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BRANDING MAGAZINE / december 2014
| The Branding Roundtable
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BRANDING MAGAZINEDECEMBER 2014
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brandingmagazine.com
Challenges & Opportunities for 2015
BRANDING MAGAZINE
Chuck KentWriter & Contributing [email protected]
David BrbaklicCreative [email protected]
As an independent online daily brand journal, Branding Magazine represents an insightful source of news and opinions from the industry.
A dedicated team of writers strives to keep its readers up-to-date with the biggest and freshest news about global brands, while concentrating on successful brand strategies, corporate and brand identity work, brand development and brand evolution.
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The Branding Roundtable
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#07
Challenges & Opportunities for 2015
Trend reports, posts and lists – in
branding or anything else – are almost
as popular at year’s end as having too
many drinks at a holiday party. So rath-
er than a trends report per se, we have
tapped into our rapidly growing body
of global experts contributing to The
Branding Roundtable, asking one lead-
er from each of the branding firms rep-
resented to respond to three simple,
but telling, questions:
1. What do you see as the greatest op-
portunity in branding for 2015?
2. What is the biggest challenge in
branding for the coming year?
3. Which branding buzzword would you
like to see banished from our profes-
sional lexicon in the next 12 months?
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Our “16 for ‘15” from around the world include (in last name alphabetical order):
Tom Adams, Global Head of Strategy, Futurebrand
Jorge Aguilar, Executive Director of Strategy, Landor Associates
Jon Bailey, Founder/Chief Relationships Officer, i.d.e.a. brand
Carol Cone, Chair, Edelman Business + Social Purpose
Scott Davis, Chief Growth Officer, Prophet
Vladimir Djurovic, CEO, Labbrand
Alexander Haldemann, CEO, MetaDesign
Margaret Molloy, CMO, Siegel+Gale
Sean McCoy, CEO, HKLM Group
Don Peppers, Founding Partner, Peppers & Rogers Group
Dominik Prinz, Senior Director of Strategy, Interbrand
Michael Savage, Director of Employer Brand, JWT INSIDE
Claude Singer, Chief Strategist, Siegelvision
Russ Stoddard, CEO, Oliver Russell
Rob Swan, Executive Creative Director, Brand Image / SGK
Eric Villain, Managing Director, Brand and Customer Experience, GfK
Some of our participants replied to all three questions, some to only one or two,
and a few combined answers. Regardless of the format of their replies, their
insights on the greatest opportunities and challenges in the year ahead are sure
to be thought provoking.
Please return to the article introducing this Roundtable to comment on any par-
ticularly interesting provocations – and to offer your own suggestions as to what
buzzwords we can do without.
Chuck Kent
Contributing Editor and Moderator of The Branding Roundtable
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What do you see as the biggest opportunity area for branding in 2015?
Tom Adams, Futurebrand
By 1915, many of the twentieth century’s greatest companies had consolidated innova-tions that drove progress over the following 100 years. Ford had mastered the moving as-sembly line and mass production of the car. GE was about to introduce affordable sealed home fridges. Coca Cola approved the design of its iconic contour bottle. A hundred years on, as we enter 2015, it’s worth considering which companies are setting the agenda for the com-ing century, and the role for brand in helping them to achieve it.
Just as their iconic forebears understood, companies that shape epochs articulate and deliver on a clear purpose and deliver an expe-rience that improves peoples’ lives. Whether they are in technology, food, medicine or infor-mation, the potential for today’s newest corpo-rate brands is to make sure they are remem-bered for why they are here, as much as what they created. And history shows that 15 years into a century is a good time to start!
Jorge Aguilar, Landor
Right now, the greatest power that brands have is to become more agile. This requires brands to be ultra clear on what they stand for, have a distinct set of principles and values, and hold themselves to those standards in order to ex-press their purpose in new ways and quickly evolve with the marketplace.
Five opportunities to manage brands differently:
1. Shift away from sameness: While consistency in branding is still important, the greatest value is in creating relevant branding that connects with consumers.
2. Create beta brands: Marketers are starting to dismiss the notion that brands are ultimate and final in favor of more fluid brands that allow for greater risk taking and learning to support business objectives.
3. Be more than a story: Developing meaningful experiences that reflect the essence of your brand at every touchpoint is crucial to cementing customer relationships.
4. Go on the offensive: Brands must constantly take a proactive approach and articulate ways in which they can drive growth and increase profitability.
5. Break the rules: Hard-and-fast guidelines that remove all cre-ativity and flexibility are dead. Embrace adaptable principles that fuel innovation and change.
“Right now, the greatest power brands have is to become
more agile.”- Jorge Aguilar, Landor
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Jon Bailey, i.d.e.a
One of the greatest opportunities for brands in the com-ing year will be establishing a purpose – a commitment to benefitting the greater good through business. Fact: one survey found that 73 percent of people said they will recommend a company that “stands for something.” However, only 5 percent actually believe companies will deliver on their promises.
An ever-increasing number of consumers want to invest in, shop at and consume goods produced by companies with a purpose. Brands are rising up to meet that de-mand: the number of B – or “Benefit” – Corporations is growing by the day, with more than 1,100 businesses in 35+ countries worldwide (including i.d.e.a.). B Corps un-dergo a rigorous evaluation process to become certified and must meet metrics each year to prove they are walk-ing the talk with their purpose. More and more compa-nies are finding their purpose and affecting measurable change in our communities. It’s a win-win.
Carol Cone, Edelman
Purpose will continue to evolve from a niche strategy to one more highly practiced for powerful organizational growth and culture development.
October’s Fast Company story “Find Your Mission” cov-ered organizations from Chipotle to Pepsico and Eileen Fisher who keenly focus their purpose-built brands to elicit avid loyalty from employees to customers, even Wall Street, from clearly stated and practiced missions.
In an era consumed with massive stimuli – called Gen-eration Flux by Fast Company --- successful companies and brands will thrive on a core reason for being, con-centrating not on making money, but HOW they make the money. This means: for Chipotle, standing for Food with Integrity; while Unilever strives to make sustainable liv-ing commonplace and CVS stands for health.
These purpose-built or purpose-evolved companies will rely on compelling missions to unlock their overall dif-ferentiation, talent acquisition and retention, organiza-tional energy and performance.
Throughout the year we saw CEO’s stepping up to what Edelman calls “the bully pulpit,” taking stands on issues critical to their missions. CVS declared it would stop selling tobacco products and, in doing so, would likely take a $2 billion revenue hit. Yet the company saw its fu-ture success as a healthcare company and took this bold step, as well as a renaming to crisply define its ambition.
Starbucks launched their College Achievement Plan, pro-viding free tuition to their partners (employees) knowing that a Starbucks job was only a temporary pause in their future career journey, while a college degree was criti-cal. As Howard Schultz stated: “If we want our partners to advocate for our brand and customers, then we must advocate for them.” Gaining more than 2 billion impres-sions in a few days, this innovation was deeply aligned with Starbucks long-term support of its people, products and communities.
In a world of limitless choices and a cacophony of mes-sages, purpose built companies and brands will provide a magnetic draw for consumers, employees and ultimately with their success, investors. For 2015, purpose is no longer a fad. It is a sought out strategy that prescient leaders will embrace. The winners will be relentless in their focus and authentic actions to bring the strategy to life.
“Purpose will continue to evolve from a niche strategy to one more highly practiced forpowerful organizational growth.”
- Carol Cone, Edelman
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Scott Davis, Prophet
In this era of infinite expectation and persistent change, absolutely nothing is more critical for a brand than to be and remain relevant. Those brands that have an unyield-ing commitment to making smart, bold moves, meet customers on their terms, push competitors out of con-sideration, and even define entire categories – all while remaining unwaveringly authentic to who they are – will win. At Prophet, we don’t believe that a brand’s relevance should be confined to a moment in time. We believe a brand needs to stay vibrant, energetic and dynamic, while constantly pushing itself to earn and re-earn its position and loyalty in the marketplace. In short, we be-lieve great brands must become Relentlessly RelevantSM. Relentlessly Relevant brands recognize that innovation in their offering, experience, content, messaging and even alignment with like-minded brands, helps to make them indispensible.
So what does that mean? It means that companies have to stop just saying they are “customer obsessed” and ac-tually commit to uncovering breakthrough insights that give rise to fresh, new ideas for how, where, and when to engage and win with customers. It means being nimble and responsive in creating opportunities for authentic engagement, and of delighting customers at every turn. And it means being ruthlessly pragmatic in bringing strategies to life.
Vladimir Djurovic, Labbrand
The biggest opportunity in branding for 2015 on a glob-al level is the internal engagement of brand employees to live the brand on social networks. This trend has al-ready started in the B2B environment with examples of brands like Philips turning their employees world-wide into branded content curators and social network ambassadors. This opportunity in branding is ready to emerge now as the maturity of social networks, plat-forms and digital habits has created a new media real-ity that is putting each person at the center. Coinciding with the growing need of authenticity, trustworthiness and social responsibility, and the decline in efficiency of
both the traditional and the first wave of digital automat-ed branding, these new internal engagement programs shall create a huge advantage for companies developing programs that empower their employees in using social networks and delivering a real-person messaging.
Alexander Haldemann, MetaDesign
Adaptiveness. Adaptive design is all the rage, but it goes deeper than mobile. Brands need to become flexible eco-systems that can react and adapt immediately to chang-es and requirements in channels, technologies and au-diences. To manage a brand through guidelines alone is impossible. Brands thrive by adapting their communi-cations to different mediums, not by adhering rigidly to guidelines and rules.
Margaret Molloy, Siegel+Gale
In 2015, the opportunity for brands will be to reimagine their customer experiences and to deliver on that prom-ise. With disruptive brands reaching mainstream satura-tion in 2014, and with more to emerge in 2015, the focus on customer experience is now paramount. Why have these disrupters captured the mind and market share of the public? They are achieving success through the abili-ty to identify (even anticipate) consumer pain and resolve it by creating friction-free, often surprisingly delightful, experiences for customers. Brands, of all ages and cate-gories, must take a cue from these disrupters, becoming more mindful of how customers are ultimately experi-encing the holistic brand.
“In 2015, the opportunity for brands will be to reimagine their customer experiences and to deliver on that promise.”
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Sean McCoy, HKLM Group
I am of the opinion that the role of the inter-nal brand will be the greatest opportunity of 2015 and will likely also remain a key chal-lenge for client and the industry as a whole.
I see it as a great opportunity from the point of view of the dire need to re-engage people, given some of the global economic challenges that we have experienced across most markets throughout the world. This has caused employee fatigue, high levels of disengagement and in some instances, severe breakdown of trust in the traditional employee-employer relationship. The op-portunity to reverse this, or at least begin the journey of reversal, is beckoning and the impact of brand engagement and improved internal/external brand alignment is large. There is clear evidence of this across sever-al markets in Africa at the moment [where HKLM operates] – also a definite indication of an improved service culture in a bid to be more globally competitive and to gear many businesses in the region for growth.
Don Peppers, Peppers & Rogers Group
[The big opportunity for brands in 2015 is to] become the leader in trustability, or proac-tive trustworthiness, in your category. This would mean always acting in the custom-er’s interest, even when it costs money to do so. The way JetBlue credits your refund automatically, or Amazon warns you before you buy a book you’ve already bought from them. [Moderator’s note: If you’re not famil-iar with Don’s book “Extreme Trust,” which explains this trustability concept, it is well-worth reading. By the way, this is not an af-filiate link.]
Dominik Prinz, Interbrand
I believe what will both be the biggest challenge and opportunity in 2015 is what I like to call “Brand Democratization”.
What it is? Basically, an organization’s willingness to let go of the desire to control every single step of the customer journey. Instead, it dares to be more playful with its brand experiences - and actually al-lows the customer to shape a large portion of it. This is, of course, es-pecially difficult for large brands out there which are often still used to think in consistency and brand guideline compliance.
But we increasingly see younger and more agile brands celebrate great success with a looser strategy. Warby Parker, for example. Take the brand’s retail experience: whether it’s 3,500 square foot garage in NYC, or a an old school bus refitted to be a traveling store and party location for their customers: Warby Parker has fun experimenting.
If done right, “Brand Democratization” creates much deeper engage-ment, more excitement, and a bigger sense of brand ownership for people. So every brand, big or small, should explore ways to make the brand experience more participatory and co-designed by the people it’s ultimately for.
“The biggest challenge and opportunity in 2015 is what I like to call ‘Brand Democratization.’”
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Claude Singer, Siegelvision
Branding — however defined — does not exist in a vacu-um. Speculating on the future of branding requires see-ing branding within the broader context of our times.
The world is in a heightened state of anticipation — wait-ing for resolution to Middle East violence, Ukrainian in-stability, China’s growth path and America’s energy pro-duction, among other question marks.
In this swirl of uncertainty, vibrant commercial brands offer reliability and reassurance. Successful not-for-profits offer the promise of action for good. These brands can bring sighs of relief in an era of intense doubt.
But this is also a time of unrelenting change — and therein lies a paradox: While promising certainty, orga-nizations must be able to adapt. They must appear as buttresses against storms while continuously shifting in the market’s gusts.
How can an organization promise both certainty and adaptability? The answer comes back to a strong sense of identity. Just as human beings who know themselves have an advantage over people who put up a false front, so organizations who know who they are and what they do have the best chance to project stability while mov-ing with the times. They can create reliable value that is shaped and reshaped for changing needs.
The conclusion is inescapable, and the trend for 2015 is clear: Organizations of all stripes and sizes will be vulnerable if they don’t do the self-analysis and build their brands on a candid understanding of their endur-ing strengths. They will need to probe deeply into them-selves for a clear fix on their identities. They will need to observe the adage: Know thyself. Otherwise the 2015 marketplace will know them as losers.
Russ Stoddard, Oliver Russell
I believe corporate values will move from the realm of motivational posters in corporate hallways to become a full-fledged component of the customer value proposi-tion in 2015.
While corporate values have largely been absent from the historical purchasing consideration set, the pur-pose-driven consumer movement – led by Millennials – increasingly wants to know what a brand stands for – and what it is against – so that they can align their purchas-ing and loyalty with brands around shared values.
You want a customer to feel good? Then make them feel good about what you share beyond the transactional ex-perience. Values add a new and dynamic component in the cost-benefit equation of value. It’s a great opportuni-ty to differentiate – and a challenge as well.
Eric Villain, GfK
I believe the opportunity for branding in the future lies in realizing that the traditional, linear “brand funnel” is no longer relevant, particularly among Millennials. The use of the internet for information gathering and shopping as well as the proliferation of social media and plethora of “personal connections” (how many Facebook friends or LinkedIn connections do you have?) circumvents the “funnel concept”. That is, people are made aware of new brand/products much more quickly than before and may go straight to ‘purchase’ on the strength of a “friend” recommendation, bypassing ‘familiarity’ and ‘consider-ation,’ i.e. “brand equity transference.” I feel, however, that while marketers have been using the friend network to promote sales, they are yet to effectively use social media to build lasting brand equity and loyalty. Hence, the opportunity and challenge in 2015 is for marketers to re-ignite brand building and also learn how to build strong equity and loyalty using social media as a medium whilst not forgetting other mass media touchpoints.
“The opportunity for branding in the future lies in realizing that the traditional, linear ‘brand funnel’ is no longer relevant.”
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What do you see as the biggest challenge in branding for 2015?
Eric Villain, Gfk
I believe that the greatest current challenge facing branding is that marketers are using advances in media buying such as programmatic buying, and focusing ROI metrics to drive immediate sales and not taking the time (or use these mediums) to understand what it means to actually build brand equity that is rich with purpose, imagery and personality and results in long term rela-tionships with people. The use of new tactical commu-nication and related norms, averages, data bases, and ROI metrics has made us forget what it takes to build a brand. Brand building takes hard work and time and is a combination of art and science. Essentially, the interim step toward building long standing, meaningful brands is missing in many branding efforts, possibly producing mediocre, price-sensitive brands with no real equity or ability to sustain a premium price.
Rob Swan, Brand Image / SGK
Maintaining relevancy in a climate of dynamically chang-ing cultural influences and values is a huge challenge for brands presently. Traditionally, equity has been estab-lished in times of more glacial change in the landscape of consumer values and competitive threat. Time is a great (and often overlooked) brand-building tool. Given time and salience in the consumer mindset, great brand stories can take root and firmly establish themselves to stand the test of time – if managed right. Look to Coke as an example. Today, brands don’t have that luxury. Sto-ries have to have the ability to fluidly flow over the rocks that the digital age seems to consistently produce in our culture.
The consumer and their values essentially have become a moving target. Plus, social issues and change events can jump up from behind a bush anywhere in the world, also influencing the dynamic. The key to winning in this context, I believe, is better proactive planning and plot-ting of brand stories and character in the foundational stages of development - and of course meaningfully con-sidered product and services offerings and innovation.
“Measure twice, cut once,” my dad always said. Even the most deeply seated brands can stand to have a look un-der the hood. In this way, strategic plans for meaning-ful activation of these stories can help brands flow more easily and, more importantly, authentically and believ-ably (relevantly) over those rocks.
Russ Stoddard, Oliver Russell
The challenge for brands is being transparent, account-able, and authentic in communicating the brand story and a clear sense of purpose. How do you communicate a brand’s values and attach them to products and ser-vices in a way that’s a turn on for the customer, rather than a turn off? For many brands, it’s tricky.
Of course, it’s not all about brand values. For a large por-tion of the market, values will be evaluated when other considerations – such as price and convenience, are at or near parity. But in a world where most products are commodities and product development moves at break-neck speed only to be quickly eclipsed by the me-too, immutable values can become a long-lasting competi-tive advantage.
“Maintaining relevancy in a climate of dynamically changing cultural influences and values is a huge challenge for brands presently.”
Rob Swan,Brand Image
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Don Peppers, Peppers & Rogers Group
[The threat in 2015 is] the rapidly spreading “Amazon ef-fect,” meaning that customers no longer compare their experiences with your brand to the experiences they have with competitive brands in your category. They compare it to the experience they would have had with Amazon. And usually they’re not happy.
Sean McCoy, HKLM Group
The challenge of course lies in getting executives to fully understand [the internal brand] and commit to it, both in terms of resources as well as leadership. All too of-ten this is seen as a cost rather than an investment or is little understood and delegated elsewhere into the or-ganisation or worst still, totally ignored. As businesses strive for a deepened sense of purpose and higher lev-els of people engagement, the leadership commitment, support and involvement is paramount to reversing the fortunes of the internal brand.
Margaret Molloy, Siegel+Gale
The challenge for brands in 2015 is also maintaining a laser focus on brand experience, however they may re-imagine it. With the proliferation of new platforms and devices, it is easy for marketers to become distracted. The vehicle to deliver on better customer experience is simplicity—creating remarkably clear and unexpected-ly fresh experiences that customers will appreciate, and employees will proudly stand behind. It is of the utmost importance for brands to empathize with customers, ad-dressing their most critical needs at each touch, and to embody using clear design and language.
Vladimir Djurovic, Labbrand
The biggest challenge is the new mindset and under-standing of how branding works that is needed to em-brace the idea of a “living” brand actualized through its organizational behavior from the monolithic corporate communication up to the sum of individual expressions. The efficiency of dogmatic brand positioning that seems set in stone for the sake of consistency is going to be-come less and less operative. The new mindset and un-derstanding of branding should integrate the necessity of a more flexible, evolving expression of the brand as well as tools to control it dynamically. The study of sub-cultures in the organizations based on expression in the social media will become key and represent the biggest challenge to come for brands and branding consultan-cies
Scott Davis, Prophet
In the coming year, brands will face the biggest chal-lenges when thinking about how to fully integrate digi-tal transformation into the overall customer experience. In order to truly transform and grow better businesses, brands will have to embrace co-creation, make friends with big (and small) data, be authentic and be useful. Building brands in a digital world is no longer an option but a requirement if you are building a brand that is truly relevant.
“The challenge… lies in getting executives to fully understand [the internal brand] and commit to it…”- Sean McCoy, HKLM Group
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However, artificially separating your overall digital strategy and customer experience strategy will ultimate lead to a fragmented experience and confused customer. The easiest gut-check when thinking through your brands strategy is how you personally en-gage with brands, whether it is an airline, retail store, hospitality or even a BTB brand. In our personal lives, we seamlessly go back and forth between digital and real world experiences: Checking in with our digital apps or scanning a particular purchase while going to the gate to board a plane or while in the checkout line at the store. Digital is interwoven in our daily lives and this should be the norm for how companies build seamless experiences go-ing forward.
Carol Cone, Edelman
The challenge to embracing a deep and com-pelling purpose looms large. Uncovering it is a journey onto itself. A hint for brands is to return to their original reason for being. Search deeply. A gem will be there. Bringing that to life as a critical lens for decision making is next. It’s very hard to execute. I fear with the focus on purpose brands there will be lots of beautiful words and manifestos, but uneven execution of their mis-sion in action.
Jon Bailey, i.d.e.a
This opportunity [to establish brand purpose] comes with its own challenges, namely the po-tential for pushback among the C-suite and shareholders; oftentimes it’s hard to see how purpose fits within profitability. Even more com-mon is the tendency to think of brand purpose as “cause-related marketing” – a short-term strat-egy tying your brand/company to a cause and trying to drive sales via that relationship. Many see purpose as secondary to business when, in reality, it should be front and center.
“In order to truly transform and grow better businesses, brands will have to embrace co-creation, make friends with big (and small) data, be authentic and be useful.” - Scott Davis, Prophet
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Jorge Aguilar, Landor Associates
Technologies, markets, and social platforms change ev-ery time we blink. Nothing is clear-cut, and there’s an in-sanely limited time frame to act and respond. Strategies developed to connect with consumers become obso-lete in a flash and need to be rethought – and rethought quickly. Just look at Facebook’s algorithm change and how that has completely thrown brands for a loop. To compete and succeed, brands need to be developed and managed completely differently today. They need to be more fluid and flexible, ready to change course, quickly adapt to new mediums and technologies, and constantly seek opportunities to get ahead.
Tom Adams, Futurebrand
The rise of real-time communications and seamless brand ecosystems driven by personal information and technology has put even more pressure on organizations and brands to be consistent and authentic. Reputation issues for companies or brands across sectors in the last year have often emerged from a gap between an official ‘position’ and the experience in reality – from the quality of a product to the behaviour of leaders. This is made even more likely as new brands emerge and grow rapidly in frictionless digital distribution channels.
The biggest challenge for branding as a discipline is to demonstrate the continued relevance of classical brand strategy – from positioning to identity and architecture – whilst simultaneously ensuring that this is genuinely brought to life through peoples’ behaviours, service de-sign and products themselves. As agencies proliferate and more and more disciplines legitimately claim to do ‘branding’, there has never been a more important time to integrate the established techniques of 20th century brand strategy with the new realities of 21st century de-livery in every aspect of a brand experience.
“The biggest challenge for branding as a discipline is to demonstrate the continued relevance of classical brand strategy.”
- Tom Adams, Futurebrand
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What branding buzzword would you like to see disap-pear in 2015?
Tom Adams, Futurebrand
I think ‘big data’ has run its course and – like ‘digital’ and ‘innovation’ before it – has started to obscure mean-ing, rather than provide it. This is mainly because it is a description of aggregated information, rather than an explanation of what it offers us or how it should be used.
Jorge Aguilar, Landor Associates
The branding buzzword that needs to go away in 2015 is “digital branding.” As evident in Landor’s 2015 trends forecast, the boundaries between online and offline no longer exist. We live in a digital era, so branding by defi-nition must be multichannel and connect with consum-ers at every touchpoint, making this phrase redundant and obsolete.
Scott Davis, Prophet
The term “digital brand building” should be killed. How-ever, building brands in a digital world should not. I am also not a fan of arbitrarily labeling all Millennials and Gen Y’ers as one big segment that have the same behav-iors, attitudes and brand perceptions and, thus, treated as one big segment. While we are at it, lets go after all moms, as I am sure they are all the same.
Vladimir Djurovic, Labbrand
Customer centricity. Why? Not denying that surpassing customer expectation is an aspect that should be taken in account when conceiving and managing the branding of company, but customer centricity is not the starting point and the reason to be of brands. Brands have the responsibility not only to amaze customers but firstly to conceive responsible reasons to be.
Alexander Haldemann, MetaDesign
Brand Guidelines. In the future, guidelines will be flex-ible documents that evolve over time. Brand ambassa-dors will be the new answer to communication needs of target audiences. While guidelines will always be around (just like dictionaries) a more practical and fluid system will be implemented for consistency.
Margaret Molloy, Siegel+Gale
In 2015, a buzzword that should go away—or rather, be properly defined—is “curate.” It is fine to curate things and ideas on your Pinterest board or Twitter feed, but one who curates is not necessarily a “curator.” In order to be a curator, it presupposes there is a professional knowledge. This is an important clarification, and one which I hope becomes more considered in the coming year.
Sean McCoy, HKLM Group
I would like to see the elimination of the use of the term “stakeholder” – as critical a definition as it is, it is a very poor, over-used and politicised expression for something so important.
Don Peppers, Peppers & Rogers Group
The buzzword I’d like to eliminate? “Native advertising.” This is a deceptively innocuous term for what we really should call “sponsored content,” or perhaps “clandes-tine advertising.”
Dominik Prinz, Interbrand
If Santa grants me one wish this year, it’s the abandon-ment of the word “Millennials” by the branding world. It’s the most overused and least understood buzz-word, at the same time. There is no way we can meaningfully jam people born over a lifespan of roughly 20 years into one segment and make sense of it – and we need to stop try-ing. People are bit more diverse (and complicated) than that. And that’s a good thing.
“The branding buzzword that needs to go away in 2015 is ‘digital branding.’”- Jorge Aguilar, Landor
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Michael Savage, JWT INSIDE
You may find this shocking given my job title (Director of Employer Brand), but I’d like to see the term “Employer Branding” put out to pasture in 2015. The term and its associations are outdated, limiting and undervalue its true worth.
“Branding” immediately frames it as a marketing pitch to an external audience of candidates, or an effort to man-age a reputation. And “Employer” immediately pigeon-holes this as a recruitment exercise wherein organiza-tions match their career offering to a list of the same-old candidate needs (i.e., compensation and career develop-ment). This old-school approach is not what this genera-tion of companies or candidates needs or wants.
JWT INSIDE’s 2014 research study confirms that a vast majority of employees and candidates want to work for companies with a clearly defined purpose (an inspi-rational cause) and a culture clearly aligned with their values. These two things drive attraction and retention of talent, and produce the highest productivity of orga-nizations – enabling employees to achieve even bigger things. Culture is the engine that powers it all.
Culture is your purpose, values, practices, people and place all combined and working together (Harvard Busi-ness Review). The way you tell that story to your candi-dates and employees and empower them to participate in it is much more than just “Employer Branding.” It in-spires and propels today’s workforce and businesses to reach new heights.
So let’s write the obituary for “Employer Branding” and usher in a new era of “Culture Carrying.” Have you de-fined your purpose, put your values and practices on dis-play for your candidates to see? Have you aligned your workforce behind your purpose and cause and built a culture that’s enabling them to succeed? That’s Culture Carrying. Not a campaign. Not exclusively for recruit-ment, it’s invaluable to every organization that dares to embark on the journey. Now excuse me for a moment, I need to go order new business cards!
Claude Singer, Siegelvision
Branding buzzwords that should disappear in 2015? I’ve always winced at the term “content” — which reduces amazingly rich expressions of human life to the level of commodities shoveled around by distributors.
It is my hope that, rather than using the general term content, people will specify what’s being distributed — news, comment, chat, documentaries — whatever it might be. Of course, exception would be made for the first pages of an actual book — “table of contents” — whenever that quaint medium is employed.
Russ Stoddard, Oliver Russell
Well, right now it’s a tossup between Big Data, Blurring the Lines Between Physical and Digital, and Thought Leader. Me, I’m more of a Little Data guy, have remark-ably clear eyesight when it comes to the difference be-tween a brick and a click, and as for thought leader – I guess I’ll riff on an old R.E.M. song – most of what pass-es these days for thought leadership actually falls into the category of Thought Leader Pretend.
Rob Swan, Brand Image / SGK
The word I’d like to take out to the shed is “No”. Risk aversion is a real and present danger and, all too often it seems, great ideas are left behind or avoided for the sake of self-preservation. It permeates into creative cul-tures as we anticipate negative responses in our collec-tive imaginations before they even come. This is really dangerous to the culture of ideas which, in the end, is what we should be trying to nurture and grow more than ever before. “Maybe” is much better... we have the abil-ity to prototype scenarios and rapidly validate them like never before, thanks to the net. You’ll find that creative partners will stretch with you – and maybe find some-thing awesome.
BRANDING MAGAZINE / december 2014
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