirations.
2. Reinforcement: Use or purchase of the brand makes the customer feel better and smarter – in his/her own eyes and in those of others – strengthening the attachment to the brand.
3. Playful: The brand is liked for its relaxed style; it demands nothing of the consumer other than to experience the pleasure it gives.
4. Role Model: The brand is admired for its charisma – a standard of leadership and innovation, which the customer, allying him/herself with the brand, is invited to share in.
5. Self-Differentiating: The brand is seen as distinctive and unique. The brand’s difference is inclusive of the customer, who therefore feels distinctive and unique too.

While each of these is grounded in product attributes and performance, the brand relationship is based on brand perceptions and projections.   Thinking about customers in this way leads to designing products, as well as brand communications, experiences, sales, and marketing, differently — for the long-term.

Perhaps if Samsung focused on cultivating one of these types of relationships, it might be able to establish a more sustainable brand advantage than it would with any one given product.  This new perspective on brand relationships wouldn’t necessarily take the pressure off the Galaxy S8 launch, but it could lead to efforts that start to get the company off the product treadmill.

related:

Don’t Settle for Being An -Er Brand

Brands to Watch in 2017

Apple’s Most Innovative Product Isn’t A Product At All

The post a new perspective on brand relationships could help the samsung galaxy s8 appeared first on Denise Lee Yohn.

Mark Wahlberg is helping get the word out there about the new Unlimited Plus streaming plan from AT&T in a new campaign created by BBDO. The campaign, called ‘Terms and Conditions’, features several spots that have Wahlberg playing up “entertainment on your terms”.

CREATIVE CREDITS:
Ad Agency: BBDO
Chief Creative Officer: David Lubars
Chief Creative Officer: Greg Hahn
Executive Creative Director, AT&T: Matt MacDonald
Executive Creative Director, AT&T Entertainment Group: Steven Fogel
Executive Creative Director, AT&T Entertainment Group: Doug Fallon
Senior Creative Director: Rob Munk
Senior Creative Director: Mark Voehringer
Managing Director: Doug Walker
Group Account Director: Lesley Brown
Group Account Director: Allie Clark
Account Director: Laura Perrizo
Account Supervisor: Shelby Remer
Group Executive Producer: Julie Collins
Executive Producer: Dan Blaney
Production Company: Pony Show Entertainment
Director: Peter Berg
Owner: Susan Kirson, Jeff Frankel
Executive Producer: Helga Gruber
Head of Production: Gareth Wood
Editorial: Mackenzie Cutler
Editor: Gavin Cutler
Final Mix: Sam Shaffer
POST/VXF: The Mill NY
Graphics: Spontaneous
Graphics: Squad47
Sound Design: Brian Emrich
Anthem/Rooms Music: The Kills/The Future Starts Slow
Unlimited Music: Louder Productions

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Young & Rubicam Prague took the unusual step of enlisting the help of an African Grey parrot in its latest campaign for Ceska Pojistovna, the largest insurance company in the Czech marketplace.

The African Grey parrot was trained by a specialist with experience coaching animals for Hollywood blockbusters as Bourne Supremacy (2004) and The Illusionist (2006). The parrot, named Carl, was taught to say “Pet Insurance”, thereby enabling him to take up his job in sales.

After three months of daily practice, he was ready to show off his newly acquired skill all over the country. So the company took him on a tour around major pet stores to recommend pet insurance to people shopping there. After all, what could be more convincing than hearing about the importance of pet insurance straight from a pet?

Carl’s office was a custom-made cage with a built-in tablet and a pre-loaded landing page that prompted visitors to buy the insurance. His unexpected shouts turned the heads of the pet store customers and turned many of them into pet insurance buyers.

According to Patricie Halkova, Account Director at Young & Rubicam Prague, “Carl, the clever African Grey, managed to surprise and delight pet owners across the country. With his help, the message around the importance of buying pet insurance was spread far and wide. What’s more, he literally works for peanuts!”

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ANA’s Ask the Expert research service answers the question, “How can I lead my company through a digital transformation?”

Now more than ever, understanding the effectiveness of each channel, campaign, and content piece is critical to marketing success, yet the rapid growth of channels in this digital age makes knowing the right mix to be successful that much harder. In this issue of Forward, the United States Postal Service looks at how merging digital and print marketing can boost ROI, increase consumer engagement across multiple forms of media, and improve marketing accountability — all cornerstones of a successful marketing campaign. Plus, how a new innovation called Informed Delivery is poised to give marketers more touchpoints and more impressions.

Discover the hard work needed to report the facts in the latest video series from The New York Times marketing team. All photos in this video were taken by Bryan Denton while he was covering Iraqi counterterrorism forces for The New York Times in Bartella, Iraq, in 2016. The video is directed by Darren Aronofsky.

Below, a second film from the series: All photos in this video were taken by Tyler Hicks while he was covering the refugee crisis for The New York Times in Lesbos, Greece, in 2015. The video is directed by Darren Aronofsky.

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  “Entrepreneurs are misfits to the core. They forge ahead, making their own path, and always, always, question the status quo” -MAXIMILLIAN DEGENEREZ Have you ever asked yourself, “What is the common thread among successful entrepreneurs?” According to Dave Lukas, a successful entrepreneur himself, “This special trait or special separator is what…

Brand culture is the culture that a company cultivates in order to powerfully, consistently and competitively deliver its brand to market. It’s how people work together to bring the brand alive for customers. But brand cultures are more than an expression of the brand itself; they are, by necessity, an expression of the people who work for that brand and the decisions and ways of working and behaving that they agree to work within.

The challenge for any brand is when what it stands for as a brand no longer aligns with what the people working for the brand do. It’s all very well to talk about building or changing a powerful brand culture, but first you need to understand the culture you’re changing. Each is different because each revolves around a different ethos. In this, the first of a two part series, I look at what defines, and what it takes to shift, a brand culture today.

It’s tempting to believe that culture is a formula. You derive a purpose, apply goals, set values, agree on behaviors and then inculcate these ideas (with varying degrees of success) over the next 12 – 18 months. While every brand culture should indeed be driven by these elements, the type of culture your brand functions within is its own human dynamic. Shifting that to something new is very difficult, essentially because you are going against the very nature of ‘how things get done around here’. Success is much more likely if you are able to recognize the predominant nature of the brand culture you are working with, and to leverage that to the brand’s advantage.

Here are the first four of eight different brand cultures I’ve encountered and some thoughts on what it takes to successfully achieve enduring change in each of these environments.

1. Performance Culture – sales and achievement focused. An environment that is highly motivated by targets, competitiveness and individualism, complicated significantly by incentives and bonuses that often reward those who excel at the direct expense of those who aren’t at the top. These cultures are ambitious, hard-working and relentless. They can include professional firms (particularly those with an eat-what-you-kill rewards system) as well as businesses that are sales-based. How you change the culture depends on what you want to achieve. If you want to instill a greater sense of engagement, for example, lift and broaden the targets but at the same time shift the incentive system to one that is more team focused and change the bonuses to reflect what is achieved by everyone. Just as importantly, bring in strong mentorship and training programs to help those who are steady but not necessarily top performers to feel fulfilled, supported and included. It’s very important when changing these cultures to remind everyone involved of the quid pro quo – that they are stronger for being part of the brand, and the brand is stronger for having them, but equally no-one is indispensable.

2. Restless Culture – always moving and evolving. These brands are all about staying ahead of what’s happening in their sector(s). They’re highly market aware, innovative, very competitive and obsessed by the need to continue to meet customer expectations. Amazon’s Day 1 ethos is a perfect expression of this type of culture. Companies with these types of culture are often in fast-moving and/or converging sectors, such as tech, media or entertainment. Driven by the need to be relevant, they are market drivers. These cultures are impatient and have a powerful sense of momentum. It’s not unusual for them to also be highly competitive within their teams, looking to achieve the next breakthrough that will see one group stand out as the organizational lodestar. Critical to engaging these cultures and helping them work together (even co-operate) is a collective vision of the future of the brand to which all can contribute. Given their high propensity for change, change itself is not hard to implement. In fact, one of the key challenges is to remind the culture to value what customers value, and to retain the brand’s inherent goodness while at the same time pressing forward.

3. Freeform Culture – flexible, organic, undefined. As brands bring in more consultants and freelancers to help them deliver on demand, the very sense of a brand culture can become much more fluid. I sometimes refer to this as the gig economy culture. It’s characterized by project teams that are loyal to the deliverables they are responsible for, but don’t feel much sense of belonging beyond that. These cultures are common in sectors like IT where there is a deep casual workforce. Equally, it’s a risk of the collaborative economy – so, places like Uber and Airbnb – where thousands of people represent the brand but are not necessarily directly employed by the brand. At its worst, this can lead to a culture that is incoherent, myopic and inconsistent because it is resourced by people who feel no affinity for the brand. They’re just here to fulfill a contract or deliver a task. I think this is one of the hardest brand cultures to marshall because of the sheer variety and volatility of the brand population. The key challenge is to ensure everyone, at different levels of involvement, feels they are getting the right returns for what they are putting in. A great question to ask is: What will they get (that they wouldn’t get otherwise) from their time with us? How can involvement with your brand advance each person’s career or credentials for example? Can you provide them with access to a valuable network or offer them the chance to develop a needed skill? And how do you build a sense of loyalty and two-way gratitude into the arrangement that helps people rally around a brand they may only be part of for a short time?

4. Learn Fast Culture – demand driven, responsive, second mover. Just as not every brand can be a market leader, so some cultures choose to take their cues from what happens around them. At their best, these brands build on what others initiate, bringing in perspectives, features and improvements that add (exponentially) to the value of what was first proposed. Companies with these types of cultures include retailers, manufacturers and those in fast turnaround sectors such as telecommunications. These brands work best when they have a problem to solve and a defined window within which to forge an answer. At their best, they are agile, creative, analytical and highly synchronized. For people in these cultures, the thrill of the chase is what gets them up in the morning. These cultures need an antagonist to duel with, and goals built around a defined set of deliverables that take what’s available to the next level. Confidence and can-do are critical. They must always believe that they have the wherewithal to take things to the next level. They need to find ways to celebrate speed and the ability to counter-punch, while not burning out nor feeling like all they can do is react. Rather than referencing everything they do as an improvement, it can be more stimulating to frame these brands as next-generation: as change-makers that will move things on for the customer and lift the industry in the process. To do that effectively, people need to be encouraged to experiment, fail fast and continue to learn.

Next Time: brand cultures driven by a need to change the world; start up brands evolving into grown up cultures; brands with powerful leaders; and brands that need to keep pushing down costs in order to thrive.

The Blake Project Can Help: Please email us for more about our brand culture expertise.

Don’t Let The Future Leave Your Brand Behind. Join Us At The Un-Conference – Marketing’s Only Problem Solving Event.

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

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Rachael Leigh Cook explains that the war on drugs is a war on people in a remake of her iconic “Your Brain On Drugs” ad.

Our nation’s drug war is leading us to lock up more people than ever.
Those charged with a non violent drug crime face fines and incarceration. More people are arrested for drugs than for rape, murder and robbery combined. And minorities are being railroaded into this system at much higher rates than their white counterparts even though drug use between both groups is about the same.

At Green Point Creative we believe our nation’s drug policy needs a serious reevaluation, so we are using our skills in strategy, creativity and world class production to generate content that seeks to educate and inspire change. Whether through print, TV, radio or social media, we employ every medium to best suit the message that needs to be told.

THE CREDITS:
Creative Agency: Green Point Creative, New York
Creative Director: Howard Bowler Managing Director: Jon Mackey Production Manager: Mary Valentino
Production: Motiv Creative, New York
Director Ryan Kleier
Shoot: The Shed, New York
Makeup/Hair: Abby Hayden
Sound: Chris Viall
Gaffer: Andreas Roalsvig
Director of Photography: Matt McClain 1st Assistant Camera: Matt Donovan Production Assistant: Josh Lee
Animation/Post Production: Edit 1, New York
Producer: Dan Fuerst
Animation Creative Director: Michael Zimbard Art Producer: Diane Boston
Illustrator: Kevin Kobasic
2D Animation: Erica Jaffin Matt Trudell
Music/Audio Post: HOBO Audio, New York
Mix/Sound Design: Chris Stangroom/Diego Jimenez Music: Oscar Convers/Julian Angel
Social Media Consultant
Lawrence Lac

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