Branding matters. Because branding matters.

04.14#24brandknewmag.com

Published by ISD Global

It’s a delight to be welcoming you into yet another edition of Brand Knew. As has been our practice, we have packed in quite a punch into this issue. For those skewed towards logos and user interface design, the features on heavyweight brands like Warner Bros, Oscar Academy Awards & Google will provide valid insights. We also share 7 different ways in which to create brand advocates while taking a peek into the Best & Worst Designs from the 2014 Sochi Olympics. With its treasure chest of liquid cash, Facebook seems to be on the path to developing a cluster of brands a la P&G while Reebok seems to have made the smart transition from focusing on pros to going cross fit. What will excite the laterally inclined is the article is the article on how a Manhattan neighborhood can be the inspiration to create corporate logos that blend into the eco system. There is more on Visa, Diet Coke and the likes. Soak it in as things get hotter. Till next issue, the very best!

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Dear Friends:

Managing Editor: Suresh DinakaranCreative Head/Director Operations: Pravin AhirMagazine Concept & Design/ New Media Specialist: Mufaddal JoherCountry Head, UK: Sagar PatilCountry Head, India: Rohit UnniDigital Marketing Strategist: Mark CijoAssociate: Brand Success: Andre Van HelsdingenWeb Specialist: Prasanta Kumar SahuOnline Support: Mahendra Kumar Behera

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CONTENTS

Book, Line & Sinker

Visa’s Shiv Singh: This Year, Brands Will Learn How to Measure Real-Time Marketing

Change: Reebok Logo Indicates Shift From Pros to Crossfit

Why The Oscars Logo Got A Makeover

The Importance of Creating Human Connections with Your Brand in Social Media

Three Strategies McDonald’s Is Using to Lift Sales

How can brands apply the principles of SEO when content is shifting to video?

The Best And Worst Design From The 2014 Olympics

Seven Ways To Identify And Engage Brand Advocates

Is Facebook Building a P&G-Style House of Brands?

Diet Coke Is High on Its New Slogan

Behind Google Maps’ Intuitive New Design

3 Reasons Why Co-Making Is The Future Of Branding

Manhattan Neighborhoods Turned Into Corporate Logos

The Surprising History Of The Warner Bros. Logo

Invariably, when an actor wins an Oscar, he thanks the Academy in his acceptance speech. At which point, millions of people watching are probably wondering, who and what exactly is this omniscient Academy?

While best (or perhaps only) known as the organization behind the annual awards show, the Academy is also a company that employs thousands of people who work in education, on film archiving, and--right now especially--on the soon-to-open, Renzo Piano-designed Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. Despite the year-round work, the Academy’s visual identity only spotlighted one thing: the Oscars.

Which helps explain why last year, the Academy enlisted the help of 180LA, a design agency based in Los Angeles, to create a new visual identity. “They needed a unifying idea, regardless of whether you’re an archivist in white gloves taking care of treasures in film, or a Steven Spielberg type,” says William Gelner, 180LA’s chief creative officer.

The old Academy logo had existed since the 1920s, and

it exclusively showed off the shape of the Academy’s gold statuette. At some point, the statuette became ensconced in a round oval. To create a more encompassing brand identity, Gelner and the design team decided that the Oscar had to stop hogging the spotlight.

“It became a simple solution,” Richard Harrington, head of design, tells Co.Design. “For me it was all about the light that was behind the original logo. So we picked that light up and shone it down on top of the Oscar, and it created an ‘A’ shape. There were the same components: we’ve got light, we‘ve got a statuette. And it’s an ‘A’ shape, which obviously stands for the Academy.”

Gelner and Harrington also found that by stashing the anchor logo--of the statuette underneath the letter ‘A’--they could easily integrate it into larger signage for the Academy, or the Oscars, without reinventing the entire look. “In the old logo, the Academy brand itself felt like a tagalong, versus being the brand behind the Oscars,” Gelner says. “Now there’s a huge emphasis on the A.”

LA-BASED AGENCY 180LA GAVE THE ACADEMY ITS NEW VISUAL IDENTITY.

Margaret Rhodes

The Academy›s old logo

Why The Oscars Logo Got A Makeover

THE EXPLOSIVE SUCCESS OF THE TACO BELL DORITOS LOCOS TACO SHOWS THAT IT’S TIME FOR BRANDS TO COLLABORATE TO CREATE

REAL BREAKTHROUGHS.

3 Reasons Why Co-Making Is The Future Of Branding

Devin Liddell

Eleven of the most notable technology brands in the world--Apple, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, Intel, Cisco, HP, Oracle, SAP, Dell, and Adobe--together filed more then 15,000 patents in 2012 alone. Developing and protecting intellectual property is important, but all this patent filing reveals an entrenched posture among technology companies that can be summarized in a word: mine! This is a problem. Because the way we’re currently thinking about technologies is in direct conflict with how we think about brands. Technologies might belong to companies (because a team of lawyers says they do), but brands belong to people. And the people don’t want more patents. They want products, services, and experiences they can’t get anywhere else. This is harder and harder to do in our crowded marketplaces, so more and more brands are collaborating to create real breakthroughs. Co-making is on the rise, and it’s a very good thing for brands and their audiences.

Consider these examples: the Taco Bell Doritos Locos Taco, the most successful product launch in Taco Bell history, moved 100 million units in its first 10 weeks and has already sold more than a billion units. Even before Taco Bell and the Doritos folks at Frito Lay teamed up to create a stoner’s dream, Apple and Nike collaborated to create Nike+, which is now nothing less than the world’s largest running club. And Fiat and Gucci created a winning combination with their collaboration, the Fiat 500 by Gucci. Importantly, these examples are not about co-branding, which has traditionally been about marketing synergies--logo co-placement, sponsorships, and licensing. These are examples of co-making, brands teaming up to make-versus just market--the actual product, service, or experience. And there are three very good reasons why we’ll see more of these kinds of product development relationships in the near future.

CONSUMER LOVE = HIGH MARGINS

The Doritos Locos Taco earns a 40% premium compared to Taco Bell’s regular taco. The Fiat 500 by Gucci sells briskly at a 52% markup over the base price of a standard Fiat 500. Online preorders for the original Nike+ Fuelband sold out in minutes, and Nike’s equipment division reported an 18% increase in profits for the fiscal year following the product’s introduction. These are impressive numbers for what are essentially a taco, an iOS-powered pedometer, and a very small Italian car. Margins like this used to be the exclusive domain of technology companies, so imagine what

premiums technology companies will be able to command with even more groundbreaking collaborations.

SNOWFLAKE STATUS

The best brands are always striving for “only” status--a marketplace position that has no perceived substitute. But such a position is mostly mythological. Why? Because any category worth being in features capable competitors. Apple, currently the most powerful brand in the world, is hardly free of rivals. But co-making presents an opportunity to turn the myth of the “only” into a reality. Simply put, co-making creates something that otherwise could not exist, something that would not be possible without the contributions of two different brands. The number of potential brand pairings is essentially infinite, with the results of each pairing entirely unique. That’s a very real “only.”

OUTSIDE INSPIRATION

The juiciest design and business opportunities in front of us simply cannot be solved with this-technology-is-all-mine thinking. Brands are often representative of core expertise, and tackling our world’s most formidable innovation challenges--from sustainability and security to transportation and health care--will obviously require more than a single expertise. We need our best technology brands to stop fussing about patents and start teaming up to tackle the impossible. Teaming up also infuses companies with new ideas and worldviews that are too often missing in our insular, us-against-them corporate cultures. Co-making is a fast way to get inspired, take on bigger stuff, learn new skills, and break new ground.

It’s time. It’s time for Google and American Express to design a smarter credit card, one that syncs with location-based technologies to score the best deals while also making fraud impossible. It’s time for Xbox and Virgin to re-imagine in-flight entertainment, and extend that experience across both air travel and hotel stays. It’s time for iRobot and Honda to finally cut to the chase with driverless cars. It’s time for HP and The Home Depot to 3-D print any nut, bolt, screw, or washer we may need. It’s time for Cisco and Honeywell and Samsung to visualize data from in-home water, gas, and electrical systems so we can cut our utility bills right from the couch. It’s time for all kinds of breakthroughs. Tacos with Doritos shells are just the start.

THE DORITOS LOCOS TACO EARNS A 40% PREMIUM COMPARED TO TACO BELL’S REGULAR TACO.

CO-MAKING PRESENTS AN OPPORTUNITY TO TURN THE MYTH OF THE ‘ONLY’ INTO A REALITY.

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1. BEST: PHOTOGRAPHS OF LIFE IN SOCHI BEFORE THE OLYMPICS SWEPT IN

2. BEST: A VISUAL GUIDE TO CORRUPTION AT SOCHI

Before the 2014 Olympic Games came along, Sochi was a humble little seaside city. Residents there hardly knew what they were in for. Photographers for a new book called The Sochi Project spent two years documenting Sochi and argue that it makes next to no sense to turn this resort destination into a world stage for a massive sporting event.

When Putin and his cronies stormed into Sochi, they spent a total of $51 billion--$40 billion over budget--building the most expensive Olympic Games in history. An infographic by Russia’s Anti-Corruption Foundation reveals how government officials and businessmen turned the Olympics into a source of illicit income. Marvel here at the staggering costs of the Games, from a $25,000 stadium seat to an $8.7 billion highway (the world’s most expensive). You’d think they could’ve bought a few working

doorknobs, too.

The Best And Worst Design From The 2014 OlympicsCarey Dunne

FROM THE MINIMAL LOGO TO THE SUPER-SIZED HALFPIPE, HERE’S A ROUNDUP OF THE BEST AND WORST DESIGN AT THE OLYMPICS THIS YEAR.

3. WORST: THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE 2014 WINTER OLYMPICS

4. BEST: A REBRANDED OLYMPIC MUSEUM

5. BEST?: BEHIND THE MINIMAL LOOK OF THE 2014 OLYMPICS LOGO

7. WORST: THE SOCHI POSTER (AND MORE OLYMPIC POSTERS, FROM THE GOOD TO THE BAD TO THE UGLY)

So, how did all these ridiculously expensive skating palaces and ice domes turn out? We ranked the Sochi architecture from best to worst (spoiler alert: Vladimir Putin’s chest is tied

for number one).

More impressive than most of Sochi’s gaudy monoliths was Base Design’s rebranding of the Olympic Museum in Switzerland, a sleek graphic identity, which we awarded with

an imaginary gold medal.

With all the money they spent, you’d think the Olympic Committee could have designed a flashier Sochi logo. But there’s actually a compelling story behind the 2014 logo’s minimal, futuristic look. The first Olympic logo made with the digital world in mind, it beat out an original proposal for a more traditional, ornate design. Check out the history of Olympic logos (many of them much worse than Sochi’s) here.

A tour through Olympic posters from 1906 to today is a lesson in the evolution of graphic design. Posters throughout the last century channeled Art Deco, minimalism, the hippie aesthetic, and Keith Haring’s graffiti art, all toward the same end of capturing the spirit of the games through design. Sochi’s poster, a vivid diamond pattern, doesn’t capture much of anything.

6. WORST: UNDER ARMOUR’S MACH 39 SPEEDSKATING SUIT

Sochi’s biggest uniform fiasco came when the American speedskating team ditched Under Armour’s fancy Mach 39 speedskating suit. Team members claimed it slowed them down, and switched back to their old suits. Embarrassing for Under Armour, but not as embarrassing as one poor bobsledder’s pants split.

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8. WORST: SOCHI’S QUILT-LIKE BRANDING

9. BEST: SOVIET PROPAGANDA TURNED INTO FABULOUS GAY PRIDE POSTERS

Speaking of the rainbow diamonds plastered all over this year’s Olympic poster: They also informed Sochi’s branding. The design references a hodgepodge of Russian arts and crafts traditions, quilting them together in a big blanket that, if you look more deeply, glosses over a complicated and violent history. This strategic branding attempts to persuade the world

that Russia is one big happy family, dammit.

10: WORST: THE HALFPIPE DESIGN

11. BEST: NATE SILVERING THE SOCHI MEDAL COUNT

12. BEST: THE WINTER OLYMPICS IN DOWNTOWN NEW YORK

Over the past 16 years, the Winter Olympic halfpipe has almost doubled in height. This means trickier tricks and, you would think, more dangerous falls by competing athletes. But industry insiders insist that the halfpipe has actually gotten safer (though it didn’t stop this year’s athletes from falling

left and right).

As of today, the U.S. has won 24 medals at Sochi. Before the games began, with a statistical model painstakingly crafted over the course of four years, data analysts Dan and Tim Graettinger predicted that the U.S. would win 29 medals this year. We visualized their predictions here.

A luge track through Times Square? A ski jump over Bryant Park? Though it would’ve made commuting in New York this winter even suckier, a creative visualization by the New York Times proves that the Winter Olympics in downtown New York City would have looked

nothing less than dope.

It’s been suggested that Sochi’s rainbow branding is a ploy to visually drown out any rainbow pride flags waved in protest of Russia’s recent legislature banning “gay propaganda.” Protesters around the world have been coming out in support of Russia’s oppressed LGBT community. One of our favorite protest campaigns turns old Soviet Propaganda posters into Pride Propaganda, replacing hammer-and-sickle flags with rainbow pride flags, depicting the bygone USSR as one big happy gay family.

First launched in 2005, Google Maps has helped hundreds of millions of people plot billions of trips worldwide. It’s one of the most indispensable Internet services available: more than 54% of all smartphone owners in the world use it at least once a month.

So how do you redesign Maps for the next decade, those next billion trips? You throw everything out and redesign it from the ground up with the future in mind--and not just the future of smartphones and tablets, but also the future of Google Glass, the iWatch, and self-driving cars.

Currently rolling out to all users internationally, Google’s new Maps design is a radical overhaul of the service that most of us have grown familiar with over the years. Featuring a minimalist UI based off of Chrome, it’s faster, more responsive, more personalized, and more integrated with related Maps services like Google Earth than ever before.

“The old Maps was a lot like a Christmas tree,” says Jonah Jones, lead designer for Google Maps. “We kept on adding these beautiful new ornaments, but over the years, the ornaments started weighing the tree down, and it became hard to find the one you were looking for.” The accumulated cruft of almost a decade of development had resulted in a design that was cluttered and obtuse, with countless Google services layered over one another. This made features hard to discover, unless you already knew they were there.

For the update, Google wanted to take a step back and redesign Google Maps from scratch to accommodate the feature set it had built up over the years. Not only did it need to seamlessly integrate Google’s many mapping services such as Google Earth and Street Views, but it also needed to provide as future-proof of a base as possible to build out Maps for the next decade.

Behind Google Maps’ Intuitive New Design

HOW DO YOU REDESIGN THE WORLD’S MOST POPULAR MAPPING SERVICE

WITH THE DEVICES OF THE FUTURE IN MIND? YOU THROW EVERYTHING OUT

AND START FROM SCRATCH.

John Brownlee

The new Google Maps sees a redesign of Pegman, the Street View mascot. His animations now show him dangling his limbs when you “drive” around.

THE OLD MAPS WAS A LOT LIKE

A CHRISTMAS TREE. WE KEPT

ADDING THESE BEAUTIFUL

NEW ORNAMENTS, BUT OVER

THE YEARS, THE ORNAMENTS

STARTED WEIGHING THE

TREE DOWN.

INTERACTING WITH THE CONTENT, NOT THE DROPDOWNS

One thing that liberated the Google Maps design team, Jones says, is the fact that people’s expectations of user interfaces are changing. In an age of touch-screen devices and minimal UIs, people are used to more directly interacting with content, instead of menus and dropdowns. For the redesign, Jones and his team wanted to do for Maps what Chrome had done for browsers: strip away all the buttons and controls, and have users interacting with maps directly.

“During our design process, we were super aggressive,” says Jones. “We would ask ourselves, ‘What would we design if we could only keep 20% of Maps’ features? In the end, though, there were incredibly few features that ended up being dropped. They’re just not all screaming for attention anymore.”

The cardinal design principle of the new Maps design is to contextualize the location it is showing a user at any time, and only present the user further options for interacting with a location as appropriate. For example, if you are browsing a map, and click or tap a nearby subway station, Google Maps will present you with a card telling you what trains and buses service the station, and when they will be arriving. Simultaneously, Maps adds an overlay so you can see the train and bus routes.

The same principle governs interacting with any other location. Click on a restaurant, or search for it, and a card will pop up with its address, hours, website, phone number, and reviews. From there, you can save it to a list of your Google Maps favorites, making it easier to navigate to in the future, or call up directions with just a tap. A Street View or Google Earth view of that location is just a button click away.

The old Google Maps obscured the map when trying to show you information about the pin. In the new design, this information appears to the side.

NOT ONLY IS THE VECTOR

APPROACH FASTER, BUT IT IS

ALSO TRULY 3-D.

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Not only is the vector approach faster, but it is also truly 3-D (albeit, most of the time, viewed from a two-dimensional perspective). This allows Google to do things it could never do before, like incorporate Google Earth’s 3-D view into Maps directly, without loading up an entirely separate app. This shift to true 3-D, though, did have one casualty: a fake shadow on the Google Maps pin.

“In the past, the perspective was a bit weird, because while you were always viewing the map from above, a prominent branding element--which you can still see even on the official app icons--was a fake shadow on the pin, set at a 45-degree angle,” Jones says. “In the new Maps, that 45-degree shadow is discordant: because everything is now rendered in 3-D, we can now have real shadows on all the buildings. So the fake shadow had to go. You wouldn’t believe how many discussions we had, just about dropping the shadow from the pin.”

Finally, the new Google Maps was designed from the ground up to work well on everything, from smartphones to tablets to PCs. In 2014, a responsive, scalable design that works everywhere might seem like a matter of course for a company like Google, but Jones and his team needed to also design the new Maps while keeping in mind the devices of the future. Jones and his team have worked with the engineers behind Google Glass to lay the groundwork for Maps on the company’s wearable headset; the interface of Google Maps has been designed so that it could, in theory, scale down to be visible on a watch face.

“Eventually, Google Maps might have to run on Glass, or even on a smartwatch. It will have to integrate new services and features, too,” says Jones. “The whole point of this redesign is to make the first baby steps towards a new future, half of which we’ve already imagined, and the other half of which we haven’t even conceived of yet.”

The new Google Maps should finish its rollout to users this month. If you don’t see it yet, check back.

A MAPS FOR MANY PLATFORMS

The new Google Maps is not just a new interface, though. There are some significant technological changes happening behind the scenes to bring Google Maps into 2014. It’s faster, it’s 3-D, and it is designed from the ground up to handle any device you can throw at it.

The old Google Maps displayed map information as a series of pre-rendered tiles, fit together so as to best represent the location you were searching for. If you have ever played a game of Carcassonne, you’ve got the idea. The problem with tiles, though, is that since they are pre-rendered, they need to be downloaded every time you refresh a map. This can result in slower download times, especially in mobile devices. For the redesign, Google switched to vector-based maps. Instead of downloading a series of pre-rendered images for each map, Google’s servers pass along a stream of data to the new Maps that describes what a location should look like using points, lines, curves, and other geometric objects.

The evolution of Google Maps, from tiles to vectors.

EVENTUALLY, GOOGLE MAPS

MIGHT HAVE TO RUN ON

GLASS, OR EVEN ON A

SMARTWATCH.

Change: Reebok Logo Indicates Shift From Pros to CrossfitDelta Symbol Coincides With Brands Focus on Fitness Rather Than Elite AthletesNatalie Zmuda

It is only the second major logo change in the brand’s 121-year history. From its founding in the United Kingdom in 1895 until 1986, the brand featured a Union Jack flag. In 1986 it switched to the vector logo, which will be gradually phased out on all products except Reebok Classics. The new delta logo, which has been used on some of the company’s Crossfit gear, will be rolled out broadly on footwear and apparel this month.

“For 30 years we’ve been successfully making products for elite athletes in every imaginable sport, but what we haven’t been able to do is inspire enough people to move,” said Matt O’Toole, Reebok Chief Marketing Officer, in a video posted on YouTube. “It’s an invitation for all of us to take part and fight against complacency for everyday people not just super stars and elite athletes.”

Reebok has a long history of endorsing elite athletes, from basketball stars Allen Iverson and Yao Ming to football players like Peyton Manning and Ray Lewis. It has also outfitted baseball, tennis, soccer and hockey players. Reebok gave up its NFL sponsorship in 2012 and rumors have circulated that the brand could be replaced by parent company Adidas on NHL jerseys -- there is precedent, Adidas replaced Reebok as an NBA sponsor in 2006.

As the brand has ceded deals with professional leagues to its parent company, it has embraced Crossfit, yoga, dance and aerobics, as a means to grow its business. Reebok has also teamed up with Les Mills -- known for exercise programs like Bodypump and Bodycombat -- as well as the Spartan Race series of obstacle course races.

The new logo coincides with the brand’s “singular” focus on fitness. “Through the millennia the delta has been a symbol of change and transformation,” the company explained in a press release. “The Reebok Delta has three distinct parts each representing the changes -- physical, mental and social -- that occur when people push themselves beyond their perceived limits and embrace an active and challenging life.”

The delta symbol, of course, will also look familiar to anyone who has recycled, used Google Drive or flown Delta Air Lines.

Earlier this month, Reebok selected indie agency Venables Bell & Partners as its new global lead agency after a review. The account had flip-flopped between Omnicom’s DDB and Dentsu’s McGarrybowen over the course of the last decade.

Though sales at Reebok have been sluggish in recent years, the brand is showing some signs of improvement. During the most recent quarter, sales increased 5%, and executives said the brand would grow for the full year.

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Shiv Singh’s role at Visa is twofold: to manage global brand strategy and positioning, but also to evolve the way Visa does marketing. Singh spoke with eMarketer’s Debra Aho Williamson about Visa’s attitude toward real-time marketing and how the company plans to measure the performance of real-time initiatives

Visa’s Shiv Singh: This Year, Brands Will Learn How to Measure Real-Time Marketing

Shiv Singh

eMarketer: Real-time marketing may be one of the biggest disruptors that brands face right now. The idea that you need to be agile and responsive and move quickly and use data and respond rapidly is something many companies are confronting. How do you approach it at Visa?

Shiv Singh: Real-time marketing is a phrase that has, I think, 100 definitions. Unfortunately, a lot of brands are losing sight of what the heart and soul and DNA of their brand is. They’re letting the real-time marketing craze just drive everything and anything they do.

From our perspective at Visa, we have very strong brand positioning, very strong brand strategy. Anything and everything we do needs to build our brand and drive our geography marketing and business objectives. And if it doesn’t, we don’t feel the need to do real-time marketing for the sake of real-time marketing.

eMarketer: In what types of scenarios does real-time marketing make sense for Visa?

Singh: When we think about real-time marketing, we think of a few things. One is much sharper, much tighter insights about our consumers. We want to find that intersection between what’s happening in real-time culture—what our consumer interests and desires are—and what our brand purpose and meaning is.

One of the things that we’re pushing is connecting social insights with pop culture and with content, not just in social, but across all channels and mediums. We also want to connect social insights with media planning and buying, not just in social but [again] across all channels and mediums, and not just for premium buying, but programmatic buying as well. And then we want to close that loop with measurements that tie in with actual business results.

For a lot of people, real-time marketing is using Twitter with an ad buy and being cute. For us, it’s much deeper insights—it’s influencing much larger-scale programmatic buys and then having the measurement infrastructure in place to support it.

“We want to find that intersection between what’s happening in real-time culture—what our consumer interests and desires are—and what our brand purpose and meaning is.”

“Real-time marketing is still in its infancy, in its early, early days, because you can’t track as effectively the scale and the predictability and the repeatability of it.”

eMarketer: How do you measure your real-time marketing?

Singh: We ran a really awesome program called #GoInSix over the past six months, where we took real-time insights and developed five or six creative options. [Editor’s Note: The multiplatform social media effort used 6-second Vine videos, six-word tweets and other short-form content to encourage consumers to do something they love to do—shop and travel, among other activities.] Through automated testing on Facebook, we saw which worked best, and then we scaled it with ad spend. We did this several times a week. We tracked the shared impressions, earned impressions, the total impressions and the average cost per impression.

What we are going to do more of in 2014 is tying all of this much more tightly to the brand, such as by doing brand Nielsen studies and working with partners to show the measurable impact on payment volume where we can.

Now, this all sounds fancy and impressive. But the huge caveat and the huge reality, which I don’t think anyone has figured out, is getting scale in real-time marketing—and not just scale, but predictable, repeatable scale. Brands are in the business of predictability and repeatability. We have quarterly earnings and need to be able to track marketing’s contribution to the business. Real-time marketing is still in its infancy, in its early, early days, because you can’t track as effectively the scale and the predictability and the repeatability of it. And I think that’s what we’re going to crack this year.

Partners like Datalogix and Acxiom help us understand the offline impact of [online] brand actions. The more challenging piece is that we don’t have any benchmarks [for real-time marketing]. With our TV spend, we know what it does for our business because we have a 20-, 30-, 40-year history, and we know what certain numbers mean. Here, we have to see in any given week how much scale we are getting, with what level of investment and what level of payment volume impact is happening. And therefore, what are the right benchmarks to have?

eMarketer: Can you compare the results of what you’re doing in real-time with marketing that’s more traditional or more evergreen?

Singh: It’s a little frustrating for me because I don’t think as an industry we’ve moved forward enough on the analytics front. On the finance side of our organization, everything can still go into a profit-and-loss statement on a balance sheet. It’s a single currency for conversation and for understanding the business. With real-time marketing, you have to normalize it against other marketing strategies or tactics. It shouldn’t be thought of as a privileged child.

You have to focus on reach with large brands like ours. You have to focus on the resonance or the level of engagement, the quality of engagement. You have to focus on what impact does it have on the brand, and do you have a way to measure that impact that’s normalized with the way you measure the impact from other marketing activities, and then what impact it has on the bottom line.

eMarketer: In the early days of social, a lot of brands had a gut feeling that they needed to be there. Is the same true of real-time marketing—that right now maybe it’s more of a gut feeling—and they’re hoping over time to be able to prove it through metrics and measurement?

Singh: I think it’s at a confusing stage where there isn’t clarity around what real-time marketing is, because it’s all so buzz-driven. I don’t think necessarily that every brand needs to play significantly in it. I think what every brand needs to do is to recognize that for them to succeed they have to be participants and contributors and curators in culture vs. being interrupters and distractors. And that may happen in more of a real-time fashion or it may not.

I think a brand can get it so wrong so quickly by just saying, “Oh, we need to do something here. Let’s just go and try.” I would say that they need to know what their brand stands for—and know really well. And knowing that, then it’s easy to know how to play in real-time marketing. And it will probably come naturally in many ways.

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One of the best things about social media is that people are becoming more real, revealing more about themselves. People are showing more courage in putting themselves out there - sure, some guy you went to school with might judge you for sharing your feelings, but there are others with whom your opinions will resonate, and those are the people you really want to connect with. Social media facilitates better connections with likeminded folk, leading to the creation of online communities that foster encouragement, creativity and genuine relationships. It’s really great to see, really heartening to see people who might have felt out of place in the world finding others who feel the same way.

I was reminded of this when Bryan Kramer did a presentation recently where he summed this up perfectly from a business perspective:

‘THERE IS NO MORE B2B OR B2C: THERE IS ONLY HUMAN TO HUMAN (H2H)’

It’s a simple, inspiring summary that’s been rightfully praised by many in the industry. It underlines that community spirit, that tangible sense of belonging that people are finding in the social media landscape. Inspiring is the best word for it, and I applaud Bryan for his clarity.

What does this mean for business?

Bryan’s statement really captures the mood around social media and how it should be used by brands. There’s a clear shift away from advertising and selling and a move towards creating genuine connections with people. The emphasis on content is largely due to it being a way to create human connections, an opportunity to present who you are as a company, as opposed to what you do. It’s an exciting time to be involved as the opportunities for creating real, meaningful relationships are there, waiting, and the audience is looking for engagement. You just have to reach out to them, understand them, and, ideally, contribute to their world. The opportunity to take up a place of trust and service has never been better, it’s now up to businesses to take it.

So how do you do it?

Listening. This is emphasised by every social media expert in every post and every publication. You need to learn what your customers want, listen to what they’re after, then be responsive to their needs. You’ve got access to more consumer data than ever before, and most of it is happening in day to day discussions, right now, conversations that you can tap into and take notes from. You need to listen, but more than that, you need to hear what’s being said and absorb that information into your processes.

Brands need to be more human

Be real, be genuine. Be adventurous with your messaging. You know your target audience - ideally, you are amongst them yourself - so if you’re taking a risk and putting yourself out there, think about what would resonate with you. What would you respond to as a target consumer? You have the data, the platforms, the means - you can find likeminded, or better ‘like-wanted’, folk that will connect with your brand identity. You just have to establish what that identity is.

Be about people

What’s the thing that people always say when they leave a company? ‘The best thing about working here was the people’. Social media gives you a chance to make all businesses about the people. Obviously, your product still needs to be great, but that inner-company camaraderie can be spread further, creating a more collaborative relationship between your business and your clients. People want to be part of a community, to feel like they belong. Social media gives you the chance to show that they belong with you.

It’s not about consumers, it’s not about clients. It’s about people. Listening, engaging, creating real connections. H2H.

They’re out there now, talking to each other, establishing likeminded communities. All you have to do is go meet them.

The Importance of Creating Human

Connections with Your Brand in Social Media

Andrew Hutchinson

Back in 2008, I had the chance to lead Procter & Gamble’s Joint Business Planning with Facebook and other big digital media players. The intent of the Joint Business Plan wasn’t about just increasing advertising dollars. It was about sharing knowledge between the two companies with the goal of having a strategic relationship where we both became better businesses as a result. P&G expanded its digital knowledge while Facebook learned more about how brand marketers thought. Now that Facebook is buying the messaging system WhatsApp in cash and stock valued at $16 billion, it looks like the company didn’t just learn how to think like P&G; it may be becoming a P&G as well.

What I mean is that Facebook appears to be using the Procter & Gamble playbook for building a “house of brands.” This playbook is about building a portfolio of businesses that often will compete against each other but ultimately give your company a larger market share. For instance, P&G’s global laundry market share is around 31%. This includes brands like Tide, Gain and Ariel, each of which contributes above $1 billion in annual sales. But the company also has brands like Bounce, Downy, Era and others that all compete in the same space. The same goes for baby care with both Pampers and Luvs as well as hair care with Pantene, Head & Shoulders, Aussie and Herbal Essences.

Facebook has long been an active acquirer, with WhatsApp being its 45th purchase by some counts. But its purchases have historically been either acqui-hires for the talent or foundations for future Facebook features. Hot Potato became the basis for Facebook Places, for example, while Karma became Facebook Gifts.

But this might be changing. The first indication was the purchase of Instagram in April 2012. At the time, Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom wrote bluntly in a blog post that “Instagram

is not going away.” As we near the second anniversary of that deal, those words have held true and Instagram is an even stronger brand today than it was back then.

With the WhatsApp purchase, the key message track for Zuckerberg and company is that “WhatsApp is on a path to connect 1 billion people.” The talk isn’t around how WhatsApp will fix Facebook Messenger, but about the potential of the WhatsApp brand and service.

P&G says its purpose is to “provide branded products and services of superior quality and value that improve the lives of the world’s consumers, now and for generations to come.” Facebook on the other hand says it wants “to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.” With the addition of WhatsApp and Instagram, you could argue that these purposes are becoming more and more similar. Facebook now has three superior branded products to improve consumers’ lives and connect the world better.

People were shocked at the price of Facebook’s purchase of Instagram in 2012. And there is even greater disbelief as the WhatsApp acquisition goes down as one of the largest M&A deals in history. But in many ways, both of these deals are similar to the moves P&G made to buy Gillette for $57 billion and Clairol for $5 billion. With Gillette, P&G gained one of the strongest male grooming brands in the world, while Clairol was a foundation for the scale of P&G beauty. For Facebook, WhatsApp has the same role in messaging, while Instagram offers it for photos.

In the end, Facebook is increasingly following the same house of brands strategy that built the great packaged-goods companies like P&G, Unilever, and Nestle. I’d say it clearly learned something about building brands during all those Joint Business Plan meetings years ago.

Is Facebook Building a P&G-Style House of Brands?Long Focused on Acquiring Companies Mostly for Their TalentDave Knox

Is High on ItsNew Slogan

Claire Suddath

Coca-Cola is going back to its roots. All the way to when its original product, invented by a morphine addict, actually contained cocaine. At least that’s what the company appears to be doing with billboards and signs proclaiming, “You’re on. Diet Coke.”

Coke’s campaign was launched with a commercial that aired during the Sochi Olympic Games. In it, Taylor Swift takes a swig of Diet Coke before being told, “You’re on”—as in, it’s time to go onstage. But the print version of the campaign evokes an entirely different message. One version that appeared on the side of a Manhattan bus stop reads, “You moved to New York with two turntables, a microphone and a really cool DJ name. You’re on. Diet Coke.” Another says: “You moved to New York with a portfolio, a pair of skinny jeans and strong opinions on hemlines. You’re on. Diet Coke.” San Francisco gets its own version: “You moved to San Francisco with an engineering degree, an app idea and an investor named Nana. You’re on. Diet Coke.” Ditch the period and the word “diet,” and you’ll see what the problem is.

“This is risky for Coca-Cola,” says Kelly O’Keefe, a professor of brand management at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Brandcenter. “I’m not sure they intended it to be directly hinting at the drug culture—I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt—but this isn’t a place Coca-Cola should be going.”

Coke usually runs safe advertisements that tap into feelings of nostalgia, unity, and familiarity. For the most part, it still

does; that’s the message of its multicultural “America the Beautiful” Super Bowl commercial. “You’re on,” conceived by New York advertising firm Droga5, which declined to comment for this article, represents the first time Coke may have tried to push boundaries.

In a statement, the company says its campaign targets “ambitious young achievers from all walks of life.” Stuart Kronauge, general manager for sparkling beverages at Coca-Cola North America, told the New York Times that “You’re on” references Diet Coke’s “uplift for those moments when you need to be on.” The company is mum on whether the cocaine reference was intentional. It also stresses that it “in no way endorses or supports the use of any illegal substance.”

The average Coca-Cola drinker is 56 years old, according to research done by marketing consultant and author Martin Lindstrom. And Coke desperately needs to lure younger consumers, specifically millennials. According to a Gallup poll, 63 percent of Americans 18 to 29 years old still drink soda regularly, the most of any age group. Diet soda drinkers have a higher income level (more than $75,000) and are more health-conscious than those who drink regular soda, which may explain Diet Coke’s youthful New York- and San Francisco-focused campaign.

In the pantheon of misunderstood advertisements, Coke’s “You’re on” campaign is a minor flub. Compared with some disasters—such as the McDonald’s (MCD) short-lived 2005 “Double cheeseburger? I’d hit it” ad (apparently, the marketing department misunderstood the term), or the time Spirit Airlines (SAVE) tried to joke about the 2010 BP oil spill by inviting people to fly to Fort Lauderdale to “check out the oil on our beaches”—Coca-Cola is getting off easy. Its level of embarrassment could’ve been worse. For one thing, it could’ve said, “You’re on New Coke.”

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Designer James C. Taylor of Pennarello Design created these great corporate logo versions of Manhattan neighborhoods, from the Lower East Side to Harlem. The Lower East Side, formerly home to dive bars, is recharacterized as the Gap logo. SoHo, the classic industrial-zone-turned-artist’s-haunt, is now given the logo of Japanese behemoth Uniqlo. Chelsea, the theater district, is rebranded as a Chase Bank logo.

It’s a statement on, if not a protest of, the corporatization of Manhattan, in which the formerly distinct neighborhoods are taken over by enormous brands, thanks in part to the extra-long, extra business-friendly Bloomberg administration. Says Taylor:

The project itself was borne out of my increasing frustration and disillusionment with the deteriorating

state of Manhattan’s retail landscape. I’ve only lived in New York for seven years, but in that relatively short time I’ve seen this aspect of the city change dramatically, often at the expense of variety, diversity and quality.

James is a British native, a transplant to New York, but his work of late, from graphic design to photography, has focused on capturing the city he now calls home. And the neighborhoods are a major part of any experience of New York.

Only New York has this many neighborhoods with nationally known identities in their own rights. San Francisco has Haight-Ashbury and the Mission; further south there’s Hollywood and West Hollywood; maybe in Chicago you’ve got Wicker Park.

But New York’s neighborhoods are almost brands in their own right, from the tony Upper West Side to the grungier East Village to the artsy theater district of Chelsea.

That’s what makes it all the more damning that the logos are just as identifiable. “I simply selected the brands and companies that seemed most prevalent on the streets of Manhattan, whose ubiquity would guarantee familiarity,” Taylor says. And no longer does Manhattan feel grungy or artsy to him (though the Upper West Side may never cease to be tony):

The city that once prided itself on its contrariness to the rest of the United States now seems content to invite

corporate America onto its shores, encouraging the very same monotony from which people used to come here to escape. Consequently, New York instead now attracts a very different kind of transplant: one that can continue to live a suburban existence surrounded by the familiar comforts of whatever town they came from.

It’s a relatively common complaint among New Yorkers; just recently, Williamsburg residents protested the opening of a Duane Reade. And it has elements of longing for the Bad Old Days, when Times Square was dangerous and Brooklyn might as well have been New Jersey. But it’s emblematic of a cycle of movement and gentrification that pushes poorer people around the city in search of affordable housing. James’s depiction is simple and powerful: look what the city has become.

Manhattan Neighborhoods Turned Into Corporate LogosONE DESIGNER SEES THE CITY THAT NEVER SLEEPS TURNING INTO A 24-HOUR DUANE READE.

Dan Nosowitz

Pity the East Village, once grungy, now, not so much.

Well, at least FiDi was never much of a cultural center.

Gramercy is these days indeed littered with

Subway sandwich shops.

Though a few remnants of the old Greenwich Village survive, there are certainly

Starbucks there as well.

James Taylor, the designer of these logos, told us that he picked Harlem for the Staples logo because the only recognizable part of the Staples logo is the capital letter L.

Gap’s logo would only work for three-letter neighborhoods--LES (Lower East Side), UES (Upper East Side), and UWS (Upper West Side).

Chelsea, the sort of theater/gallery district, rebranded as Chase Bank.

Perhaps the most famous logo of them all.

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American Apparel’s trademark minimalist logo fits perfectly with the post-industrial vibe of the Meatpacking District.

Though SoHo was for years the only Uniqlo location in North America, now they can be found in Midtown and even in Brooklyn.

The home of New York’s biggest film festival gets corporatified.

The Upper East Side gets Duane Reade-ified.

The Upper West Side is home to several Dunkin Donuts.

And finally, the West Village. Does anyone know what the difference is between the West Village

and Greenwich Village?

The Surprising History Of The Warner Bros. Logo

John Brownlee

PROVING THAT GREAT DESIGN IS BOTH TIMELESS AND INFINITELY

ADAPTABLE, THE WARNER BROS. LOGO HAS HAD HUNDREDS OF DIFFERENT

ITERATIONS OVER THE YEARS. HERE ARE SOME OF OUR FAVORITES.

1998 onwards.

The Warner Bros. logo has always had the same basic premise: It’s a shield floating in the clouds stamped with the initials W.B. Everyone knows it, and looking back at old Warner Bros. movies, it’s tempting to say that it basically hasn’t changed over the years: The emblem you see at the beginning of a movie today seems virtually identical to the one you would have seen 60 years ago.

Or does it? In actuality, over the last century, the Warner Bros. logo has seen a surprising number of design iterations that has resulted in literally hundreds of different logos, and a fantastically comprehensive gallery shows what has changed over the years, and what has not.

The first Warner Bros. logo hails all the way back to the 1920s. As seen in films such as 1927’s The Jazz Singer, it establishes the basic motif of the Warner Bros. logo for the next 90 years: a shield with the initials “W.B.” stamped on it. Yet unlike future iterations, the original logo crushed the studio’s initials into the lower third of the shield, so as to reveal the company’s Burbank film studios.

Through the 1920s and 1930s, the W.B. initials eventually grew to take over the rest of the shield, and by 1935’s Captain Blood, the Warner Bros. logo had settled into a more elongated but otherwise similar version of the design it has used, with small iterations, for the past 80 years. But there are exceptions. In November, 1966, Jack Warner sold control of Warner Bros. to Seven Arts, Inc. The studio was then renamed Warner Bros.-Seven Arts. As seen in films like

1968’s Bullitt, this logo--coincidentally, the studio’s seventh major logo variation--kept the shield and Warner’s initials but dropped the B, opting instead to have the W’s ascender bend into a 7.

This design lasted only four years. In 1970, Kinney Services bought Warner Bros. and changed the logo to resemble almost a gas station’s version of the historic mark: a beveled W and B over a crimson shield with gold outlines. Time Warner seems to want to expunge this logo from the historical record. Although it was originally seen at the beginning of 1971’s Dirty Harry and A Clockwork Orange, in recent DVD and Blu-ray releases, the company either replaces it with its current logo or edits it out of the film entirely.

After an eight-month return to the classic Warner Bros. logo, Saul Bass was hired in 1972 to rebrand the famous film studio. It’s easy to see why Bass’s design--very much of its time and slightly, well, Nazi-like--was quickly phased out by the mid-1980s in favor of the classic Warner Bros. logo. Even so, it has always been my personal favorite. I’m not alone: Ben Affleck and Steven Soderbergh opted to use this Warner Bros. logo at the beginning of their respective films, Argo and Magic Mike.

Which brings us perhaps to the most noteworthy thing about the Warner Bros. logo: Filmmakers have always been encouraged to tailor it to suit the individual tone of their films. The first stylized Warner Bros. logo appears as early as 1938’s The Adventures of Robin Hood, in which the shield is rendered as if it were a royal crest. In the late 1990s, with the rise of CGI, stylized use of the Warner Bros. logo exploded: There have been more than 200 variants in the last 15 years alone. Great design is timeless, but it’s also adaptable.

THERE HAVE BEEN MORE THAN 200 VARIANTS IN THE LAST 15 YEARS ALONE.

FILMMAKERS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN

ENCOURAGED TO TAILOR THE LOGO

TO SUIT THE TONE OF THEIR FILMS.

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Seven Ways To Identify And Engage Brand AdvocatesTracy Foster

For startups and small businesses, when it comes to allocating marketing dollars, value is the most important word. We all seek to gain maximum value and exposure with limited budgets. Cultivating brand advocates who are excited to share their experience with you can be a low-cost, high-return marketing strategy.

Essentially, a brand advocate is someone who enjoys your product or service so much that they’re eager to tell others about it — whether that’s via social media or in real life, on their blog or in a publication. Brand advocates can be online influencers with millions of social media followers, or people who are active or well-respected in their industry.

Befriend industry influencers

Thanks to the conversational nature of social media and the explosion of blogs in every niche and industry, marketing is now a two-way street that can benefit both sides. Reach out to people who would benefit from your product or service: introduce yourself, see about treating them to a coffee (if you live in the same city) and try to build a mutually beneficial relationship.

Trade product instead of advertising.

Advertising is expensive, especially when it comes to print publications or high-traffic blogs. See if the writer or blogger would be interested in reviewing your product or potentially giving one away: the cost of the product (or even two!) is often much cheaper than direct advertising and it encourages a much higher level of engagement. Popular BPOP +3.14% blogs are often open to creating a hybrid of traditional sidebar advertising and reviewing a product; try to couple product reviews with advertisements on the same site for maximum exposure.

Send snail mail.

No matter how much of our lives are lived online, people still love to receive mail other than bills. If you have access to a key influencer’s address, buy some pretty stamps and a nice set of stationery and send them a note about how much you appreciate what they’ve done for your brand. The thrill of receiving a tweet from a brand wears off quickly, but a thoughtfully handwritten note is likely to be remembered.

Send an email.

If you find that there are people who are regularly interacting with your brand on social media and always have something great to say, move the relationship beyond that platform. If you aren’t able to send a handwritten note, sending a quick email to let them know how much you appreciate their support will go a long way in building the relationship.

Give them a discount.

Even if you can’t justify sending a free product to an influencer (perhaps their social media reach isn’t large enough or they aren’t in quite the right niche) consider offering a modest discount.

Feature them on your blog.

A regularly updated blog can be a fantastic way to not only share company news but also establish a brand personality, connect with industry influencers, and highlight emerging talents in your industry. At ONA, we realized that our customers were constantly creating great original content for us through photos they shared on Instagram, Facebook or their personal blogs. We moved beyond highlighting emerging photographers in our Photographer Profile series and started featuring ONA users from a variety of backgrounds (e.g., professional photographers, bloggers, photo enthusiasts, etc.) in different ways. People now regularly contact ONA for a chance to be featured on the blog. Not only does this associate ONA with incredible talent, it also shows potential customers how existing customers are using the product.

Treat them to a coffee.

One of the best ways to build long-term relationships is to get to know influencers beyond their blogs, publications or Instagram feeds. We regularly reach out to photographers and bloggers about meeting up over a coffee or a drink. Those conversations (that aren’t just brand-focused) often lead to creative collaborations. Keep an eye on Twitter and relevant blogs to know when out-of-town influencers will be coming through your city — and make plans!

Brand advocates can create some of the best value for a small business or emerging brand. The word-of-mouth marketing that results from their kind words can exponentially increase your company’s profile and positive associations. Keep them engaged as you grow and you’ll likely catch more brand advocates’ and influencers’ attention along the way.

Here are seven ways to turn a regular customer or industry influencer into an active, engaged advocate for your brand:

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MARKETING

DIGITAL

MENU

For nearly a decade, McDonald’s same-store sales were climbing upward, but in 2012 a deceleration hit the Golden Arches. It’s only within recent months that its top executives finally copped to having some hurdles to overcome, namely operational woes and a decline in consumer relevance.

“The U.S. is our largest market and has the most significant need for improvement in the near term,” said McDonald’s Chief Financial Officer Peter Bensen, speaking at RBC Capital Markets’ Consumer and Retail Conference Wednesday,

who called the first half of 2014 a “a service reset” for the business. At the conference this week, the chain offered a look at how it plans to tackle those problems, and it boils down to three tactics: improving marketing; focusing on core products and stepping up digital, including e-commerce.

Three Strategies McDonald’s Is Using to Lift Sales Chain’s 2014 Priorities: Improve

Menu, Marketing And Digital

Maureen Morrison

The company’s new U.S. chief marketing officer, Deborah Wahl, started at the beginning of the month, and as of now it’s unclear what agency changes she might make, if any. But the company has also rejiggered its marketing department. Marketing at the Golden Arches used to be organized by product -- there would be a marketing lead for beef or chicken, said Mr. Bensen -- but it is now organized by consumer group such as millennials, families and adults.

Only a few months after McDonald’s hired it first chief digital officer, Atif Rafiq, late last year, Mr. Bensen is fast-tracking testing of mobile payments and ordering. “By later this year…[there will be] multiple tests around the digital payment and digital ordering in various markets around the world, and a lot of work on how do we come up with a loyalty program or this customer relationship aspect that can be uniquely McDonald’s,” said Mr. Bensen. He added that in a move that will be “a bit unnatural for McDonald’s,” the chain will likely have to put digital initiatives out into the market “that we know are not 100% perfect, but if you wait in this space until everything is 100% figured out, then you’re going to miss the whole opportunity.”

The company erred last year by rolling out four new products in the U.S. -- McWraps, blueberry-pomegranate smoothies, Egg White Delight McMuffins and its new line of Quarter Pounders -- in too quick a succession, a move the chain said ultimately slowed down operations. Mr. Bensen said this year the company will focus more on core products like burgers. Just this week, the chain rolled out its Bacon Clubhouse burger, an item it now considers a core-menu product.

Another emphasis will be on McDonald’s breakfast -- one of its strongest pieces of business and one that will likely see increased competition when Taco Bell rolls out its breakfast at the end of the month.

Deborah Wahl Meyer

Atif Rafiq

How can brands apply the principles of SEO when content is shifting to video?

Nigel Muir

In 2011 Cisco’s chief futurist, Dave Evans, predicted that 91% of Internet data in 2015 will be video. But, a year off that mark, it feels like we might already be there. Last year witnessed the arrival of video-led social media platforms like Vine and Instagram Video. What’s more, we’re told that brands account for 40% of the 1,000 most-shared Instagram videos. So it’s clear that social video is fertile place for marketing messages. But how can marketers apply the proven efficacy of SEO to a medium that lacks the written word?

In addition to being the perfect channel for communicating business-critical visual information like hotel walkthroughs, new product demos, events, behind-the-scenes activities and mini-adverts, social video has a secret weapon in that it offers an incredibly powerful way to engage and encourage shareability. As a naturally social medium it has become a vital tool in the digital marketing armoury. What’s more, video can help give an otherwise faceless brand or business a warmer and more personable side.

Although SEOs have been optimising video for a long time, the growth in video across social networks has increased the importance of getting the strategy right. Of course, the way to maximize traffic for a video is to ensure it’s highly watchable. If Google et al recognise the video as a high-quality, trusted piece of content, the subject will organically rise in video search rankings. Popularity and engagement have been frequent traits of YouTube’s own search algorithm for some time. But there are some other more obvious yet often overlooked SEO tactics that can be applied. For example:

- Ensure the page on which the video is placed has an appropriate transcript with time stamps. This allows for text content to be indexed and associated with the main site.

- Self host the video if possible as this will allow for thumbnails in search listings. Thumbnails act as rich snippets to attract even more eyeballs and differentiate listings amongst competitors within the search results.

- Thumbnails can also be encouraged through the use of video sitemaps.

Engaging and compelling video encourages longer dwell time, especially when complementing on-site content. However SEO optimised video content has the added benefit of driving traffic and providing information to the user before they hit the site. This means viewers are consuming more information, which helps when communicating complex products and concepts. By improving usability and viewability, the all-important bounce rate can be lowered – especially when combined with succinct calls-to-action post video.

It’s also crucial to ensure videos are given added functions to make them easily sharable. With Instagram’s 15-second video format, for example, it’s relatively easy to cross-post to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, FourSquare and email. In doing so, you can encourage user engagement and higher propensity for links, especially when it comes to mechanisms like Vine and Instagram video.

Perhaps the most important consideration when trying to optimize videos is to stick to the ethos of the hosting channel. So use Vine for short, funny clips that border on low-fi, but Instagram if you’re more interested in documentation.

Then again, Facebook video is the right place for longer videos (Facebook accepts up to 20-minutes of HD video and, after images, is the platform’s most shared content). Snapchat is where you want to be if you’re trying to tap into an audience of under-30s, whereas Google+ Hangouts are all about live videos and interviews. But regardless of which platform you’re using, the headline tip for marketers wanting to optimise social video is that anything coming across as overly promotional will not make it up the search ranking pages.

SEO embodies the core principle that should underpin any digital marketing strategy. And its founding message – “it’s quality that gets you noticed” – should be applied to any medium, not just the written word.

Book, Line & SinkerThe Brand Strategist’s Guide to Desire

By Anna Simpson

Brands are supposed to meet their customers’ needs; but does industry understand what really matters to them? The Brand Strategist’s Guide to Desire provides a ground-breaking model for understanding and responding to consumer desire, offering brands a way to build strong relationships and gain a lasting competitive advantage. Through interviews with sociologists, psychologists and leading brand consultants, Anna Simpson explores five common desires: community, adventure, aesthetics, vitality and purpose. She argues that, by examining motivation, companies can understand how to develop successful products and services that offer real value. Edited by Glyn Atwal and

Douglas Bryson

Luxury Brands in Emerging MarketsThe rewards of success in emerging markets are potentially huge, and as luxury companies continue to expand their global reach, they will need to continually assess if their current strategy is delivering competitive advantage. Luxury Brands in Emerging Markets is an invaluable repository of knowledge that brings clarity to key issues and trends for practitioners, academics and students of luxury brands. It sets out to decode the luxury markets in the primary emerging markets (BRICs) and provide a rich resume of the key factors that influence the effectiveness of luxury brand strategies.

By Sandra Vandermerwe

Breaking Through, 2nd EditionImplementing Disruptive Customer CentricityCustomer centricity is fundamental to business growth and ongoing success. Most executives appreciate the importance of it yet don’t know how to execute it or sell the processes internally. This thoroughly revised edition of Breaking Through guides readers systematically through the ten breakthrough points of implementation, to explain how to execute a transformation to customer centricity, so that a company can engage continuously with its customers, making them allies and advocates with all the rewards that it brings.

By Gregory S. Carpenter, Gary F. Gebhardt and John F. Sherry

ResurgenceThe Four Stages of Market-Focused ReinventionBased on a multi-year study with several large companies, Resurgence reveals how some of the most interesting and notable brands in the world have managed to stage remarkably successful comebacks following periods of decline. The core of this book is a smart, simple four-part framework for reinvention, plus compelling advice distilled for general business readers. Yet,it also features fascinating, insider accounts of the change process, with stories from a core group of leaders at companies such as Motorola, Alberto

Now with over 60 international case studies, 2 new chapters, coverage of CSR and ethics, video interviews with change practitioners and an improved guiding framework, the fourth edition of this best-selling change management textbook is more practical and immersive than ever.

By John Hayes

The Theory and Practice of Change Management

By Yasushi Kusume and Neil Gridley

Brand RomanceUsing the Power of High Design to Build a Lifelong Relationship with Your AudienceFor brands to succeed in a competitive environment they need to build a ‘loving’ relationship with their audiences. Brands need to construct an emotional engagement with audiences over time, so that they can make a genuine connection both to the brand and what it has to offer.Featuring 15 ‘commitments’ Brand Romance reveals how to use High Design principles to build a truly effective brand. High Design goes beyond the usual rational, quantitative measures, to analyse the role that emotion can play in building brand loyalty.

Hit Brands

By Daniel Jackson, Richard Jankovich and Eric Sheinkop

In the battleground for the hearts and minds of customers, music is one of the most powerful tools that brands can use.In this definitive guide to how brands harness the power of music to drive business, three leading industry experts show you how to create and execute successful music strategies with lasting impact.Every major global brand already uses and invests in music as part of its communications but very few have created ‘hits’. Music has the power to make a brand instantly recognised and loved, so what are the secrets?

By Daniel Jackson

Sonic BrandingAn Essential Guide to the Art and Science of Sonic BrandingBrands have become very important as sources of value and as a means to build value and sustain market position. Much emphasis has been placed upon the visual representation of brands. This book defines a new competitive arena in the creation and development of brands - sound. Sonic branding is a new fast growing area related to advertising and media development of the branding experience. This will be a distinctive book and the first in this important new area.

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By Nick Wreden

FusionBranding: How to Forge Your Brand for the FutureFusionBranding: How to Forge Your Brand for the Future by brand futurist Nick Wreden represents a fresh look at branding imperatives, especially for companies selling to other businesses. Core principles of FusionBranding are illustrated with numerous case studies. Each chapter includes a FutureView, which looks at branding in 2005 and beyond, Takeaways, in-depth questions that can help apply FusionBranding principles, and Resources that features books and Web sites about FusionBranding principles.

Brand Relations Management: Bridging the Gap Between Brand Promise and Brand Delivery

By Tony Apéria, Rolf Back

Brand Relations Management is a book for all those interested in strategy and marketing. The primary intention is to show that both brand promise and brand delivery are necessary in order to build a sustainable brand. The book’s greatest strength is that it gathers and presents all the relevant theories of brand building.

By Nicholas Ind, Clare Fuller, Charles Trevail

Brand Together: How Co-Creation Generates Innovation and Re-energizes BrandsA new tool for marketers and brand managers, co-creation is fast becoming a recognized and effective way to drive business growth and enhance and protect brand reputation. Brand Together shows how to involve all stakeholders - employees, clients and customers - in the process of co-creation and innovation to enable the brand to succeed in the new world of customer engagement and participation. It shows how to intertwine creativity with brand strategy and provides practical guidance on how to co-create with customers from a brand perspective.

By Adam Morgan

Eating the Big Fish: How Challenger Brands Can Compete Against Brand LeadersIt contains over 25 new interviews and case histories, two completely new chapters, introduces a new typology of 12 different kinds of Challengers, has extensive updates of the main chapters, a range of new exercises, supplies weblinks to view interviews online and offers supplementary downloadable information.

Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers

By Geoffrey A. Moore

Here is the bestselling guide that created a new game plan for marketing in high-tech industries. Crossing the Chasm has become the bible for bringing cutting-edge products to progressively larger markets. This edition provides new insights into the realities of high-tech marketing, with special emphasis on the Internet. It’s essential reading for anyone with a stake in the world’s most exciting marketplace.

By Tim Calkins

Breakthrough Marketing PlansHow to Stop Wasting Time and Start Driving GrowthAlmost every company creates a marketing plan each year, and many spend hundreds of employee hours researching, preparing and presenting their tomes to senior executives. But most marketing plans are a waste of time; they are too long, too complicated and too dense. They end up sitting on a shelf, unread and unrealized. Breakthrough Marketing Plans is an essential tool for people who create marketing plans and people who review them. The book provides simple, clear frameworks that are easy to apply, and highlights why marketing plans matter, where they go wrong and how to create a powerful plan that will help build a strong, profitable business

Competitors take any and every opportunity they can to deride and dominate their opponents in the marketplace. While all companies strive to create innovative and aggresive campaigns to make gains in the market, the smart companies - the ones that thrive - make sure to create a defense strategy that is just as strong, if not stronger, to maintain the ground when push comes to shove. Indeed, a good defense is far more important than a good offense. If you fail trying to grow, you will miss your objectives. If you fail defending your business, you can lose everything.

By Tim Calkins

Defending Your BrandHow Smart Companies use Defensive Strategy to Deal with Competitive Attacks

By Steve McKee

Power BrandingLeveraging the Success of the World’s Best BrandsEvery one of the largest, most successful corporations were, at some point, mere startups. McKee explains what enables some companies to growbigger and better, while others stumble along year after year, running but never winning the race. The difference is that the biggest and best brands aren’t slaves to conventional marketing wisdom. McKee shows by example how the same, sometimes counter-intuitive, strategies used by the biggest brands can also best serve small and mid-sized companies.