Join us now on Facebook Live for another episode of TED Dialogues, our response to current events, adding insight, context and nuance to the conversations we’re having right now. Join us Thursday, February 23, 2017 at 1–2pm on TED’s Facebook page.

Our speakers are two historians who will try to help us make sense of what’s going on in Washington: Rick Perlstein, journalist and expert on the history of conservatism in the US, will moderate a conversation with Yale history professor Timothy Snyder. Snyder’s book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century will be published next week. There will be an opportunity for questions from the Facebook Live audience!

Kellogg’s is investing more than £6m in advertising for Crunchy Nut this year, 31 per cent of which will be spent digitally, as the brand reaches out to social influencers in its ‘Search for the Ultimate Crunchy Nutter’ competition.

The £6m campaign, consisting of a digital competition and two TV ads in 2017, represents a 183 per cent increase in the cereal company’s above-the-line investment in Crunchy Nut, compared to the previous year.

Today marks the launch of the digitally-led ‘Search for the Ultimate Crunchy Nutter’ competition, which challenges Crunchy Nut fans to eat a bowl of the cereal in a ‘troublesome place or at a troublesome time’, before sharing video evidence of the consequences with Kellogg’s though the hashtag #TastesTooGood.

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The ‘Search’ will identify the biggest Crunchy Nut fan in the UK, with the aim of cementing Crunchy Nut’s position as the go-to cereal brand for taste. The initiative has been developed in partnership with global marketing and technology agency DigitasLBi and full service creative agency Leo Burnett.

The reach of the challenge will be heightened by a host of social influencers posting videos of their own entries – including comedians Cian Twomey (5.4m followers) and Dylan Evans (1.6m followers), football freestyler Jamie Knight and Radio 1 DJ Scott Mills – ultimately pushing the campaign to a combined following of 11m social engagers.

As part of the £6m spend, Crunchy Nut is on TV now, featuring a new end-frame highlighting Kellogg’s latest innovation – Crunchy Nut Peanut Butter Clusters – a cereal which generated Kellogg’s highest ever level of organic engagement on a social media post. The post was shot under the popular format of ‘unboxing’, to reveal the peanut-themed packaging.

Gareth Maguire, Cereal Marketing Director for Kellogg’s UK & Republic of Ireland, said: “We are excited about investing at this scale in Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut – it is no. 1 for taste in the UK market and, as consumers know, the food is irresistible.

“Powering up Crunchy Nut through TV and digital allows us to grab fans’ attention by dramatising this irresistible taste; engaging with consumers in a fresh way while utilising social media influencers and audience participation.

“Crunchy Nut is in more than 6.5 million households across the UK. That means there are plenty of Crunchy Nutters across the nation, and we are looking forward to seeing the breadth of troublesome situations in which #TastesTooGood comes to life.

Ian Hilton, Planning Director, Leo Burnett, added: “After years of broadcast storytelling about the trouble that the irresistible taste of Crunchy Nut can get you into, we’re delighted to be bringing consumer participation to the heart of the campaign by inviting our devoted Crunchy Nut fans to have a bit of fun with us by demonstrating the trouble they’re prepared to put themselves in to enjoy a bowl.”

Kellogg’s Search for the Ultimate Crunchy Nutter competition goes live on Facebook and Twitter from today, using a launch film directed by George Sawyer from Channel X.

Kellogg’s will develop reactive branded content based on the videos submitted by Crunchy Nut fans. The best entrants will then compete in a special game show, where one person is crowned the ‘Ultimate Crunchy Nutter’.

Chris Clarke, chief creative officer, International, DigitasLBi added: “To make the content we’re creating with Kellogg’s truly engaging, we’ve boosted our team with talent from the world of TV programme-making – most notably our Executive Creative Director, Peter Drake, who has great experience developing programming for the likes of Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network. The Search for the Ultimate Crunchy Nutter is a great example of the way in which we’re approaching content for Kellogg’s from an entertainment perspective.”

CREATIVE CREDITS:
The Search for the Ultimate Crunchy Nutter
Creative agencies: DigitasLBi and Leo Burnett
Client name and job title: Nicolas Borri, European Marketing Manager – Crunchy Nut & Extra
Creative Director: Peter Drake
Art Director: Lewis Beaton
Copywriter: Alex Moore
Strategists: Ian Hilton, Bernard Valentine
Account Director: Jessica Lyons, Sarah Wales
Agency Producer: Lisa Nicholls
Photographer: Christopher Harris
Director/ Production Co: George Sawyer from Channel X
Producer: Jim Reid
Post Production: The Farm
Sound Design: The Farm
DoP: Peter Gregory
Media agency: Carat

The whole world is now in your browser. Fly through landmarks and cities like London, Tokyo and Rome in stunning 3D, then dive in to experience them first hand with Street View. See the world from a new point of view with Voyager, which brings you stories from the BBC, NASA, Sesame Street and more. Start exploring: https://g.co/earth.

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By Frederick D. Lipman, Esq In 2012, I wrote a Director Notes publication for The Conference Board entitled “From Enron to Lehman Brothers:  Lessons for Boards from Recent Corporate Governance Failures.”  It included a review of independent investigative reports, books and articles on various financial disasters, including Enron, AIG and Lehman Brothers and noted the presence of […]

If three makes a trend, then lately I’ve noted a new trend in strategic thinking.  It involves the discipline to ask different questions to get different results — and not just different results — better, clearer, more sustainable results.  I came across the idea to ask different questions to get different results from three different people — a consultant, a professor, and an entrepreneur.  Although each of them suggested a different question, together they provided a new perspective on strategy development — that is, sometimes an answer can be less important than the question.

Different question #1:  What problem are you trying to solve?

I came across the first admonishment to ask a different question in a recent Harvard Business Review article by Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg, an independent consultant, speaker, and coauthor of the book Innovation as Usual.  Wedell-Wedellsborg related a story about the owner of an office building trying to address tenant complaints about a slow elevator.  The typical solutions (replace the elevator, install a stronger motor, upgrade the algorithm that runs the elevator, etc.) address the question of how to make the elevator run faster.

But Wedell-Wedellsborg suggests that if you ask a different question — how to make the wait seem shorter — you identify many other potential solutions (put up mirrors next to the elevator, play music, install hand sanitizer.)  He pointed out that the new question, “What problem are you trying to solve,” isn’t intended to help find the “real” problem — rather, the approach helps reveal if there is a better one to solve.  Perhaps solving a different problem would be cheaper, easier, faster.

Different question #2:  What job does your customer need to get done?

I recently had the pleasure of hearing Harvard Business School professor Clay Christensen speak at a conference.  Since the conference was hosted by a technology platform company that helps companies collect and manage customer data, Christensen surprised the audience by suggesting that collecting more and more data about customers is actually leading companies in the wrong direction.  His point made sense, though, when he explained that simply knowing about a customer isn’t the same as knowing what the customer is trying to do.

When a customer buys a product or use a service, he said, they are essentially “hiring” it to help them do a job.  Some customer jobs are purely functional (store clothes in a closet), others are emotional (find a fulfilling career) — but they are all a means to an end.  So the new question we need to ask is, “What does the customer hope to accomplish?  What is the job to be done?”  By considering customer jobs, we not only better understand who and what we compete with today, but also we can identify who or what is likely to disrupt us and/or our category in the future.   Consider how a too-narrow view of what customers were trying to accomplish led rental car companies to caught off guard by rail hailing services.

Different question #3:  What are you replacing?

Basecamp founder Jason Fried recently wrote a blog post based on the new question, “What is someone going to stop doing when they start using your product?”  He went on to say that, when developing a new product, the classic entrepreneur mistake is to only think about what it offers.

To understand how to make the new product successful, we must think about what we are asking people to switch from and what would prevent them from doing so.  The switching costs of habit, fear of the unknown, and momentum can be powerful; and if they’re smart, established players will build even stronger glue into their offerings.  So we must consider the context or the new product.  And I would add that figuring out how to create desire for an alternative to an existing solution might lead to an entirely different solution.

Framing has always played a critical role in strategy development, but when taken together, these three questions seemed to offer a refreshing approach.  So this new trend — to ask different questions to get different results — may not be all that new.  But it does reflect the kind of mindset that is needed in today’s business environment.

“We thought that we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong.” – Bono

related:

What Game Are We Playing?

Excuse Me, Could Someone Please Explain The Strategy?

Scale Up Your Brand Workbook

The post ask different questions to get different results appeared first on Denise Lee Yohn.

Nielsen’s “The Mindset of the Meal Kit Consumer” study explored the habits, demographics, and opinions of U.S. consumers who purchase pre-prepared meal kits.

This morning’s employment report shows a healthy increase of 235,000 total (nonfarm) jobs last month—pretty much across the board, in all major categories except for retail services. The manufacturing sector alone gained 28,000 jobs—a stronger showing than we’ve seen in a long time. But we shouldn’t break out the champagne over one month’s worth of […]

Several weeks ago on Branding Strategy Insider, we discussed an emerging trend called frictionless retail. And while retail brands have unique challenges to solve as they move into the future, all brands can apply the idea of frictionless to some, if not many components of their brand experience.

Business is the common denominator that unites brands. And at the center of business is customer transactions – without customers, there is no business, there is no brand. Radiating outward from the transaction is a multitude of interactions and touchpoints required to sustain transactions and nurture existing customers. But every touchpoint created by a brand requires a commitment of time and attention from customers they would have likely spent elsewhere.

Most friction slows customers down, and makes it more difficult or time-consuming to get what they want, which in turns decreases motivation. If a website asks visitors to register for a webinar and requires a customer to fill out 20 form fields of information to attend, they will not likely get many registrations. But if they only require 4 fields, they reduce friction. When Disney introduced its wearable Magic Kingdom wristband, it lowered friction around the hassle of hotel keys, park tickets, and payment systems.

Airlines are a great example of an industry that typically has high friction. Consumers wonder things like “Why is it so hard to change a flight?”. Their expectation has been set by the modern world of frictionless everything: Uber, InstaCart, AirBnB, Hotel Tonight. They don’t understand that older, complex airline information systems aren’t as flexible as the born-in-the-cloud apps they use on their mobile devices.

Southwest Airlines has done particularly well in minimizing common industry friction points (like checked bag fees or simplified reservation changes they call “TransFAREncy”). These actions allow the brand to almost empathize with customer frustrations. When they unveiled their new “Heart” brand in 2014, Southwest CMO Kevin Krone said, “The heart is our identity—the Heart of our Southwest employees enhances the customer experience. It’s the finishing touch that makes the Southwest brand unique, demonstrating that Southwest cares about each customer.” Instead of pursuing incremental transactions with customers, they went for a more passionate pivot, and showed their customers the love.

In his new book, Friction, Jeff Rosenblum says, “Passion brands actively remove friction from customers’ lives. Fighting friction eliminates the obstacles that prevent customers from doing what they want to do. Removing friction empowers customers and improves their lives one small step at a time.” Today every marketer should seek to eliminate the friction weakening their offer and value. Here are four ways you can help make that a reality for your brand.

1. Create An Experience Map: To orchestrate touchpoints over time and space, you must first know where the touch points are and what is happening to the customer when they are there. Because an experience map is a catalyst for other planning activities, this exercise will help brands understand what friction is necessary.

2. Automate What You Can: Tom Goodwin once remarked it would be great for hotels to scrap the idea of the front desk and move check-in, registration and security to guests’ mobile devices. We may still be decades away from automation at that level, but that’s the right idea. Think about anything and everything your customer must do to interact with the brand, and find ways to automate the work required. Mobile apps should always find ways to access help or support from within the app, and the call center should have information about the customer before they say hello.

3. Get Predictive: Mining available data and using statistical analysis to make predictions allows the brand to be more anticipatory. It also shows good data stewardship on the part of the brand by taking the time to identify personally relevant patterns and trends.

4. Learn By Social: Social listening can help brands identify customer frustrations and points of friction. It can also create meaningful dialogue with customers who may offer their take on how the brand experience can be proved.

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Watch how the various features of the new LG G6 can enrich your life in Heats first work for the smartphone maker. Live a smarter, better, and more enjoyable life with the LG G6 that actually fits in your hand.

The TV Commercial Ad titled G6 was done by Heat San Francisco advertising agency for product: LG G6

Three :15 spots compliment the campaign (below) “Meatball” “Milk” and “Astronaut” each focusing on different features of the device.

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CREATIVE CREDITS:
Advertising Agency: Heat, New York, Usa
Chief Creative Officer: Steve Stone
Chief Executive Officer: John Elder
President: Mike Barrett
Ecd / Head of Creative: Evan Slater
Creative Director: Jb Byrne, Elaine Cox
Senior Writer: Jon Korn
Art Director: Justin Hargraves
Head of Integrated Production: Joyce Chen
Senior Producer: Andy Rosenthal
Associate Producer: Mackenzie Huff
Group Account Director: Matt Huntington
Account Director: Elaine Feinstein
Assistant Account Executive: Paris Clark
Senior Strategist: Apo Bordin
Director of Business Affairs: Jenn Kennedy
Production Company: Gentleman Scholar
Directors: William Campbell, Will Johnson
Head of Production: Rachel Kaminek
Line Producer: Richard Kaylor
Dp: Rebecca Baehler
Design & Animation: Gentleman Scholar
Creative Directors: William Campbell, Will Johnson, Chace Hartman
Associate Creative Director: Jp Rooney
Senior Producer: Sue Yee Hubbard
Producer: Gregory Behrens
2d Animation & Design: Dennis Go
Designer: Trish Janovic, Christina Barna, Mike Tavarez, Chris Finn
Assistant Editor: Steven San Miguel
Producer: Tim Kirkpatrick

New work from Y&R New York for AZEK Building Products, a leader in the development of premium, low maintenance exterior building products. AZEK’s first-ever TV spots, showcasing their decking and railing products, will appear nationally on stations including HGTV, DIY and Food Network.

In the spots, the natural beauty of the decking takes center stage. Employing the use of numbers over the spots and people moving in and out of frame demonstrates variety and versatility, without removing focus from the product.

“We are growing across many of our categories and well known among the trade, but have been challenged with low brand awareness among homeowners,” said Julia Fitzgerald, Chief Marketing Officer at AZEK. “We partnered with Y&R to take us to the next level. We want to be the first choice among homeowners who want to spend more time enjoying their home and less time maintaining it.”

CREATIVE CREDITS:
CPG, AZEK Building Products
Chief Marketing Officer – Julia Fitzgerald
Brand Manager – Christopher Czachor

Y&R NYC
Chief Creative Officer – Leslie Sims
SVP, Executive Director Integrated Media – Jennifer Kohl
Executive Creative Director – Richard Butt
Creative Director, Copywriter – Josh Schildkraut
Creative Director, Art Director – Miranda Dean
Content Producer – Taylor Schomann
Art Director – Mitch Goldstein
Music Producer – Deb Oh
Account Supervisor – Susan Min
Account Manager – Basem Ebied
Integrated Media Director – Theresa Ferrugio
Integrated Media Planner – Kelsey Roche
Senior Brand Strategist – Paul-Claude Vary-Kinney

Production Company – Concrete & Clay
Director – Dewey Nicks
Executive Producer – Mike Brady
Executive Producer – Carrie McLaren
Head of Production – Barrett Schultz
Line Producer – Leora Glass
Content Production Company – On The Day Productions
Photography – Dewey Nicks

Editorial Company – The Paint Shop
Editor(s) – Ian McGee

Post production Company – The Paint Shop LA
Engineering – Marc Healy
Audio – Edit Studio (Y&R NYC)

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