Presentations, Farewell Takeaways

A fantastic set of presentations today ranging from videos to monologues to a vocal appearance from Herr Claudio Seidler.

From the DMarie presentation especially, there was a continuing reiteration of the power of passion, love, and social impact. Whether its a service or a consumer product, people feel good when they are part of something bigger and effective brands (and marketing) tell the social mission that brands have (in DMarie’s case, creating makeup that improves self-esteem).

A final set of takeaways, before we all begin our own adventures in the ‘real’ brand world:

• Simple frameworks. Big results. Never forget the tried and true image-identity gap analysis, especially at the starter to a broader conversation with the owner of a brand.
• Got Marketing? Many companies have tiny marketing departments, with substantial overlap in responsibilities for senior management, who may share these duties. There’s tremendous value delineating these responsibilities explicitly.
• Telling stories. Perhaps the most obvious statement of all: Powerful storytelling and design has significant power to redefine a brand. And yet, it’s important to realize that customers will associate you with where you’ve been, so that brand changes can be difficult (for example, Distilled).
• Employees. Customers. Both groups are important stakeholders which need to buy into the brand and its vision. The former is often neglected and yet they are brand ambassadors, who can provide significant leverage to a marketing platform.
• And finally, the iceberg. The power of brand is in the bottom of the iceberg, where a brand can subtly promote itself, rather than simply in the top where the brand directly imagines itself. Great things come from the bottom (of the iceberg).

Signing off …

Ethics, Authenticity, and Media

A visit by Dana Cho from IDEO and a rumination on what brand can be and a torrent of my own reflections.

Vision for a brand: Extraordinary brands create a new interdependent world that blurs the line between consumer, brand, and community.

Current dislocations: Social media is changing the way we communicate and the role of the consumer. The recession is leading to a shift to non-conspicuous consumption and reduced trust in all brands.

Insights:

1. Design for engagement- Build a collaborative brand where consumers feel a part of the process
2. Become authentic- Determine your values and then engage your company’s employees to accomplish this. Select out the most authentic employees, and then help them to buy into this vision
3. Encourage the emergent- Allow the user’s power and control

Reflections from a recovering BiB Student:

• Lifecycle of marketing technologies. The give and take in the early stages when companies are all piling into a new form of media (often comically so, as Dana’s Tide Detergent example shows). And then the realization afterwards, of ways to use it effectively (or a decision not to use it at all).
• Ethical implications of marketing. “Shopping is arguably the last remaining public activity.” – Rem Koolhaas. To what degree has marketing led to a conspicuous consumption culture in America, where shopping is therapy and where there are so many benefits to fabricating authenticity? Can we somehow use marketing to create a more balanced level of consumerism?
• Crafting Authenticity. Everything wants to be authentic, and yet fabricated authenticity proliferates. For what customers and what types of brands is authenticity important? What ways can we promote authenticity in products and marketing, beyond company culture? And is authenticity overblown?
• Control. We all want it and crave it. And yet, as a brand how comfortable do we feel giving up control, and given that we may not like the results? Or is control in this new age of social media an anachronism?

Love, anthropology, and kitchen tables

A rollicking discussion Monday on love, anthropology, and the power of kitchen tables, interspersed with our classmates own stories of brand relationships ranging on the intensity scale from respect to barely concealed lust and romance.

Genevieve Bell, an Intel anthropologist provided insights on the power of observations and interviews based on her experiences jetting from the homes of the most connected Silicon Valley residents, to those living in the jungles of Southeast Asia.

Initially tasked with representing the ‘Rest of the World’ (ROW) outside the Americas for Intel, a key early insight was how difficult it can be to change the view of those around you who think the world is actually like how they experience it (I’m reminded of several startup entrepreneurs, who tell stories of Silicon Valley-based venture capitalists pushing their company’s to incorporate the latest and greatest technology, regardless of the potential benefits for the business).

Another key theme was how different ‘love’ can be defined, ranging from caring, to romance, to hot and heavy love. In marriage, many Europeans and Americans define it as romance, some aboriginal cultures define it as love of country, while many Indians define it as love of children. In the brand sense, this love can range from a guilty love, to rebellion, to aspiration, to an expression of self. From interviews, a marketing manager realizes how humans have a remarkable capacity to rationalize this love after the fact.

A few other tidbits from Monday’s discussion:

Promiscuity and relationships: Brand loyalty and relationships can differ in intensity. For example, it can be defined by continuity (we know it and always love it) versus a relationship that needs to be replenished on a regular basis with new and exciting experiences and changes.

Kitchen Table: Kitchen tables have a tremendous capacity (and other areas that are in an interviewee’s own setting) to enable people to open up. Often this setting, allows them to feel in charge, comfortable, and able to talk openly.

Ethics, Shmetics: The power of the internet has allowed consumers to become much more discerning when it comes to brand messages (or just connected to other consumers who are). For example, is Dove the image-flouting brand as shown by its ‘Real Beauty’ campaign, or the controversial, push-the-envelope Axe brand.

Different brands are different in different cultures: McDonald’s as the ultimate first date environment in China a few years ago, versus the perception of McDonald’s in the United States.

Do You Remember When: Nostalgia can be an exceptionally powerful driver to create a strong brand relationship, especially when they help us define who we are, where we come from, our who are cultures/families are. With the current economic climate, nostalgia and sincerity are likely to be a strong undercurrent in new advertising.