Creating Loyal Brands : Themes Of The Week...

So much content, so little time...

A weekly round-up of the themes and posts I found particularly interesting or useful.

Conversations around loyalty made a welcome return this week, together with a look at the rising importance of creativity, and the need for marketers to get in tune with the connected consumer.

Loyalty matters...
In a world of ever-increasing competition, building strong relationships with customers matters more than ever.

Customer Loyalty: Is it a Behavior? Or an Attitude? highlighted the need to build positive customer attitudes that drive positive customer behavior, rather than being seduced into buying customer loyalty.
A simple approach to creating Loyal Brands... provided a powerful framework for building brands centered on earning customer loyalty.
Amazon Earns Customer Loyalty With Integrity, Not Rewards used a simple example to demonstrate that the only way to achieve loyalty is by running businesses honestly, fairly, and transparently.
Surprise Is Still the Most Powerful Marketing Tool urged marketers to use surprise to strengthen their relationships with existing customers.
While How Smart Data Boosts Customer Lifetime Value explored how technology can enable brands to create meaningful relationships with customers, by providing personalized and timely content.

Creativity rules...
With the forces of disruption swirling all around, several posts explored the need for a more creative and flexible approach.

The Rising Value Of Brands In The Digital Age highlighted how digital media needs to learn from the creativity of the advertising pioneers, to build the consumer brands of the future.
What Value Creation Will Look Like in the Future showed how value is increasingly based on creativity, rather than industrial scale, and examined the implications for a more fluid form of organization.
Competitive Advantage Is Dead. Here's What To Do About It argued that the days of creating a sustainable competitive advantage are over, and success may well lay in knowing when it's time to quit or adapt.
5 Ways Big Companies Can Pivot Like Lean Startups offered some useful advice on how to unlock creativity and innovation in a corporate giant.
While Why marketing professionals should look to data for their next big idea looked at how data itself can be a source of inspiration, to unlock creative ideas.

Getting jiggy with it...
In an ever more connected world, marketers need to loosen up, and embrace it.

New Digital Influencers: The Coming Youthquake outlined how both Millenials and Generation Z are different through growing up in a digital age, and urged us all to understand their behavior, expectations, and preferences.
Baby-Boomer Marketers Are Misreading Millenials' Media Behavior argued that senior marketers are still too wedded to the methods and media that have worked over the past 30 years, and just don't understand millenials' vastly different media habits.
Now You Tweet Me, Now You Don't urged companies to intentionally invite and reward customers for sharing positive experiences and accolades, to help shape the conversation about them.
The 10 Second Rule explored how, in an environment where two-thirds of the conversations about a brand are generated from outside the company, brand strategy and experience must be considered every 10 seconds, not every 10 years.
While Why Digital Influencers Can Explode Your Company's Bottom Line simply made the case for connecting your content marketing strategy with digital influencers.

Finally, in a world where mash-ups are increasingly the norm, Everyone in marketing should be a marketer scientist provided a great profile for a modern marketer.

Enjoy...

Creating Loyal Brands : Themes Of The Week...

So much content, so little time...

A weekly round-up of the themes and posts I found particularly interesting or useful.

This week's conversations included how some brands make a strong connection, the relationship between organizational culture and brand experience, as well as looking for inspiration from leading brand examples in different media.

Crazy in love...
Several posts sought to explain how certain brands develop a strong connection with consumers.

Why Do We Love Brands? looked at brands from a consumer point of view, arguing that a strong brand serves to open a door to what a person could be from who they currently are.
Higher Purpose Branding: 14 Brands Are Doing It Right concluded that strong brands go beyond functional benefits to generate self-expressive, emotional or social benefits.
Love It? Hate It? Beyonce Does H&M explored how successful brands use cultural ideas to become embedded in consumer culture.
While The Truth About Loyalty... showed how brands have to stay true to their core values and beliefs, to earn the loyalty of their customers.

Of culture and experience...
With today's hyper-connected world, there's a close relationship between the experience a brand offers, and organizational culture.

From moments to journeys: A paradigm shift in customer experience excellence highlighted the need to focus on the entire journey a customer makes in fulfilling a need with a brand, and the challenges this poses to the way organizations operate.
Why Brand Culture Should Be A CMO's Best Friend... showed how an organizational culture that lives the brand is the key enabler for meeting changing customer expectations.
Organizing Your Organizational Culture highlighted the importance of commitment and emotion to building an effective organizational culture.
While The Next Phase of Social Business is the Collaborative Economy argued that brands will need to extend their view of the customer journey, to care about the relationship between customers, as they trade and rent products between themselves.

Leading by example...
With so much change in marketing at the moment, several posts highlighted case studies for inspiration and guidance.

Amanda Palmer: Proof That Social Media Is The Future Of Business highlighted how one artist has used social media to build an intense connection with fans, and create a sustainable business model.
The Most Popular Branded Boards on Pinterest and Inspiring Content Marketing Case Studies provided some instructive examples.
Top 25 Engaged Brands on Twitter: An Interview with Henry Min, Founder of Nestivity offered some useful insight.
Nike's Instagram Campaign Lets Users Design, Share And Buy Custom Kicks highlighted an excellent example of how to use this mobile photo-sharing platform to engage.
While 8 Marketers Doing Big Data Right provided some practical examples of brands using data-driven insights to create growth.

Finally, if you want something more to chew on, How the Internet of Things Changes Everything provided much food for thought.

Enjoy...

Why Brand Culture Should Be a CMO's Best Friend...

Marketing is changing. We all know it. It's hardly news.

Barely a day goes by without mentioning a new marketing term, a new tool, or new capabilities a CMO needs to embrace.

But while there's much talk about the changes of approach necessary for a brand to navigate today's connected waters, these are manifestations of a much more profound change that goes right to the core of the entire company: a brand today is a reflection of its culture.

So to chart a successful course, the wise CMO needs first to cast a gaze inward.

Come together, right now, over me...
Technology has certainly created changing customer expectations, that brands have to respond to.

First, customers are experiencing brands in many different ways, across a variety of channels (mobile, social,etc), and screens. They naturally expect these to be joined up. After all, coherency has always been the basis of branding. But this is no longer just about integrated marketing communications. It requires bringing together all aspects of the business that impact customers, into one coherent whole.

Second, with the onset of social media and mobile, there is the expectation that brands respond in real time. Much has been made of the need for brands to move their marketing from a campaign mentality to that of a newsroom, inserting the brand narrative into the flow of news. But more generally, with the speed that conversations can now spread, a brand needs to be able to respond quickly in all areas of its operation.

Third, in a world where customers are providing much more data, and using mobile devices which are much more personal, they expect interactions to be relevant to them. Sending a coupon to my phone for meat, when you should know I'm a vegetarian, is just downright rude.

But more fundamentally, these changes in the frequency, variety and nature of interactions have put the behaviors of the brand on show (Watch Your Step...). They enable customers to read its body language, and sense what the company behind the brand is really like. Where once advertising could define a brand, now the sum of these interactions (and the sharing of them through social networks) form the brand identity. Revealed through its behaviors, the culture defines the brand.

The great enabler...
While it may seem a little counter-intuitive, a key role for the CMO is to shape the culture around the brand.

Of course, this isn't about sending out an email. Cultural change is hard and time-consuming work.

It requires the establishment of a core purpose for the brand, that is grounded in improving people's lives in some way. This ensures that it's focused on customers, rather than the company's agenda (How To Find Your Core Purpose...). And then that core purpose needs to be embedded in the culture of the company, so that it guides behaviors.

This can't just be done through internal communication, essential though this is. It needs to be hard-wired into the policies and processes of the organization, if it is to succeed (How To Create A Brand Culture...). It helps if the purpose springs from the company's DNA, rather than trying to weave a foreign idea through the company: the recent troubles at JCPenney bear testament to that. And it's not in the gift of the CMO alone. The CEO needs to be the champion and role-model, with the CMO as steward and cheerleader.

However, ensuring the company lives the brand will not only enable the brand to be clearly defined, but also make it easier to meet those changing customer expectations.

A coherent brand experience needs behaviors that are aligned. Responding in real-time needs employees who instinctively communicate in line with the brand. And personalizing the experience requires a true passion for improving customers' lives.

The changes facing marketing are very real. New approaches, new tools, and new capabilities all need to be navigated.

But a culture that lives the brand will give the CMO a following wind for the voyage ahead.

And a best friend...

Creating Loyal Brands : Themes Of The Week...

So much content, so little time...

A weekly round-up of the themes and posts I found particularly interesting or useful.

The impact of the digital world was again center-stage this week, with advice on how businesses need to re-organize, and on bringing together strategy and brand narrative, as well a look at how big data can enable better decision-making.

Getting it together...
Several posts explored how the new realities of business require a much more collaborative approach.

The Imminent Shift from Social to Digital Engagement showed how the connected customer is using multiple screens and channels to interact with a brand, and why this demands an integrated approach to deliver a cohesive customer experience.
The Six Characteristics of Companies That Are Winning the Digital Game highlighted the leadership capabilities and decisions that are required to compete in today's digital world.
The snappily-titled Why Companies Should Put Values First - And How They Can Do It Without Sacrificing Growth urged CEOs to adopt a values-led approach, to unlock the potential of their employees and avoid greater regulation.
Why I Made My Payments Startup An Open Company looked at the benefits of being transparent, and openly collaborating with customers, through the eyes of a founder and CEO.
While The Only CEO Who Matters served as a reminder that the "greatest assets companies possess are not their buildings, brands, or backgrounds. It's their customers."

The owl and the pussycat...
In a world with ever-greater transparency and competition, a brand's strategy and narrative need to be closely aligned.

The Connection Between Strategy and Story offered a thoughtful piece on how the choices that strategy entails and the meaning that story provides need to come together to create a strongly differentiated brand.
Dove: The Most Impressive Brand Builder in the Last 15 Years? provided a case study of strategy and story working together to create a major success story.
Lady Gaga Playbook: How to Turn Your Customers into Fanatic Followers examined how this pop artist had brought together her story with a clear strategy to build a fanatical group of consumers.
While Creative Newsroom: Brand Storytelling at the Speed of Social looked at how the strategic imperative for real-time engagement makes it more important for brands to understand and articulate their brand story.

Oh Big Data, you enable me...
With all the hype surrounding Big Data, several posts explored how it's real power comes in enabling people to make better decisions.

What big data means for marketing decision making argued that the big opportunity lies in using data to inform, rather than to drive decisions.
Little Data Makes Big Data More Powerful urged organizations to use data to enable their customers to make better decisions themselves, instead of trying to figure it out for them.
The coming era of 'on-demand' marketing highlighted how the combination of emerging technologies and big data are raising customer expectations for relevant, personalized, value-creating, and always available interactions.
While The Value of Big Data Isn't the Data argued that human insights have to be extracted from the data at machine scale, if decision-making is really to be enabled, and suggested how.

Finally, Talking Kellogg's offered an interesting interview with the CMO on keeping the snap, crackle and pop with consumers today, and tomorrow.

Enjoy... 

Creating Loyal Brands : Themes Of The Week...

So much content, so little time...

A weekly round-up of the themes and posts I found particularly interesting or useful.

This week's conversations explored some familiar themes: the spreading impact of disruption, the power of purpose, and how to use digital and social media effectively, to engage customers and spread the word.

Who's eating my lunch...?
Enabled by accelerating technological change and the resulting hyper-connectedness, the forces of disruption are spreading to industry after industry.

How you know when your company is being disrupted took a refreshing look at the major forces of disruption that are redefining the way business is done.
To Create The Future Of Brand Identity, Ideo Looks Inward explored how the digital revolution has led one agency to re-imagine the nature of identity systems for brands, to make them more human.
The Store Is Media And Media Is The Store argued that in the post-internet, post-mobile world of one click access, the primary role of a physical store will increasingly be to deliver a remarkable experience, rather than simply to sell product.
Getting Customer Feedback Better, Faster, And Cheaper showed how technology enables companies to listen to customers, at a fraction of the cost of traditional research techniques.
While Reset Your Expectations - It's the End of Big highlighted how technology is levelling the playing field, making it difficult for big companies to sustain blockbuster success, but creating "awesome" conditions for entrepreneurs.

Doing things on purpose...
Asking why your company exists in the world, and what difference it makes to people's lives, is not simply an act of altruism. It's increasingly fundamental to success in today's world.

Is Your Business Working On Purpose? argued that defining a clear reason for being can drive significant and meaningful change both inside and outside a company.
In Your manifesto, your culture, Seth Godin examined how defining what you stand for forces you to be clear about what's important and what you won't or can't do.
How To Become a Contagious Social Brand in 8 Steps looked at how combining purpose, storytelling, and social technologies can build a brand's reputation, community and social impact.
What do consumers want from brands? argued that people today expect, and may even demand, that brands play the role of cultural reformers.
While Authentic Brands Attract, and Deserve, Authentic Scrutiny warned that brands that stand for something will inevitably attract greater scrutiny, but urged them to embrace the criticism. 

Spreading the word...
Several posts examined how brands are using digital and social media, to engage customers and spread the word.

Sephora Reaps Rewards of Dedicated Customers, Fine-Tuned Service looked at how this speciality retailer has used digital and social technologies to provide their customers with a better experience.
The North Face: 5 Social Media Marketing Tips provided an instructive analysis of how this retailer achieves social media excellence.
How K-Mart Used Social Listening (And Some Nerve) To Create A Ship-My-Pants Funny Viral Hit examined how a promotion of this retailer's integrated multi-channel approach, a pretty dry subject, was turned into a viral success.
Does BuzzFeed Know the Secret? provided an interesting profile of a company built on the idea that you can create an environment for content to be contagious.
While Real-Time Marketing is Driving the Long-Term Brand Narrative looked at how brands should use creative content to connect with consumers around things they are thinking and talking about in real-time.

Finally, if you're weary of the never-ending onslaught of technology, Branding From The Insight Out argued that the next evolution for businesses is in fact about being human.

Enjoy...