ENVY Advertising and adam&eveDDB have teamed up to deliver a heartfelt ad for a new Volkswagen campaign that asks people to share their cherished memories of the brand’s cars.

Shot by award-winning director, Amanda Blue, ‘VW Barry Openshaw’ tells the beautifully nostalgic story of Barry and his father’s golden Beetle. In the film, Barry shares the important role the car played in his childhood and the fond memories it conjures up of his father in his prime. Skilfully told through a montage of old family photographs, and a mixture of archival and newly-shot footage, the film deftly captures the story’s intimacy and features a touching surprise at the end.

adam&eveDDB enlisted the expertise of ENVY Advertising to bring Barry’s vivid recollection to life. With memories playing a central role in this campaign, ENVY Advertising carefully scanned Barry’s old photos in high resolution so that they could be woven into the film. Colourist, Vicki Matich, worked closely with Amanda to lend the film and photos a suitably nostalgic feel. The post-production facility removed distracting elements from the background to keep the attention on the story.

ENVY Advertising were also responsible for the audio, which played an important role in the film, since Barry narrates throughout. Despite being hundreds of miles apart – with Barry in Manchester and ENVY in London – location was no obstacle for the post production house. By opting to record Barry’s voice over ISDN, a remote link-up, ENVY Advertising was able to secure the perfect delivery. Whilst combining it with music, Sound Designer, Arge, was mindful of keeping Barry’s voice at the forefront.

Philip Archer, Producer at ENVY Advertising, comments on the collaboration: “It was a pleasure to work with Amanda. A consummate professional, she did a wonderful job bringing out the heartfelt story. Because of the film’s personal nature, our main aim was to keep any post work as invisible as possible to allow plenty of space for Barry to speak to the viewer. I think we achieved that and helped make a really beautiful piece for adam&eveDDB.”

CREATIVE CREDITS:
Creative Agency adam&eveDDB
Agency Producer Nicholas Akinnibosun
CCO Ben Priest
ECD Ben Tollet, Richard Brim
Creative Director Matt Woolner, Steve Wioland
Account Director Loella Bowles
Account Manager William Menko
Business Team Mike Stern
Planner Nick Hirst, Mattijs Devroedt, Alistair Owen
TV Producer Louise Richardson
Production Company tantrum
Director Amanda Blue
Executive Producer Stuart Wrigglesworth
Production Assistant Nic Akinnibosun
Cinematography Ian Murray (repped by Vision)
Editor Nik Hindson (at The Assembly Rooms)
Post Production ENVY Advertising
Colourist Vicki Matich
Flame Kieran Baxter
Producer Philip Archer
Sound Design ENVY Advertising
Sound Designer Arge and Dave Williams
Media Planner Victoria Tait, Megan Kennedy (at Mediacom)

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Just because there is a better product or a better way of doing some­thing, it doesn’t mean that customers will embrace the new solution.

If a new offering doesn’t fit with engrained behaviors and expecta­tions, customers will be reluctant to change and will look for reasons not to shift to a new solution. Companies will be forced to invest resources fighting both actual and perceived obstacles.

For example, in many parts of the world, mopeds are a popular way of navigat­ing congested urban areas. Despite similar traffic and hassles in many U.S. cities, mopeds have never really taken off in the States. Part of that can be attributed to perception. When you think about mopeds in other parts of the world, you often think of old, loud, dirty contraptions that—while practical—aren’t particularly com­fortable or esteemed. We think of them being used to carry families of four down dusty roads in South America or through crowded traffic jams in India. Back in America, we just don’t see the need. If we want to get around the city, public transportation is typically good enough to get the job done. When it’s not, cars are becoming more and more luxurious. Cars give us the option to turn on our seat warmers, sip our coffee, make a phone call or two, and belt out the lyrics to the newest Taylor Swift song completely free of judg­ment. You can’t do that on a moped. And with favorable lease terms, a car can actually be pretty affordable.

But things are changing, and cars aren’t always ideal. Parking costs are starting to soar. Gas is getting more expensive, and people are becoming more environmentally conscious. Cities—though his­torically designed around cars in the United States—are making strides to be friendlier for bikes and mopeds. People are getting married later, delaying the move out of urban areas. Even families are choosing cities over suburbs with increasing frequency. As ur­ban areas become even more densely populated, cars begin to make less sense. And when you need to carry groceries or bulky items home from the store, public transportation is less than ideal. There’s clearly a market opening for mopeds in U.S. cities, but consumers are going to need to be convinced. They’re not going to shoulder the burden of determining why mopeds are actually a good idea. Companies need to be well aware of stubborn behaviors that can impede the successful uptake of their new product and think, from the very outset of the design process, how they can excite people out of their comfort zone.

GenZe has taken a number of steps to fight inertia and non-con­sumption, in hopes that its new electric scooter will take off among younger, urban consumers in the United States. Before launching its new bike (the GenZe 2.0 – pictured above), company employees traveled to cities around the country to talk to people about how they were commuting today, where they were experiencing pain points, and what they were trying to get done in their commutes. Using that knowledge, they de­signed a bike that accounts for the jobs and job drivers of their target demographic. It offers cargo units to carry briefcases, groceries, and other personal items. Those units are even rainproof for people in cities with less forgiving climates. The scooters are environmentally friendly, allowing riders to save on fuel costs and feel as though they’re doing their part for the environment. The scooters are also visually appealing and tech-heavy, featuring a 7-inch touch-screen control panel. Consumers don’t choose the GenZe 2.0 because they can’t af­ford something better; they choose it to make a statement. The bike also helps lower the barriers to adoption by introducing features that make it safer and easier to use, such as taller windscreens and a special driving mode for those still learning to ride. While it remains to be seen how well the GenZe 2.0 will do in the United States, GenZe’s dedication to customer centricity and its focus on defeating traditional purchase obstacles will give it the best possible chance to succeed.

Fighting inertia means lowering the barriers to trying a new product. While some companies continually “wow” their loyal cus­tomers with a parade of shiny new products, most do not. This latter group has to work hard to induce trial. We created a chart that illus­trates several ways companies have found success in improving the speed of product diffusion.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by Stephen Wunker, excerpted from his new book JOBS TO BE DONE: A Roadmap for Customer-Centered Innovation, with permission from AMACOM publishing.

Compete. Win. Learn. 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

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There was a trend identified by many brand and digital strategists a few years ago, due to the behavioral changes ushered in by two-way communication media.

Its name? Brands as publishers.

Its theory was that brands no longer could act in a way where they simply advertise and then iterate products every five to seven years. They had to begin acting as publishers, curating and creating content to engage in an always-on world which then required a whole new set of skillsets to implement a modern brand strategy.

It also required brands to update its products as often as its content. But many companies didn’t understand that behavior and several thought the more they tweeted, posted on Facebook or produced videos, the more they would persuade customers to buy more.

How disassociated from reality they were with that logic.

This of course ushered in the new (old?) wave of content marketing into the mix. If brands were publishers, then that would require massive amounts of content to push and amplify to an audience much like how The New York Times, Mashable or BuzzFeed would operate.

Many brands are still defining what this process means using hierarchical organizational charts to do so. Of course, this means that the people who do the day-to-day work the least, have the most say in the work because businesses and brands still use an operations process defined in the 19^th century by railroads.

Now behavior is shifting again. And this time it’s not going to be a simple incremental change. While brands staffed up with writers, copywriters, designers, illustrators, etc. to be “publishers,” now the pivot is into a more dynamic realm.

Brands are taking the role of broadcasters.

What this means is that brands now have the ability to be the media rather than have to beat it. Much of this disruption is the result of the democratization of tools that allow any of us to take the airwaves of the world wide web.

What used to require a TV network, an AM/FM bandwidth or a cable signal can be brought to life on a Facebook or Twitter feed, a YouTube or Twitch channel or with a SoundCloud account.

Of course, simply creating the content won’t mean you will reach people nor will they react. This is the creative angle brands keep missing. They think customers want to know more about them but the pivot is that they want to know more about the world around them and how you can help them adapt to it.

If mainstream broadcasters are simply reporting about the world around them, can companies now define how to evolve in this world with no rules, lack of best practices and disruption?

Or will they simply broadcast more branded content junk that will get many turning away faster than you can say, “skip this”?

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

Join us in Hollywood, California for Brand Leadership in the Age of Disruption, our 5th annual competitive-learning event designed around brand strategy.

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

There are certainly good times to consider diversifying your brand, but equally there are times when such a strategy should be avoided. Here are three situations when your brand shouldn’t go there.

A weak brand shouldn’t attempt to diversify. It’s tempting to think that changing sector and/or shifting into another part of the same sector is a great way to bolster a brand that is struggling. Offer current customers new places to experience the brand, the thinking goes, and collect new customers along the way. Unfortunately, the effect is often quite the opposite. The brand becomes more confusing to everyone and what strength the brand does have is distracted through venturing into unfamiliar territory. If you are going to expand your brand’s presence, always do so from a position of strength and carry that through into your broader presence. Otherwise your initiative will be seen for what it really is – revenue hunting.

If you are going to diversify, don’t simply bring a variation of the same idea to the new market. By doing this, you are, in effect, simply adding to the noise. If you cannot enter a market with a specific and distinctive point of view – one that draws on what you’ve achieved as a brand to change what consumers can expect in a sector – chances are you have no place being there. Recently, Chipotle decided to expand into the burger sector with a offer called Tasty Made. The problem is that, according to social media, they have simply brought another variation of a well established product to a well established market. There are some product variations to be sure, but what seems to be lacking is a fundamentally different philosophy and approach that would enable the brand to add value in a sector where value is often defined by volume.

Finally, if you are going to diversify, don’t expand into an area where growth is stalled, either because the market itself is saturated or because consumer interest is waning. In the case of Tasty Made, for example, while fast food and fast casual are significant players in the restaurant sector, and hamburgers account for over 30% of industry sales, this is still a very full market, with high quality competitors and low compound growth forecast over the medium term.

Standing out in such a market is always going to be difficult. The critical judgment for any brand looking to expand into new sectors, therefore, is not only that it can apply its philosophy and skills to that sector, but that the sector has tangible demand and untapped potential.

Diversification presents paradoxical pressures. On the one hand, brands have no choice but to seek out and explore new territories in their bid to stay relevant and interesting. Brands that don’t do this will only ever find themselves in situations where they are defending or receding, and they will be confined to the dynamics and growth patterns of the sector that they have aligned themselves with. At the same time, when they do diversify, brands must be very careful to do so within the competitive capabilities of the brand itself and at a pace that the wider business can absorb and add value to.

I have one question when marketing teams tell me they want to take their brand into new places, and it’s a question I apply not just to new sectors but also to new regions: Why will you be welcomed? Because, in the end, successful diversification of product or footprint is not about where your brand wants to participate, where it feels it is entitled to make a profit because others are doing so, or where it wishes to move because it’s run out of ideas where it is. Diversification is about the response your new presence will generate. If you’re not acting to excite buyers, you have no place being there.

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

Thanks to everyone who participated in my recent survey to determine which brand should be named Great Brand of the Year.  The results are in!  You voted as follows:

#3 — Amazon (which received 11.8% of the votes)

#2 — Netflix (12.6%)

#1 — drumroll please…Apple (13.4%)

Although the survey is unscientific and Apple beat out its closest rivals by just a percentage point or two, there’s good reason for Apple to be named the Great Brand of the Year.  Among Apple’s accolades and achievements are:

• Around $635 billion in market cap — the largest of any U.S. company
• The highest sales per square foot of any retailer at $5,546, according to eMarketer
• #1 in Interbrand’s 2016 ranking of Best Global Brands, with $178 billion in brand value
• #1 in FutureBrand’s Index of Global Top 100 Companies
• #2 in Brand Z’s 2016 Most Powerful Brand list, with $229 billion in brand value**
• #5 Tenet’s list of 2016 Most Powerful Brands based on the CoreBrand Index
• #1 in Satmetrix’s Net Promoter Score for laptops and tablets and #2 for smartphones
• #1 in J.D. Power’s 2016 Smartwatch Device Satisfaction Report
• The winner in Boston Consulting Group Survey of America’s Favorite Brand
• The news Apple announced at its annual conference in September wasn’t as ground-breaking as in years past, but the new iPhone 7 has benefited from the talk-value of removing the headphone jack as well as Samsung’s debacle with its Galaxy Note 7
• And, just last week, it announced the first major overhaul to the MacBook Pro family in more than four years.

2017 holds the promise of being an even bigger year for Apple, as the iPhone reaches its 10 year anniversary and rumors of its “mixed reality” functionality abound.  For now, Apple is the winner of the 2016 Great Brand of the Year survey.

Everyone who voted and provided their email address was entered to win an autographed copy of my book What Great Brands Do and the winner is Ted Spencer (who voted for Airbnb) — congratulations!

Thanks again for participating!

related:

Apple’s Most Innovative Product Isn’t A Product At All

Brands to Watch in 2016

Vote for Great Brand of the Year

The post apple is the great brand of the year appeared first on Denise Lee Yohn.

Reports of TV advertising’s death are greatly exaggerated. Addressable TV is the next step in mass marketing to consumers; here’s a look at what it means for finding the right audience,
measurability, and more.

Airtasker, Australia’s no.1 local services marketplace, is set to hit primetime TV with the launch of Like a Boss — its first major advertising campaign.

The campaign will launch on September 18 and will feature on Network Seven Sydney during the airing of the AFL Grand Final broadcast and the premiere of the new season of the X-Factor. Versions of the campaign will also run nationally across out of home (billboard advertising), online video, digital, and over social.

It serves as the Sydney-based startup’s first major advertising campaign, launching off the back of Seven West Media’s strategic investment in the company earlier this year.

“The phrase ‘Like a Boss’ is all about empowerment. Whether you’re looking for more flexibility or control in the way you work, or if you need a helping hand to get more done in life, Airtasker can help,” said Simon Reynolds, Airtasker VP Marketing.

“Our community members found a great feeling of accomplishment when using Airtasker, to the point where they just might break into dance. So we wanted to bring this to life in our first major marketing campaign.”

“This campaign marks a major shift in our approach. We’ve been relying on word of mouth for growth, but are now using our brand to move our growth beyond “in-the-know” early adopters, and into the mainstream,”

Airtasker CEO and co-founder Tim Fung said: “Our community members have been along for the ride with us since day one, particularly the growing number that use Airtasker as a main source of income.”

“With tens of thousands of Australians using Airtasker to earn money or get things done each month, we hope this campaign and the themes it covers resonates with all of them. And like us, they get a little laugh out of it too.”

The Like a Boss campaign was created by U Don’t Know Us (UDKU), a creative innovation agency that specialises in helping corporates innovate and startups compete at scale.

The agency, founded by ad agency and management consulting executives, has flown under the radar since their formation three years ago. This advertising push from Airtasker serves as their first formal public campaign.

“This is the first time we’ve been able to claim credit for our work,” UDKU partner and co-founder Colin Jowell said.

“To now, we’ve been working on projects like concept stores, prototypes and customer experience innovation strategy-hardly the kinds of things that our clients want to alert their competitors to in advance.”

CREATIVE CREDITS:
Client: Airtasker
Campaign: Like A Boss
Title: Cynthia & Derek

Agency: U Don’t Know Us (UDKU)
Managing Partner: U Don’t Know Us
Creative Director: U Don’t Know Us
Account Director: U Don’t Know Us
Agency Producer: U Don’t Know Us

Production Company: Goodoil
Director: Matt Kamen
Executive Producer: Sam Long
Producer: Michael Cody
DOP: Crighton Bone
Production Designer: Guy Treadgold
Editor: Dan Lee – The Butchery
Post Production: The Refinery
Sound: Rumble Studios

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At this year’s TEDWomen conference, we tried out some new ideas for accommodating attendees with small children. Beyond a lactation room, for instance, we offered a list of local, vetted caregiver services to call upon, a free livestream pass for caregivers, a free breast-milk shipping service, and a suite at a nearby hotel where attendees and caregivers with small children could gather and watch the livestream together.

We did not, however, reverse our grownups-only policy. That’s because, simply put, our attendees have been vocal about us maintaining it.

But in our attempt to accommodate all our audiences, we fell short: A newborn was turned away from TEDWomen last week, and the disappointed mother wondered how an organization like TED could leave her with so few options.

That disappointment touches a nerve here at TED. Many of us are parents, and there’s no denying that many of the moving ideas shared on stage last week — ones that demanded a healthier world for babies and their parents — prompt us to ask: How can TED do its part to set a new standard?

We haven’t figured this out yet, but we are trying — and listening. We’ve been in touch with parents from this event and others to help us take a hard look at how we can better support parents of babies and small children. We recognize the importance of getting this right. Stay tuned.

Just a few of the intriguing headlines involving members of the TED community this week:

The cascading effect of small lies. Tali Sharot is the senior author on a paper published in Nature Neuroscience that sheds light on the possible slippery-slope effect of telling small, self-serving lies. Using an fMRI scanning device to monitor the amygdala, an area of the brain associated with emotional response, the researchers found that when participants believed lying was to their benefit, “they were more inclined to dishonesty and their lies escalated over time,” reports The New York Times.  What’s more, as their lying progressed, the response in their amygdalas decreased — and the bigger the decrease, the bigger their next lie would be. The findings suggest that the brain becomes desensitized over time to the negative emotional effects of lying, but Sharot cautions that, while we know the decreased activity is related to lying, whether or not it’s related to a negative emotional reaction is still speculation. Fellow TEDster Dan Ariely is a co-author on the paper. (Watch Tali’s TED Talk and Dan’s TED Talk, and stay tuned for Ariely’s upcoming TED Book.)

What everyday objects tell us about inequality. An initiative of the nonprofit Gapminder, Dollar Street collects photographs of everyday objects from the richest to the poorest households around the world as a way to explore inequality. For the project, a team of photographers photographed up to 155 objects, everything from toothbrushes to toys, in 200 homes in nearly 50 countries, a list that continues to grow. The completely fascinating website, where you can  explore the collection of photographs, launched on October 18. The project is the brainchild of Anna Rosling Rönnlund, who co-founded Gapminder along with TEDsters Hans Rosling and Ola Rosling. (Watch Hans’ and Ola’s TED Talk or read the Ideas article about Dollar Street.)

Robots to the rescue. A joint training exercise between members of the Italian Coast Guard and a team led by TEDster Robin Murphy from Texas A&M’s Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue (CRASAR) tested a robot-assisted search and rescue to help safeguard migrants crossing the Mediterranean from Africa to Italy. Lasting 3 days, the exercise tested EMILY, an unmanned surface vehicle that can drive to a group of people in distress and position itself so that the greatest number of people can grab on. The EMILY system was tested in January 2016 to help migrants crossing from Turkey to Greece, and two EMILYs are currently in use by the Hellenic Coast Guard and Hellenic Red Cross; the Hellenic Coast Guard credited CRASAR with recently saving over two dozen refugees trapped in high seas. This new exercise pinpointed differences between migration routes, as well as new ways for robots and humans to interact in the water. (Watch Robin’s TED Talk)

Better diagnostics for pathogens. Richard Baraniuk is the lead author on a study detailing a new diagnostic method that could help slow the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and mitigate infectious disease outbreaks by allowing faster detection of microbes. Typically, bacterial detection requires the use of DNA probes that are target-specific, which means detection can be costly and slow when dealing with new or mutating species. Instead, the new method uses a small number of DNA probes randomly generated that are not target-specific, greatly reducing the cost and time of detection. (Watch Richard’s TED Talk)

Open-source, autonomous vehicles. Sebastian Thrun, the creator of Google’s self-driving car project, is taking the development of autonomous vehicles open-source through his online education startup Udacity. The project, began as an accompaniment to their new autonomous car-engineering course, will make the software driving the car and the data collected by the car available to anyone, for free. With the code needed to begin testing the car written by Udacity engineers, Udacity is now soliciting contributions by giving prizes for the best responses to specific projects, and students in the course are contributing to the project as well, reports the MIT Technology Review. (Watch Sebastian’s TED Talk)

A perpetual spring for honey bees. Neri Oxman and her team have created a synthetic apiary that creates a constant spring-like environment for bees, allowing seasonal honey bees to remain active and producing honey year-round. The apiary regulates light, humidity and temperature to create the optimal environment for the bees’ survival and is set inside a building on the MIT campus, rather than outside. The research offers hope for bees, whose numbers have been steadily declining, by demonstrating their ability to survive in a completely synthetic environment. (Watch Neri’s TED Talk)

New faces at the UN. On October 14, following his appointment as Secretary-General-designate of the UN, António Guterres announced the members of the transition team that will help prepare him to assume his duties on January 1, 2017. Fellow TED speaker Melissa Fleming, now the Head of Communications and spokesperson for the High Commissioner at UNHCR, will act as senior advisor and spokesperson for Guterres. (Watch António’s TED Talk and Melissa’s TED Talk. Plus, read Melissa’s article on 8 practical ways to help refugees.)

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

Digital marketing experts and marketing automation vendors have likely already told you brands need to pump as much content into the pipeline as quickly as possible. Well, as Geoffrey Colon correctly pointed out this week, quantity does not equal quality.

In fact, at the end of this article, you might be ready to tear up that social media marketing deck entirely. Here’s why.

I have to admit; this is a strange place for me. In 2007 I accepted a new role at Avid Technology, the market leader in software and hardware for the media industry, where I was already neck deep in product marketing for Avid Xpress Pro video editing software. Management had taken notice of my eagerness to engage with our up-and-coming customers on community forums, blogs, and nascent social media channels like MySpace. They offered me the newly created position of eMarketing Manager in order to spread that digital engagement across all of the company’s business units. With that, I became one of the first social media marketing managers in enterprise software and quickly converted our passionate worldwide customer community into a large social media fan base—the largest among our peer group of companies producing tools for the creative media professional.

Fast forward to 2013. We were already experiencing diminishing returns from social media networks, even as the content itself racked up insane impressions for a B2B brand (check out the views of this Pro Tools video from 2010). The squeeze was on. Facebook’s increasingly intelligent algorithmic News Feed and a public stock offering in 2012 left brand marketers with a fast-closing window to reach a collected fan base through organic means. Paid placement was clearly the future of brand awareness on social. Sound familiar?

Now I hate spending money on paid media. And I certainly don’t want to pay for promoted access to customers who’ve already opted-in to receiving communications from me on these platforms. We needed our own platform to publish on and connect with customers. A blog would be a good start, but not a typical company blog, which is often a dumping ground for the PR team and the odd bit of content that doesn’t fit on the corporate site. We needed our own branded storytelling platform with an editorial voice and a Media Publishing strategy. Thus my first marketing newsroom was born. In April 2013, to coincide with the company’s largest global tradeshow, I launched Avid Blogs. Built on self-hosted WordPress, the site served as the new daily storytelling hub where customers could learn what’s new in the world of Avid, explore creative techniques from other users, and discover how to make the most of their investment in Avid systems. In my two and a half years as Editor-in-Chief, Avid Blogs rose to become the most trafficked Avid web property outside of Avid.com proper.

Launching a standalone storytelling site isn’t enough to tear-up the social media plan, a proper marketing newsroom requires three digital disruptions.

1. The willingness of a marketing organization to rethink present and future staffing. My own role changed from Social Media Manager to Editor-in-Chief. In a marketing newsroom, other roles like Field Marketing become Field Reporters, PR Managers add Featured Columnist duties, Demand Generation Specialists become Audience Growth Managers. To succeed with an editorial approach to audience development on owned platforms, organizations must invest in new skills training (visual storytelling) for existing staff and write job descriptions that find candidates who can tell a story, rather than launch a campaign.

2. Stop what you’re doing. You can’t campaign your way to an engaged audience. That email campaign, that infographic, that press release, while part of an “integrated marketing campaign” is NOT how customers are conditioned to consume content. Take a lesson from the biggest consumer media brands and create episodic original content. Think like Netflix with Stranger Things or Amazon Prime Video with Transparent. These are stories told in chapters, over time, with a narrative arc that entertains and builds affinity for the content provider. In your case, you’ll create “edu-tainment’ or content that both entertains and informs.

3. Buy-in from above. Like any transformation, there are those who can understand immediately the benefit of disrupting “business as usual” and others who are highly averse. That buy-in will only come with a plan (‘playbook’ in marketing newsroom parlance) that lays out the editorial strategy, individual responsibilities, technology requirements, interlock with Sales, publishing process, amplification plan, and much more. This is where you tear-up the social media deck! Its replacement, the Marketing Newsroom Playbook, is your daily guide for creating audience you own.

This is a preview of the marketing newsroom framework – The Blake Project’s approach to building highly differentiated brands in a digital world. We’ll outline each of the working parts of the framework in upcoming Branding Strategy Insider articles. Or, experience the marketing newsroom live at The Un-Conference, coming up in May 2017 at The London in West Hollywood.

Join us in Hollywood, California for Brand Leadership in the Age of Disruption, our 5th annual competitive-learning event designed around brand strategy.

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