As usual, the TED community has lots of news to share this week. Below, some highlights.

Man vs. machine? It took Danit Peleg just 100 hours to print the dress worn by fellow TEDster Amy Purdy in the opening ceremony of the Paralympics in Rio (if that sounds slow, consider that it took her 300 hours to print a dress a year ago). Peleg had never met Purdy before the first fitting, so she used Nettelo, an app that allows users to create a 3D scan of their body, to make sure the dress fit Purdy perfectly. Since Peleg used a soft material called Filaflex to print the dress, it moved beautifully as Purdy, a Paralympic medal-winner who lost both legs to bacterial meningitis at age 19, mesmerized audiences with a bionic samba routine. (Highlighting the fact that Purdy was also a finalist on Dancing With the Stars.) The dress was perfectly in line with Purdy’s dance, a reflection on the human  relationship to technology and its ability to allow Paralympic athletes to reach their full potential — one point, Purdy even danced with a robotic arm. (Watch Danit’s TED Talk and Amy’s TED Talk)

For the problems that affect us all, start small. Our national and international political institutions are hopelessly ill equipped to solve the complex, interdependent problems of the 21st century, says Benjamin Barber, but a solution is close at hand — cities, and the mayors who govern them. Barber has long dreamed of building on the urban networks that already exist in specific policy domains to form a global parliament of mayors, and with the inaugural convening of the Global Parliament of Mayors in The Hague, September 9-11, that dream is now a reality. More than 60 mayors agreed on The Hague Global Mayors Call to Action and discussed future governance of the GPM. They also discussed action-oriented plans for such issues as climate change, migration and refugees. (Watch Benjamin’s TED Talk)

Taking the measure of fragile cities. Robert Muggah’s Igarapé Institute is behind a data visualization platform on fragile cities, which launched at Barber’s Global Parliament of Mayors and includes information on more than 2,100 cities with populations of 250,000 or greater. Developed along with United Nations University, World Economic Forum, and 100 Resilient Cities, the cities were graded on 11 variables, including city population growth, unemployment, inequality, pollution, climate risk, homicide, and exposure to terrorism. Surprisingly, the analysis revealed that fragility is more widely distributed than previously thought. (Watch Robert’s TED Talk and read this Ideas piece co-written by Barber and Muggah)

Image permission granted by Robert Muggah.

Biodiversity in The City of Lights. Shubhendu Sharma’s project to promote biodiversity in Paris has been selected as one of 37 projects to improve the city that will be put to a public vote. The vote is part of the city’s Participatory Budget Initiative where residents submit proposals on concrete ways to improve their district or the city at large. The proposals are narrowed down before being voted on by residents (projects for the city at large and projects for specific districts are voted on separately). All residents, not just those who submitted the project, can help bring winning projects to life. Between 2014 and 2020, Paris has dedicated 5% of their capital budget to fund these projects and in 2016, that commitment totals €100-million. By 2020, the investment will total close to half a billion Euros. (Watch Shubhendu’s TED Talk)

The poetry of dissonance. “I don’t remember the last time police / sirens didn’t feel like gasping for air,” writes Clint Smith in his debut poetry collection, Counting Descent, released on September 15. Weaving between personal and political histories, Smith masterfully tells a coming-of-age story exploring the cognitive dissonance that occurs when the community you belong to and the world you live in send you two very different messages. Specifically, he renders the dissonance stemming from straddling a world that frequently depicts blackness as a caricature of fear and communities that ardently celebrate black humanity. (Watch Clint’s TED Talk and read his Ideas post)

Listen up, language lovers. Many of us lament the shifts that occur in language over time, maintaining that language is steadily deteriorating as it succumbs to a steady onslaught of acronyms from our text messaging habits or a misuse of words that grows to be common and accepted over time, like the use of “literally” to mean “figuratively.” But linguist John McWhorter thinks you should think twice before complaining. His new book, Words on the Move, published September 6, explains why the evolution of language is not only natural, but good. (Watch John’s TED Talk and watch for a new talk from John this fall.)

Art that mixes oil and water. Fabian Oefner is on a quest to unite art and science. As he told audiences at TEDGlobal 2013, “On one hand, science is a very rational approach to its surroundings, whereas art on the other hand is usually an emotional approach to its surroundings. I’m trying to bring those two views into one so that my images both speak to the viewer’s heart but also to the viewer’s brain.” His latest work, Oil Spill, is no exception. The photographs show the captivating result of mixing oil and water. The bright colors result from the refraction and reflection of light as it travels through the lens of the camera. (Watch Fabian’s TED Talk)

Do judge a book by its cover. How do you read a closed book? It sounds like a trick question, but Ramesh Raskar and colleagues have developed a camera that can do just that. In order to test the prototype, the researchers used a stack of papers, each sheet with one letter printed on it, and the camera was able to correctly identify the letters on the first 9 sheets. The camera uses a type of electromagnetic radiation called terahertz radiation and could eventually allow academics and researchers to access ancient books and documents too fragile to open. The system could also be applied for analysis of other materials that occur in thin layers, such as the coatings on machine parts or pharmaceuticals. On September 13, Raskar was awarded the Lemelson-MIT prize for his co-invention of many breakthrough imaging solutions including this camera, a camera that can see around corners, and low-cost eye care solutions. (Watch Ramesh’s TED Talk, and read more about the technology behind the camera in this Ideas piece.)

The real meaning of conspiracies. In The New York Times, Zeynep Tufekci explains how the prevalence of conspiracy theories in America’s current election cycle — think Hillary Clinton’s body double or the head of her Secret Service who’s really her hypnotist — is not an anomaly, but a symptom of problems that run much deeper. Conspiracy theories are nothing new, she says, but the growth of technology and declining trust in public institutions means that their number is only growing. “Conspiracy theories are like mosquitoes that thrive in swamps of low-trust societies, weak institutions, secretive elites and technology that allows theories unanchored from truth to spread rapidly. Swatting them one at a time is mostly futile: The real answer is draining the swamps.” (Watch Zeynep’s TED Talk and watch for a new talk from her this fall.)

Have a news item to share? Write us at [email protected] and you may see it included in this weekly round-up.

In a previous article, “The Life and Times of the CMO,” we addressed the importance, and often unrecognized contribution of the Chief Marketing Officer in driving today’s brands.

However, the opposite is often the case with the Chief Executive Officer. In today’s marketplace, it’s not uncommon to see the vision and convictions of the CEO on full display via advertising, public relations or social media that, in effect, shape the brand’s perceptions in ways that may or may not be scripted into the brand strategy.

We can trace this phenomenon back to the beginnings of modern industrial brands with a national footprint. Henry Ford not only revolutionized American industry and created the first significant automobile brand that bore his name, but he was also an active social engineer and even established a “Social Department” within the company to police his standards of conduct among Ford Motor employees. Though he was responsible for much advancement in manufacturing (the modern assembly line) and worker compensation (the five-day work week), Ford’s combative, take-no-prisoners approach, whether dealing with his son Edsel or labor unions, or his anti-Semitic stance and pacifism about World War I, was well known at the time. His controversial personality, in spite of all that he and his company accomplished, became a brand liability, and helped enable competitors such as GM and Dodge to gain a foothold and grow their market shares.

Clearly the DNA of company founders and CEOs like Ford is fiercely potent (or else they wouldn’t be the CEO) and at times, can be over-shadowing to the brands that they are ultimately responsible for. And as in the Ford example, they can become synonymous with the brand in the consumer’s mind, either by design or through media coverage. An example here would be Steve Jobs for Apple, who, through a rocky and tumultuous ascendancy to lead the very company he founded, became the face of the world’s most innovative brand. Even his successor Tim Cook inherited the mantle of fierce Apple independence by staring-down the FBI over unlocking its iPhone encryption technology. Both Jobs and later Cook have, through the force of their personalities and commitments, guarded the Apple brand’s essence and maintained its anti-establishment status going back to the days it tangled with IBM.

Very often the brand story is shaped by the very beginnings of the idea for the brand and the likeability of the founder and CEO who will ultimately lead the brand to greatness. Such is the case of the world’s largest do-it-yourself retailer, The Home Depot. If you have ever read the book “Built from Scratch” you will understand why. Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank were both fired from Handy Dan Home Improvement Centers with what Marcus refers to as being “kicked with a golden horseshoe.” All throughout the impressive growth of the chain, Marcus, and later Blank, guided the brand by principles they learned early in their retail careers. Both men would pay surprise visits to stores and their folksy, down-to-earth demeanor fit the home improvement warehouse chain’s personality to a tee. While only Home Depot shareholders knew them during their tenures as CEO, they have retired to become well-known philanthropists and community leaders in their home of Atlanta … and thus further enhancing the brand’s legendary reputation.

Of course, no discussion of CEOs and brands would be complete without the acknowledgement of CEO as pitchman. Usually the criticism of this strategy is that the ad agency couldn’t come up with anything that the client would approve of, so they put the CEO in front of the camera. Ironically, for all of their usual bravado, most CEOs are reticent to take on the role as campaign spokesman. Often, they will cite that “the message is bigger than one person” or that “people will think I’m on an ego trip.” The smart ones will set those concerns aside if the strategy soundly supports the brand. And there are many memorable and effective examples where this was the case. Here are ten:

• Dave Thomas for Wendy’s
• Frank Perdue for Perdue Chicken
• James Dyson for Dyson Vacuums
• Neil Clark Warren for eHarmony
• Victor Kiam for Remington
• Lee Iacocca for Chrysler
• George Zimmer for Men’s Wearhouse
• Colonel Harland Sanders for Kentucky Fried Chicken
• Orville Redenbacher for Orville Redenbacher popcorn
• Michael Dubin, Dollar Shave Club

Chief Executive magazine quoted a Forbes study that claimed that TV spots scored higher in desire for the product, viewer relevance and being informative when the CEO is pitching the goods. After all, who should know more about it?

The risk, of course, is that in a high profile campaign, the CEO becomes the brand’s “celebrity spokesperson” and is subject to scrutiny of his or her personal lives or political views just as anyone else. That was true with Henry Ford in the 1920’s and is still true today.

The Blake Project Can Help: The Strategic Brand Storytelling 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

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Many start-ups get derailed because they don’t get their brand right.  To avoid this fate, you need to develop a Minimum Viable Brand (MVB).

Short on time and money, many start-ups rush into the marketplace thinking that a creative name, cool logo, and pithy tagline are all they need to launch their product idea. But without being grounded in a strategic foundation that provides the internal focus and clarity and external relevance and differentiation, the fledgling business has little chance of surviving the myriad of challenges and threats facing new brands, much less to thrive as the business scales.  Sooner or later the upstart finds it’s not attracting customers or investors, so it retrenches, plots a pivot, and tries (and fails) again — insanely doing the same thing over again expecting a different result.

Start-ups should consider using an MVB. Click To Tweet

Start-ups should consider using an MVB. With a MVB, you expend the least amount of time, effort, and money necessary to develop enough of a launch brand concept to center your organization, convey your value, and to collect learning. As an alternative to a complete strategic brand platform or simply a shell of a brand, a MVB provides you the perfect balance of structure and flexibility.

My latest ChangeThis manifesto, “How to Start Up Your Brand: Develop a Minimum Viable Brand” explains:

• why start-ups need strong brands
• the MVB framework and how to use it, including guidelines & examples
• how the MVB is used to make progress through process

Please check it out — and if you like what you read, please consider subscribing  to my “brand-as-business briefs™^TM” so you can get helpful content like it delivered direct to your mailbox each month.  Thanks!

Related content:

Building a Small Business Brand

Pivot Your Business Plan, Not Your Brand Core

The MVB Framework (Entrepreneur Magazine Video)

The post how to develop a minimum viable brand (MVB) appeared first on Denise Lee Yohn.

Is there ever a right time to get on the front foot and call out your competitors by name? Motorola seems to think so.

The very first rule I was taught as a junior copywriter was to never give your competitors real estate that you had paid for. Don’t compare with them, don’t criticize them, don’t even mention them … And yet that’s precisely what Motorola did recently when they suggested that smart phone buyers should “skip the sevens” and invest in their new model instead. Apple had lost their way they suggested, using their competitor’s own language to suggest that the company with the “Think different” ethos had been reduced to “incremental improvements”.

As the AdWeek article points out, if this was Motorola’s strategy coming into the launch (or even if it wasn’t) the timing couldn’t be better. Both Apple and Samsung have had underwhelming releases. It got me thinking about what other prompts, if any, challenger brands should be looking for when deciding whether to attack head on.

First though, why be a challenger? Challenger brands have one simple motivation for being the brands they are. They lack the influence to change the market. If you believe in Rule of Three dynamics (the top three brands in any category dominate that category and drive the rules), then any brand below that in the pecking order either needs to grow their way into that top set, or challenge their way in. Challenger brands have the ambition, but they need an effective means. And that means rewriting the dominant narrative by telling a different type of story that redefines their place in the world.

According to The Challenger Project, there are three ways that challenger brands look to do that:

1. They stand up for the consumer against perceived exploitation.
2. They bring a rich sense of purpose to a market, actively advocating for change in what they see as ethically or ideologically wrong.
3. They position themselves as the ones to whom the baton should be passed – the next generation brand that deserves to take over from the old ways of doing things.

Interestingly, Motorola have combined approaches 1 and 3. Their pitch essentially is that consumers are no longer getting the phones they deserve when they upgrade and that, for this upgrade cycle at least, consumers should advocate for greater change by switching.

So when might a brand openly look to name and shame others? Here are four occasions to pull the gloves off:

• You want to reposition yourselves as a contender – brazen acts generate headlines, and headlines can give an old brand (or an unseen one) new relevance and influence in crowded markets. With this ad, Motorola have looked to step back out of the shadows and reassert their right to be taken seriously. It’s a great approach for brands that really have nothing to lose from taking on the mainstream – and, when done well, it can transform a brand that would have been dismissed into a consideration.

• The dominant brands have been arrogant or lazy – the incumbent brands have done or said something that has really riled consumers, or they haven’t done enough. This is a classic opportunity for a challenger brand to step up, play the people’s champion and lead the revolt. The message here is: ‘you don’t have to take this anymore’. It requires a very strong and very simple call to action.

• You want to disrupt an assumption – as noted earlier, most brands work to a predominant narrative, and, alongside that, they encourage look-alike behaviors and processes that work for the brand but can really annoy customers. In this situation, challenger brands can look to feed on people’s indignation at being treated like cattle. The message here is ‘Look what they make you do’. This approach requires not just identifying the behavior but providing an alternative that is simple, brand-specific and that consumers will (hopefully) see as sensible, enjoyable and a way of voicing their displeasure. Motorola is doing that here by challenging the automatic same-brand upgrade cycle.

• You want to make them look less appealing – one of the most effective strategies that challenger brands can use is to make the more dominant players look joyless. Here, challenger brands use their informality and cheekiness to call out bigger players as lacking humor and/or humanity. This is an effective approach for brands that are personality-driven and that are looking to pressure a monolith. This is all about: ‘We are what you see. Look at them. How can you trust a brand that seems so faceless?’

Having got the attention, the validity of Motorola’s approach will come down to its bottom-line effectiveness. If it works to move the market share dial, good enough. But then how will they capitalize on a shift in sentiment to take loyalty beyond the next upgrade cycle? (Because that was the term they referenced in their own advertising.) And if their approach doesn’t work to change consumer loyalty and behavior, what then? They may have got back into the trade press but where will they take their strategy going forward?

The Blake Project Can Help: The Strategic Brand Storytelling 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

– the book:  A Lapsed Anarchist’s Approach to the Power of Beliefs in Business is the 4th in a series of books, Zingerman’s Guides to Good Leading.  If you’re not familiar with Zingerman’s, check out their online store (prepare to drool) and their training company, ZingTrain (prepare to be amazed).

– the brains:  Ari Weinzweig, co-owner and founding partner of Zingerman’s.  As a self-described “lapsed anarchist,” he had always been suspicious of institutions like business.  But founding and running Zingerman’s has helped him discover that structure and leadership can actually help people succeed, rather than just oppressing them.

– the best bits:  At 588 pages, A Lapsed Anarchist’s Approach to the Power of Beliefs in Business is an extensive resource on the power of beliefs in business and so much more.  For this write-up, I’m only including some of the many tasty bits on beliefs:

“Every single thing we do, every single thing we experience, everything others around us do is being radically influenced — and more often than not initiated — by beliefs…Strongly held beliefs are at the core of everything we experience.”

“Beliefs can be negative, neutral, or positive.  In each case, I believe, they are essentially self-fulfilling.”

“The real work isn’t to cut out bad behavior; it’s to change the beliefs that put it in motion.”

“When you buy our bread, you’re also buying our beliefs.”

The book also includes an illustrated history of Zingerman’s, recipes for some of its iconic products, and a suggested reading list.

– the brand story:  Of course the brand story here is Zingerman’s.  The company uniquely engages its employees in so many ways; but rather than tell you about them, let me share what Zingerman’s employees have to say about their working experience:

“Something that changed for me when I came to work at Zingerman’s was the knowledge of what it feels like to work for a company that cares — in a foundational way, not just person-to-person — about how we operate in the bigger picture; our footprint, how we treat people, the impact we have on community, who and what we’re ‘responsible’ for.”

“Rather than consider [my job] as a mere stepping stone to something bigger and more important…I started to see my job at the Deli as an occupation worthy of my best creative work and attention.”

“I now believe in myself…and believe that what I am doing makes a difference in this world.”

– the bottom line:  A Lapsed Anarchist’s Approach to the Power of Beliefs in Business is part philosophy text, part personal memoir, part corporate story, and part leadership & business book (with a recipe book thrown in for kicks) — the perfect concoction for a deep dive into beliefs and Zingerman’s.

Listen to my interview with Ari to:

• how beliefs differ from values, philosophies, principles, etc.
• learn why “the customer is always right” is wrong
• get the six-step recipe for changing a belief

Resources:

• Contact Ari at: [email protected] (yes Ari checks and responds to his own email)
• Get copy of the book: http://Zingtrain.com
• Learn about Zingerman’s: http://zingermans.com

related Brand Book Bites:

– The Five Hour Workday by Stephan Aarstol

– The Business of Belief by Tom Asacker

– Dare to Serve by Cheryl Bachelder

The post brand book bites from Zingerman’s A Lapsed Anarchist’s Approach to the Power of Beliefs in Business appeared first on Denise Lee Yohn.

Over the years, we’ve had so many wonderful and moving talks at the TEDWomen conference, but perhaps one of the most striking was Malawi activist Memory Banda. The amazing 18-year-old presented at last year’s event – and inspired us all with her story.

Memory began her talk by reciting a poem written by another young woman she knows, 13-year-old Eileen Piri, entitled “I’ll Marry When I Want.” Memory told the audience that the poem might seem odd written by a 13-year-old girl, but in her home country of Malawi, she called it “a warrior’s cry.”

She told the audience how there was a traditional rite of passage in her country in which young girls who have just reached puberty were sent to “initiation camps” to learn how to please men sexually. As part of their initiation, a man visits the camp and the young girls are forced to have sex with him. Many girls end up pregnant or with sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS.

Memory chose a different path. She refused to go to the camp. She wanted to continue her education and had dreams of being a lawyer. She became an activist and, with the help of the Girls Empowerment Network (Genet), a group dedicated to ending the practice of forced child marriage in Malawi, she began talking to other young women about their experiences.

At the time, Malawi had the highest rates of child marriage in the world. A 2014 Human Rights Watch report outlined the shocking statistics: one out of two girls in the country on average will be married by her 18th birthday. “In 2010, half of women aged 20 to 24 years were married or in unions before they were 18. Some are as young as 9 or 10 when they are married.”

Memory continued with her own schooling and began teaching other young women how to read and write. With the support of Genet and Let Girls Lead, she worked on a storytelling project in which girls were encouraged to share their stories – the dreams they had for themselves, as well as the obstacles they faced – in art, poetry and storytelling.

Memory says that participating in Genet’s River of Life project was transformational for her: “Until then, I always thought I was the only one who suffered. But sharing my story gave me strength to know that I wasn’t alone.”

As she explained in her TED Talk, the girls published their stories and they became part of a campaign to outlaw child marriage in Malawi. A female chief from Memory’s community joined the fight, and the girls worked with her and other village chiefs to develop bylaws banning the initiation camps and child marriage. Eventually, their advocacy went all the way to President Mutharika, who agreed with the girls that the sanctioning of child marriage was a “national disgrace.”

Last year, Malawi officially outlawed the marriage of girls younger than 18 years old. But, as Memory explained in her TED Talk, changing the law is one thing, enforcing it is quite another. Today, she continues to work on the issue, not only for young women in rural areas who might not be aware of the new protections that exist for them, but for young women in other countries where laws still need to be enacted.

Since Memory appeared at TEDWomen in 2015, response to her TED Talk in Malawi and around the world has been phenomenal – it has been viewed over 1.1 million times! This visibility has helped raise Memory’s profile as a global advocate and Rise Up girl leader. Memory is a globally renowned champion for girls’ rights and an advisor to global leaders on the importance of investing in girls. She is currently beginning her sophomore year of college in Malawi, achieving her dream of completing her education.

The TEDWomen conference is sold out now but we have decided to offer discounted registrations that include all conference activities except for guaranteed seats in the theater. These registrations provide comfortable viewing in the Simulcast Lounge where everyone gathers during breaks between sessions.  Find out more at the TEDWomen website.

Green Giant teases the return of its iconic mascot with this :60 spot created by Deutsch, New York. “The Giant Awakens” digital media spot is filled with anticipation as we don’t see the big green giant, rather the ad captures the frazzled looks of people across the country, heads gazing in ah upward, eyes wide open, as they catch a glimpse of the him. As for us, we only see his shadow and enormous footprints. The light-hearted music eases the mysterious, frightening even mood of commercial, and now we wait.

The work is Deutsch New York’s first step in reinventing the Jolly Green Giant for a modern audience and making him just as culturally relevant to Americans now as he was in his glory days. “The Giant Awakens” was directed by renowned commercial and music video director Patrick Daughters.

Says Dan Kelleher, CCO, Deutsch New York, “The Jolly Green Giant is a true icon of American advertising. So having the opportunity to bring him back is a rare honor. This is not your typical packaged goods spot. And that speaks volumes for the bravery and long-term vision of the B&G Foods team and the future success of the Jolly Green Giant.”

“The Green Giant is a legendary mascot, and working with passionate partners like Deutsch and Patrick, we’re excited to be reconnecting him with consumers in a seismic way,” said Jordan Greenberg, Vice President and General Manager, Green Giant at B&G Foods. “We’ve got a lot in store for consumers and this marks the beginning of our marketing efforts.”

Credits:
Ad Agency: Deutsch, New York
Director: Patrick Daughters

Nielsen recently conducted a study to better understand the audience that will grow into the first wave of virtual reality adopters and content consumers.

In 2000, the Wired article The Future Does Not Need Us called into question whether machines were quite the panacea we hoped they were. It was possible, said the author, that this dependence on machines was not going to a good place.

More recently, Ralph Nader, writing in the Huffington Post, asked whether Bill Joy’s concerns were still valid. According to Nader, 70% of the volume of stock trading in the U.S. is now driven by computers and their algorithms. That means machines now have considerable influence over how the markets themselves are run and traded through the instructions they operate under.

While much is made of the fact that automation and robotics will continue to drive the inefficiencies and human error fallibilities out of systems, it’s not just repetitive jobs that are threatened. According to Fortune, a company called Automated Insights has programmed the creation of earnings stories and sports stories that show up in newspapers around the world. That company’s computers churn out 3,000 earnings stories per quarter for the Associated Press at an average cost of less than $8 per story. Now, instead of releasing 300 earnings stories per quarter, Fortune observes, Associated Press is able to release 3,000. Automated Insight’s ambitions, it seems, are even higher. Their goal is not to create one story for a million people but rather to release a million specialized stories for one person—all driven by data. The ultimate goal is complete personalization of each person’s news feed.

There’s the potential future of content marketing and social media right there – less about real interaction and reaction and more about scheduling, as the machines turn content into automated drip-feeds that are as fulfilling as content fast-food. As algorithms decide how brands will react to all sorts of prompts and requests from customers, brands are less and less about what motivates people and increasingly about pre-decided choices. It doesn’t take much imagination to transpose the power of the trading floor to that of media selection – media spends monitored by machines and adjusted in real time to hit pre-selected reach targets. And it takes even less to see that data-powered computing could make marketing more specific, personalized and dull than it is now.

Thomas Davenport, writing in WSJ, says concerns that the machines are taking over are misplaced. He predicts that “structured, codified, routine, predictable tasks [will] move toward computers [while] other kinds of tasks that involve emotions, creativity and a human interface stay with humans.” He’s probably right. But perhaps not in the way he meant. It’s entirely possible that organizations will seek to remove the emotions, creativity and human interface from how they market. The development and management of brands will become structured, codified, routine and painfully predictable – if brands choose to trust what they perceive as market intelligence over human intuition.

Isn’t it ironic that businesses persist in talking about the need for differentiation and customer responsiveness at the same time as the ways in which brands deal with customers and campaigns become more systematized, less personal and more ubiquitous?

I’m not for one moment suggesting that we should go back to an analogue way of doing everything. I’m not even being a Luddite. I am suggesting that when you take the human factors out of brands, you remove much of their intrinsic interest. There are now whole industries where any of us can undertake tasks without any human contact. This isn’t marketing. This is transacting. It’s auto-responding. It may go faster, it may cost less, it may be available anytime – but it’s also boring, predictable and impersonal. Because humans don’t want pre-planned answers. They want responses that stem from someone reacting to pain, need, hope, interest, conversation, ambition, worry … They want a story for that moment, not one that’s built around keywords. They want to be understood, not just acknowledged. That’s what makes encounters interesting.

At some point in the future we could lose that in the bid to make our brands react automatically and do more things. The power of big data is that it gives us what feels so much like greater insight. The danger is that it could tell us so much that we don’t think we need people to make brands work.

The Blake Project Can Help: Accelerate B2C and B2B Brand Growth Through Powerful Emotional Connections

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

Don Draper does not exist in the new world of marketing. What exactly does this new world look like?
Well, it is a converged world full of large and tiny touch screens, data as insight, people yearning for experiences and meaning rather than consuming things, and an emerging “do it yourself ” collaborative and remixed economy powered by user-generated content, production, design, and feelings, with a heavy emphasis on a company’s reputation and culture instead of monetary capital. In other words, everything you’ve come to learn about what makes efficient or successful marketing is actually inefficient and incorrect.

Marketing today doesn’t look very different from how it has for the last half century, nor has it truly disrupted itself inside and out mainly because of the attitude of marketers and advertising agencies. No industry disrupts itself. That’s why it’s important we look at how people other than those who call themselves marketers behave. I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing several of them for my book and what they have to say will help you prepare for the new normal.

Advertising agencies are also difficult to trust for innovative answers or solutions because, in wanting to stay the course that had historically made money rather than charting a new future, they made the biggest mistake in modern business: they defended themselves instead of going forth and conquering. As a result, agencies blew four opportunities to remain relevant:

1. They missed the digital train. They ignored the dotcom industry, thinking it would go bust.
2. They ignored search engines because they didn’t ask “What if” questions about where the world could be headed with smartphones and location-based technology.
3. They ignored social media marketing because they thought people would only use search engines and platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn wouldn’t ever be as big as the “big media” of cable and network television.
4. They were late to the content-marketing game because they didn’t understand why people used the social web and Internet in the first place. It was hardly to make friends with brands; it really was a place to connect and learn.

Agencies missed these four trends and will continue to miss many more because of the group-think and conformity embedded in their DNA.

What agencies failed to realize is that marketing is more than messaging. It’s more than advertising. It’s more than broadcasting. It’s more than simply return on investment (ROI). Agencies also failed to realize that marketing isn’t devoid of math anymore. Nor should math reduce creativity to a Post-it note on a social platform instructing visitors to “read more,” “learn more,” “download more,” or “watch more.” People aren’t responsive to what sounds like commands from a military general.

If anything, math makes marketing more creative, not less. Marketing in a disruptive sense is the way we all can and should use data to build more meaningful products, create alliances to solve the world’s most daunting problems, get people to adopt new ways of thinking, solve customer problems, and rethink how business and possibly the economy will operate differently in the next decade.

Even David Ogilvy, one of the godfathers of advertising and the inspiration for Don Draper’s character in the cable television show Mad Men, knew that data would be more relevant than creative efforts alone. Ogilvy was as much a futurist in this area as anyone else. To me, he was one of the first disruptive marketers. It’s a shame his beliefs don’t resonate in our world as much as they should. When reading the following passage, replace Ogilvy’s phrase “direct response” with “disruptive marketing”:

“In the advertising community today there are two worlds. Your world of direct response advertising disruptive marketing and that other world, that world of general advertising. These two worlds are on a collision course. You direct response people know what kind of advertising works and what doesn’t work. You know to a dollar. The general advertising people don’t know. You know that two-minute commercials on television are more effective, more cost-effective than 10-second commercials or 30-second commercials. You know that fringe time on television sells more than prime time. In print advertising, you know that long copy sells more than short copy. You know that headlines and copy about the product and its benefits sell more than cute headlines and poetic copy. You know to a dollar. The general advertisers and their agencies know almost nothing for sure because they cannot measure the results of their advertising. They worship at the altar of creativity. Which really means originality. The most dangerous word in the lexicon of advertising.

They opine that 30-second commercials are more cost-effective than two-minute commercials. You know they’re wrong. In print advertising, they opine that short commercials sell more than long copy. You know they’re wrong. They indulge in entertainment. You know they’re wrong. You know to a dollar. They don’t. Why don’t you tell them? Why don’t you save them from their follies? For two reasons. First, because you’re impressed by the fact that they’re so big and so well paid and so well publicized. You’re even perhaps impressed by their reputation for creativity, whatever that may mean. Second, you never meet them. You’ve inhabited different worlds. The chasm between direct response advertising disruptive marketing and general advertising is wide. On your side of the chasm I see knowledge and reality. On the other side of the chasm I see ignorance. You are the professionals. This must not go on. I predict that the practitioners of general advertising are going to start learning from your experience. They are going to start picking your brains.”

I share more about this and many other topics in my new book, Disruptive Marketing.

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