A powerhouse coalition will change the way vaccines are made — and help us prep for the next global outbreak. (Because it’s not if but when.)

One of the cruelest ironies of the recent Ebola outbreak: There was a promising Ebola vaccine already, sitting in a Canadian lab, awaiting human trials — the last step away from being approved to use on people. But development had stalled in 2010, and it wasn’t ready to use.

“Why is it that the Ebola vaccine wasn’t fully developed at this point?” asked vaccine advocate Seth Berkley in March 2015 on the TED stage. “Mainly because of the financial risk in developing it. The sad reality is, we develop vaccines not based upon the risk the pathogen poses to people, but on how economically risky it is to develop these vaccines. Vaccine development is expensive and complicated.” 

As he concluded, “There’s a complete market failure. If we want vaccines, we have to provide incentives or some type of subsidy.”

Last Thursday, January 18, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Berkley saw the launch of exactly that: CEPI, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, a fund from a coalition of countries, labs and foundations that will create incentives for academic and industry labs to create and test vaccines, and will help form global partnerships that will speed reaction times. The first $460 million of backing comes from founding partners including the governments of Norway, Germany and Japan, the Wellcome Trust and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; other nations are poised to join. The organization expects to raise the full $1 billion that it needs for the next 5 years by the end of 2017.

The first targets will be the MERS-CoV, Lassa and Nipah viruses.  

In an email to TED after the launch, Berkley calls this fund “exactly the type of initiative I called for in my TED Talk.  It was also set up well by Bill Gates as he did the epidemic talk right before mine.”

Watch this clip of Bill Gates at the CEPI announcement:

Berkley shares more details: “I participated in the Davos launch today and am excited that CEPI could be put together and funded over the last year. It brings together companies — both large multinational vaccine companies and small biotech companies — to pursue two goals: First, to create some vaccines for known pathogens that are at risk of epidemic spread.  They will be produced and go through early-stage testing and then will be stored to be immediately ready for response to an outbreak.  Second will be to develop, test and validate platforms that could be used for novel agents that might appear as part of an outbreak. These will allow us to be much further prepared to move quickly if a new pathogen appears.” 

Berkley runs Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, which was launched at the WEF in 2000. “Gavi has immunized 600 million addition kids, changed the marketplace for vaccines and prevented more than 8 million deaths,” he notes. (The WEF-Gavi partnership was highlighted at the main entrance to this year’s forum.)

Seth Berkley runs Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, which launched at Davos in 2000 and was featured this year at the main entrance to the event. This year, the CEPI launch is counted among the top 10 achievements at Davos 2017. Image courtesy Seth Berkley.

His group will work closely with CEPI, he says, “with the idea that if useful vaccines are produced for diseases of epidemic importance, Gavi could purchase doses for a stockpile so that the world is prepared if outbreaks occur.  This work can be seen as global insurance against the evolutionary certainty of future infectious disease outbreaks.”

“Of course, I am also happy to report that there are 300,000 doses of the Merck VSV-Ebola vaccine available if there are outbreaks in the interim, and Merck has agreed to submit the vaccine for regulatory approval by the end of the year.  Gavi will then set up a formal stockpile.  This vaccine had a 100% efficacy rate in trials in Guinea.  So one of the two experimental vaccines I held up on the TED stage is now a reality.”

“I think this is a great example of TED highlighting a global problem worthy of a new idea.  That idea being socialized, leading to a new paradigm that can make a real difference in the world.“

By Alex Parkinson The deadline to enter the Excellence in New Communications Awards, presented by the Society for New Communications Research of The Conference Board (SNCR), is fast approaching—Friday, February 3 is just over a week away! So, don’t delay. Submit your case studies ASAP, so you can be in the running for these prestigious […]

A cautionary tale and best practices for marketers who want to share memes and celebrity likenesses in social media marketing.

24Today I break with my usual Brand Book Bites format of author interview and book overview to share about the book Shoe Dog:  A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight.  This wonderful book combines corporate memoir (Knight recounts some of the most significant moments in the early years of Nike’s founding) with personal confessional (Knight reveals with surprising candor his fears, vulnerabilities, and mistakes).  I suggest you read Bill Gates’ write-up about the book which perfectly captures its essence.  And while I agree with Gates’ assessment that it doesn’t seem Knight set out to teach the reader anything, I do think it conveys some important lessons and observations about starting a business and building a brand — and that is what I want to share here.  So here a just a few of the gems of wisdom that I gleaned from Shoe Dog:

Running a business is — or should be — like running itself.  I’ve found that too many people operate their businesses as if it were only a means to an end — making lots of money, selling lots of stuff, being “successful.”  All of that can be true, but it also seems that running a business can be an end unto itself.  The motivation can, or as Knight seems to suggest, must come from within yourself.

In writing about his idea to start a running shoe company, Knight observed, “Few ideas are as crazy as my favorite thing, running. It’s hard. It’s painful. It’s risky. The rewards are few and far from guaranteed. When you run around an oval track, or down an empty road, you have no real destination. At least, none that can fully justify the effort. The act itself becomes the destination. It’s not just that there’s no finish line; it’s that you define the finish line. Whatever pleasures or gains you derive from the act of running, you must find them within. It’s all in how you frame it, how you sell it to yourself.”

Believe in what you’re doing — or no one else will.  As an entrepreneur, you must be utterly convinced that what you’re doing is worth doing if you expect anyone else to do so also.  As Knight reflected on why he was so much better at selling shoes than mutual funds, he asked himself, “So why was selling shoes so different? Because, I realized, it wasn’t selling. I believed in running. I believed that if people got out and ran a few miles every day, the world would be a better place, and I believed these shoes were better to run in. People, sensing my belief, wanted some of that belief for themselves. Belief, I decided. Belief is irresistible.”

Managing inventory, not marketing, is the key to your viability.  A wise colleague of mine Jeff Harbaugh often writes in his MarketWatch column for the action sports industry about how managing inventory is more important than marketing these days.  It’s a concept that many brand-builders bristle at, but even Knight, perhaps one of the greatest brand-builders of our time, believes it.  He wrote, “Supply and demand is always the root problem in business. It’s been true since Phoenician traders raced to bring Rome the coveted purple dye that colored the clothing of royals and rich people; there was never enough purple to go around. It’s hard enough to invent and manufacture and market a product, but then the logistics, the mechanics, the hydraulics of getting it to the people who want it, when they want it—this is how companies die, how ulcers are born.”

Your brand should characterize your culture, and vice versa.  In my book, What Great Brands Do, I explain that Great Brands Start Inside — meaning, great brands start brand-building by cultivating a strong brand-led culture inside their organizations.  Nike’s story supports and explains this notion that brand and culture are inextricably linked.

When Knight was trying to convince an attorney, Rob Strasser, to join the company after having represented it in a lawsuit, Knight said to him, “You’re one of us.”  “One of us,” Knight wrote, “[Strasser] knew what those words meant. We were the kind of people who simply couldn’t put up with corporate nonsense. We were the kind of people who wanted our work to be play. But meaningful play. We were trying to slay Goliath, and though Strasser was bigger than two Goliaths, at heart he was an utter David. We were trying to create a brand, I said, but also a culture. We were fighting against conformity, against boringness, against drudgery. More than a product, we were trying to sell an idea—a spirit.”

Be clear on the #1 thing you must do.  “Pay Nissho first.”  Knight wrote that this mantra was “my morning chant, my nightly prayer, my number one priority.”  Knight explained that he had concluded that paying his secondary bank, Nissho, was the #1 thing he and his company had to do every month in order to keep their line of credit at their primary bank secure — and they had to do that in order to have the cash to run the business.  Having that clarity kept the company alive.  Every leader needs to have such clarity.

Business is a noble cause.  Knight said it all:  “It seems wrong to call it ‘business.’ It seems wrong to throw all those hectic days and sleepless nights, all those magnificent triumphs and desperate struggles, under that bland, generic banner: business. What we were doing felt like so much more…We wanted, as all great businesses do, to create, to contribute, and we dared to say so aloud. When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the lives of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is—you’re participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. More than simply alive, you’re helping others to live more fully, and if that’s business, all right, call me a businessman. Maybe it will grow on me.”

related:

brand book bites from Onward by Starbucks CEO Schultz

In CSR, Nike Just Does It

brand book bites from Birth of a Brand by UGG Founder Brian Smith

The post brand book bites from Shoe Dog appeared first on Denise Lee Yohn.

Mr. Clean and Toronto’s Leo Burnett sensually tease its 2017 Super Bowl LI commercial with a promise that the famous cue ball will get dirty during the third quarter of the Big Game February 5, 2017. Check back with us the 27th of January when the full spot comes out.

CREATIVE CREDITS:
Ad Agency: Leo Burnett, Toronto

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Once a brand is well positioned, the one enduring challenge that marketers face is making sure that everything associated with the brand is consistent in the minds of the target audience.

In theory it’s relatively simple. In practice of course, when managing global brands, with millions of customers and multiple campaigns, it can prove a lot more demanding.

Brand Associations And The Mind

The brand associations you build must work within the context of an over-communicated society, where it is getting harder for consumers to see and hear the signals. That’s the challenge. The good news is that once you have encoded an association it is extremely difficult to decouple it. Have you ever been to the Willis Tower in Chicago? Most people would say “no” because the building lives in their minds as the Sears Tower. In reality it’s been the Willis Tower since 2009.

Building Landmark Associations

When you execute brand associations, don’t build them around what your consumers are going to get. Build them based on what your consumers are going to remember. That has led some brands to build associations with iconic landmarks to fuel their success.

In 1925 French automaker Citroen began leveraging the power of the Eiffel Tower brand with 25,000 lights. The campaign, which spelled the brand name vertically on the side of the tower itself would last nearly a decade and would help the manufacturer become the country’s largest producer of automobiles until the Great Depression. Generations of Parisians would vividly recall the association long after the lights were removed.

In contrast Joe Boxer wanted to associate its neckties with the Statue of Liberty in 2014 by suspending a giant tie by helicopter. From one angle it gave the impression that Lady Liberty had a bold new tie and look. From other angles it looked like construction. Ideas suspending from helicopters are obviously temporary. Only two years have passed, yet the campaign is largely forgotten and deemed unremarkable.

That said, the opportunities for major brands to associate themselves with iconic landmarks are exceedingly rare. Even more rare is when that opportunity can’t be copied or diluted. For example, a new opportunity has emerged to build a long-term, physical association with the famed Hollywood sign. Brands seeking a strong link with the hopes and aspirations of dreamers everywhere will surely take note.

Just below the letter D, ‘The Last House on Mulholland’, offers one brand a preeminent stage to build an iconic home to showcase its vision.

This branded residence offers the right brand unique benefits to:

• Become the next enduring symbol of the hopes and dreams that are Hollywood
• Achieve high, enduring visibility with a global audience
• Be the first and only brand to enjoy a direct and physical association with this global icon
• Bring something new to their brand story
• Reinforce what the brand stands for; its positioning
• Differentiate the brand both in method and meaning

What do you want people to associate your brand with? Is your brand intrinsically LA, for example? Does it reference Hollywood (or could it)? Do you want consumers to associate you with glamour or luxury? There are plenty of motivations why a brand would want to associate itself with this iconic sign.

We can share more about this larger-than-life opportunity. Contact Derrick Daye at The Blake Project.

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

The Harry’s Shaving Company founders, Jeff and Andy, are just like you. They put their pants on one leg at a time, they need to shave, and they don’t want to pay too much for high quality and good design.

Directors Henry & Rel (“Catfish”, “Nerve”) were approached by the young Turks at Harry’s to tell the story of their brand’s origin and incredible rise to the top in this energetic, tongue-in-cheek and off-beat documentary.

CREATIVE CREDITS:
AD AGENCY: Partners & Spade
DIRECTORS REPRESENTATION: Siobhan Murphy
PRODUCTION COMPANY: Moxie Pictures
MEDIA COMPANY: Noble People
MUSIC: Search Party
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Erika Best & Andy Wilcox
EDITING COMPANY: Ps 260
EDITOR: Maury Loeb
ART DIRECTOR: Rob Matthews
CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Jonathan Mackler

In this Q&A, Intel CMO Steve Fund shares his thoughts on a new branding campaign designed to showcase the products and services Intel technology enables.

Every business and brand is unique. They all have their own processes, efficiencies, culture and values. The origins of many brands is traced back to providing a solution that didn’t exist to a problem or unlocking a mystery for people. The next phase of development takes place when they move from solving mysteries to a position where they are part of an ongoing mission. Here emotional connection between people and brand is built based on what mission and solutions the brand provides. Brands achieve this through scale and algorithmic precision. They use mass or targeted awareness to help drive word of mouth.

It’s this type of habitual behavior by brands that helps define who and what they are to customers. But it also gets brands into habits that become hard to break. It is this very type of behavior that leads to a fertile environment for disruption.

So how do brands recognize disruption? And why does disruption take place? Well, if a brand moves to solve mysteries through a heuristic phase to run an algorithm, the issue is they don’t check the landscape that is parallel to them to see what new mysteries they can solve. Brands get what we know as inattentional or perceptual blindness. They are so focused on what they are currently doing, they cannot see what they need to do or where they need to go based on the evolution of behavior. As a result, they simply get left behind and left behind quickly in relevance because another player replaces what they at one time provided. In other words, brand disruption happens because customers have new wants and needs that the dominant or legacy brand fails to address or create. This is usually because algorithmic business models lead to profits rather than innovation.

We have seen this countless times and maybe the best way to explain this is through a real tale in popular culture around the shapeshifts in technological hardware and our listening habits. It is important to note however that a number of factors are involved that cause change. These include but are not limited to:

• Customer Sentiment
• An evolving marketplace – what people need in 2017 is different from what they needed in 2012 but could be similar to what they needed in 1917 (past is always prologue in disruption)
• The inability to inspire new customers or retain current customers (a common tale when you are running an algorithm, any straying from the path is seen by the brand as an unnecessary diversion)
• Cheaper Solutions
• Entirely new lines of business
• New technology which changes how we live and work (Amazon didn’t rise to power because retail is dying, it rose to power because of how we live and work and the need for delivery within timeframes and convenience factors in a long tail economy)

All of these factors are why we’ve gone from quick service restaurants dominating the landscape to fast casual now being the norm. Why we’ve gone from a world where apps like Uber have superseded taxis and limousines and a world where unbranded mix and match Uniqlo has outrun The Gap and Abercrombie & Fitch in a world of fast fashion and declining income among younger people.

So, what tools do we use spot these disruptions? Here are a few questions you should always be asking.

• What is the social sentiment of your brand?
• What are people searching for on Google or Bing that is bubbling on the fringe?
• What things are you observing in the world around you in terms of how people live, communicate, dress and conduct themselves?

Many times, companies spot these shifts but are either too early or too late to solve that new mystery. The first smartphone wasn’t created by Apple but by Microsoft. The first search engine not by Google but Archie. The first solar cells were created by Bell Labs not Kyocera.

A True Tale Of Perpetual Brand Disruption

Hi-Fi stereos were all the rage in the 1930s due to vinyl records and a market dominated by the brand RCA Victor. Then in the 1960s the transistor portable radio was created and Sony, Sanyo and Texas Instruments were the main brands in this space pushed by the popularity of AM radio stations. Did that obliterate hi-fi stereos? No, but the brands that manufactured transistors were different from the brands that manufactured hi-fi stereos. Recognizing disruption many times is understanding brand disruption isn’t a winner take all scenario. So, while you may still be thriving as a brand, you may not be thriving within a specific timeframe. This is what catches many brands off guard and is key in the recognition process. People may still be purchasing their products but those purchase habits are changing and the legacy brand isn’t adapting to where things are headed next. The disrupting brand is solving those new mysteries. This is why relevance is a quality signal in identifying disruption more than revenue.

So, did transistors eclipse hi-fi stereo brands and become the dominant audio device in the 1960s and 1970s? Yes, but ultimately portable headphones and players eclipsed the transistor in the 1980s changing the market once again. This new player was known as the Sony Walkman. Thus at this point Sony had eclipsed RCA as the dominant audio brand. From this point portable and personal players were the crux of the market. Sony had solid profitability. Then in the late 1990s things pivoted again due to a change in audio formats. The MP3 eclipsed the CD and cassette tape and several companies rushed to issue a player. There were several created by upstart brands like SIS, Diamond Multimedia and Eiger Labs.

But digital rights management switched things up again opening the door for what ultimately disrupted the entire market in the form of Apple’s iPod and iTunes. But were we done yet? Ultimately while many of us may point to the iPod innovating into the iPhone, the way we listen to music has changed again and is now dominated by things beyond the hardware including Spotify, Pandora and iHeart Radio apps. If we actually look at data, streaming services have eclipsed mp3s. But what will eclipse streaming? If fringe data is any indication, we are headed back to our past (again, past is prologue). What do I mean by this?

Vinyl is making a comeback. That is if it ever really left us in the first place.

All of this happened in the last 90 years. That’s a lot of change in that period of time. A lot of juggling back and forth between dominant brands and disrupted brands that no longer exist.

The question to answer now isn’t will you be disrupted (you will) but will you survive to see another day?

Learn how to keep your brand relevant in the 21^st Century in my new book Disruptive Marketing.

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: Accelerate 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

For the release of Assassin’s Creed, Wilkinson has partnered with Youtube and give the opportunity for the first time ever to kill its own ad online.

À l’occasion de son partenariat avec Assassin’s Creed le film, Wikinson vous donne pour la première fois l’opportunité de supprimer sa propre pub sur YouTube.

CREATIVE CREDITS:
Ad Agency: J. Walter Thompson, Paris