My 5 wishes for successful branding in 2016

I'm not a big fan of New Year's resolutions. Bottom line is, these new resolutions often only last the first couple of months, due to a lack of long-term commitment. If it's not part of our DNA, it doesn't last. Think of how many people sign up in January at the local gym. The first couple of months are crowded; when comes March you only see the regulars.
The same applies to brands, as brands are created by people, and in some way are living entities. People create a brand's new resolutions, and are accountable for the brand's commitment to successfully implement them in the long (or short) term. 
Going back to the gym analogy, you are more likely to stick to the gym over several months if you are working towards a goal, such as participating in a (mini) marathon in June. Chances are, by June, you will have settled in a work-out routine and exercise will then be part of your DNA. The same applies to brands as well.

Here is what I wish brands will do more in 2016 to be successful:

Show empathy
Your brand's purpose is not defined by what you do for your customers. It is defined by why what you do matters to your customers. By focusing on the why, you show empathy to your customers.

Not only do you understand your customers' needs (which leads to innovation and new product ideas), but you also understand their emotional journey and what message resonates with them (which leads to defining a roadmap for the customer experience, the foundation for your brand strategy).

Focus on insights & personalization
Many companies develop their products on what the CEO thinks his wife or children (or even himself) would want; on what the R&D team or Software development team think is cool to create based on the engineering complexity of it; or simply on the principle of what-competitors-do-and-we-can-do-it-cheaper-or-better. It sometimes works, at least in the short time, often time it does not.

Empathy for customers based on research and customer insights are so important to uncover unmet needs, understand customers’ behaviors, and define the customer journey. If you don’t focus on customers, customers won’t focus on your brand. Your brand will mean nothing to them.

Customers connect with brands who resonate with their beliefs. They expect a personalized experience and a personalized message in return. With mobile technology nowadays, coupled with beacon/location-based technology and big data, brands have the opportunity to cater and deliver an experience and a message that is personal to one individual, not just a demographic group anymore.

Successful brands in 2016 will be able to deliver personal experiences and messages in the relevancy of time and location.

Bring excitement
With a click of a button on a computer or a tap of a finger on a mobile device, customers can in real-time compare product/service offerings, prices and make a purchase decision instantly. Only 28% of consumers are loyal to their providers and brands. Because customers are more volatile than ever, bringing them excitement is critical to create than instant need and trigger to purchase. 

Excitement is a neurological push that triggers customers to make an impulsive purchasing decision. While empathy helps define how to create loyal customers in the long term, excitement helps convert a "lead" into an instant customer. The repetition of exciting personalized experiences and messages will help keep customers coming back.

Give back to the community
Successful brands are successful because they make a difference in people's lives. It's only natural for brands to continue to show empathy and to give back to the community to support other organizations making a difference in people's lives.

More than 85 percent of millennials correlate their purchasing decisions and their willingness to recommend a brand to the social good efforts a company is making. Businesses interested in selling to millennials can't afford to ignore the opportunity to create social good. The "one-for-one" model proved that companies could have profit-driven goals while integrating philanthropy into their business’s bottom line. Millennials now want even more.

Be socially and environmentally responsible
According to a recent Nielsen survey, two-thirds of the “sustainable mainstream” population (a cluster of three of the five segments) will choose products from sustainable sources over other conventional products. These consumers will buy as many eco-friendly products as they can and have personally changed their behavior to minimize their impact on global climate change. Additionally, these consumers are more likely to buy products repeatedly from a company if they know the company is mindful of its impact on the environment and society.

Millennials (age 21-34) appear more responsive to sustainability actions. Among global respondents in Nielsen’s survey who are responsive to sustainability actions, half are Millennials; they represent 51 percent of those who will pay extra for sustainable products and 51 percent of those who check the packaging for sustainable labeling.

What are your 2016 wishes for successful branding?

The future of retail is about experiential and contextual marketing

14 years ago almost to this date, Apple changed the way retailers engage with their customers when the iconic brand opened its first two stores. Since then, successful retail brands have moved away from merely displaying lines of products on their stores’ shelves to creating show-room type experiential spaces.

The future of retail is all about the consumer. Consumers make the rules and now have total access to whatever they want, wherever and whenever they want it. The power has shifted away from retailers who long held it—and now the ball is in the consumer’s court. Brands and retailers are forced to play on the consumer’s terms to be successful. And the more brands can understand, connect and delight consumers instead of sell to them, the more long-term success and sustainability they will enjoy.

In that regards, retailers such as PIRCH have partnered with experiential design agencies like Fitch to transform the shopping experiences. PIRCH stores offer customers the opportunity to test products and enjoy using them before purchasing - 'try before you buy’ becomes something new and powerfully branded. Shoppers enjoy the opportunity to cook with a real Chef while testing the kitchen’s appliances. For other, they can reserve a time at the “store’s spa” to test showers and bathtubs. After testing products, shoppers “can enter a 'dream room' to meet with a designer and plan their homes”.

The Robin Report delicately describes what the Apple or PIRCH experience is about. “These brands are not retailers. They are neurologically addictive experiences, co-created by the brand and their dopamine-addicted consumers”. The brick-and-mortar retail business has a bright future provided that it transforms its physical space into an experiential space. The Robin Report suggests that such retail brands stimulate their visitors’ dopamine. It is almost like a sport performance-enhancing drug, except in that case dopamine is “a chemical in the brain that gets released every time we have an elevated experience. It provides feelings of euphoria, self-satisfaction, wellbeing, and can lead to addiction. The dopamine-releasing brands headlining this report (and there are others) are such because the experience they have developed requires that the customer participate in creating or shaping that experience to satisfy their own personal desire at the moment they engage with the brand”.

No matter what happens in the physical or digital shopping experience, successful brands know that the key is to build brand loyalty. The store experience is an important component, among others. But the way brands communicate across various channels with their customers is critical. Loyalty requires communicating brand values that people want to be affiliated with. Consumers today have many options, and more than ever they choose particular brands to communicate something personal about their own beliefs and priorities. The best way to establish and reinforce common values is to create content so highly specific that it defines not only the brand, but the customer.

To do so, many brands invest in original content to communicate with their customers on a more personal and emotional level... to build brand loyalty. Now that the vast majority of the population is connected 24/7/365 through their mobile devices, the solution to creating a branded content experience that delivers results lies in a centralized mobile content marketing strategy. By integrating content channels and reaching all consumer touch points, brands can maintain open access to content assets, encourage ongoing engagement, and build affinity.

“Location-based marketing is an effective new way to deliver timely and relevant messages to consumers”, states Alliance Data Retail in their report on Geofencing technology. The key is context: reaching them precisely where and when they’re most likely to engage with a brand. Content is important for brands to engage with their customers at a personal level, but content mostly remains generic of time and location. “With the mobile economy here to stay – and the cost of ignoring it unrecoverable – location-based communications are a very attractive next step in marketing. Geofencing technology enables timely, relevant and powerful messages to modern consumers at the right place, at the right time, and in the right way”, according to the report.

Apple is very well known for transforming the way we live. After all, this is Apple’s brand promise. Their latest initiative, “Proactive” is going to redefine the brand experience. This is taking location-based marketing to the next level. The augmented reality feature will allow a user to hold up her iPhone in the Maps application, and point her camera toward a particular business or an area. Pointed towards a cafe, for example, the screen could show a virtual view of menu items or daily specials. If the user points her phone toward a street, a virtual outline of local businesses, restaurants, shopping stores, or coffee shops could appear. In return, businesses will be able to communicate back to the user with a personalized offer.

Today’s technology has redefined the way brands can interact with their consumers. Content and context are intertwined, and brands’ mobility and agility are key to provide a unique and ongoing experience.

Why I am big fan the Taylor Swift brand… What she teaches us about branding.

I am not personally a big fan of Taylor Swift as an artist (meaning I don’t buy her records – although I enjoy listening to her music). I am probably too old to relate to her lyrics, but my kids love her songs and I see her as a good role model for them.

However, I LOVE the Taylor Swift brand. Why? Because from a young age she’s developed an authentic, engaging , truthful relationships with her customers (sorry – her fans!).
If you have any doubts, check out Oliver Darcy’s article and the YouTube video… She is not a fabricated star, she is authentic and she genuinely cares about her customers (sorry – her fans!). The same happens backstage on her tours. A few weeks ago I heard on the radio listeners commenting on their various backstage experiences. Most of them said stars just show up for a few minutes, take a group picture and leave. Taylor Swift actually spends time with fans, has dinner with them, takes individual pictures, calls them by their names, wants to learn their personal stories…

What can TS teach us about branding then? Kevin Roberts, Executive Chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi, perfectly describes the different between brand and what he calls lovemarks.

People have only 3 questions of any brand engagement:
1. do I want to experience it again?
2. do I want to share it?
3. do I want to improve it?

The key is to create an emotional experience and you get action. Brands are built on respect. Lovemarks are created out of respect and love.

Brands build loyalty for a reason. Lovemarks inspire loyalty beyond reason. Actually they inspire loyalty beyond attribute, benefit, range, price.

Brands aim to be irreplaceable. Lovemarks are irresistible.

Intimacy is the small touch, the perfect note and it is the future of business. The purpose of business is to make the world a better place for everyone. Intimacy is empathy, the brand in the audience’s heart, (not the audience at the brand’s heart).

Kevin Roberts takes it even further. “Brands are owned by companies, marketers, and stockholders. Lovemarks are owned by the people who love them”.At a Cannes event back in 2012, he shared how marketers can build loyalty beyond reason for their brands through music and turn their brands into Lovemarks.

Takeout 3Es

Enthusiasm – (from Greek enthousiasmos). Be an irresistible force of nature. Risk it! Put music at the heart of your brand.

Execution – The audience won’t wait for inspiration: Form a music partnership. Start a conversation. Ignite a movement. Fail fast, learn fast, fix fast! Now!

Emotion – Music is life. Lead with your heart, and you will become priceless.

In a previous post, I explained how companies must find a new why to do business, meaning to connect emotionally with their customers.

A brand is the external reflection of a company’s inside culture and core values. In order for a brand to stay relevant, be different and unique, it must reinvent itself continuously. If a company’s products or services don’t change the game regularly, they suddenly become a commodity, as unique and innovative they could have been at some point. EVERY product and service becomes sooner than later a commodity. What’s critical is for the company to keep its brand relevant by innovating and bringing to life new game-changing products or services. You must keep delivering on your brand promise, day after day.

DON’T settle for being an er-brand. Your tactics are focused on being better at the same things that your competitors do. Red flags go up whenever I hear a pitch that explains how a new offering is just like another but is small-er, bigg-er, thinn-er, light-er, fast-er, sexi-er, whatev-er.

DO find a unique brand personality that translates into a unique customer experience, enabling your brand to rise above competitive comparison. Using brand personality in this way is not simply about developing creative communications; it’s about infusing every aspect of your operations with your unique character.

You have to switch your company’s focus from being transaction oriented to emotion oriented. A product is a transaction, an experience is an emotion. That’s your differentiator. 

It is easy to create a brand and a “promise”. What is hard to achieve is to deliver on the brand promise over and over again. As innovative as the brand promise may be at some point, other brands will follow and suddenly your promise will become commoditized, again.

As marketers, we all need to turn our brands into lovemarks. Like Taylor Swift.

Can social and business activism spark innovation?

There has been a lot of buzz around embracing failure as a stepping-stone to success. Many organizations welcome the idea and contemplate the thought of celebrating failure, but they are often reluctant to embrace the concept in practice.

There are two main reasons. One is risk and failure aversion. In a work or school setting, our brains are formatted to learn theory and what the outcome should be instead of experimenting through trial and error.  People don’t like to make mistakes, and they don’t like to look foolish, whether it is an adult or a child. Trial-and-error can cause both of these things to happen when things don’t work out as expected. The second reason is that our organizational cultures are often not designed to experimenting. In larger organizations, we are often trying to improve efficiency. Doing this means that we must reduce variation and risk. But innovation and experimentation increase variation.

What smart people realize is that without failure there would be no success. Failure leads to insight. Failure leads to understanding. Failure leads to innovation. As Douglas Adams said, “Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” What’s critical is to be able to learn from failed experiments to lead to successful ventures. On the West Coast, many successful organizations, from start-ups to established companies, have embraced this concept, but it is more of a challenge in the conservative Midwest.
The reasons are not too hard to find. Even in the most progressive and understanding of workplaces admitting to failure brings forth feelings of embarrassment, shame and inadequacy. In more extreme organizations it can lead to understandable concerns about loss of status and even salary.

Now, Indiana is challenging failure aversion. Led by Launch Fishers and Indiana Small Business Development Center, FailFest will celebrate the role failure plays in moving companies, careers and communities forward. On November 19, FailFest will bring Indiana’s most important business leaders together to share the lessons they’ve learned from the mistakes they’ve made, both personally and professionally, in a day-long conference designed to inspire, inform and ultimately change the way failure is perceived in our society. Failure leads to innovation.
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas A. Edison


As FailFest illustrates, social and business activism can help challenge the status-quo.

In that spirit, a group of innovation activists that I am leading is launching a new experiment – s.p.IN – Indiana’s first social & business activism platform that brings together innovation enthusiasts and practitioners to shape the Hoosier state’s future.

s.p.IN has been developed through an iteration process, gathering feedback from business leaders across the state about what they saw was missing in the existing initiatives around innovation (from conceptualization, to brand positioning to content). The intent is to bring people together that would likely not meet otherwise and get them work on specific innovative projects aimed to help the business community. CONNECT. EMPOWER. INSTIGATE. ACT.

s.p.IN seeks to accelerate innovation by creating an open innovation and collaboration platform where professionals use their diverse ideas, experience and resources to solve specific challenges within four key themes:

·      - Planting the seeds of innovation in education

·      - Creating a toolkit for Indiana entrepreneurs

·      - Revisiting transportation

·      - Designing a roadmap for community revitalization

To provide a venue for discussion and idea generation, s.p.IN hosts monthly mini-collisions with Indiana’s top influencers and innovation leaders at local businesses. Mini-collisions focus on a set of deliverables for each topic. The first projects will be announced in December. Output from mini-collisions will be unveiled online and shared in depth during s.p.IN’s Collide Summit Indiana un-conference, where the broader community will have the opportunity to provide feedback and build on the ideas.

Will it work? If we don’t try we’ll never know. This is what experimentation is all about. No risk taking, no failure in our minds. Only an opportunity to learn and succeed in the long term.

10 reasons why you must attend the Day of Innovation conference!

Day of Innovation - August 28 - Indianapolis, IN

10. “Either you choose to innovate or to commoditize” - Charlie McTargett, 2013 Day of Innovation keynote speaker and VP Product Development at Delta Faucet.

9. Network with others who share an innovation mindset.

8. Event you don’t want to miss because everybody is going to talk about it.

7. Challenge the status quo in your organization and learn from Indiana’s innovation thought leaders.

6. Educate your employees about innovation at a low cost (only $200 compared to other conferences of $1000+).

5. Because we don’t believe in the conventional way of thinking, our panel will bring an espresso shot of disruption to challenge the status quo. Expect (good) chaos.

4. Learn how to be innovative well beyond product development: marketing, customer experience, future planning, competitive intelligence, company culture, mindset.

3. Your competitors have already registered. What are you waiting for?

2. This will change the way you think about innovation in your organization.

1. Expose yourself to new perspectives you’ve not considered before.

Register now!

To win or not to lose? The power of loss aversion

Because we feel the disadvantages of risky decisions (losses) more intensely than the advantages (gains or wins), we see risky moves as bad ideas. Opportunities that are forecast with certainty seem especially tempting since they are risk-free.
In a previous blog, I spoke about how we need to upgrade our thinking, how we must funk up the way we think.

In his LinkedIn post titled “The Power of Loss Aversion”, Cass Sunstein explains that “people dislike losses more than they like equivalent gains”. To illustrate his point, he talks about incentives programs for teachers to improve their student’s achievements. Unfortunately, many of these efforts have been vain. In an ingenious study, teachers were given money in advance and told that if their students did not show real improvements, they would have to give it back. The result? A big improvement in teacher quality, as measured by a significant increase in students’ math scores.

Here are some common behaviors people around us (if not ourselves) experience:

- holding onto a losing stock investment
- keeping a home with a mortgage substantially above its market value
- going to an event you don’t really want to attend because you have already paid for the tickets.

Because gains are fleeting and losses linger, people behave irrationally to avoid loss.

How can you leverage the power of “loss of aversion” to grow your business, motivate your people and increase sales?

When you promote the benefits of your products or services, frame your message towards loss prevention. If you pitch a product to a potential buyer that is designed to increase revenue, don’t just state the obvious benefit such as: “if you use our product X, you can expect your sales to rise by $120K annually”. Instead, remind your buyer that he would face losses from not using your product: “every month that product X is not used, you leave $10K on the table. This is money left that will not be recovered. You will lose money month after month. Can you really afford losing $10K a month?” Switching the message around to remind your buyers that they face losses from not using the product is a much more powerful message than just promoting the gains.

If your business sells products or services directly to consumers, leverage scarcity. Scarcity, one of Cialdini’s “weapons of influence,” is powerful because it represents a loss of freedom. If you are selling a product, promote its limited quantity, retire products early on a constant basis and introduce new products. Put an expiration date on your offer – car dealerships excel at this by pressing potential buyers to accept this one-time deal that may not be available if they shop around and come back two days later. If you are planning an event, make sure you mention the limited seating. Or perhaps you can offer early bird tickets, which gives you the opportunity to market to people’s loss aversion multiple times: once when tickets are announced, once when the early bird discounts are expiring and then just before ticket sales end.

When you define your pricing strategy, focus on the fear of losing money. Retailers who sell home appliances understand this very well. They offer a one-year warranty on a $1000 flat screen plasma or a $2500 refrigerator, reminding customers that after 12 months they are not covered but that they can extend the warranty by paying $200. What do customers do? They pay $200 extra in fear of losing their $1000 purchase, of the (very small) probabilities that their plasma or refrigerator will have some technical issues 3-5 years down the road when the extended warranty is over.

The same could apply to buying insurance, or flat-rate plans for mobile phones, etc. Consumers prefer to pay monthly fees of $40 to protect themselves for potential losses as well as variability of costs for their phone bills, instead of taking the risk to pay $20 a month and $60 another month. They are afraid of paying more, rather than seeing the benefits of paying on actual usage.When you formulate pricing strategies for your different offerings and services, do not forget to utilize the power of loss aversion with your buyers. A dollar gained and a dollar lost might equal zero on a pure economic basis, but it causes great pain to most buyers when behavioral economics is factored in. Buyers will generally pay more to eliminate this pain if your pricing strategy is framed correctly. Ignoring this powerful pricing tool means money left on the table and gone forever... and we all know how painful that can be.

Another principle is the theory of the foot in the door, or the tactic that involves getting a person to agree to a large request by first setting them up by having that person agree to a modest request. You want to create “ownership.” Loss of money (and the freedom of choice that comes with it) can be a barrier to people buying your products or services. However, once they’ve taken ownership of something it’s difficult to give that up. To illustrate, think of the various websites or publications which offer a free 30-day trial period. This is very effective when they require customers’ credit card information up front while allowing them to opt-out within the trial period (most surprisingly, most don’t opt-out simply because they already have a foot in the door). When you sell a product, think about this tactic. You can also easily apply this tactic to motivate your team by asking a small commitment which will lead to a bigger commitment. Imagine you apply the study described above with teachers to your employees… Let’s say you have a profit-sharing plan where your company gives a 10% bonus to your employees if all company goals are met. This is a nice incentive, but how can you be sure your employees give it all? How would it be different if you deposited at the beginning of the year a 10% bonus in their bank account (bonus would be frozen), and that they would have to give it back at the end of the year if your company does not meet its goals?

Power of loss aversion in your day-to-day communication. PR firms know a great deal of leveraging the power of loss aversion when reporting news or financial results. If you have more than one piece of bad news (or losses) to report, bundle up your bad news into one single statement. If you spread out the divulgation of bad news or losses across multiple announcements, you multiply its negative impact. The pain of losing $40 dollars at one time is less painful that losing $20 in two separate instances.On the opposite, when you have multiple pieces of good news to report, you are better off spreading them across several announcements, as people experience greater satisfaction gaining two times $20 versus $40 one time only. When you have a mix of good and bad news to report, try to mix small losses with big gains, but separate your small gains from bigger losses.

In conclusion, while you cannot model your business decisions solely based on the power of loss aversion, the opportunities abound where inclusion of these basic principles can be highly advantageous. You must upgrade the way you think in order to seek gains and put the fear of losing and failing behind you.

French car-sharing service set to arrive in Indy… Success or failure?

Autolib’ arrives in Indianapolis

On June 10, Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard joined forces with civic and business leaders to announce the 2014 launch of an electric car-sharing service led by the French company Bolloré.

This initiative is part of a bigger plan for the city of Indianapolis to replace its fleet with all hybrids and plug-in vehicles by as early as 2025.
Autolib’ was launched in Paris by Bolloré in December 2011. It's going down a storm in Paris, the company's latest figures showing its 1,800 Bluecars have taken over 2 million trips through Paris since late 2011, with 82,000 subscriptions sold. Just 11 months ago, those figures were half a million trips and 37,000 subscriptions.
Cars can be reserved by smartphone and picked up using an access card swiped against a reader on the windshield--the cars in Indy will use a similar system.
What Indianapolis won't be getting is a fleet of Bolloré Bluecars like those used in Paris. Instead, Autolib' plans to use either the Ford Focus Electric, or the familiar Nissan Leaf, as part of its car-sharing service. Both are more suitable for U.S. roads (and indeed, legal and federalized for U.S. use) rather than the French electric vehicle.
Mayor Ballard hopes the service will attract more international visitors to the city and raise its profile--providing an easy and inexpensive way for travelers to move about.

Strong potential
I strongly believe in the potential of this car-sharing service, but several obstacles lay on the road to make Indy Autolib’ a success.
First of all, unlike Paris and other US cities such as San Francisco or Portland (Oregon) which have a robust public transit system, Indianapolis is not known for providing good public transport.
In Paris, Autolib’ is more of a (private) enhancement and addition to public transportation, not a substitution. If you have ever ridden on the crowded metro or bus in Paris, you have had to endure the body odors emanating from your fellow commuters or have been forced into body-to-body positions like you are dancing the Salsa; you understand that renting a car to go from Point A to Point B would be a nice alternative. However, Paris being so vast, you won’t find Autolib’ kiosks in every part of the city, hence the need to eventually juggle between public transit and renting a car. Besides, traffic is horrifying in the French capital. Driving a car in Paris, even if your name is Dario Franchitti, can be as scary as eating frog legs or escargots for a Midwesterner.

Obstacles
The bottom line is that Hoosiers are not big consumers of any type of public transportation. Renting a car is a common practice for Americans while vacationing, but not for short in-city drives. The Midwestern culture of owning and driving a car is very much anchored in our daily commuting habits. Hoosiers don’t use public transportation if they can drive a car. Selling a car-sharing concept like Autolib’ to Indianapolis residents will be challenging in that regards.
Visitors and convention-goers are expected to be a major segment for Autolib’. For instance, the average cost of renting a car through Autolib’ is about $6-8 for a 20-minute ride. A visitor arriving at the Indianapolis airport will see a benefit vs. taking a $35-$40 cab ride to a downtown hotel. Easy to pick up the car at a kiosk at the airport and drop it off at the JW station downtown.

However, Autolib’ can’t be a stand-alone service in Indianapolis as it is in Paris to be vastly successful (for the reasons described above).  In my mind, it has to be integrated into a much larger global product offering. It has to be part of the visitor experience or the downtown business experience. The visitor experience can start with Autolib’ at the airport (Point A), but should not end at the drop off location downtown (Point B). Autolib’s should be linked to other services and products that create the visitor experience (hospitality, events, businesses…), should be one of the platforms to access an array of services available to visitors and business people.

It is great to have an innovative service such as Autolib’ here in our conservative Indianapolis, but transposing the Paris model of Autolib’ to Indianapolis won’t be as successful if it is not part of a much bigger offering.

What do you think?  Will you use Autolib’?  I have some ideas that I would be glad to share to make it a success.