Tag / modern brands

by jcuene

Why Food? — For Positive Change in the Food Industry by Yvon Chouinard – Patagonia Provisions

This is another great example of a purpose-lead organization finding new growth (new products, new categorys, new customers) by starting with their purpose, and using that to inspire invention. In this case, their entry into the food space.

So it only makes sense that we’d want to share some of our favorite food with our customers. But that’s just the beginning; we also believe there is great opportunity—and an urgent need—for positive change in the food industry. With Patagonia Provisions, our goals are the same as with everything we do: We aim to make the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, and perhaps most important, inspire solutions to the environmental crisis.

via Why Food? — For Positive Change in the Food Industry by Yvon Chouinard – Patagonia Provisions.

Brand purpose is often the best place to start when seeking new revenue growth. By recommitting to your core purpose, you can start envisioning whole new ways to play in your own business landscape. Or, like Patagonia, you can move into whole new categories with completely new products. Operational and business model complexities aside, to consumers, moves like this make sense when there’s a clear purpose behind the brand to tie them together. Invention (identifying new ways to grow like new products and services) comes fastest when there is a clearly articulated brand purpose guiding the explorations.

by jcuene

Fallon: What we Can Learn From Butch Vig & Rick Rubin

Great post from Chad Koehnen (Planner at Fallon) about "Smart" vs. inspiring. He comes down in favor of inspiring, not surprisingly. It's a great read, and especially helpful for brands trying to understand how to get the kind of creativity they need today. Good quote: 

Here’s a little secret that Planners would be advantaged to learn: Nobody (real people) truly cares about smart. That’s not to say it isn’t important, but it’s an input, not an output. Therefore, the only evaluation of smart should be through the work it inspires. People don’t care about what Producer Butch Vig told Nirvana during the making of Nevermind. People just care about how “Smells Like Teen Spirit” sounds like the perfect angsty, balls out, cymbal-crashing soundtrack to their life.

Whether it be Music Producing or Account Planning, smart is only as good as the interesting, hilarious, touching, persuasive, rocking, and beautiful product it inspires.

I also like this one (which i might put on a T-shirt): 

 Or more specifically, it’s a Planner’s job to fight on the side of people who love to consume amazing shit.

by jcuene

The Digital Brand Advertising Maturity Model: Phase 1 -“TV on the Internet”

A lot of big brands are still trying to figure out digital marketing. They are taking a hodge-podge approach to their efforts, with a little bit here (SEM), and little bit there (their website) and maybe a little excitement dashed in (their facebook presence/twitter stream). But, before big, mass market brands can truly wrap their heads around the concept of being "modern brands", they should get comfortable with what they are doing with basic web display advertising. That is, "TV on the Internet".

TV on the Internet

Big, slow, classic mass-market brands have built their whole marketing model around TV. Their planning calendar is driven by their TV buying and TV production cycles, delivering "campaigns" that are like carpet bombs of 30 second tv spots. Their research tools, processes, and partners are designed to deliver the one true "insight" that will make a great TV spot. The creative messaging is driven and shaped by all the tools they use to conceptualize, vet, test and create their TV spots. The marketers and researchers there have built – literally- whole careers on being great at managing and guiding these processes, blending, when it's done well, the science of marketing and the art of advertising together to create breakthrough work that infiltrates our culture. Via TV.

It's a big, well oiled machine that we all take for granted, and we assume, because the machine has always worked so well, that it will also output great digital marketing. But it can't create great digital marketing. Because it was designed.for.creating.TV. That doesn't means the digital marketing that comes out of this systems is bad. It's just not what digital marketing could be.

Before brands shoot for "great", it's worth understanding what "good" looks like. Here are the characteristics of digital campaigns that are "TV on the Internet":

  • A single, broad target – Typically, defined by demographics, like "Moms with kids in the house, 30-55".
  • Key Objective: Awareness – These campaigns are really very much like TV, in that they are  designed to deliver an impression. And that's pretty much it. All the cool interactive stuff that you can do online? Clicks, conversions, online ad driven actions don't really matter in these campaigns.
  • Creative: Persuasion – The goal of the creative is to persuade and change attitudes, not drive action.
  • Campaigns: The campaigns tend to flow at the same rhythm as TV; run for a couple months, and then go dark.
  • Media: "Set it and Forget it" – These campaigns don't get optimized when they run. They are planned and run and aren't really optimized that much over the course of the campaign. 
  • Media: Focus on Reach – Like TV, the main objective of the media buy is almost always to maximize the number of people reached by the message. The placement – where the creative runs – is important, but generally, reach is favored over relevance.
  • Measurement: Offline impact – These campaigns don't measure impact by what happens online.  Like all ad efforts, the most value is placed on what happens offline. Cash register rings. Sales in the big box, or the market, or the retail outlet. 
  • Learning Cycles – The learning cycles of "TV on the Internet" campaigns, as far as i've seen, tend to be like an annual cycle. The iteration and learning cycles tend to be six to eight (or up to 12 months). 

 But, while digital marketers might scoff at these campaigns, they work for marketers for a couple important reasons:

  • They are relatively easy to manage – Agencies and marketers can work and execute these campaigns pretty easily, assuming the marketers don't try to over-work the banners.
  • They work – A lot marketers are finding that banners work well. At the very least, they drive brand metrics. But, they also drive sales offline, too. 
  • They are predictable – Brands can these campaigns pretty easily, and they are getting more and more predictable in their ability to drive results. 

These aren't the sexiest digital campaigns. You'll never see these on the front cover of AdAge. But, these campaigns can form the foundation of great brand-building efforts. They can drive regular results, can be pretty predictable, and can provide marketers with "ground cover" to do more, innovative, and more interesting things.

But, "Modern Brands" should be providing more than advertising, more than their own message. That's the next phase in the maturity of digital brand marketers. 

Next up: PHase 2- Data Driven Brand Marketers