- (2011) Strategic Brand Management by Shahid Khan, Dr. Simon John and Marketing Club / link

- (2011) Brand Against the Machine by John Morgan / link

- (2011) Managing Product Management by Steven Haines / link

- (2011) Marketing Management 14th Edition by Philip Kotler and Kevin Keller / link

- (2011) Advanced Brand Management – Managing brands in a changing world by Paul Temporal / link

- (2010) B2B Brand Management – The success dimensions of business brands by Philip Kotler and Waldemar Pfoertsch / link

- (2009) Eating the Big Fish – How challenger brands can compete against brand leaders by Adam Morgan / link

- (2008) The New Strategic Brand Management – Creating and sustaining brand equity long term by Jean-Noel Kapferer / link

- (2007) Strategic Brand Management (3rd edition) by Kevin Lane Keller / link

- (2007) Brand Management 101: 101 Lessons from real world marketing by Mainak Dhar / link

- (2007) BrandSimple: how the best brands keep it simple and succeed by Allen P. Adamson / link

If I’ll have the time and energy, I’d also love to go through these ones: Enchantment from Guy Kawasaki, Crossing the Chasm from Geoffrey Moorey, How we decide from Jonah Lehrer, Start with Why from Simon Sinek and The Thank You Economy from the one and only, Gary Vaynerchuk. These are not focused on marketing per se but more on leadership, decision making, business insights and social media. I’ll keep you posted on my progress!

I added below 2 of my favourite paragraphs from his speech:

“I discovered that all the work I had done that was meaningful and significant came out of an affectionate relationship with a client (…) I am talking about a client and you sharing some common ground. That in fact your view of life is someway congruent with the client, otherwise it is a bitter and hopeless struggle” (lesson You can only work for people you like)

“(…) What is required in our field, more than anything else, is the continuous transgression. Professionalism does not allow for that because has to encompass the possibility of failure and if you are professional your instinct is not to fail, it is to repeat success. So professionalism as a lifetime aspiration is a limited goal.” (lesson Professionalism is not enough)

Walter Isaacson – Steve Jobs

Remember the old Robin Williams joke about his son’s future: “Hello Mr. President” or “Do you want fries with that?” Career planning at this point probably requires a combination of serendipitous opportunity plus being curious. This in turn requires an educated mind that allows for serendipity to play a large role in discovering opportunities and staying just outside of your comfort zone.

Live in the coolest place, I tell Cole and his brothers. Have the coolest friends. Do the coolest things. Learn from everything you do. Be open to new opportunities. And do something your father hasn’t yet figured how to do, which is every few years take off 138 days and just walk the Earth.

A thought-provoking article on life, creating learning opportunities and what kind of advice would a father give to his 7-years old son. (full article)

Once a niche product for climbers and hikers, it soon got adopted into mainstream as a fashionable daily accessory – it was versatile, had a funky design and was tapping into the trend towards sustainability and environmental awareness.

It’s really extraordinary the way they shifted the product in terms of marketing communication with the eco friendliness statement at its core.

The SIGG bottle was shaped into a Social Brand, a brand that goes beyond the product’s pure functionality, sparking conversational cycles across the web and generating consumer engagement. It’s not about buying a nicely designed bottle, it’s about the sense of belongingness to the community that already embraced the brand!

Here’s 2 really cool initiatives that got my attention:

SIGG – Stay hydrated: a free iPhone app that monitors your water intake, making sure your body stays healthy.

Play SIGG: a great example of consumer generated marketing and creative co-creation. Behind this idea are a bunch of young talented Japanese that used no less than 520 SIGG bottles and a HD projector. Go ahead and watch the video, it’s awesome!

4 marketing lessons to learn from physics, a really awesome thing to observe while doing a parallel between these two. Of course, you still need plenty of imagination and creativity mixed in the pot, to actually spot the common grounds. This fascinating creative exercise is performed by Dan Cobley in his 7-minute speech at TED. Playing with these two, he soon unveils 4 rules that physics and marketing share in common:

#1 Newton’s Law – Force=Mass x Acceleration

The bigger the mass of a certain object, the more force is needed in order to change its course.

The same can be applied to brands: the more massive/complex a brand is, the more baggage it carries, the more effort is needed to influence its course in the market (think of positioning, advertising etc.)

#2 Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle

It’s impossible to measure precisely the state (position, momentum) of a particle, because the act of measuring it, by definition, changes it. The act of observation changes it.

It’s the same with marketing: the act of observing consumers changes their behavior, they get biased from the research. So, it’s safer to measure what consumers actually do instead what they say they do or intend to do.

#3 The Scientific Method

You cannot prove a hypothesis through observation, you can only disprove it

You can gather many data points around a hypothesis, it will strengthen it but it will not conclusively prove it. And only one data point, if opposite, can blow away your theory.

Here, the marketing lesson is: regardless of the investment you put in a brand, one mistake or a bad decision at a particular point in time can undermine decades of success and good work.

#4 Increasing Entropy

The entropy, which is a measure of a system’s disorder, will always increase.

The marketing lesson is: nowadays, with the evolution of the digital and social media tools available to every single one of the consumers, it’s impossible to control where your brand goes. Your brand starts being dispersed, your brand starts being part of the conversation out there. You cannot control the reactions/comments/reviews toward your brand. As Dan Cobley says, marketers shouldn’t fight this but they should embrace it and find ways of working with it.

These 4 rules are no news to the marketing world, any marketer with a bit of experience is highly familiarized by now. What’s fascinating is the way these principles come alive when looking at them through the magnifying glass of physics.

Here is Dan Cobley’s presentation at TED:

A kind and insightful article on Edwin H. Land, the genius behind the Polaroid Corporation and an inspiration hero for Steve Jobs.

I had made couple of notes during the discussions and here are my take-aways from this meetup:

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Do you surprise your consumers or they surprise you?

Steven started with an intriguing statement: “Do you surprise your consumers or they surprise you?” and pointed out the changes happening right now in our society thanks to the wide spread of internet and technology.

Now, every single one of us, armed with a smartphone and a 3G service can be a walking journalist (remember this?). You rarely hear anyone buying music from the downstairs record store. Instead, they download their music online with a touch of a mouse click, via iTunes or other online music store. We’re hooked on apps that help us save time and money, apps that entertain us, apps that make our life easier.

And marketers need to understand this new emerging generation, need to make their research and use those insights if they want to keep up. Here are couple of nice statistics: in Netherlands alone, the internet penetration is 92% and 71% of them connect to the internet on a daily basis. There are lots of people that own more than one cellphone and 52% of the people under the age of 25 feel unconnected without a cellphone in their pocket.

Consumers – taking control of their money

He then talked about ZMAZZ, a fast & easy mobile payment service that uses the RFID/NFC technology. This service gives consumer the opportunity to dramatically simplify the way they make payments, scan their receipts and keep a clear track of their spendings. On the other side of the counter, the merchants get to operate free-of-charge transactions and have access to deep information regarding their consumers’ buying behavior, loyalty and shopping patterns. ZMAZZ requires no additional technology and ensures the privacy for all collected data.

As Steven reinforced, there is still lot of work to do but we’re steadily getting there. It’s thrilling to think that in couple of years time this new technology will go mainstream and we’ll be able to pay everything using our smartphone, from parking to groceries.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Next in front was Xaviera telling us that brands need to make a PAKT with their consumers – a PAKT based on 4 important pillars: personality, audience, knowledge and trust.

Cherish your Starry Eyed Consumers

The Starry Eyed Consumers are the most important category of your consumers – they buy your product, do the marketing for you and defend your brand in times of adversity. They love your brand and they’re willing to talk about it and recommend it wherever they”ll go. Why do I inevitably think of Apple ?

She also talked about NPS (Net Promoter Score) which is a customer loyalty metric measuring the probability of a consumer recommending a certain brand/company to a friend or colleague. She also pointed out that this score increased in the internet age and more and more people are willing to talk good/bad about their brands online. Taking into consideration that 70% of the web users are simply spectators you really ought to concentrate on those 30%.

Personality / Audience / Knowledge / Trust

People don’t want to do business with companies nor brands – they want a human contact, they want to do business with people, with personalities. Personalities attract people; you need to lose persuasion and use attraction more. It helps a great deal figuring out what your personality is, what does that mean for the company and how can you enforce your employees to spread the message?

Your consumers want to be heard, acknowledged. Come down from your ivory tower and speak to them as equals. They will tell you their wants, their needs, what they love and what they hate. Once you figure out how to listen to them, see what moves them and deliver that!

In order to reach your customers you need to be aware of the cultural particularities, the technical restraints and the possibilities you have in using the social platforms. Even though you’ll want to outsource your social media efforts to an external agency you need to know what you’re buying and have a clear understanding of how social media works, how your consumers behave online. Combining knowledge and strategy gets you results.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

It was an insightful talk – always a pleasure having people talk based on their expertise and work experience. The next meetup will be on July 4 and will be focused around Crowd Sourcing – creativity & innovation. TechMAP Amsterdam has also its own Twitter account as of 6 June. Feel free to hit follow and keep in touch with the upcoming events and tweets!

That’s about it for now. Thanks for dropping by and have a lovely summer time!

It was a very entertaining evening and we were happy to have Tom de Bruyne and Joeri Van den Bergh in front of us as guest speakers. It was a great mix between social media, brands, advertising and research. Tom had a keynote on how social media is slowly shaping the future of advertising and Joeri stepped in with a set of insightful learnings from his research around brands and the Millennials generation.

I took couple of notes during the meetup and I would like to share with you some of the key statements that stuck with me after I listened to their presentations:

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Tom de Bruyne is partner at Boondoggle, the interactive agency behind one of KLM’s most successful campaigns called ‘How Happiness Spreads’ that used the Foursquare platform. You can read more about the campaign here.

#1 digital is not a revolution in media but in consumer behavior

As Tom stressed out, it’s no news that more and more consumers reach out to Google for making informed decisions and take a major interest in what their friends have to say about a certain product or service. An increasing number of purchases are made under the influence of the discussions and recommendations on Facebook, testimonials or reviews and comments that come across Twitter.

Brands should know this by now and should act accordingly. Brands should interact and communicate in such a remarkable way that would get people talking, spark social conversations around it and ultimately, have them share it further with their friends.

#2 forget CREATIVE ideas, embrace SMART ideas

Agencies should focus their efforts less on creative ideas per se and more on throwing in smart ideas. The ones that would get the conversational cycle started among their fans & followers and produce consumer engagement.

He backed his point of view with 2 examples: Shocking Barack and Fiat Eco Drive campaigns.

#3 don’t design for impact, create stuff worth sharing

Here, Tom made an unique parallel that provoked smiling yet curious facial expressions throughout the room. He compared advertising with the art of seduction. What pick up artists do, advertising doesn’t. Advertising goes for the impact, for the hit. Instead, the winning strategy is ‘the less you seduce your consumer, the more seductive you become as a brand’.

#4 forget campaigning, start committing

It’s about replacing the short-term mindset with a long-term vision. Sacrificing the need of seeing immediate results from the recently launched campaign and committing in delivering little acts of kindness on the long run. Here, the Nike brand was brought up into discussion and their continuous gestures of delivering inspiration and innovation to the athletes (see Take Mokum)

#5 how’s the advertising agency of the future looking like?

Asked how he sees the future of advertising, Tom said the agency of the future is a PR agency. And the PR people have a far more important role than they might think. They own the important role of crafting brand stories and help them spread among the consumers. They will take over the function of a consulting company and help the client tweak they way their brand behave, the way they communicate in every consumer touch-point.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Joeri Van den Bergh is co-founder of Insites Consulting and co-author of the book called “How Cool brands stay Hot”. His presentation got me really curious about the book and I’m already putting it on my reading list. You can find out more here www.howcoolbrandsstayhot.com

#1 generation Y (also known as Millennials) are a powerful generation

A generation with a non-stop thirst for novelty, for spotting out the new groovy stuff out there. And brands need to stay on the move and innovate on a regular basis if they want to keep up with them.

Joeri gave the example of the clothing brands Jack & Jones and H&M. If in the past Jack & Jones only had 4 collections a year, they soon realized they need to adapt – now Jack & Jones offers a new collection every 3-4 weeks. The same goes for H&M where they constantly change their posters and rearrange the clothes’ position in the store. People have the impression that new clothes were brought in. Instead, H&M just shuffles the clothes around to avoid being static/boring and keep people entertained and curious. So that’s why I never find the stuff the second time..

#2 Millennials enjoy ownership

It’s a generation where consumers want to be in charge, be empowered and have the chance for self-expression. Joeri mentioned here Coke’s Interactive Fountain Machine.

#3 how to keep your brand hot?

Exploring a number of 5000 stories where consumers talk about why they love their favorite brands, the following key factors kept popping out: Cool, Real, Self-Brand Identification and Happiness.

COOL was the most discussed one. Research unveiled the magic formula of being a cool brand:

Cool Brand=37% Original + 20% Popular + 42% Appeal

It’s also important for the brands to join in the conversation and listen to what their fans have to say. Joeri said that in social media there are 146 conversations/week and at least one brand is mentioned.

There is also an interesting relationship between Millennials and their parents (Baby Boomers). As they advance in age Baby Boomers would like to remain young and cool and so they look to their children for inspiration. They are influenced in terms of clothes or what sort of tech gadgets should they buy. Joeri calls this Kidsulting – consulting with kids.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

All-in-all it was an awesome meetup. Great people, learned lots of new things. I’m happy to see the techMAP community steadily growing and I’m looking forward to the next one: 6th of June – Consumer behavior in a digital world. Sounds promising, see you there!

There’s no doubt that an efficient social media campaign can generate fun, word-of-mouth, consumer engagement and invite fans to join in and engage into the conversation. The company can then listen, observe, take notes and collect insights along the way from the groups of fans and followers they’re interacting with. They can see what worked and what didn’t, what should they continue and what should they stop doing.

Mario Sundar from Linkedin said, at the recent The Next Web 2011 conference in Amsterdam, “Social media is like peanut butter, makes everything taste better”.

The thing I mostly enjoy about social media is that no person/company has yet to nail it once and for all. They’re still figuring it out, experimenting, putting ideas into practice, celebrating success, learning from their failures. That’s normal, social media is not like math, an exact science. Takes time & experience to build your craftsmanship. I recently wrote a piece about social media failures, going through another 3 case studies.

I wanted to learn more myself on how to measure social media’s effectiveness and I chose 3 different campaigns which performed online and proved social media’s return on investment – brand awareness, increased sales, Youtube views, Facebook likes etc. Let’s take each individual campaign – from the brief to the ideas, from ideas to the implementation and the responses they got from the online community:

#1 ‘The Best Job in the World’ social media campaign (2009)

I remember this social media campaign generating a lot of buzz online. It was created by Tourism Queensland and its advertising agency, CumminsNitro Brisbane. The lucky winner was Ben Southall from Hampshire.

The concept: ‘post a one-minute video application on our website convincing us why should you be the caretaker of Hamilton Island on the Great Barrier Reef?’

The prize: ‘get yourself on a paradise island, your only tasks being blogging and recording your experience throughout a period of 6 months’. Salary: about $100K. Not such a bad deal, ey? What were the results?

• 1,100 TV placements in the US within 2 days
• 400,000 new visitors in the first 30 hours. Their initial goal was to get that amount of visits over the course of a whole year!
• 1mil hits on the second day
• they had aprox.  35,000 people from 200 countries applying for the awesome job
• 336,000 visitors came from their Facebook page alone
• more than 3000 followers on Twitter
• there were 423,000 people voting for their favorite top 50 finalist
• by the time people started voting the website had 6.7 million visitors
• over $11 mil worth of exposure
• it picked up the top awards at Cannes Lions ’09 becoming the first ever campaign to win 3 Grand Prixs (Cyber, PR and Direct).

I think the concept has a huge potential and the core idea can still be implemented in other campaigns as well. One of the main reasons I totally love this campaign is that it tapped into every human’s hidden desire of a life without worries, lost somewhere on a sunny exotic island, swinging in a hammock with a cocktail. And I believe using this insight also contributed to its massive viral hit.

#2 ‘The Fun Theory’ campaign from Volkswagen (2009-2010)

An initiative to get people to change their behavior by allowing them to see the funny side of acting environmentally responsible.

The brief: increase the awareness of Volkswagen’s BlueMotion Technologies – promote Volkswagen’s environmental program, drive interest and sales.

One of the things they did and went on to become a viral hit was to transform a subway staircase in Stockholm into a giant piano. The effect of this was that 66% more people chose to join the fun and take the stairs. The platform also encouraged people to create and submit similar initiatives offering a cash prize of €2500. So, what were the results?

• The Fun Theory became one of the most viral campaign in the world, receiving over 20 million hits on Youtube
• more than 700 concepts from 35 countries were submitted for the contest
• CNN, NBC, New York Times, The Guardian and many more global media outlets picked up the campaign and fed the global discussion around the idea of changing human behavior for the better
• in Sweden, where the campaign was initially started, Volkswagen reported of having the highest selling eco car
• Volkswagen’s campaign won the Cannes Grand Prix for a digitally led integrated campaign.

And even though it’s hard to pin an exact figure on it, it’s obvious that this campaign contributed to Volkswagen’s awareness and the attributes people tend to associate its brand with. If we look on Twitter solely, we can see that Volkswagen gets mentioned several times per hour, being associated with words like eco, environment and most important, fun.

#3 Old Spice ‘Smell like a Man’ social media campaign (2010)

A brilliant campaign for Old Spice Body-Wash that, without a doubt, rewarded Wieden&Kennedy’s creative efforts. It was a campaign aimed at refreshing Old Spice ‘s brand identity and giving it a boost in an already-crowded category. The commercials, targeted at men and their ladies, soon became ‘the’ internet sensation with Old Spice receiving the title of #1 all-time most viewed branded channel on Youtube.

What gave it an edge and further fueled its online success was engaging with their fans directly. Throughout a time span of 3 days, they filmed 180 videos and responded in near real time to fans and celebrities on Youtube, Facebook and Twitter.

Couple of their fantastic internet figures:

• day 1: campaign receives aprox. 6 mil views / day 2: Old Spice had 8 of the 11 most popular videos online / day 3: campaign reaches over 20 mil. hits
• from the day 1, Old Spice brand captured 75% of all conversations in the category
• their Facebook fan interaction increased to 800% / Twitter following increased 2700%
• their traffic on Oldspice.com went up 300%

What about their sales results?

• the Old Spice campaign increased sales by 27% over 6 months since launching (year on year)
• Old Spice became the NO#1 body wash brand for men!

#4 Blendtec’s ‘Will it blend?’ experiments (2006-present)

One of the early social media ideas that was successfully put into practice, way back in 2006. It was Tom Dickson’s habit that sparked the idea of a social media campaign for their blenders. Tom Dickson, president and engineer at Blendtec, used to test their 240-mph commercial blenders by chopping a 2×2 lumber. This is how they started, blending from golf balls and iPhones to vuvuzelas and iPads, demonstrating the hardcore durability of their products and improving on the awareness of their lines of blenders.

A campaign that developed & grew nicely along the way generating:

• a Youtube channel with more than 370,000 subscribers and over 100 mil. views
• an increase of 650% for the willitblend.com website
• 700% increase in sales

They’ve also engaged with their fans online, encouraging them to suggest new things that would go under the merciless blades. The iPad 2 video itself has more than 1 mil views. They’ve also set out contests, offering for example an iPhone 4: Tom Dickson was offering to pay the 2–year subscription and blend the winner’s old iPhone 3.

Another cool thing they did (this time offline) is promoting their website on the packaging of their retail products and hosting live performances at trade shows and corporate events.