We all know the power of a story. Stories evoke feelings, and as Maya Angelou once said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Even now, as an adult, your most cherished…
It seems like it was just yesterday when I published my last list of Brands To Watch, but alas 2017 is fast approaching, so I’ll continue the format I introduced in last year’s post and provide a list of Brands To Watch in 2017, one for each letter of the alphabet. Consider the following an almanac of sorts for brands in the coming year:
A. America. The United States of, that is. With Trump’s assumption of the highest office in the land, it’s unclear what the coming year holds for our country. We could see significant and surprising changes from Cuba to China and immigration to infrastructure, plus health care, regulation, and more,
B. Barnes & Noble. The venerable bookstore chain has let its CEO go, lowered sales expectations, and shrunk its footprint by dozens of stores. Meanwhile Amazon Books is opening stores. Is 2017 the year B&N’s death will become imminent?!
C. Chipotle. No one thought it would take this long for Chipotle Mexican Grill to recover from its food borne illness crisis. Recovery plans for the coming year include a new store design, desserts, and digital ordering.
D. Donald Trump. The future of the Trump brand is in question. Will the Donald’s presidency help or hurt it? The election might indicate that the brand has more fans than most imagine, but Trump’s strong campaign rhetoric combined with conflict of interest issues might detract from the brand’s power.
E. Echo and Echo Dot. Sales of Amazon’s Echo and Echo Dot voice-controlled speakers have topped five million in two short years. The company is now rumored to be working on a high-end Echo-style device that would feature a 7-inch touchscreen. Yes, it’s like a tablet-and-speaker in one, and yes, Amazon is continuing to land grab in its fight against tech giants like Apple.
F. Ford. Bill Ford recently made the bold announcement that autonomous ridesharing is coming in 2021. It’s a big bet with a potentially huge payoff — but what happens to the brand in the meantime?
G. Google. The PIxel smartphone that Google introduced in 2016 has gotten off to a great start, with positive reviews and three million units in sales. Let’s see if it continues to grow and support the company’s strategy of drawing more people to the Android platform.
H. Home Depot — Competition between The Home Depot and Lowe’s has been one of the quintessential retail rivalries. Currently The Home Depot is growing sales faster and enjoys higher profitability, and at the time I’m posting this, it was popping up as an analyst choice for holiday season sales. Let the game continue.
I. IPhone. Apple is expected to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the iPhone launch by introducing a brand new edition. Radical changes expected include a super-high-resolution OLED screen that stretches from edge to edge of the device, a virtual on-screen home button, and wireless charging capability.
J. JCPenney. JCPenney’s ability to execute a turnaround has been a crapshoot and its performance in 2017 will probably as unpredictable. The company is making all the right moves but consumers are spending less on apparel.
K. Kred, Klear, and Klout. Influencer marketing is fast becoming a common strategy for marketers, particularly for B2B companies where the salesperson’s role has diminished in importance to many customers. And tools like Kred, Klear, and Klout, which help companies identify and monitor top influencers in their markets, are fast becoming the brands of choice for data-hungry marketers.
L. Lady Gaga. Lady Gaga made a comeback last year, with a stunning performance of the national anthem at the Super Bowl, a creative tribute to David Bowie at the Grammys, and a new album that has been well-received by critics and fans. This year, she’s headlining the half-time show at the big game. Paws up!
M. McDonald’s. The fast food chain will finally leverage its core brand equities in speed and convenience by launching a mobile order-and-pay app and digital kiosks in 2016. But who knows if it’s enough to produce sustained growth for the struggling chain?!
N. NFL. Thanks to cannibalization from digital media, continued concerns over concussions, and (some would say) players’ protests during the national anthem, the NFL has been suffering from declining ratings this past year. I guess Mark Cuban’s 2014 prediction that the league would experience an implosion in 10 years might come true.
O. Oil of Olay. As one of P&G’s flagship brands, Oil of Olay is a good brand to watch in 2017 to see if reducing the number of brands (to 65 from 200 at its peak) will be effective at turning the packaged good giant around.
P. Prime. Amazon has been aggressively signing up new members to its Prime service and, according to some speculation, has been losing money just as fast. In the company’s latest earnings report, the company missed estimates by a wide margin. Will Amazon raise the membership fee above the $99 rate it’s offered for the last 3 years? Probably not, but it’s always interesting to see CEO Jeff Bezos convince investors to be patient.
Q. Quest Diagnostics. As consumers take more control over their health care, companies that once were only B2B plays will become consumer brands. Quest Diagnostics is one that just announced that it is expanding a test of patient-initiated testing services, including tests for HIV and panels for heart health.
R. Ralph Lauren. 2016 brought signs that Ralph Lauren’s new CEO, Stefan Larsson, is successfully returning the company to financial health. Let’s see if the momentum continues in 2017.
S. Samsung. The Galaxy Note7 recall has hit the company hard. And the timing couldn’t be worse, with Google’s smartphone entrant picking up steam (see G above) and Apple’s new iPhone just around the corner (see I above). Samsung better pull itself out of its hole in the coming year or it might lose more ground than it can recover.
T. Twitter. It’s do or die time for Twitter. Either it figures out how to attract more users or it shuts down. If Trump continues to use the channel the way he did during the campaign, it just might have a chance.
U. Uber. It’s unclear if Uber will finally do an IPO this coming year. If it does, it would undoubtedly be the biggest of the year. What is certain is that the company will refocus its efforts on the U.S. domestic market after ceding China to Didi and the development of the self-driving car technology that it sees as key to its long-term profitability.
V. Volkswagen. The new CEO of Volkswagen recently told reporters “We want to write a comeback story” and announced a 10-year plan that includes a combination of more America-friendly products, better utilization of its plant in Chattanooga, TN, and a commitment to electric vehicles. Given how profitable of a market the U.S. is for the beleaguered company, it will likely start implementing the plan aggressively.
W. We Chat. WeChat, the Chinese messaging app owned by Tencent, is rapidly closing in on 1 billion users and seems poised to give Facebook Messenger a run for its money…and lead the ascendance of Chinese brands in the world.
X. Xiaomi. Another Chinese brand, Xiaomi, is the smartphone maker that most U.S. consumers have never heard of…yet. It has been teasing a launch during the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) of the Mi7 which some critics say may be one of the best smartphones of the year.
Y. YouTube. It looks like YouTube is almost ready to launch its new live TV streaming service dubbed YouTube Unplugged. It’s just signed CBS and in talks with FOX, Disney, and NBCUniversal. Let the mass cord cutting begin.
Z. Zenefits. Zenefits was once considered a darling of the start-up world for introducing software with the potential to disrupt the entire HR industry and raising nearly $600 million from high profile investors including Andreesen Horowitz. But it imploded due to uncontrolled growth and regulatory violations. Now it seems the company is trying to reboot — and if it succeeds, it will show that it is possible to resurrect a unicorn.
P.S. This list of Brands to Watch in 2017 is highly dominated by U.S. brands and consumer brands, since these are the markets I know the best. I’d love to hear about foreign and B2B brands to watch in 2017 — please share in the Comments section below.
related:
Brands to Watch in 2016
Brands to Watch in 2015
Brands to Watch in 2014
The post brands to watch in 2017 appeared first on Denise Lee Yohn.
We’ve all been in those meetings. The subject of the company’s brand purpose comes up and the C-level executives around the table roll their eyes or become fidgety.
For them, the P-word is a soft thing, nice words, lofty and aspirational, and notoriously difficult to measure. Purpose may remind them of a plaque in the boardroom which makes employees cynical about hollow leadership initiatives and mantras. Or it may sound like a branding, public relations or Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) tactic, not worthy of a board-level discussion.
But they would be wise not to dismiss the P-word. In fact, today many leading CEOs and companies are finding that embracing a core purpose is not only a ‘good’ thing to do but also drives top corporate performance. Bottom line? Purpose means growth, and growth means profit.
What Is Brand Purpose?
Purpose is the reason the company exists not only materially and economically but also emotionally and spiritually. It is the enterprise’s unifying statement of commitment to customers, employees and the larger world it operates in.
A higher purpose connects the business and peoples’ work to societal goals such as reducing hunger in the developing world or improving public health in the US.
Purpose, more than money, motivates the best employees to come to work every day and make a difference. A strong, values-based direction helps a company attract and retain the highest performers.
If a company’s brand positioning statement appeals to customers’ functional and emotional needs, then its purpose statement expresses the company’s soul, defining how it serves Customers, the Organization and the Rest of the World (its COR stakeholders).
Procter & Gamble’s Purpose: We will provide branded products and services of superior quality and value that improve the lives of the world’s consumers, now and for generations to come. As a result, consumers will reward us with leadership sales, profit and value creation, allowing our people, our shareholders and the communities in which we live and work to prosper.
Most companies have visions, missions and values; but having a purpose goes deeper: it establishes a reason for being (beyond economic) and defines individual employee and collective meaning and direction.
The Case For Brand Purpose
Harvard Business School professors John Kotter and Rosabeth Moss Kanter helped put the purpose concept on the corporate strategy map (along with Jim Collins prior). They published works asserting a causal relationship between a company being a good global citizen and making good profits.
Kotter referenced a multi-year study with 200 companies to argue that ideals-based businesses outperform the others in revenues by 400 percent. Babson professor and Whole Foods advisor, Raj Sisojdia, studied 28 companies from 1996-2011 and concluded: purpose-driven enterprises (“firms of endearment”) grew by 1647 percent compared to the S&P 500 average of 157 percent.
Competitive strategy legend, Michael Porter, a colleague of Kotter and Kanter, broadened the argument and began a revolution with his “Shared Value” paper. In it, he called for a remaking of the corporation, and of capitalism itself, to serve rather than compete against societal aims such as decreasing obesity or carbon emissions. According to Porter’s thesis, the company’s own economic interests would ultimately be better served by structuring and operating the business to achieve these greater goals.
Still, scholars and case studies divide over the relationship between corporate purpose and profits. One camp led by Porter argues that profits should not be the primary corporate goal but rather the byproduct of an effective implementation of a purpose-based system. Another school holds that profit-focus and achievement is a precursor and the most effective way to fulfill a great purpose. Some strategists say purpose and profits should be twin objectives and reinforce each other.
Can a company become great, in every sense of the word, by operating with social purpose at the core of its business model? Or does a company become great only
After it has built the capabilities to make a better world? Give forward or give back? For Porter, the ‘give back’ corporate philanthropy and more recent CSR movements have failed in tackling social problems and often end up hurting the economic and social interests of the company.
Notwithstanding chicken-and-egg arguments, the large body of data supports the case that purpose-driven companies are high performing ones.
Companies should embrace a higher purpose by serving and creating distinct value for its COR ‘shareholders’—Customers, Organization, and Rest of the World. Only when they do this authentically, operationally and comprehensively, will their long-term financial objectives be realized.
A company’s higher purpose should speak to the needs of the three COR audiences: Customers, Organization and Rest of the world.
Serving, Creating Value For CUSTOMERS And Improving The Category
Many companies’ marketing efforts have taken on an almost religious tone in their emphasis on serving customers’ needs (e.g. ‘voice of the customer’ research, ‘customer intimacy’ strategies); these strategies though often don’t consider the other two COR stakeholders. Customer-centricity should acknowledge that customers today want to identify and align with the company’s purpose and values, as an expression and extension of their own. A McKinsey study with business-to-business customers found they value the following attributes most in a company:
Millennial customers — who now drive the majority of marketplace transactions — care more about whom they buy from and do business with than other generations do. They value brand authenticity and want purpose to be intrinsic to the company and operation, not merely part of a ‘giving back’ campaign. For them, actions speak louder than words; Purpose needs to be more than just the copy in an ‘About Us’ section on the corporate web site.
Serving, Creating Value For The ORGANIZATION And Employees
Taking care of employees is good business. Porter cites the example of Johnson & Johnson saving $250 million by investing in employee wellness programs. Some companies take it a step further: they operate as employee-centric with a purpose that taps into workers’ spiritual needs. Southwest Airlines (“Spirit” is a corporate Value) has carried the employees-first mantle for decades. It boldly asserts that colleagues come before customers. Founder Herb Kelleher once said, “If the employee comes first, then they’re happy…A motivated employee treats the customer well. The customer is happy so they keep coming back, which pleases the shareholders.”
The airline company just reported its 43rd consecutive year of profitability. Companies like Southwest that actively engage their employees through a shared purpose are the ones that perform the best.
Millennial workers, to a greater degree than other cohorts, seek to participate in a purpose-driven enterprise. Purpose is also a powerful recruiting and retention tool and provides a company with a strong competitive advantage.
Serving, Creating Value For REST OF THE WORLD And Communities
Porter’s model challenges all companies, business-to-consumer and business-to-business, to carefully consider and act on their role in the wider world. Shared value means the company should integrate external social needs into its core offering. It also means employees are incented to make a difference in their communities and beyond — through their ‘personal brand’ initiatives or corporate means (e.g. Citizen IBM or its Peace Corps-like Corporate Service Corps). “Smarter Planet” is more than a campaign. It continues to be operationalized in many ways.
GE’s ecomagination business ($12 billion invested, $160 billion in revenues s by 2013) is an example of social offerings borne from core purpose. No longer can companies afford to be on the sidelines leaving government and non-profits to tackle the world’s social ills. Companies should exist to solve these problems, argues Porter.
Best Practices
Purpose-driven, high performing enterprises have been adept at building their system in four phases:
1. Customers. The company’s leadership should work in an inclusive way across the organization to craft a purpose statement that is credible, authentic and compelling for COR stakeholders. The statement can be a simple few words, like Disney’s “to make people happy” or a paragraph like Procter & Gamble’s. Successful statements are rarely earth-shattering — but they need to be clear, genuine and motivating.
2. Communication. Once the purpose is established, leaders should communicate it first to the organization, then to customers and the wider world. Great purpose-based companies (e.g. Whole Foods, Zappos, Tata Group) tend to have charismatic CEOs or founders who evangelize the purpose.
3. Operationalization. The hardest part is organizing, acculturating and operating the business around the purpose while staying focused on market and financial imperatives. All employees need to understand and execute against the purpose, individually and collectively.
4. Measurement. Another challenge is establishing metrics that focus accountability and push progress. Some purpose-driven companies have used the Net Promoter Score or Brand Equity Measurement to measure customer and employee value and impact. Procter & Gamble West Africa asks its employees in their performance reviews to account for how they have bettered the world and saved lives.
Building on his corporate shared value work, Porter has expanded his view and metrics to national social advancement and well-being with his Social Progress Index.
How Are You Determining Progress At The Corporate Level?
The next time you are in a meeting with the leadership of a company lacking core direction, you should make a business case for the P-word. It would be highly profitable for them to listen and act.
Build A More Valuable Future For Your Brand. 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 you identify and develop your brand purpose.
Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Licensing and Brand Education
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“When there’s no name for a problem, you can’t solve it,” says Kimberlé Crenshaw. She spoke at TEDWomen 2016 on October 27 in San Francisco. (Photo: Marla Aufmuth / TED)
Michelle Cusseaux. Aura Rosser. Tanisha Anderson. Mya Hall. Natasha McKenna. These are the names of but a few African-American women who were victims of police brutality in the past two years. Why are most people unfamiliar with these names? Activist and law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw urges us to ask this question. Through her theory of intersectionality, she explains the overwhelming underrepresentation of violence against African-American women in activism, politics and media.
“The problem is, in part, a framing problem,” Crenshaw says. “Without frames that are capacious enough to address all the ways that disadvantages and burdens play out for all members of a particular group, the efforts to mobilize resources to address a social problem will be partial and exclusionary.”
For Crenshaw, this meant developing a language as a method of understanding this problem, she says: “When there’s no name for a problem, you can’t see a problem. When you can’t see a problem, you can’t solve it.”
Inspiration struck as a law student, when she came across the case of Emma DeGraffenreid, an African-American woman who sued a manufacturing company for not hiring her on the basis of race and gender. The judge dismissed her claim, noting that the company had hired people of her color, and hired people of her gender. It just didn’t happen to hire people who were both. Crenshaw seeing this obvious injustice (or “injustice squared,” as she puts it) imagined DeGraffenreid standing at the intersection of being both a woman and an African-American. This intersection is at the heart of the theory of intersectionality, a theory Crenshaw has developed to describe how our overlapping social identities relate to structures of racism and oppression.
The reality is that African-American women face discrimination through both their race and gender. Spheres of social identities — from race to gender to sexuality to disability — operate on multiple levels, creating multidimensional experiences. This casts a shadow on the African-American women who have lost their lives to systemic racism in the past few years.
“Why don’t we know these stories? Why is it that their lost lives don’t generate the same amount of media attention and communal outcry of the lost lives of their fallen brothers?” she demands. Frustrated by this situation, Crenshaw launched the #SayHerName campaign, a social media movement that seeks to shed light on forgotten women.
“Let’s create a cacophony of sound to represent our intention. To hold these women up. To bring them into the light,” Crenshaw proclaims. Accompanied onstage by singer Abby Dobson to close out this powerful talk, she encourages us to bring these women to light and finally say their names: Michelle Cusseaux. Aura Rosser. Tanisha Anderson. Mya Hall. Natasha McKenna.
I never thought about what my “ONE Word” was until I met Evan Carmichael. Evan, who runs EvanCarmichael.com, a popular website for entrepreneurs, breathes and bleeds entrepreneurship. His goal? To help 1 billion entrepreneurs. To change the world. And he’s made progress! His YouTube Channel is nearing half a million…
By Alex Parkinson I was recently tasked with uncovering strong examples of internal storytelling—no easy task given that most examples are rarely public. However, at the recent Engagement Institute Summit in Detroit, I was fortunate to hear about GM’s What’s Your GM Story? podcast. Following the summit, I had a conversation with Kerry Christopher, GM’s […]
The Conference Board’s newly released Sustainability Practices 2016 Key Findings report shows there is a significant uptick in the number of companies including sustainability metrics as part of their executive compensation schemes. While globally disclosure of most practices remained fairly flat this year, this particular practice saw an increase in disclosure across all indexes, sectors, […]
To ensure proper oversight of cybersecurity issues, boards should consider either establishing a special committee of the board of directors or securing access by directors to the objective advice of a cyber-expert. That is one of the lessons learned from interviews with five corporate board members conducted by The Conference Board for the recent Director […]
Saki Mafundikwa prepares to speak at the TED@Nairobi auditions in 2013, aiming for a slot on the TED mainstage. (Spoiler: He made it.) Photo: whattookyousolong.org
Do you have a TED Talk you’ve always wanted to try out in front of an audience? We’re thrilled to announce that applications are open for two new events in Africa: TEDLagos and TEDNairobi 2017 Idea Search!
Anyone with an idea worth spreading is invited to apply to either of those two events; around 25 finalists at each event will share their risky, quirky, fascinating ideas in under 6 minutes, in early February, onstage at beautiful venues in Lagos, Nigeria, and Nairobi, Kenya.
The TED Idea Search is a chance for us to find fresh voices to ring out on the TEDGlobal stage. Some of these talks will be posted on the online TED platform; other speakers will be invited to expand on their talks on the TEDGlobal 2017 main stage in Arusha, Tanzania, in the summer of 2017, themed Builders. Truth-tellers. Catalysts. We are looking for speakers whose talks fit well within that theme. Saki Mafundikwa, Richard Turere, Zak Ebrahim, Sally Kohn, Hyeonseo Lee — all these speakers are fantastic finds from previous TED talent searches.
The deadline to apply is December 13, 2016, at 6pm Lagos time / 8pm Nairobi time. To apply, you’ll need to fill out a form and make a 1-minute video describing your talk idea. Quick notes: We can’t cover travel for finalists who live far from the cities where these events are taking place; we encourage local applicants to Lagos and Nairobi. Please choose only one event to apply to — applying to both events will not increase your chances of being selected to speak.
Apply to speak at the TED Africa Idea Search 2017
Raj Panjabi was born in Liberia, but his family fled civil war when he was nine. He returned as a medical student — and went on to found Last Mile Health. Photo: Courtesy of Last Mile Health
It sounds simple enough: If you’re sick, you make an appointment with a doctor, and if it’s an emergency, you head to the nearest hospital. But for more than a billion people around the world, it’s a real challenge — because they live too far from a medical facility.
Where Raj Panjabi’s nonprofit, Last Mile Health, operates in Liberia, people in remote communities hike for hours or even days — sometimes canoeing through the jungle or motorbiking over rough terrain — to get medical care. Many will go their entire lives without visiting a doctor, which puts them at high risk of dying from diseases that are easily treated. Last Mile Health has created a model for expanding healthcare access to remote regions by training, employing and equipping community health workers. The organization’s work has shown impressive results in Liberia, and could be replicated elsewhere. That’s why TED is thrilled to announce Raj Panjabi as the winner of the 2017 TED Prize.
On April 25, 2017, at the annual TED Conference, Panjabi will reveal a $1 million wish for the world, related to this work. “I’m shocked and humbled, because I feel in many ways our work is only just beginning,” he said. “But it feels very right to me that this cause is worthy of the TED community’s efforts. Illness has been universal for the entire length of human history — but universal access to care has not been. Now, because of the advances in modern medical science and technology over the past 50 to 100 years, we have the chance to end that inequality.”
Reaching remote communities in Grand Gedeh County, Liberia, often involves long hikes or traveling by motorbike. Last Mile Health trains community health workers to serve these remote areas. Photo: Courtesy of Last Mile Health
Since 2007, Last Mile Health has partnered with the government of Liberia to train, equip, employ and support community health workers. These community health workers are nominated by local leaders, and trained, with support from nurses, to diagnose and treat a wide range of medical problems. In the past year, these health workers have conducted more than 42,000 patient visits in their regions, and treated nearly 22,000 cases of malaria, pneumonia and diarrhea in children. They’ve also proven themselves to be a powerful line of defense against pandemics. During the Ebola outbreak, Last Mile Health assisted the government of Liberia in its response, helping to train 1,300 health workers and community members to prevent the spread of the disease in the southeastern region of the country. This year, Panjabi, who’s also a physician in the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital at Harvard Medical School, was named to TIME’s list of the “100 Most Influential People in the World” for Last Mile Health’s part in helping contain the Ebola epidemic.
And it feels especially fitting to announce him as the next TED Prize winner on World AIDS Day, since Last Mile Health began as Liberia’s first rural public HIV program, helping patients in the war-torn area of Zwedru who could not make the trek to the capital, Monrovia, for care.
“I want to see a health worker for everyone, everywhere, every day,” says Panjabi. “I’m honored and excited by the opportunity to amplify the work of these inspiring community health workers.”
Sign up to receive updates as Panjabi readies to reveal his wish at TED2017. And learn more about the TED Prize, a $1 million grant given annually to a bold leader with a wish to solve a pressing global problem. Past winners include Sylvia Earle, Jamie Oliver, JR, Dave Isay and Sarah Parcak, whose citizen-science platform for archaeology will launch in the new year.
*reSET is the only Connecticut organization to receive the U.S. Small Business Administration for the Growth Accelerator Competition Award, announced by President Obama on August 4th, 2015.
