One way to do so is to better understand how Chief Marketing Officer’s are bracing for the changes ahead. Over the last few years we have had the pleasure of interviewing over 20+ CMO’s to better understand how they are preparing for the future of marketing.

In addition to these one-on-one interviews, we also collect insights by engaging in excellent thought leadership forums and conferences that bring together marketing leaders. From that recent journey, here are the top 10 insights we gathered from CMO’s and marketing leaders who took the stage.

1. If  You Do Nothing Else, Find A Way To Make Your Brand Relevant.

One of the recurring themes I witnessed is the importance of making your brand more relevant in a world where we are all more distracted than ever before.

Bill Neff from Yeti suggests that as marketers, we might be overly obsessed with measuring awareness. He explained how “awareness is a derivative of relevance” and that if you focus on being relevant to your consumers, awareness will eventually follow.

Yeti runs an event once every 5 days, not with the goal of “building awareness”, but instead to connect with consumers on a personal level to understand how to be more relevant to them.

2. Start With Brand Purpose And Create Ways To Help People Feel Connected.

Most of the brands celebrated at marketing conferences today have created relevance for their consumers by uncovering a powerful brand purpose.

People around the world are becoming more individualistic over time and by focusing on themselves rather than others, loneliness is pervasive. It is no surprise that many brands have purposes of helping people feel connected.

Mindy Hamilton from Marvel Entertainment shared how her brand’s secret to success is “epic storytelling imbued with human spirit”, addressing the fact that we all want to be connected to something.

Doug Atkin, recently Airbnb’s Head of Community, explained the power of community and how people don’t join communities to create a new identity, but to finally be allowed to be themselves around others that accept them and make them feel connected.

3. If You Thought Discovering Your Brand Purpose Was Hard, Sticking To It Might Be Harder.

Doug Atkin shared several Airbnb stories to demonstrate how important it is to have brand purpose guiding your brand strategy and execution, which is consistent with many other brands that are well positioned for a bigger future.

He shared evidence from a Harvard Business Review article and Simon Sinek’s research to reinforce the idea that “why we work, determines how well work”.

He also went on to suggest that while uncovering your brand purpose might be hard, executing it consistently might be even harder. This was illustrated through a powerful example where Airbnb made a tough decision to stand up to a very powerful entity, the New York attorney general, for something that was intrinsic to its purpose.

As this happened in their early years, the decision could have bankrupted the company, but ultimately, they chose to allow their brand purpose to guide their decision.

In addition to business decisions, Airbnb also uses their brand purpose to hire and progress their talent. Doug explained that how well aligned employees are to Airbnb’s brand purpose is just as an important as their skill levels are.

4. Don’t Ask, Don’t Get. The Magic Of Not Knowing What You’ll Get If You Ask.

Brian Scudamore, CEO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK? & O2E Brands, reinforced the concept that if you want something, you usually have nothing to lose by asking.

He shared a powerful story of asking the Nasdaq if there was any way they could re-run his out of home ad and take a picture of him in it, and sure enough, they did.

He shared several other stories that reflected this principle not knowing what you’ll get if you just ask for something you really want.

His point is powerful from the perspective that if you don’t ask, the answer is always No.

5. Find What You LOVE Doing And Find Ways To Do More Of It.

This concept has been brought to life by several speakers. Keynote speaker and famous professional skateboarder, Tony Hawk, shared his life story and journey into fame.

He demonstrated how he often prioritized his love for skateboarding above all else, even in making some difficult trade-offs, which put the business itself at risk. This was yet another example of how purpose overcame fear and influenced tough business decisions.

Jennifer Saenz, CMO of Frito-Lay North America, shared how even after her 13-year journey from intern to CMO, she loves where she works because of how much she continues to learn.

We all have the ability to thrive by exploiting our unique talents and ambitions.

6. Vaccinate Against Short-Termism.

There are several examples of brands that have done a great job of building short-term conversion while also building powerful brands in the long-term.

Scott Baker, from Porsche Cars North America, talked about how measuring return is very different from measuring revenue. Revenue is immediate, whereas ‘return’ has a more long-term focus.

Return builds and reinforces memory structures and associations that built consistently over time can lead to a purchases years into the future.

Scott went on to explain how Porsche takes the long game of building those associations early in consumers’ lives to build aspirations that one day might lead to conversion years into the future.

7. To Improve Your Advertising Effectiveness, Look Beyond Your Core Targets.

Nils Weigelt, Global Brand Director of M&M’s at Mars, shared several insights on how to apply the ‘Laws of Growth’ from ‘How Brands Grow‘ to your marketing.

One application of this had to do with advertising effectiveness. In many cases, brands speak to their core targets when testing their advertising, but the reality is that in order to grow, you need to focus on reach and penetration, which means that you need to think beyond your core target.

If your ad can work with the consumers that have less associations with your brand, it will likely be more successful at driving penetration. On the other hand, if you only test it with your core audience, there is a bias from the strong awareness and memory structures you have already built with those consumers.

Extend your reach and drive penetration was the lesson I took away from this.

8. Use “Borrowed Memory Structures” To Be More Relevant.

Distinctive brands build and reinforce memory structures, but Nils from Mars shared several examples of how brands can get closer to what’s most relevant to consumers. The key is to find ways to build associations between your brand and what is most relevant to consumers, in essence creating ‘borrowed memory structures”.

One of several examples he used was how M&M’s has borrowed memory structures by creating an ad integration with Stars Wars and Darth Vader to link to what was relevant to a broad set of its consumers at the time of the ad.

Nils also advised that you should look for sweet spots where you can tie into existing behaviors without creating new ones to once again create borrowed memory structures.

One example included how a new packaging format for gum leaned into the behavior of already placing your coffee in coffee cup holders in cars and made it easier for consumers to adopt the new behavior to start placing gum into their coffee holders.

9. Use A Portfolio Strategy To Expand Relevancy And Drive Penetration.

Mindy Hamilton, SVP of Global Partnerships and Marketing at Marvel Entertainment, explained how Marvel has over 8000 characters and each one has the ability to bring consumers into the Marvel franchise.

Nils pointed to the same idea, as M&M’s have several distinct personalities that can appeal to the differing needs and personality types of a broader audience.

Jennifer Saenz of Frito-Lay shared how the different brands within their snacking portfolio have a complimentary set of consumer benefits and can thus use a portfolio approach to driving consumer relevancy and engagement.

10. The Key To Success In Business And Marketing Is PEOPLE.

This principle was reinforced by several conference speakers. It seems like such an obvious insight, but is something that is so easy to forget when we are in the thick of things.

Brian Scudamore from 1-800-GOT-JUNK? stated that brands are only as good as the people that run them. He explained that in his business, one of the most important elements is the people who take care of their customers, which ultimately leads their customers to take care of the brand.

Jennifer Saenz shared the advice of getting to know each one of your team members on a personal level first before discussing business issues so that you have a better understanding of what matters to them. Not only will this improve your team’s dynamics, but it will likely make everyone’s work more fulfilling.

Perhaps Tim Harris of the L.A. Lakers said it best when he stated, “we’re just in the business of people, played by people, sold by people, and consumed by people, so be good to your people”.

He went on to share how he has gotten upset at employees for missing their kids little league games or dance recitals to do something for work that wasn’t a crisis and reminded us that we need to make sure we are looking after our people.

What have you learned on the marketing conference circuit? Please share your conference notes with us.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Jonathan La Greca, Hotspex, VP Strategic Growth

The Blake Project Can Help: Accelerate Brand Growth Through Powerful Emotional Connections

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Of the many insights, two really stood out.

1. A Pronounced Focus On Accountability And ROI At The Expense Of Brand Building

This isn’t a new concept, nor did hearing this surprise us; however, the intensity with which CMO’s expressed it did.

Many organizations have evolved to include Chief Growth Officers, which means that their CMO’s have more accountability when it comes to sales. They are now responsible for marrying short-term conversion and long-term brand building.

Yet, several CMO’s indicated that overall, the marketing community is falling short on long-term brand building. Additional desk research we conducted confirmed this and pointed to digital and technology advances as key contributors.

The issue is that long-term brand building takes a “long time” to demonstrate results and when organizations aren’t hitting plan, CEO’s are pointing their finger at CMO’s first where 40% have been in their roles for less than 2 years.

Further to which, if you look closer at the marketing functions these CMO’s are leading, many of their team members are rotating between businesses and different brands every 12-18 months. As a result, their performance reviews tend to be myopic and are very focused on short-term impact, versus longer-term brand building.

2. Technology Is Leading To Role Proliferation

In our research CMO’s indicated that they were feeling overwhelmed by technology and that their roles have proliferated substantially as a result.

Today’s CMO’s are being asked to do more and be more than in any other time in the history of the role. Specifically to:

• Digitize their organizations – thus playing the role of Chief Digital Officers;
• Better use their data, while also protecting their consumers in doing so – thus also acting as Chief Information Officers;
• Uncover the ad tech and martech companies that can help them deliver personally relevant content at scale – thus leading some part of the Procurement process; and
• Hire a wider range of skill sets to enable their organizations despite having to grow leaner through restructuring efforts – effectively becoming Chief Talent Officers.

All of these roles are in addition to the increased expectation that CMO’s are focused on growth.

Empathy: The Ability To Understand And Share The Feelings Of Another

Whether you are a marketer reporting into a CMO or a partner agency (i.e. creative, design, innovation, media, or insights firm), or brand consultancy, a little bit of empathy can go a long way.

Starting with what is dominating the thoughts of the CMO in your life is a good way to help you drive more impact for your organization or your clients.

If you are interested in learning more or contributing to this ongoing dialogue on what is top of mind for CMO’s, please send us a message, as we will be facilitating several brand building discussions with marketing and insights leaders from different industries over the next few months. The journey will put us in a position to be more empathetic to those in the business world’s most dangerous role.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Jonathan La Greca, Hotspex, VP Strategic Growth

The Blake Project Can Help: Accelerate Brand Growth Through Powerful Emotional Connections

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Growth and Brand Education

FREE Publications And Resources For Marketers

1. Mental availability to create recall in advertising; and
2. Physical availability to make it easy for consumers to identify brands in buying situations.

Yet marketers face an important and ongoing tension of:

1. Evolving their brands to be more relevant to consumers and their changing needs; with
2. Staying familiar enough to trigger and reinforce existing memory structures built over time.

In addition to placating changing consumer needs, marketers now must manage the fact that the contexts within which they build physical and mental availability are changing because of the disruption that technology is bringing.

Communicating a brand’s distinctiveness now takes place in smaller environments like mobile screens and happens in a shorter duration with some ad exposures only lasting seconds at best.

Marketers are adjusting their strategies and their brand identities to win in these rapidly changing environments.

Recent Mastercard Brand Identity Evolution

Mastercard recently modified their brand logo, a cornerstone brand identity element, in order to improve its visibility across digital realms.

When asked about this change by Steve Oleski of the CMO Network, Mastercard’s Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, Raja Rajamannar, explained that the changing digital landscape is driving their marketing strategy and consumer engagement.

The new and simplified brand logo dropped the typeface “Mastercard” from the logo. According to Raja Rajamannar, the brief was aimed at delivering against pillars of simplicity, connectivity, seamlessness and modernity.

This is the outcome of this decision:

This poses some interesting questions of marketers and insights professionals that might include:

1. Do they agree with this strategy?
2. Do they believe that Mastercard has executed the strategy well?
3. What are the risks or concerns with implementing this strategy?
4. What could they learn from this and apply it to their brands?

Logos As Part Of A Brand Identity Evolution

Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with this brand identity evolution, it is interesting to note that several well-known brands have simplified their logos over time. Here are just a few examples (keep in mind that the before and after includes several gradual changes over time, not a direct change):

4 Simple Behavioral Science Principles To Consider In Brand Evolution

Whether you agree with these changes or not, there are some behavioral science and brand building principles that you should consider ahead of a logo or brand identity redesign.

Here are a few quick considerations for the next time you plan to refresh your brand.

1. Our Brains Prefer Visuals Over Words. It’s generally true that visuals are processed more fluently than words. This leads to quicker and less effortful processing. Less work means more positive associations. It’s also been shown that simpler visuals are processed more easily and positively than complex visuals. Hence, simplifying brand identity or executions of your brand in terms of ads and packaging, should make life for your consumer easier.

2. Our Brains Enjoy Solving Simple Puzzles. Our brain likes to solve “simple puzzles” and fill in gaps. Research on problem solving shows that consumers get emotional rewards in the form of a dopamine boost when they solve problems. Activation of positive affect related brain areas in the prefrontal cortex have also been observed when consumers solve simple problems. Logos that leave a consumer filling in a few simple gaps may lead to mental rewards that feel good at a non-conscious level.

3. Our Brains Are Attracted To Novelty. Our prehistoric brains are attracted to novelty. If you go back 200,000 years ago, we needed to find fresh food, water, and shelter, so our brains are wired to be attracted to new things. The trick to novelty is not to make it so unfamiliar that it triggers fear, but new enough that it sparks excitement and interest. This is the tension that brand builders face in building a distinctive brand that evolves enough to stay relevant to consumers but is familiar enough that it doesn’t require excess processing efforts.

4. Our Brains Use Context To Make Sense Of The World. Context drives perception. Anytime marketers change their brand, the biggest concern is that the new executions of the brand won’t trigger the brand automatically. To support this transition, marketers should take advantage of the fact that the brain always processes information relative to context and past experiences. Identifying other distinctive brand assets and the common contexts within which consumers expect to see the brand will help the activation of the brand.

Final Considerations

Is your marketing team considering evolving its brand? Perhaps you’re trying to renovate your brand, refresh your packaging, or even launching a new product and trying to determine which elements of your master brand you should incorporate?

Here are a few simple questions you might want to consider as a starting point:

1.Who are your consumers and what drives their behaviors?

2.What makes your brand distinctive?

3.Which elements of your brand identity are distinctive brand assets and must not be touched?

4.Which of your brand identity elements need to be evolved and how do you go about doing it?

5.Which brand identity elements are holding your brand back and should be removed?

6.How do you ensure that you leverage context to improve the transition of these changes?

There are simple ways to leverage behavioral science to answer these questions and inform your brief. We have seen marketers and their insights teams deploy innovative and agile audits of their packaging on shelf or their communications to uncover the path forward.

In closing, whether you like or dislike the changes Mastercard has made to their logo, marketers will continue to feel the pressures to evolve their brands over time, especially as the context within which these brands are advertised, purchased, and consumed become more digitized.

The key is to be very careful in evolving your brand and to do so in a way that doesn’t disrupt the memory structures that allow consumers to easily identify your brand.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Jonathan La Greca, Hotspex, VP Strategic Growth and Dr. Dan Young, Hotspex, Chief Behavioral Scientist

Interested in learning more about how to apply leading behavioral and marketing science principles to drive brand growth? Email us.

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Growth and Brand Education

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Discussion #1 – The True Definition of an Insight:

How many times a day do you say the word “insight”?

Have you ever paused to think about what that word means?

Cherri Prince ran a fantastic session on the 7 habits of highly insightful people and shared some of the key properties of an insight.

An insight…

• Is an undiscovered, unexpected, yet strangely familiar truth that is not obvious;
• Provides a clearer understanding to a complex situation;
• May have elements of a revolution within it;
• Acts as a springboard to new thinking; and
• Reveals a deep, intimate understanding of human behavior.

Cheri went on to describe how insights are different from, and deeper than, facts. When a person is exposed to a fact they are likely to react with a dull sense of curiosity, perhaps responding with “Really? I didn’t know that”, whereas a person being exposed to an insight would likely react with a great sense of having uncovered something that was hidden right under their nose with “Yes! That’s so true!”

Discussion #2 – The 4 Stages of Evolution for Insights Teams:

How evolved is your insights team relative to other organizations?

There are different levels of sophistication that an insights team can achieve and this impacts how much influence they have within their organization.

Mario Simon from BCG offered an excellent framework in mapping out the evolutionary path of an insights team and suggested that even if you are still in the early stages of your evolution (i.e. Stage 1 or 2), there are steps you can take to evolve to the higher stages (Stage 3 or 4) and have more impact and influence within your organization.

Each Stage shows an evolution of how the insights team is perceived by their stakeholders:

1. Internal Market Research Provider (Stage 1)
2. Business Contributor (Stage 2)
3. Strategic Insights Partner (Stage 3)
4. Source of Competitive Advantage (Stage 4)

At one end of the evolutionary scale, Stage 1, the insights team is led by the organization and is reactive, tactical, and very activity focused. It conducts “research” projects based on the requests of its stakeholders and is perceived as an “internal market research provider”.

Contrast this with the other side of the spectrum, Stage 4, where the insights team now leads the organization, and is proactive, strategic, and growth focused. It delivers knowledge that accelerates short and long term brand growth and is perceived by stakeholders and the organization to be a “source of competitive advantage”.

The most interesting stat related to this framework was that only 20% of organizations feel that they are at Stage 3 or 4. That said, this has doubled from 10% of organizations that felt this way in 2009. We still have a long way to go as an industry, but we are headed in the right direction. The call to action from this discussion was finding ways to influence your own insights team evolution and ensure that it has a seat at the executive table and decision making aperture.

Discussion #3 – Marketers Must Embrace and Adapt to Transience:

How are you adapting to and dealing with the disruptive world we are in?

Kathy Sheehan from GFK discussed the “New Era of Transience” sharing several examples demonstrating just how transient our lives are and offered suggestions on how to face non-permanence.

Some of the consumer themes she touched on were the shift to short-term thinking, living in the moment, life by subscription, and the rise of micro-moments. One colleague I discussed this with, a global insights leader at a leading CPG company, suggested that this topic made her pause and re-evaluate how consumers think about the future and how this might influence her marketing communications. She suggested that for consumers, the view of the future is “no longer a year, two years, or five years, but rather tomorrow or this weekend”. One can see how applying this deeper consumer understanding can influence our innovations, communications, shopper-based design and in-store marketing.

In closing, consumers, marketers, and insights leaders are facing incredibly transient times, and permanence will only continue to shrink as we move into the future, a future measured in fleeting micro-moments. That said, times of change and disruption will unearth new opportunities for insights leaders, so it is a perfect time for us to dig deeper into our craft to proactively pave the path forward, one micro-moment at a time.

The Blake Project Can Help: Accelerate Brand Growth Through Powerful Emotional Connections

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Licensing and Brand Education

FREE Publications And Resources For Marketers

In an astonishing fact, Pokémon GO has been downloaded more times in one week than the very popular relationship app Tinder has been in the past 4 years and according to some sources, it could surpass Twitter in terms of its daily active users!

Avid Pokémon GO players uncovered that a McDonald’s logo was hidden in the app data and hours later the Pokémon Company confirmed that there would be a branded tie in with the quick service restaurant (QSR). Some small businesses had already been capitalizing on the global game craze with fun signs or promotions, but this announcement marks the game’s first foray into official brand partnerships.

How does getting the attention of these Pokémon crazed smartphone wielders benefit McDonald’s?

Physical Availability  

Early details seem to indicate that all McDonald’s locations in at least one country, rumored to be Japan, will be turned into “PokéStops” or “Pokémon Gyms”, which means players will follow their GPS and congregate at these locations to engage in certain geographically tied in game activities.

In How Brands Grow, Byron Sharpe describes how physical availability drives brand growth. Simply put, brands that are more readily available, are more likely to fulfill consumer need states. When it comes to QSRs, brands can increase their physical availability by increasing the number and accessibility of their locations. Providing more reasons to visit their stores or locations creates new consumer entry points.

In this case, the game itself will drive traffic to these locations by making them desirable destinations for anyone playing. Given that these consumers will have likely been walking around for hours glued to their phones while playing, the Golden Arch labelled “PokéStop” are likely to trigger and satisfy hunger and thirst need states. It will be interesting to see how the potential washroom lineups impact paying, yet non-playing consumers.

A relatable example from Byron Sharpe’s book is how Sainsbury’s in the U.K. demonstrated sales growth over its competitors during the busy Christmas period of 2010 by simply purchasing 12,000 tons of salt and ensuring that their parking lots were always free of snow, making their retail locations more desirable and accessible.

The Halo Effect

In simple terms, the halo effect is the tendency for an impression created in one area or by one brand to influence opinion in another area or for another brand. McDonald’s has had a long standing partnership with Nintendo, previously supporting the company’s DS and 3DS systems with Wi-Fi enabled beacons and having strong brand ties with the Pokémon franchise through promotions and Happy Meal toys.

By highlighting this partnership, the positive associations consumers have towards Pokémon GO create a mental halo that McDonald’s can position itself to take advantage of. The partnership may also dial up new associations that further strengthen equity in the brand.

Brand Growth

McDonald’s is making a bet that this partnership will drive significant traffic and positive associations for the brand. Time will tell whether the game continues to garner the attention that it has so far , but in any event, we applaud McDonald’s for trying new things to build physical availability by making its retail sites more desirable and accessible. It is also a smart brand move to drive additional associations through the halo effect with the excitement surrounding Pokémon GO. If interest in the game and the overall popularity of Pokémon continues to grow, imagine the impact this partnership could have, especially if McDonald’s chooses to leverage its 30,000 global locations.

The Blake Project Can Help: Accelerate Brand Growth Through Powerful Emotional Connections

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Licensing and Brand Education

FREE Publications And Resources For Marketers