Learn about new research from the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) on how the overall ANA member community is conducting e-commerce initiatives.

Productivity, discipline and focus: The perfect formula for success in business–and in life. As you know, those 3 traits are deeply intertwined. I believe that focus and discipline naturally lead to productivity. But the first step is to gain focus. Early in my business, I wanted to do it all. I…

Sonic Union mix engineer Brian Goodheart and sound designer Owen Shearer unite with director Robert Broadhurst to bring the futuristic aesthetic of the Adidas Y-3 Spring/Summer 2017 collection to life in a surreal new campaign film from Blackrose NYC. Written and directed by Broadhurst, the story unfolds in a sleek, dystopian universe as two protagonists face off against an oppressive surveillance regime. The artist Son Lux provides an eerie, dreamlike score that amplifies the artful mosaic of stylized, impressionistic scenes that showcase the brand’s futuristic sportswear, footwear and signature color palette.

“The SS17 collection had a specific cinematic feeling that all I wanted to do was build a beautiful world around it and let it emanate this strange and hopefully entertaining story,” Noted director Robert Broadhurst. “I was incredibly lucky that Blackrose and Y-3 loved the concept and gave it so much support – that’s the greatest part of working with a forward-looking brand, especially as a new director. It was exciting to explore some of the contemporary anxieties that I find really enrich Yohji Yamamoto’s famous notion of ‘clothing as armor.’ And, as with all things sci-fi, the sound design and mix were particularly vital to the film. Brian worked his magic to elevate it beyond the high standard we had achieved the last time around and once again helped refine story through sound.”

This is a recurring collaboration between Goodheart and Broadhurst, having previously collaborated on the recent Y-3 Autumn/Winter 2016 campaign film.

CREATIVE CREDITS:
Agency: Blackrose NYC
Director: Robert Broadhurst
Producer: Kori Shadrick
Director of Photography: Aaron Platt
Lighting Design: John Torres
Music: Son Lux
Color: Paul Harrison at Freefolk
Talent: Louie
Talent: Zlata
VFX Lead: John Shafto
UI Design: Toros Köse
Sound: Sonic Union
Mix Engineer: Brian Goodheart
Sound Designer: Owen Shearer
Studio Director: Justine Cortale
Scheduling Producer: Pat Sullivan
Set Design: Anthony Asaro

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What marketers need to know this week: BuzzFeed’s coup over Trump, institutional trust is failing, magic unicorns, and more.

One of the more interesting developments that emerged during these past few months is the phenomena of brands facing direct criticism from then President-elect Donald Trump.

The frequency and unpredictability of these criticisms has put brands on notice. From questioning the decision to move manufacturing to Mexico, as in the case of Carrier or Ford, or of the estimated cost of Air Force One, as with Boeing. Any brand facing criticism from the new president, along with enduring the accompanying media coverage subjects brands to deep and potentially threatening scrutiny. Like many things associated with the recent election, this is totally new in the political/marketing universe. For the first time, a soon to be sitting president is using his position to publicly chastise a company and brand by name.

Though there is no direct precedent it should be noted that presidents have never been totally silent in matters that effect marketing and commerce. For example in 1952, Harry Truman attempted a seizure of the steel industry in the face of a strike. Ten years later, President Kennedy was at odds publicly with the steel industry over pricing. In 1981, Ronald Reagan fired 11,000 striking air traffic controllers for refusing to return to work. In 2009, President Obama attempted to re-invent the healthcare industry with the Affordable Care Act and jump-start the entire green industry in the U.S. In each of these cases, the power of the presidency was brought to bear to settle an issue in the marketplace, or in the case of Obama, rebuild or reinvigorate a marketplace. But in these examples and others, brands weren’t singled out as they are now. Had Twitter been around in 1962, would Kennedy have called out U.S. Steel directly for price gouging? We’ll never know.

What we do know is the power of social media (in this case Twitter) wielded directly and personally by a President on a mission to “make America great again.” So far, it has been quite effective. United Technologies (Carrier), Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Ford, GM, Fiat Chrysler and Toyota, have all had their turn. The news media amplifies the message beyond the President’s 20.3 million followers and CEOs squirm. In every case a negative tweet from @realDonaldTrump has delivered a blow to the brand in stock valuation loss. Stanley is one company that seems to be getting the message. This from their CEO John Lundgren: “It’s going to be advisable to have more manufacturing in the U.S.” Our observation: If your brand is on the Fortune 500, rightly or wrongly your brand could be next.

That is why, in assessing your brand’s potential threats as part of a SWOT analysis or other situation analysis, you consider heightened public scrutiny for your business plans and policies as part of that matrix. A Wall Street Journal op-ed recently complained that the new president should allow CEO’s to chart the destiny of the businesses that they know better. While that may be true, the new reality may very well become the new normal for high-profile brands. It is, in fact, a new crisis management scenario that these brands must prepare for.

While the combination of presidential administration scrutiny, public criticism and direct threats are a unique development for high-profile brands, threats in the marketplace are not. Essentially, the tweets from @realDonaldTrump can call into question the trustworthiness of the brand to have the country’s best interests at heart. This is much like a consumer group questioning product safety claims or a company’s environmental policy being deemed “green wash.” The difference is, of course, it’s coming from the “highest office in the land” and by virtue of that, it’s news that is capable of threatening the trust consumers have with your brand.

The trust issue at the top of this list of brand threats and how to counter them where Mark DiSomma points out: “… the range of behaviors that consumers find unacceptable has broadened to include not just misleading messaging but also the gamut of wider business and ethical issues.” I would add it is the “wider business issues” (relocating manufacturing outside the U.S. or bids that are perceived to be high) and “ethical issues” (the resulting job loss among the brand’s own consumers or unreasonable profits) that a targeted Trump-tweet raises on the basis of trust—or lack there of. Damage control from crisis management techniques aside, how do brands counter this potential threat without necessarily acquiescing, as in the case of Stanley or others?

Our advice? If things are happening that you wouldn’t want people to know about, beyond commercial sensitivity, that’s a trust issue waiting to happen. Address it, before buyers address you about it and certainly before the President tweets about it.

That’s because when the brand’s trust is impugned by raising “business and ethical issues,” the brand’s reputation can suffer long lasting damage as real as its temporary stock value drop. A study by the Wirthlin Group concludes just how important your brand reputation is:

• “Companies with good reputations are 7 times more likely to command premium prices for their products and services,
• 5 times more likely to have their stock recommended,
• 4 times more likely to be recommended as a good place to work,
• 3 times more likely to be recommended as a joint venture partner, and
• 1.5 times more likely to receive the benefit of the doubt.”

Threats to your brand will emerge. It’s inevitable. Some you can anticipate and some you can’t. The best way to handle being the target of a disparaging tweet, presidential or otherwise, is to have a plan on how you will take a stand, be transparent, and trustworthy.

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

While many Americans are focused on what a Trump administration will mean for such issues as healthcare, immigration, and gender diversity, those in the governance community are also concerned about the fate of the many Dodd-Frank Act rules enacted during the Obama administration and the possibility of mandatory use of universal proxy cards in contested […]

You and I have unique ways to see the world, and a unique approach to buying. I make my buying decisions only after weighing the benefits and future implications of my purchase. You won’t see me grabbing a pack of mints at the checkout counter of the grocery store. Others…

What if? That is the question you need to ask and answer—multiple times every single day. The solution to every marketing problem begins with this question.

The best marketers don’t ask either/or questions. They don’t seek answers to questions such as: “Transactions or relationships?” “High touch or high tech?” “Purpose or profit?” “Size or speed?” There is no doubt that we all must make difficult choices in executing brand strategy. But it’s no longer about giving up something that is important to you and your customers. In many cases, asking “What if?” helps you find new ways to navigate an ill-defined obstacle course.

An Obstacle Course For Decision Making

What if I asked you to run through the woods on a muddy trail with me? That’s exactly what my co worker Laurel Geisbush asked me to do in 2013 when I arrived at Microsoft. But this wasn’t your average mud run. This was an obstacle and endurance course created by two Harvard Business School students, Guy Livingstone and Will Dean. Its name? Tough Mudder.

Tough Mudder is a great analogy for the world we occupy as marketers. The demanding physical course features several decision-making scenarios requiring the traverser to work creatively and collaboratively to be successful. To the unacquainted, the obstacle course can be a mare’s nest of irrational decision making, whether there is one leader everyone follows or if everyone attempts the course on his or her own. That’s the point. What the organizers want you to do is to make decisions—many of them uncomfortable—quickly and spontaneously.

In Tough Mudder, groups think obstacles through “on the y” benefit from using a “What if” rather than an “Either/or” decision-making process, although several of the obstacles require a straight linear-thought trajectory.

The Biggest Obstacle: Consumers In Control

Shaping business around real customer behavior is the challenge facing us as marketers today. It’s our version of Tough Mudder. Unfortunately, companies are still built and structured to solve linear, twentieth-century marketing issues. The marketing skills that used to work splendidly are incompatible with today’s world.

Phillipa Reed, director at Think Big Social, in London, defined the current situation brilliantly when she wrote about brands in a thought-leadership piece for LinkedIn: “There is an increasing trend away from consumers simply being influenced by brands, to the point where brands are now increasingly being controlled and influenced by their consumers.”

The primary driver of this distinct trend is the influence that social networks, smartphones, apps, online forums, and blogs have had on how we live our lives. The continuing takeover by digital media has ushered in the reimagination of the roles once controlled by brand strategists, media buyers, advertising agencies, brands, and marketing departments. While customers were once subject to the whim of brand messages, they now can act as media creators, publishers, producers, and critics. In other words, brands have less control than ever before and must be willing to adapt to this newfound reality.

Ask yourself:

• What if we developed messages as marketers that had nothing to do with stories, but more to do with social responsibility?
• What if we decided to ditch all the ways we as marketers have tried to improve brand perception via impression-based metrics and instead looked to other metrics such as sentiment as a guide for our efforts?
• What if we disrupt revenue models gained from conventional practices like media buying and advertising for more nonconventional practices like customer relationship management (CRM) and customer design and development of new products?

Sounds easy and dangerous at the same time, doesn’t it? Well, for some of you it may be too dangerous, which is one reason that marketing is stagnating. In my opinion, mainstream marketing is not changing to reflect rapidly evolving customer behavior.

The Biggest Problem: Sticking To The Old Ways Of Solving Problems

One of the biggest problems in business is the unwillingness to come up with new ways to creatively solve problems. In the agency world where I spent most of my career, people are always trying to solve problems. Customer-experience problems, client problems, design problems, technology problems. Most work in the twenty-first century will revolve around problem solving. Why? Because the world is complex. We face a number of hurdles that non-imaginative and non-people-centric problem-solving models will have a hard time addressing.

For example, too many businesses treat customer problems as employee problems. Because employees are not able to solve a customer’s problem, they blame it on the employee’s incompetence, instead of looking for new solutions. They are unwilling to try different things to solve the customer’s issues. And the cycle goes on and on.

Why is that? I believe that in part it’s the consultants to whom businesses turn for answers. Most business books, for example, are written by professionals who hide behind their MBA and or 30 years of experience as if they were badges of honor, when in fact the indicators of success that we used to take for granted are now irrelevant, thanks to data and indirect knowledge. As a result, books and blogs with rigidly defined, step-by-step, linear solutions may seem helpful but can actually be harmful in the real business world. Their assumptions are incorrect because they are centered on methodology and technology, not on people.

Solving problems by asking the “What if” question is more helpful because it takes people into consideration rather than simply following a set of pre-established resolution blueprints. For every problem you are trying to solve, you should be asking more questions. The Socratic Method is as popular as ever in a liberal arts education because it helps develop critical thinking skills that are so needed in the business world—including marketing—for the twenty-first century.

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: 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

Now is the time of the year when every marketer should well reflect on the achievements of the past year and holistically examine what the New Year is going to mean for marketing, branding, and business.

As we all know, paying attention to what’s on the horizon offers valuable insights. Knowing the 16 marketing trends listed below will help you build, expand, and maintain strong brands. Now, let’s have a look at what the best brands will do in 2017:

1. Constantly Raise The Bar Of Customer Experience 

Although this should have been ingrained in every marketer’s DNA for years, with all the data, tech, and buzzwords flying around, one of the biggest marketing challenges of 2017 will be to stay calm, focused, and to be obsessed with the only one that matters: Your customer! How to identify her, reach her, engage her, motivate her to purchase, motivate her to recommend you, and motivate her to re-purchase more of your products in the future. There is a certain risk that marketing managers face — falling into the trap of mixing up data-driven insights with a real customer-centric business philosophy.

While data will be an extremely crucial element of marketing in 2017 and beyond, it’s quite a challenge to filter out valuable information from the enormous volume of data available.

Therefore successful companies and brands don’t worship the data gods for the sake of it; instead they have a comprehensive and deeply rooted digital transformation strategy in place which is flanked by a crystal clear marketing action plan. Enhanced and lived by every employee of the organization.

2. Do Their Homework: Instore Execution And Internationalization

Omnichannel marketing, i.e. the ability to offer a continuous brand experience across shopping formats and devices, has in recent years been mostly interrupted and poorly delivered offline: When shoppers are in brick-and-mortar stores and face demotivated (or no) staff, waste time standing in line, do not find the products they’re looking for, feel no incentive to buy – or even worse – do not have the impression of being welcome and appreciated. In other words:

Many brands and retailers have gotten much better at matching their mobile app and the responsive design of their website than creating an engaging and brand-building look, feel, and convenience inside their stores.

According to Nielsen’s Global Retail Growth Report, e.g. 46% of shoppers around the world say that grocery shopping is something they try to spend as little time as possible doing. Less than half of global respondents (49%) believe their main grocery retailer always or mostly communicates with them in a relevant way. Why would you as a brand or retailer not want to exchange with shoppers, have them experience (feel, touch, smell) your products, have them express their socializing needs and desires…in real stores? And although it’s common knowledge that we all dislike waiting at traditional check-out counters, after more than a decade the supermarket industry is still testing self-checkout kiosks (except for the UK where it went mainstream). Whereas Amazon launched Amazon GO which works differently and empowers customers: Shoppers simply use an app, also called Amazon GO, to automatically add the products they buy to a digital shopping cart. Then they can walk out of the building without waiting in a checkout line.

Top marketers will need to become bolder and more focused again when thinking about how to deliver real-life-brand experiences. As a fundamental requirement, brands should continue to invest in exclusive in-store promotions e.g. through beacons technology which sends data to smartphones via bluetooth.

Leading brands, however, go a step further and continue to drive state-of-the-art technology into “connected” brick-and-mortar stores – e.g. installing smart mirrors or smart fittings rooms of suppliers such as KineticCafe or Oak Labs – which excite shoppers and deliver real value. If you are in the lifestyle or CPG business, you might want to talk with the Polo Ralph Lauren flagship store manager in New York City who has started testing a new smart fitting room.

It’s never been easier to sell your brands and products in almost anywhere in the world thanks to various online marketplaces. Top brands will go the next step in 2017. First, they will take full advantage of offered services of leading platforms like the Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) service for brands and merchants. Instead of you having to fulfill orders one by one, Amazon stores your products for you and picks, packs and ships them out to customers in return for certain fees (pay as you go). The best brands will also enter closer cooperation with leading e-commerce platforms by establishing branded stores on big marketplaces, join their affiliate programs, share data, etc. Second, I expect ambitious and growth-focused marketers to enter new collaborations with online marketplace partners which either operate in specific niches (e.g. Etsy or Zibbet for vintage or handmade products) or which are well positioned in certain geographies like e.g. Alibaba or JD.com in China, Flipkart in India, Souq in the Middle East, Rakuten in Japan or Tokopedia in Indonesia. I believe that Indonesia will soon become the third biggest Asian e-commerce nation behind China and India; particularly in the Consumer Packed Goods sector. It has already established itself as one of Asia’s foremost mobile-first countries with more than 70% of internet traffic coming from mobile devices. Are you already active in Indonesia?

3. Drive Data-Fueled Creativity And Innovation

In an era of ever increasing consumer emancipation and consumer co-creation, democratization of media, interactive experiences, fast speed and high complexity of constantly new trial and error (product) concepts, a major sweet spot for successful marketers lies in the intersection of human creativity and digital mastery.

Leading brands will use technology, data, and algorithm-driven models to beef up and to complement their innovation processes. In an economic and cultural setting where six months are already considered a lifetime, it is crucial to have your technical and human dimensions tightly interwoven to be able to keep innovating, updating, and optimizing quicker and be more impactful than your peer group.

Let’s take as an example US sports and clothing company Under Armour which is facing pretty stiff competition from its two major rivals Nike and Adidas. Digital and data management made them rethink how to approach creativity and marketing. They have changed their process to start with consumer insights and then try to develop unique experiences. One major outcome of this approach was the brand’s 2016 Olympics campaign that outwitted competitors without having to be an official sponsor with an enormous marketing budget. Still, they were fully compliant with the IOC’s Rule 40 restrictions.

Under Armour’s superb “Rule Yourself” campaign didn’t contain any Olympic intellectual property and nevertheless was the second-most-shared Olympics ad in 2016. The brand also ran live events, used emojis congratulating some winners, etc. According to Amobee, digital-content engagement around Under Armour on Twitter has increased by 83 percent since the start of the Olympics.

More than ever, a key 2017 responsibility of marketing leadership is to create a mindset, framework, and culture of innovation based on the willingness to become a data-supported idea and creativity factory. In this respect organizations can learn a lot from agile and bold startups. That’s why I have difficulties in understanding Coca-Cola’s recent decision to shut down its Founders Program under which the company supported young startups. One might hope that with the new CEO they will re-evaluate that decision and understand that it takes time, rigor, and true senior management backing to integrate entrepreneurial ideas and energy across the corporation.

4. Cherish Analytics 

In 2017 top marketers will permanently and comprehensively tie back business and marketing objectives and actions to revenue, profit, customer engagement, retention, and satisfaction. In 2017 the best marketing departments will have performance-based scorecards in place which measure and analyze e.g. ROI of core business drivers like clicks, signups, downloads, purchases, stalls, etc and based on these will conduct weekly and monthly marketing reviews.

Marketers will no longer just accept data from social networks or marketing agencies.

Instead I expect them to demand direct access to the results through independent data providers like Moat which is the web’s largest digital advertisement search engine. There you can look up e.g. campaigns by advertiser, check where creatives run and how they perform (by using their tool Moat Analytics). This will make it even more challenging for marketing and advertising agencies which will need to thoroughly review their existing business model and reflect if and how they really add value to brands. One attractive option might be teaming up rather quickly with technology providers which are specialized in the interpretation and visualization of data as this will be a major need in 2017 for companies to better draw conclusions from data and insights (without the risk of drowning in the data). Some very good data visualization tools are e.g. Tableau, InstantAtlas or ZingChart.

In 2017 Brands will try very hard – and some will succeed – to create single customer profiles to track and target customers more closely. Meaning, no matter where your customers are, what they are doing, you want the capability of interacting with them on mobile, tablets, desktops, or TV screens.

Therefore, it’s also the year when cross-device targeting will finally take off and as such brands will create a consistent user experience and enabling to re-exchange and re-engage with customers wherever and whenever they left off.

With the ongoing evolution of secure and encrypted messaging applications, brands should invest more in tools such as GetSocial.io or Google Analytics to measure as good as possible where traffic is coming from. In addition, and that’s a great side-effect of these apps, you and your teams will be able to safely and quickly share confidential information with co-workers, customers, and business partners without worrying that your data could be compromised. Interesting secure messaging apps are Signal Private Messenger (available on iOS or Android) , Gliph or ChatSecure.

5. Embrace Technology

Marketing departments will automate repetitive tasks such as website updates, mobile campaigns, emails, newsletter marketing, social media, etc. to simplify, to scale, and to orchestrate marketing campaigns within a holistic CRM strategy across multiple channels. Automation platforms and services like Oracle’s Eloqua, Marketo or Hubspot have already become more intuitive and affordable. To find out more about Marketing Automation, check out this recent webinar.

In parallel to “Automation“ and to complement their scaling efforts, I expect that in 2017 more and more brands will give in to increased and reasonable pressures to rationalize their multiple partner relationships to reduce complexity and to benefit from consolidation.

As a result, there might be some good opportunities for watchful marketers to acquire e.g. smaller research or advertising companies to strengthen their technology and data know-how.

To find and prioritize high value customers, marketers need to develop and embrace a very deep understanding of how to market to the right customers. Ten years ago, lead volume was by far the most adequate metric available to measure marketing success. In 2017 marketers will have access to excellent data sources and superior analytics which allow them to generate high value pipelines. Here is an insightful whitepaper on how to make your marketing more intelligent.

Moreover, I expect that marketers will try to leverage blockchains in 2017 to increase the organization’s security systems and to develop new products and markets. A blockchain, the technology underlying bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, is a shared digital ledger, or a continually updated list of all transactions. This decentralized ledger keeps a record of each transaction that occurs across a fully distributed or peer-to-peer network, either public or private. The end game for blockchains isn’t just digital currency; it’s a new digital business model and flow.

As such, a blockchain goes far beyond the “cryptocurrency” application. It has the ability to disrupt financial services (banks, insurances, clearing houses, etc.), health care, music and publishing industries (e.g. royalty and content management), energy, etc.

6. Leverage The Internet Of Things (IoT) 

When it comes to the number of connected devices, which form the basis of the Internet of Things (IoT), the current count is somewhere between Gartner’s estimated 6.4 billion (which doesn’t include smartphones, tablets, and computers) and IHS’s estimate of 17.7 billion (with all such devices included). IHS forecasts for 2017 an installed base of 20.4 billion devices (and more than 30 billion in 2020). In 2017, more than ever, marketers will be able taking advantage of the “smartness movement:“ From smart cities to smart things like sensors, clothes, beacons, etc.

While the IoT creates a bridge between new technology and older objects, it also creates a ripple effect that molds new technology. The broad adoption of the IoT will also drive platform as a service (PaaS) (PaaS) utilization. Gartner forecasts that by by 2020 more than 50 percent of all new applications developed on PaaS will be IoT-centric.

7. Further Develop Artificial Intelligence And Chatbot Capabilities

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer science fiction. Today AI technologies – such as deep learning, language processing, causal reasoning, machine learning, robotics, etc. – are used almost everywhere. They create insights from data and then act automatically on them. In consequence, every marketer should have at least a basic understanding of the main AI technologies and how they can make the company’s products and services better; based on an in-depth understanding of consumer and behavioral data resulting in a far more granular personalization of the customer experience.

Are you talking to a human or a bot to inquire about the status of your ordered bottles of wine, to get latest sports news updates, to get your hotel reservation confirmed, etc.? If you can’t tell, then the bot is working as planned. Although still early days, chatbot technology has become much more sophisticated in the past 12 months. A pretty good example is Facebook which in early July 2016 announced that there were 11,000 bots on Messenger and over 23,000 developers, already two months after having opened the platform. To get more tips, case studies and a special Q&A series with some of the businesses and brands who have already built bots for Facebook Messenger click here on www.messengerblog.com or have a look at a short clip featuring Facebook´s CEO Mark Zuckerberg who explains how people can now order flowers from 1-800-Flowers “without having to call 1-800-Flowers” during the company’s F8 conference in San Francisco on April 12, 2016.

In 2017, fueled by the adoption of chatbots, major messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger , WeChat (800 million users!), Twitter Direct Messages, Skype IM, Slack, Line, and Kik will continue to boom.

As Forrester stated: “Chatbots Are Here, But They Aren’t Ready To Replace Apps Or Humans.“ Chatbots will define the future of messaging apps; stimulated by the development of artificial intelligence and machine learning that will tailor brand experiences to fit each person that interacts with your organization.

2017 will see a further acceleration and stimulating competition among the major tech companies and their respective voice- and AI-enabled Virtual Assistants like Amazon’s Alexa, Apples Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Google’s Assistant.

Amazon e.g. suggests that the number of skills in the Alexa Skills Marketplace has increased from about 100 at the beginning of 2016 to more than 5,000 today. Currently Alexa is found primarily in the Echo, Fire TV, and Fire Tablet devices. But developers are actively working to expand the virtual assistant’s reach to other devices. As a brand you should develop applications (skills) for categories such as smart home, food and drink, lifestyle, communications, mobility and transport, etc. In addition, for smaller companies and developers – or if you have an exciting idea – it might be an attractive option to apply for the Alexa Fund. It provides up to $100 million in investments to fuel voice technology innovation. Whether that’s creating new Alexa capabilities with the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK), building devices that use Alexa for new and novel voice experiences using the Alexa Voice Service (AVS), or something else.

8. Push Augmented And Virtual Reality Into Mainstream

Still propelled by the phenomenal success of Pokémon GO, in 2017 we’ll see the accelerated rise of Augmented and Virtual Reality (VR).

Although in the meantime enthusiasm for Pokémon GO has significantly slowed down, without a doubt it has proven in an impressive manner that apps are far from dead. It has also underscored that brands and developers will need to team up more effectively to develop content that people find engaging and love.

Driven by Pokémon GO, Augmented Reality will activate consumers en masse this year. It has opened up new engagement and revenue opportunities for the entire app ecosystem by having shown a model between online and offline.

Innovative brands and businesses (among them many small and local ones) will be able to piggy-back on its approach e.g. by increasing foot traffic to their venues and recruiting new customers with similar apps and products.

Also Virtual Reality has already started its quest to capture the mass market. There exists now well accepted basic and inexpensive smartphone-compatible VR headsets like Google Cardboard, the pretty impressive headsets of Homido or Samsung Gear VR which many consumers have been trying. Unfortunately, the more sophisticated and immersive devices such as the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive – which currently offers the best VR experience – still require powerful gaming PCs. Nevertheless, VR will continue to capture big bites of an highly attractive market segment with its endless options for product demos, company walkthroughs, storytelling, staff training, etc. Besides gaming and entertainment, real estate, and 3D design, I expect that VR will get severely more traction in 2017 in shopping, education, and tourism.

A beautiful VR example is US retailer Lowe’s, which operates home improvement and appliance stores, and which at this point in time operates 19 Lowe’s stores with “Holorooms” that utilize Oculus Rift and Google Cardboard. Customers can experience there what a new bathroom could look like, etc. They can substitute appliances and compare. Selections can be viewed either using the Oculus Rift in-store or at home with with a Google Cardboard device. You can find everything here about VR and how it will affect your marketing.

9. Apply The Magic PISD Content Formula 

PISD stands for Personalized, Immersive, Short-Lived, and Dense content forms.

Mass customization will fully transform into personalization in 2017 by reaching different types of audience members (or even individuals in its purest form) based on their behavior, preferences, and habits. 94% of executives consider delivering personalization as critical or important in order to reach customers according to a Forrester/PwC study.

To develop a real personal communication strategy and to earn the attention of customers, brands will need sophisticated data sourcing and analysis tools to target a more specific niche with a more specific topic. The best brands will develop new interactive ways – e.g. contests, surveys, infographics, polls, etc. – to get people participating actively instead of passively consuming.

By offering immersive experiences users will feel that they’re involved and contribute to something bigger. Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual reality (VR) as well as 360 degree videos are three major technologies driving this approach forward. Marketers will need to be more creative than ever in the ways that they present content. They will have to use multiple types of content to make their material stand out in a crowded marketplace. So, upload your videos not only on Youtube, but also on Vimeo, submit infographics to Visual.ly, post slide decks to Slideshare and do not rely only on uploading images to Snapchat, Instagram or Pinterest. Users should be able to share multiple forms of visual content via social media, which can potentially increase the reach and engagement.

In 2017, besides continuing to invest (which you should do) for your best content pieces into paid ads, with classics such as Google Adwords, Facebook Ads, and Stumble Upon, you should also promote your content by utilizing amplifying networks such as Outbrain and Taboola.

What makes Snapchat so sexy and valued at $25 billion or even more? Well, the fact that it has a very strong position within the 18 to 24-year-old demographic, i.e. with young Millennials plus those in Generation Z (both very valuable target groups for many businesses) and that its content disappears. Like no other platform, Snapchat highlighted the relevance and value of short-lived (disappearing) content. As a marketer you and your teams should think very hard about how best to integrate short-lived content into your marketing and content strategy.

According to a study, the human attention span has dropped from 12 seconds in 2002 to only eight seconds in 2013, which is a second shorter than a goldfish. As a consequence, when many consumers have a lower attention span than a gold fish, dense and compact content will be crucial for the success of any form of communication in 2017 and beyond. To be able to cut through the noise, messages will not only have to be creative and unique, but most of all worded in headline- and sub-headline style by making every line and word count.

10. Develop Value-Adding Native Advertising Campaigns

Definitely one of the big trends and buzzwords for 2017: Native advertising is a type of advertising, mostly online, that matches the form and function of the platform upon which it appears. In many cases, it manifests as either an article or video, produced by an advertiser with the specific intent to promote a product, while matching the form and style which would otherwise be seen in the work of the platform’s editorial staff. The word “native” refers to this coherence of the content with the other media that appears on the platform.

Native advertising is expected to expand across numerous online platforms this year, since it’s a form of paid media which fits organically. Native advertising, if well executed, doesn’t disrupt the user experience, so users can’t differentiate between what is paid advertising and what is part of the site.

According to data from IPG & Sharethrough consumers looked at native ads 53% more frequently than at display ads.

A cool example is Cadillac’s recent “Dare Greatly“ campaign. Its protagonists describe how they are shattering the status-quo and pushing innovation forward in their respective communities (e.g. in fashion, entertainment, technology etc.).

Careful: In order to prevent losing consumers’ trust and keeping them engaged, native advertising needs to provide real value and easy consumption. It must not come across as a “disguised“ ad to be effective. In 2017, the leading brands will carefully and smartly look for ways to weave their products and offerings into a larger narrative.

11. Rock Video – More, Better, Mobile

According to Brightcove´s global survey The Science of Social Video: Turning Views into Value report, 74% of consumers say there is a connection between watching a video and their purchasing decision-making process; with the average consumer now watching 49 minutes of social video every day. That’s why video content will continue to rock, e.g. with 360° experiences which were triggered some years ago by GoPro’s spherical videos. Some months ago, UK fashion company Ted Baker released in collaboration with Guy Ritchie “Mission Impeccable“ a crime-meets-couture-themed thriller – on its homepage, etc. The movie was entirely shoppable. Viewers could add items to their online carts with a simple click.

And let’s not forget Snapchat Spectacles. Snap, the company formerly called Snapchat, created with Spectacles its own wearable sunglasses with which users can record 10-second video clips which are formatted for interactive playback in the Snapchat app. As a user you can augment the experience by putting filters to the videos, text, or stickers. In 2017, I anticipate significant improvements in immersive devices (see section on AR and VR) as well as software giving brands more options to engage users in exciting video content.

When thinking of live streaming video which allows marketers to strongly connect with consumers on the fly, you need to focus first and foremost on the crème de la crème of video-sharing sites “YouTube“ which now has over a billion users; i.e. almost one third of all people on the Internet. Every day people watch hundreds of millions of hours on YouTube and generate billions of views.

Also Facebook Live needs to be part of the live video portfolio of any ambitious brand. It only launched in 2015 and therefore being still much smaller. All users can share now live-streaming video on FB Live, while friends and fans can comment the video as it streams. For example, the cosmetics brand Benefit has been running a weekly live stream every Thursday called “Tipsy Tricks with Benefit!” And even the The Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET) has taken fans for a tour through the museum when it hosted a Facebook Live Q&A with one of its curators using Facebook Live. To learn more about how to use Facebook Live to increase brand awareness and social following you might want to check out Tips For Using Facebook Live.

A few words on mobile video: We live now in an age of mobile video. Time for every marketer to realize that. Invodo reports that mobile video views grow six times faster than desktop video views.

I also expect for 2017 that “video customer service“ will get a lot of momentum for top brands, since it’s an impactful medium to ease customers’ pain points in an efficient manner (besides phone calls, mails, and social media).

12. Put Even More Focus on Mobile

Already in September 2015 the German Online Fashion company Zalando celebrated its MobileFirst Day when it presented multiple mobile first initiatives with various partners and vendors (Facebook, Instagram, Uber) and tried making its almost 10,000 coworkers to think and support “Mobile First.”

While in 2015 and 2016 businesses mainly focused on ensuring that their web pages were optimized for mobile browsing, the mobile journey has been accelerating towards mobile apps – and luckily even small businesses can now easily and inexpensively build their own apps via services like GoodBarber or AppsMoment – and mobile payment services and apps like Apple Pay, Google Wallet, Amazon Payments, Square Cash or Venmo.

According to Zenith’s Mobile Advertising survey, mobile devices will account for 75% of global internet use in 2017 (from 40% in 2012 to 68% in 2016). Mobile advertising will overtake desktop advertising in 2017, increasing its share of global internet advertising to 52% from 44% in 2016. Do you need more figures to get your mobile budget significantly and very quickly ramped up? Already during the 2016 holiday season more than 72% of Amazon´s customers worldwide shopped through mobile devices (shopping on the free Amazon mobile app grew by 56 percent that 2016 holiday, worldwide).

Having a mobile-friendly website or app has just been the beginning, if you want to reach a wide audience. In 2017, excellent marketers will create content that looks cool and works well on any device regardless of screen size and whether it’s an iPhone, Apple Watch, or Android tablet.

13. Institutionalize Influencer Marketing 

According to a Digital News report, 47% of online consumers use ad blockers. Frankly, this number is expected to continue growing as consumers get more savvy about protecting themselves from ads.

So, if your company isn’t utilizing influencer marketing yet, you better get started. Very quickly! While “influencers” always have been a relevant element in marketing, they’re quickly becoming one of the most effective ways to reach customers and clients. That’s especially true on social media.

Influencer marketing gives brands the opportunity to create word-of-mouth buzz through personalities whom consumers already follow and admire. When influencers are used effectively, they create natural ways to seduce a target audience. Los Angeles-based InstaBrand, which offers a mobile-influencer platform that connects companies with more than 100,000 influencers in their database across social-media channels.

In 2017 brands will increasingly rely on micro-influencers with high engagement in niche verticals to produce more organic and engaging content (to be used e.g. within native marketing campaigns). Take e.g. UK’s Pretty Little Things an online fashion start-up company which very successfully targets teenagers and twenty somethings with sassy, inexpensive, and glamorous fashions created with influencers like Lionel Richie’s 18-year-old model daughter Sofia (1.8 million Instagram followers).

14. Ramp Up Security Systems

Protecting your company against cyber-crime should become a major priority now that an army of compromised devices has swamped one of the industry’s top distributed denial-of-service protection services. A giant botnet made up of hijacked internet-connected things (even thermostats were abused!), launched last year the largest DDoS attack ever. Services like Nexusguard DDoS Protection protect your organization against all types of DDoS attacks, including UDP, NTP, SMTP, SYN flood and even DDoS attacks launched from Ransomware. As a top marketer one of your biggest worries must be how to ensure the safety of your customers’ data. Therefore leading brands hire specialized companies such as Social-Engineer to test the strength of their security both online and offline so they can identify where they’re weak. Finally, there have already been examples in the past months of brands victimized by co-ordinated misinformation campaigns, including fake news. Consequently you need to ensure that you have a tight tracking as well as a pro-active crisis/PR system in place.

15. Establish A Borderless Organization

Some thoughts on the marketing organization of the future. Many (consultancies) are suggesting that the (digital) transformation of marketing should be led by a Chief Digital Officer (CDO). I strongly disagree.

If your CMO and your marketing team are not ready (yet) to tackle related challenges and tasks, then you as leaders better support and train/coach them ASAP. Instead of hiding your strategic and organizational weaknesses behind the function of a CDO.

Even if you were lucky enough to find an exceptional candidate to fill out the demanding role of CDO (tech and marketing understanding, strategic mind, strong executer, change manager) and if you were to give her direct business responsibility (which in my opinion is a definite “must“ for such a role), then she should be part of the CMO’s team, and in charge of digital strategy and campaigns, versus being in a separate function or organization. She should closely team up with a Chief Marketing Technologist as her peer to co-lead such initiatives.

The organization’s senior management team will need to create an organization free of department borders and “silo thinking“ mentality. They need to kick-off and moderate required change initiatives. And over time, they would need to withdraw more and more and giving people freedom so that they can contribute and amaze them. Based on the belief and commitment of attributing individuals more decision-making authority, providing them with learning opportunities, stimulating virtual team work and global project work, and allowing them to self-organize.

The future of marketing – embedded within an accelerating digital transformation process – encompasses key functions from R&D, sales, finance, legal, HR to strategic business planning. Most importantly, it’s not rooted on machines or algorithms. It’s rather founded on the conviction and knowledge that people as owners will do whatever it takes to make their organizations, projects, and teams succeed.

16. Drive Vehemently Customer Loyalty

It should not come as a surprise that for many brands the respective trust levels are low. In recent years, there have been numerous examples of consumers being misled by brands in sectors such as food, beauty, automotive, technology, etc. Prior to the internet age, brands could get away with these sorts of things easily, but now—luckily for customers—it’s not as easy. In a recent report the Rare consultancy put the focus back on customer emotions and explored the drivers of true customer loyalty. There were several key findings: Loyalty isn’t functional. While general purchases are driven by price (81%), quality (80%) and convenience (55%), loyalty is about likeability (86%) and trust (83%). As a result, in 2017 top marketers will very strongly focus on emotional and authentic messages (e.g. via Influencer Marketing) to drive customer engagement (versus customer recruiting) and to try making them more loyal.

Final Thought

Of course, this list isn’t exhaustive. Be prepared and ready for the unpredictable and unprecedented. That’s the real beauty of being a leader, manager, business owner or… marketer. Even, and especially, in a world which is increasingly dominated by data and analytics. Nor should you have ambitions of getting involved with all of the trends which I have outlined. Instead, focus on the ones which make most sense to your business setting, competitive environment, resources, vision and ambitions. However, be bold, think big, and dare to experiment, fail, and succeed. The timing has never been better.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by Andreas von der Heydt, Director, Kindle at Amazon, originally published on Linkedin

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Learn about a company that is “re-imagining the primary care experience from the ground up,” in this Brand Experience Brief.  Circle Medical Group, is a technology-enabled healthcare start-up whose doctors are available to make house calls 8:00am – 8:00pm seven days a week at no additional charge.  See how it is delivering convenience, transparency, thoroughness, and comfort in a brand experience that serves as an example for all businesses to learn from.

related Brand Experience Briefs:

• Amazon Books Store
• Sharp Healthcare All-Staff Assembly
• Walgreens Chicago flagship store

transcript:

Today you’re going to get a peek into what the future of healthcare looks like.  You’re going to learn about Circle Medical Group, a company that is, in the words of one of its founders, “reimagining the primary care experience from the ground up.”  I discovered the company first as a patient, but was so impressed with what I experienced that I wanted to share it with you as an example of an extraordinary brand experience.

Let me start with some background.  Circle Medical was founded in San Francisco by three tech entrepreneurs in the summer of 2015.  Having gone through Y Combinator’s accelerator program, it raised a 2.9 million dollar seed round, led by Collaborative Fund.   It’s one of several companies that are rethinking the patient experience and using technology to enable a better one.

CEO George Favvas and Chief Medical Officer David Kagan told me they started Circle Medical to change how healthcare works — to create a patient experience around what the patient needs instead of building a healthcare system and squeezing the patient in.  They focus on delivering three benefits.  First, convenience — making it easy to find a doctor, book an appointment, and deal with insurance.  And having doctors available where and when patients want to be seen.

So their app, available in iOS and Android, allows patients to scan your insurance card, find a doctor and make an appointment, chat with your doctor, receive appointment summaries, and check your insurance co-pays and deductibles.  There is no paperwork at all.  The app interface is pretty standard and it made everything simple and seamless, even taking care of insurance for me since Circle Medical is considered in-network for almost all insurance companies in California.

Circle Medical’s doctors are available 8am to 8pm 7 days a week and they make house calls for no extra charge.  In fact only about a third of its individual 3,000 patients go to their offices.  And speaking of their offices, the space functions as an office both for doctors and the start-up so the patient room is a small conference room equipped with a medical table and workstation for the doctor.  But the rest of the place definitely feels more like a tech start-up with its cool industrial feel, open workstations, and bar and game room in the basement.

The second benefit the founders designed the company to deliver is transparency.  David described his frustration with how healthcare is excessively complicated and said he wanted to help patients breakdown what you get and what it means.  The way my doctor explained everything to me and the summary of my appointment that was available afterwards through the app delivered that for me.

Finally, the Circle Medical experience is intended to be thorough.  David observed that both doctors and patients would agree that the typical 7 minutes that a doctor usually spends with a patient isn’t enough time to get and give information and for the patient to feel comfortable with the doctor, so Circle Medical appointments last a half hour.

I personally experienced a fourth important benefit — comfort.  There are four doctors on staff and you can learn about them in videos on the Circle Medical website, so you can relate to them as real people and pick the one who resonates with you.  Also the doctors dress casually so the appointment feels less clinical.  I spent most of my appointment fully-clothed sitting at a small table across from my doctor just talking about my health.  Overall he related to me as a person not a patient.

So from my experience as well as the reviews I found online, I can say Circle Medical delivers on its goal of transforming the primary care experience — and delivering a consumer experience for all businesses to learn from.  There’s a lot more it can do to deliver on its benefits, including integrating with other services, devices, and providers, but as a start-up, it’s definitely on the right track.  Thanks to Circle Medical Group and other companies like it, healthcare is catching up and perhaps maybe will even exceed other industries in delivering extraordinary experiences.

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