Storytime with Oren and Justine Jacobs

About Oren and Justine and their first thoughts on storytelling:

• They have 3 kids, both make movies, Justine is going to go back to being a lawyer for a bit to subsidize her “hobby”
• There is a lot of power in titles (“Cancer” vs. “Birth”)
• There is a lot of power in people’s titles too (Being an Imagineer at Disney tells a story in and of itself; there is  Dean of Pixar Universtiy; would have been cool if Genevieve from Intel really was the Chief Anthropologist)
• Stories need a “twist“, like in 30 Rock
• Think arcs - tell stories, not situations (Casablanca, not Jurassic Park)
• Be laconic
• Editing yourself is absurdly hard.  Good story-telling is absurdly  hard.  So don’t beat yourself up if you don’t get it right the first time around.

Notes that came as a result of Class Pitches:

• You can make your story sticky by playing on your character(David is a cross between the Stapler Guy from Office Space and Kramer – that’s pretty unique!)
• Letting the audience come to an internal emotional conclusion on its own, by telling them the facts rather than telling them how you felt, is much more powerful
• Think hard about how much of it you have to tell versus how much you should let the audience infer and imagine for itself.  Every sentence you utter better be necessary – take a machete to your story, and only leave the diamonds, get rid of the rough.
• BUT, control for the important facts.  Be aware that whatever you do leave out will be open to interpretation, so if there are things you would rather the audience not be ambiguous about, stick them in.  This is especially important when details make something unique and specific, as opposed to a “trope” that evokes cliches, evoking a been-there-done-that boredom in the audience.
• You can relay blunt information through creative means - instead of saying “he got better”, you can say “5 years later, we were back to wrestling again.”

2009 Most Valuable Global Brands

Who ran the study?

Research firm Millward Brown recently published their 4^th consecutive BrandZ report, ranking the top 100 most valuable global brands.  BrandZ claims to be the world’s largest study of consumers and business-to-business users’ brand preferences, ran this study, marking the 4^th consecutive year.

How does Millward Brown calculate brand value?

The three variables that make up Brand Value include Branded “intangible” earnings, Brand contribution, and a Brand Multiple.  Brand value is the product of these three variables:

1. Intangible Earnings: Branded earnings are identified and capital charges are subtracted. This ensures only value above and beyond what investors would require any investment in the brand to earn is captured.
2. Brand Contribution: The degree to which brand plays a role in generating earnings. This is established through analysis of country-, market-, and brand–specific consumer research from the BrandZ database.
3. Brand Multiple: Includes both an analysis of financial projections (earnings multiple) and consumer data (brand specific growth opportunities and barriers).  This multiple is then indexed on a 1 to 10 scale (10 being the highest)

What are the Results?

The report lists the top 100 global brands, ranked by brand value.  The clear leader this year is Google with an estimate brand value of $100 billion dollars, with Microsoft coming in second with a brand value of $76 billion.

Any interesting trends in the data?

• With the economic downturn, people are retreating to their homes to enjoy the small pleasures, often with loved ones.  As a result, gaming companies, the coffee category, and online shopping all experienced significant growth year-over-year.
• Additionally, frugality is replacing conspicuous consumption across most categories. For example, people are drinking less bottled water, and are opting for tap water.
• Finally, technology companies occupied 7 of the top 10 most valuable brands, with the mobile operators experiencing the highest growth of all the categories. 

Click here to access the full report

Desiree Rogers’ Brand Obama

The article “Desirée Rogers’ Brand Obama” (http://magazine.wsj.com/features/the-big-interview/desiree-rogers/), published in the WSJ Magazine, offers a great illustration of using story to develop personal brand. Intertwined is the branding of the Obamas with the branding of Desiree Rogers, White House Social Secretary.

Branding the Obamas…

• Consistent messaging: The White House as “the people’s house.”
• Vivid storytelling: An environment where average Americans might stop by and catch the first lady serving homemade huckleberry cobbler and caramel ice cream to students, tending to the vegetable garden on the South Lawn, or watching the romantic comedy “He’s Just Not That Into You” with her girlfriends.
• Imagery: Photos of Mrs. Obama reading to schoolchildren, digging and planting the White House Kitchen Garden with fifth graders, shaking hands with voters, dancing at parties, and smiling widely with a glowing face.
• Media blitz: Mrs. Obama on the cover of People, Vogue, and Oprah’s O magazine, among others, building her status as an American icon.
• Extendability of brand: “Our possibilities are endless.”
• NOT: The image that Mrs. Obama gave America early on the campaign trail by talking about her husband’s dirty socks and how he was “stinky” in the morning.

Branding Desiree Rogers…

• Vivid storytelling:
  • On being a networker…She is the descendant of a Creole voodoo princess and a daughter of the middle-class Seventh Ward of New Orleans. Red beans and rice on Mondays. Fried fish and potato salad on Fridays. Dreams of Wellesley and Harvard as she walked to high school on St. Charles Avenue. A city councilman father used to ask little Desiree to serve drinks or gumbo and help entertain when company arrived. There was a constant flow of company moving through the house. This upbringing gave rise to her becoming the “world-class networker” that she is today.
  • On being a style icon…She got her sense of style from Big Mama, her maternal grandmother, who used to dress for church on Sunday in bright colors and spectacular hats. It grew from there. Now an enduring topic among White House press corps is what Rogers is wearing.
  • On being a go-getter…In 2003, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and, after several surgeries, overcame the illness. “There’s no time to waste. Every day there needs to be movement on something,” she says.
• Persona: The 49-year-old turns on just enough Southern charm to camouflage an aura of self-assuredness typically reserved for runway models or first ladies.
• Association: Every morning she attends a meeting with President Obama’s Chief of Staff, a top Obama aide, and other senior White House officials. Moreover, she has been friends with Mrs. Obama for nearly two decades.

Who are the powers that be?

The Martha Stewart case raises two big issues. Who decides to make a star from a regular person and to burn him or her at a certain time?  Do the new technologies change anything?

People who are able to build a brand from their own name seem to manage everything. They decide everything, they master everything, and they choose what is said about them or not. I believe that this is partly true. No matter your power, you always have stronger people who allow your brand to exist and even boost you to succeed. These same people can decide to kill you just like that.

A recurrent debate focuses on journalists and the balance between on and off. Why does a reporter break the “off” rule to reveal something to the world? This question is particularly important in the case of personal brands like politicians or stars. Do you have to reveal that a president has a mistress or secret children? Do you have to reveal that an important person with crucial functions is sick? It goes beyond purely ethical issues. It is not just about what is right or wrong.

I think that everybody focuses too much on journalists. It is not a matter of function but a matter of power. Professor Aaker gave a really important insight in class. We have to interpret facts with the perspective of extreme users. By monitoring extreme users and by understanding why, when and how their opinions and behaviors change, we can understand why there is a general move towards the same direction. The media and branding system is not linear. Changes occur by sudden breaks. There are thresholds enabling the switch from adulation to abhorrence.

These thresholds are important because they set up the level of listening. When a star becomes a target, it seems that no critics occurred before a certain point. On the contrary, after this point, everybody is always hounding that star. This is often a wrong impression. In fact, some people try to reveal things at any time. The impact that their voices have depends on audiences’ ability to listen. The number of extreme users and their behavior reflect this ability. There is always a time when the echo of extreme users voice is heard and listened by the mass. Fans are listened during the adulation period. Detractors’ voice resonates during the prosecution. Journalists are the catalyst of such a phenomenon.

People with power use extreme users to manipulate situations. The person trying to build his or her brand does not have the keys forever. There are always stakeholders involved and lots of money at stake, which justify to create a star or to kill her.

What is the role of new technologies? More power for people against the powers that be? No more manipulation? Fairness? Democracy? Internet amplifies any phenomenon. It gives more power to weak people. But in the end, the issue is the same. There always some people that can decide to make you fall or to make you shine. Internet is even slyer. The danger comes from anywhere. As a brand, you not only have powerful stakeholders that could try to destroy your reputation, but you can have any individual person worldwide. Everything is more extreme with Internet. A viral video can make you a star immediately (ask Susan Boyle) or kill your brand in a couple of hours. Maybe the way deal with it is to use Internet as a monitoring tool for extreme users.

“Power is my mistress. I have worked too hard at her conquest to allow anyone to take her away from me.” – Napoleon Bonaparte

Fast Company: “The Brand Called Me”

Came across this Fast Company article from 2005 about managing a brand when it has your name attached to it.  It’s pretty brief, but there are some interesting bits and good quotes.  Features Tony Hawk, Nigella Lawson, Todd Oldham, Kelly Hoppen, and Andrea Immer.

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/93/fasttalk.html

Do firms really deal with their brands as they should?

We have seen in class many frameworks and tools to build, define and monitor brands. These tools are strategically crucial to make evolve product lines. In essence, a firm needs to make profits and grow. One of the main ways to grow is to expand the firm’s product line. As for any decision, the executives should guarantee that the brand they spend years and money to build keeps being consistent. They cannot hurt the brand. Unfortunately, in many firms executives come from the finance world or marketers are kept quiet by financial considerations. It seems that product line expansions are decided more in a financial perspective than in a branding one.

Let’s take an example that is a big question mark for me. I encourage you to give me your opinion by commenting this post.

Why does Subway offer burritos and pizzas?

For me, Subway is first and foremost a sandwich brand that allows you to choose your healthy food. It is a fast food chain (Quick Service Restaurant as a category) by the choice of the product (sandwich). But it is healthy. I go to Subway but not to MacDonald’s. The firm seems to build the brand on the healthy reputation (you lose weight by eating only Subways….).

My questions are simple. Why do they try to escape the sandwich segment? Why do they expand their product line with pizzas and burritos that have a “fat” and “unhealthy” image?

The subway brand is of course linked to this way of taking the line and ordering each ingredient to add in the sandwich. The purpose is to do the same with the pizza. Pizzas become healthy because you compose it. But the opposition of contradictory images is strong and can become expensive to fight.

Why do they choose this strategy? Increasing traffic and gaining market share is a matter of survival. The crisis is an opportunity for the QSR market. It is more expensive to expand organically the Starbucks way than by adding products in the menu. These are some of the reasons they choose this strategy. But it is still very dangerous for the brand. Personally, I am confused to find pizzas at Subway.

Belated Blog on Class 8 – Martha

Blog on Martha Day

Martha’s Name:

Pros:

• Differentiate
• Extendable
• Emotional benefit
• Name has story

Cons:

• Traditional name
• Risk during Crisis/Uncontrollable situation
• Relate to brand as person and vice versa
• Puts personal life in focus/on pedestal 

Why was there such a backlash after crisis?

• Value judgments she was placing on others makes her a target
• Uncertainty behind bars (who takes over when she retires?)
• Media: fall from grace story
  • America’s fascination with a train wreck (and comeback story)
  • She promised perfection – bigger target if anything went wrong

Importance of self-parody: (inability hurt Martha early on, ability later helped her)

• Can eliminate desire to knock off pedestal

KEY TAKEAWAY OF CLASS: When you go to jail, it doesn’t have to be a bad thing! 

Rest of class:

Authenticity: if you’re home alone at 3am – what comes to mind?

Per Deb Gruenfeld: Everyone is acting all the time.  We are always wearing a mask – at home, at work.

To be authentic – try to feel authentic, natural, close to flow

For personal brand:

Stand for something

Be different (POV)

• People don’t judge you as badly as you think they will if you do things differently

 Favorite quote of class:  No one will remember what you said, they will remember how you made them feel.