Rohit Parbhakar, head of digital marketing and technologies at McKesson, developed a recipe for transforming McKesson’s marketing team and shared his insights on how other brands can do the same.

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CREATIVE CREDITS:
Ad Agency: Publicis Italia/Milano
CEO Publicis Italia: Bruno Bertelli
Executive Creative Director Publicis Italia: Cristiana Boccassini
Art Director: Alessandro Candito, Maxime Damo
Copywriter: Lina Akbarzadeh, Paolo Bartalucci
Creative Directors: Alessandro Candito, Paolo Bartalucci, Geert De Rocker, Tom Berth
Digital Creative Director: Azeglio Bozzardi, Martino Lapini
Account Team: Barbara Pusca, Filippo D’Andrea, Florence De Lophem e Roberta Scotti
Social Media Team: Diletta Sala e Arya Alfieri
Strategic Planner: Guglielmo Pezzino
TV producer: Luana Strafile e Matilde Bonanni
Production company: H+
Executive Producer: Stella Orsini
Directors and editors: Murphy
Centro Media: MediaCom
Marketing Manager: Matteo Cattaneo

Transactional brands offer the right product at the right price at the right time. They launch ad campaigns that capture the audience’s attention. People pay a fair price, they are not particularly loyal, and the relationship is completely rational.

Emotional brands, on the other hand, create irrational relationships—irrational in the most positive ways. They generate irrational enthusiasm. They charge irrational prices. They have customers who ignore the competition. They have evangelists who proselytize with clothing, online reviews and impassioned conversations around the dinner table.

The best way to understand the power of an emotional relationship is to simply look at someone you love, like your children. Sure, your kids are extremely cute.  But nobody gets more pleasure out of their photos and their videos than you.

The relationship that you have with your children is not rational, it’s emotional, and that’s a beautiful thing. They look better to you than to anybody else. They’re cuter to you than to anybody else. They’re funnier and smarter and more entertaining to you than to anybody else. That’s the power brands have when they shift from a rational, transactional relationship to an emotional relationship.

You know who some of these brands are: SoulCycle, Apple, Patagonia, Under Armour. At this point you may be sick of hearing about them. But irrational brands are popping up in the most surprising of categories.

Brand Example One: Yeti

Take Yeti coolers, for example. They charge $650 for a cooler. Sure, they make a much better cooler than the competition, but they charge ten times as much as needed for a decent product. It’s not just that their customers happily pay this amount; they consider it a point of pride. As crazy as this sounds for a company that makes coolers, Yeti is a full-blown lifestyle brand. Those who can’t afford a Yeti cooler will proudly purchase a Yeti hat.

While rational brands purchase 30-second interruptions and hope to God that somebody actually watches one, Yeti has a series of videos that extoll the virtues of outdoor adventures ranging from kayaking to fly fishing. They’ve been watched and shared millions of times over. Rather than simply sell products on the Yeti website, they use it as a storytelling platform. The site has dozens of the most inspiring stories I’ve ever seen.

In the videos, the Yeti brand is almost invisible. In one video about a death-defying all-night kayaking trip called the Texas Water Safari, they feature everyday people who push themselves to the breaking point for the sake of winning a patch that has no financial value and no bragging rights outside of a small group of fellow competitors. The video is absolutely mesmerizing. With small cameras mounted on the kayaks, Yeti captures the thrill and danger of the event. It’s unlike anything most people have seen before. It captures viewer’s attention for a full 7 minutes.

By comparison, the typical interaction with a digital ad lasts 1.6 seconds. The only time the Yeti brand is clearly displayed is at the very end of the video on the hat of a competitor who passes out in the grass after the event. The product placement is fun, authentic and completely frictionless.

What Yeti proves is that removing friction is not only about taking away problems in the interactions that a brand has with its audience. It’s about providing value throughout the entirety of the journey that people go through in life.

Yeti makes coolers that are certified grizzly bear–proof. Seriously, there’s an organization called the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee, and it endorsed them. That’s clearly a piece of friction for those who are camping and fishing in very specific areas. But the greater piece of friction is that people desperately want to be inspired.

Yeti fans don’t just watch the videos to be entertained. They are thought-provoking. They are motivating. They help Yeti fans envision a better version of themselves, one that is more active. More adventurous. More fun.

Brand Example Two: Rapha

Rapha is another brand with seemingly irrational behavior that is creating irrational results. They charge more than $200 for a cycling jersey. That’s four times as much as most other jerseys. Rapha customers don’t just happily buy the jerseys. They flaunt them. The brand is a badge. It’s a source of pride.

Yes, they create very high-quality clothing and gear, but their customer loyalty is driven by something much bigger. Rapha focuses on enriching the cycling community. Rapha fans are not just looking for a great ride. They want to be part of a group of passionate, likeminded individuals.

The need for belonging is one of the most basic of all human instincts. Rapha customers don’t just want to ride their bikes. They want to share stories and experiences. They want to push and be pushed to greater levels of performance. They have an insatiable need to be immersed in cycling culture.

So Rapha retail stores don’t just sell products; they serve food and drinks and provide communal tables where riders can meet and greet each other. They are places where riders can tell tall tales and feel, innately, like they belong. Rapha helps riders get more out of cycling than simply exercise or transportation.

But the true beauty of Rapha’s ethos can be found in the little ways they fight friction.

For example, they realized that many of their shoppers take a bike to the store, and most of these bikes are expensive. So they’ve built bike racks inside the store rather than out front. That type of behavior at face value is irrational.

Their location in New York City is one of the most expensive retail locations on the planet. And yet they’re using space to give people a place to put their bikes rather than using it to sell products. It’s unprecedented and absolutely not needed. But it shows a deep rooted understanding of the audience. It demonstrates respect. It builds trust.

It’s easy to dismiss the lessons of Yeti and Rapha because they compete in the outdoor category. There will always be something implicitly cool about outdoor adventure. But emotional brands can be built in the most unlikely of places.

Brand Example Three: USAA

USAA is a financial services firm for military personnel and their families. The friction that USAA removes is that people want more control and earning power from their personal finances, but ironically, most financial services do the exact opposite. USAA, on the other hand, makes transparency and control key performance indicators.

Recently I received a call from USAA. To be honest, I was barely paying attention. I was just listening to make sure I didn’t miss a payment. Since it was USAA, I was willing to semi-listen.

After a few minutes, I realized something and interrupted. “Wait, are you calling to tell me you are giving me money back?” I asked. “Yes, sir” was the reply in a sweet Southern drawl. Apparently, I had two different products with some crossover. They realized I didn’t need them both, adjusted my account, and gave me money back. The total was $176. That’s not chump change, but it’s not life changing either. What was changed, however, was my permanent perception of the company. As I go through the stages of life, I will consider and trust USAA before any other financial services company.

That doesn’t make me unique. 92 percent of USAA members plan to stay for life. That’s an insanely high number, particularly given that loyalty is often the most important predictor of business success.

Loyalty isn’t simply a goal for USAA. They structure every aspect of their business to build loyalty through empowerment. One quarter of its annual hires served in the military or come from a military family. They offer free financial advice to those being deployed or returning to civilian life. Their Educational Foundation conducts close to 850 financial management presentations annually to 50,000 attendees in the military community.

Despite the fact that USAA is fundamentally smaller than the competition, they’ve been leading innovators. They created an app that enables members to make deposits simply by taking a photo of a check. While this technology is commonplace now, USAA owns the patent. They developed it so that overseas military personnel could remove the friction of depositing checks from the opposite side of the world. That’s not just technology. That’s empathy, empowerment and respect.

Looking back on the last 100 years of advertising literature, most people consider brands a promise or a story. That’s insufficient. Ultimately, brands are a shortcut. Consumers are now bombarded with thousands of marketing messages every day. That’s more than any human being can manage. They need shortcuts. They need brands they can relate to. Brands that inspire them.

So Yeti’s videos about outdoor adventurers, Rapha’s indoor bike rack and USAA’s customer service may not seem like much. But they help turn those brands into shortcuts. The audience knows that if the brand understands them at a fundamental level, then it’s a brand they can have a relationship with. It’s a brand they can fall in love with.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Jeff Rosenblum and Jordan Berg, excerpted from their new book Friction: Passion Brands in the Age of Disruption, published by powerHouse Books

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From evolving public opinion to product versatility and a buyer demographic flush with cash, there are plenty of reasons advertisers need to start taking the cannabis market more seriously.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Different question #3:  What are you replacing?

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

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

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

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

related:

What Game Are We Playing?

Excuse Me, Could Someone Please Explain The Strategy?

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

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