Author: Tenet Admin

2015 has been a banner year for corporate mergers and acquisitions, Driven by low interest rates and easy access to money, corporations have been scooping up companies to grow, eliminate competition and expand their markets.

CVS’ purchase of Omnicare gives the pharmacy healthcare chain access to an older demographic. Charter Communications merged with Time Warner to create one of the largest cable television and broadband Internet providers in existence. And fast paced ACE insurance just purchased the venerable, yet conservative Chubb Group of Insurance companies.

Unfortunately, mergers aren’t always successful. Some fail because one company overestimates the worth of the other—and overpay. Other times, failure can be linked to a lack of synergy in services, products, resources or markets. But history—and research from the Society for Human Resources Management—has proven that over 30% of mergers fail because of simple culture incompatibility. For example, in 2003, the America Online and Time Warner merger could be considered one of the most epic failures in business attributable in large part to huge cultural divides. The 2005 merger of Sprint and Nextel Communications was also a cultural disaster. Within 3 years, Sprint wrote off $30 billion, almost the $35 billion they paid for Nextel in the first place. And the infamous Daimler Chrysler merger imploded due to a myriad of reasons, but primarily because of cultural differences in management and operational style.

Culture drives employee behavior
When two companies with their own distinctive cultures combine, there’s a huge potential for failure. Even with integration consultants working to forge a new synthesized culture, there are bound to be issues.

All institutions and companies have their own cultures. Some are shaped by strong beliefs of their founders, such as Steve Jobs and Apple; others by a sense of social responsibility evidenced by Toms Shoes; still others consciously create a culture that reflects their customer-focused business model like Zappos.com.

Corporate culture influences how employees behave and shapes what is expected of them. It is seen in the large and small decisions of every day business. In a merger, the acquired company must adopt and adapt to a new set of cultural norms and make new behavioral choices. Which isn’t always easy.

Behaving is believing.
After all the stock shares have been divided, the payouts made and the organizational structure solidified, it can be the employees who will make or break the ultimate success of the deal.

That means, all the employees of the newly formed company—from management on down, and especially those who were acquired—need well defined, specific examples of what behaviors are the new norm. If the old value of slow, thoughtful conservativism is being replaced by a value of speed, risk-taking and aggressiveness, there’s a huge need for employee re-education.

Measuring employees’ awareness and expression of a new brand through their behaviors and actions—along with helping employees self-define and integrate on-brand behavior through brand workshops—can bridge merged cultures and aid in more successful brand integration.

Cultural values—and their demonstrated behaviors—need clear definitions. Even from one person to another, cultural values such as integrity, collaboration and innovation need to be defined by each person in terms of their job, tile, function or role. “Tell me what you want me to do? How should I behave? How should I be living the new brand’s culture?” These are the questions that must be addressed or a merger runs the risk of the failures of the past.

It’s that time of year again, where The Hess Truck is back for its 51st year. This is after Marathon Petroleum purchased all Hess stations and rebranded them as Speedway stations. With only 10 mall kiosks and a website to share their latest model with, how will the Hess Truck be received? Will the customer experience be just as enjoyable? Will their Hess Truck jingle return for yet another year? I certainly hope so.

Since 1964, The Hess Truck has focused on several key values. They’ve consistently offered a well-built toy, with various bells, whistles, lights and accessories each year. As a sign of goodwill, batteries have consistently been included with every truck since its inception. At the time, it was a significant move and fit in with their concept of goodwill. Nowadays, included batteries are a point of entry for toys.

While the Hess Truck is different each year, they’ve kept within themes of fire, rescue and safety vehicles. Early on, they were primarily tankers, and service trucks, with an occasional helicopter, space shuttle or racecar added into the mix. And with a few red-colored exceptions, all models have retained the Hess green color scheme.

And since 1988, they’ve annually created adaptations of the song “My Boyfriend’s Back.” While I’ve never received a Hess Truck for the holidays, I’m very familiar with the jingle (A majority of their past jingles can be found on their YouTube channel) and could recite it from memory if ever needed to. Most friends I asked remember Hess Trucks fondly from childhood and are familiar with the jingle as well.

While not to the same scale of prestige as last year’s 50th anniversary model, this year’s model is also selling a Silver Edition amidst the regular models, making it a bit of a lottery as to who will obtain one. For those nostalgic of past years’ models, there is a full breakdown of each model on a dedicated website.

Perusing their website, they show a clear dedication to consistent quality in their models. That consistency has definitely made an impact, as articles cite that the Hess Truck accounts for 10 percent of toy truck sales each year. (Presumably, just the US)

The biggest takeaway I’ve gotten while researching the history of Hess has been: Putting value in your customers creates long-lasting brand value.

From focusing on a goodwill item to offer customers, to moving their release date from Thanksgiving to early November to discourage holiday shopping on a holiday (a very contrary action to today’s “Gray Thursday/Black Friday” retail mindset), to creating a very memorable audio brand through their jingle, Hess has held up their tradition of giving value to their customers.

What other brands out there have focused on the customer experience, and customer value?

As with humans, it is important for brands to know what behaviors are socially acceptable.

Another day, another social media blunder seems to be cropping up in my Facebook newsfeed. It’s become almost second nature for me to wonder, “which brand will it be today?” with so many brands overstepping their boundaries and issuing apologies for their mistakes.

However, the more I think about it, the more it makes sense that we’re seeing these social missteps on a recurring basis. As brands work to become more social – more human – they are being held accountable for being just that: human.

As a millennial working in the social media and branding space, I’m well attuned to the notion that when it comes to brands and social media, almost anything goes. A brand’s ability to react and engage quickly with their audience is not only lauded, but also expected of fans. Also, given its real-time nature, some of the most successful posts and tweets on social media are those that a brand posts on the fly. But unfortunately, this spur of the moment thinking often results in borderline offensive and inappropriate posts and tweets.

One incident that caught my attention comes from IHOP, the International House of Pancakes restaurant chain. The company recently posted a particularly controversial tweet (that has since been deleted), alluding to the flat yet great personality of their pancakes. The tweet was quickly shot down by fans citing its overtly sexist and off-brand tone, especially given the fact that IHOP refers to itself as a family restaurant.

Many commentators have been quick to note that IHOP is likely trailing on the success of its competitor Denny’s, who has been pushing the proverbial envelope across all of their social media platforms with witty comments and snarky responses. Denny’s has developed a particular knack for catering to a fan base of intelligent and socially active millennials, who have conversely grown to love the brand’s surprisingly youthful marketing tactics. A quick glance at Denny’s Tumblr page shows just how fun and engaging the brand has evolved to become in order to keep pace with millennials. It should come as no surprise then that IHOP would hope to take back a share of this market that they lost by attempting similar tactics.

I see countless posts and comments on Facebook with claims that our generation is becoming overly sensitive and that people don’t know how to laugh anymore – but in my opinion, we’re becoming wiser, whether it be through protesting cultural appropriation in Halloween costumes like the use of blackface and Native American feather headdresses, or through understanding why #BlackLivesMatter, and why those advocating #AllLivesMatter contradict this effort.

Brands seeking to appeal to millennials should know that, while we are impressed by brands that can make us laugh, we aren’t willing to overlook political correctness for it. The growth in cultural sensitivity and awareness of sexism in recent years – which in my opinion, has been fueled in large part by millennials – is shaping how we react to the media around us, and no amount of brand loyalty will ever outweigh this scrutiny.

As millennials continue to eclipse older generations in terms of buying power and consumption, it will be interesting to see how brands continue to hone and refine their online practices to avoid future incidents like this. Looking for a suggestion from a millennial? Stay relevant, but mindful of the expectation that this generation wants to get it right the first time.

In the last few years, one of the brands that we have long tracked in our CoreBrand^® Index, General Electric (GE), has been working to change its brand image from that of a large, industrial manufacturer, to being a brand that is (along with being a large industrial manufacturer) at the forefront of innovation and technology.

As one of the most powerful brands in the index (they finished 17th overall in 2015), for GE to intentionally move away from their brand legacy towards a new and different brand persona might be considered risky. However, GE has taken an interesting approach by trying to show the benefits of applying innovative solutions and technology to what GE is best known for; large scale equipment that drives businesses and industries.

Throughout 2014, much of that effort was based on advertising and marketing directed at B2B audiences (investors, partners, industrial buyers, etc.) and consumers that was centered on stories about GE providing better solutions for businesses and industries, whether it means greater efficiencies, higher performance or in being more environmentally friendly. An example can be seen in this ad, where a little girl talks about what her mother does at GE:

Now, in 2015, GE has added to this effort with very clever advertising and marketing campaign that not only speaks B2B and consumer audiences investing in, or purchasing from GE, but also to the TALENT GE will need to attract in order to sustain a leadership position in innovation and technology.

Called ‘What’s the Matter with Owen’, it is built around a nerdy computer programmer who has been hired by GE to write code that, as he put’s it, ‘will change the world’. However, friends, family and acquaintances, upon hearing of Owen’s new job, have difficulty reconciling GE’s brand image as a manufacturer, with Owen’ being a programmer. Perhaps the best example is ‘The Hammer.’:

Obviously, it remains to be seen how this new messaging will impact the GE brand, and whether or not it contributes to GE ranking high in the CoreBrand^® Index in 2016. But what this new messaging does do, in my opinion, is show GE to be a brand with exceptional self awareness in knowing that success is not just about convincing people that you offer a better solution, but also knowing that in order to build that solution, you need talented and capable people to help you get there.

Activision Blizzard’s acquisition of King Digital is worthy of discussion in regards to how they’ll blend their complementary brand strengths. Activision Blizzard has a strong player community and genre-defining content, while King Digital provides a wider audience through all-ages and bite-sized content. An important facet of this joining of brands is their respective user experience styles; actively engaging their audiences through quality content.

Defining Genre Experiences
While Activision Blizzard has a solid handle on community building through expansive multiplayer and online games such as Call of Duty and World of WarCraft, there’s more to their products than just playing with others. Most of their products have games within games. These non-required quests, challenges and mini games are opportunities for players to do more than just button mash to the next level.

Their games have “replayability”; there is more content than can be consumed in just following the primary missions or story lines. It’s encouraged to explore the worlds they’ve coded, seek out various achievements (challenges that provide a digital trophy for accomplishments).

The Activision Blizzard experience is about long-play engagement with others. Unlike Candy Crush, these games can take several hours to progress through campaigns, challenges, story arcs or quests. Their content provides a lasting experience for players, while allowing for on-the-go bursts of playing time. King Digital’s games are a more focused user experience, providing quick hit entertainment for the masses. A round of Candy Crush or similar game can take minutes, not hours. How many rounds and minutes users spend at any given time varies. As most of those games have infinite rounds (although not necessarily infinite lives/turns), the potential entertainment value is limitless.

Bite-Sized, On the Go Experiences
King Digital is responsible for the slightly addicting matching game Candy Crush. They’ve created other games like Pet Rescue, Diamond Digger, Farm Heroes, Papa Pear, Bubble Witch and Alpha Betty. These games don’t have the story or character depth when compared to Activision Blizzard’s offerings. There’s little of that needed when the game mechanics are simplified to matching, grouping and organizing.

They’ve been responsible for bringing casual gaming to the masses through Facebook and mobile devices. Their games help show that gaming isn’t just for “gamers” but for everyone. You don’t need to invest in gaming specific hardware or software, beyond the games themselves. They’re all-ages and more intuitive than role-playing, real-time strategy, or first person shooter games. King Digital has made a very quick impact on making “gaming” mainstream.

Will it Blend
Today’s games are becoming increasingly multifaceted, to accommodate the multiple playing styles, skills, and interests of gamers. With games like Witcher 3, Fallout: New Vegas, Battlefront, Grand Theft Auto: V and the Fable franchise, there are several integrated card, dice and board games within the overall games, providing an example of what Activision Blizzard could best take advantage of with its purchase of King Digital.

Leveraging King Digital’s focus on “creating moments of bite-size brilliance” and Activision Blizzard’s roster of “pure-play interactive” entertainment, there’s incredible potential for integrating more quick-play games and community building aspects in current and future long-play games. By utilizing the depth of user behavior data both companies have, there’s great potential for finding the right balance between accessible, engaging, and replayable content.

I’d love to see mini-games integrated into the lore-rich and character-strong games in development. It’d also be great to see it go the other direction, bringing more depth to the casual gaming with characters or story lines to progress through at your own pace. As an avid fan of Activision Blizzard’s products, and a previous player of Candy Crush, it’ll be fun to see just where this acquisition takes both companies.

Chipotle, once a darling of Wall Street, continues to face serious reputation issues tied to the outbreak of strains of salmonella and E. coli. In an interesting twist, it is Chipotle’s differentiating commitment to sourcing and carefully preparing the very best natural ingredients to offer “Food with Integrity” that may have led to the outbreak. Apparently, sourcing and preparing food using high-quality, raw ingredients without additives can be a risky proposition.

Chipotle’s stock has been pummeled, leading the decline during a tough first week of trading in 2016. This is despite the efforts of Steve Ellis, Chipotle’s Chairman and co-CEO, to institute stepped-up safety protocols. Nevertheless, over the past 20 years, Chipotle has earned a reputation of being a step above the Fast Food category, creating a unique Fast Casual dining experience. While Chipotle is responsibly taking a closer look at its ingredients and preparation, there are a few reputational ingredients the company must adhere to in order to rebound:

• Leadership must be unwavering in its message about its 20+ year commitment to creating a better dining experience through natural, healthier and better tasting options. This value proposition remains a valuable point of differentiation.
• Transparency is key – Chipotle must “lean in” with a higher profile about the steps the company is taking to address recent health issues and speak to the results of its improved efforts. Witness what Dominos Pizza did in its food tampering scandal, how it owned up to it in high profile TV commercials and was clear about rededicating itself to its customers.
• Engage all key stakeholders in Chipotle’s ecosystem to serve as advocates in restoring its reputation. Consider the role of employees, farmers, ranchers, suppliers and loyal customers as advocates. It’s one thing for the company to communicate, it’s quite another to have support from other constituents.

It is uncertain whether Chipotle will fully bounce back, but they certainly should not be counted out. Many other companies have faced far more serious issues and have demonstrated their resilience by following these simple reputational ingredients.

With the New Year upon us, many have taken the time to reflect upon the changes of the past year. Given just how quickly the worlds of advertising and marketing move, it’s important to take stock of the drivers that continue to shape and influence the way brands create value, both for their organizations and their customers.

‘Innovation’ and ‘disruption’ seemed to be the buzzwords of 2015, but for all the noise these catchphrases have created, it’s worth asking: Is brand innovation and disruption simply a trend or part of something bigger? My vote is for something bigger that is fundamentally shifting our relationship with brands and the experiences they create. In the spirit of reflection, here are five major ways the branding landscape evolved in 2015, and what these changes will mean for marketers as they seek to create new and ‘disruptive’ brand experiences in the year ahead.

The shift from the connected consumer to the connected product
The rise of the Internet of Things (IoT), coupled with the growing spotlight on Design Thinking – a form of customer-centric design – has resulted in products never before seen. In the race to build the first truly connected smart home, Apple’s HomeKit will be going head-to-head with Amazon’s Echo – and despite being at the center of a few April Fool’s jokes when it was introduced, Amazon’s Dash Button illustrated, if anything, that the IoT is poised to create profound changes to the way consumers shop both online and off. In 2016, the biggest challenge for brands won’t necessarily be in creating a new suite of connected products, but in transforming them from novelties to true utilities, offering a functional as well as an emotional benefit to the end user.

Apparel stands out as a category prepared to make transformative shifts on this front. While clothing with sensor technology is still in its infancy, major brands including Under Armour, Ralph Lauren and Levi’s have been working to develop their offerings. Ralph Lauren revealed its smart shirt, PoloTech, at last year’s US Open tennis tournament, made with a “second-skin” fabric that tracks biometric stats like heart rate, steps taken, breathing depth and energy exertion. Many leading brands, from Apple to Google and Nike, are also investing in artificial-intelligence technology that reads people’s emotions by analyzing facial expressions – expect major things on this front from hyper-targeted advertisements to virtual dressing rooms and virtual personal shoppers as part of the in-store experience.

Brands as content creators – and social media’s growing foray into e-commerce
2015 was a banner year for content marketing. While continuing to disrupt the hotel industry, Airbnb’s one-off print magazine, Pineapple, made headlines and the company is now in talks with Hearst to launch a new magazine as a joint venture.

On the traditional hospitality front, Marriott’s in-house content studio expanded to take on film. In March, the company launched its first original short “Two Bellmen,” a 17-minute action-comedy starring Henry Simmons from Marvel’s “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D” and Miles Brown from ABC’s “Black-ish.” David Beebe, Mariott’s VP of creative content and global marketing who leads the 65-person studio, explains Marriott’s approach with three Cs: “Scaling content, then building a community around that content, and driving commerce.”

Driving commerce with content marketing will be high on marketer’s to-do list in 2016. According to the Content Marketing Institute, approximately 80% of B2C marketers plan to produce more content in 2016 compared to 2015. In the B2B space, 51% of marketers plan to increase their content budget in the next 12 months.

On the social media front, brands will be increasingly turning to Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest to help boost consumer loyalty and drive sales. Across channels, these sites are getting smarter about offering ad space and tools that allow businesses to integrate their content with images and inspirational posts, giving consumers the opportunity to purchase the products seen directly within these social pages. As social media sites grow to become micro e-commerce platforms, marketers will need to focus on four crucial components to establish their footing and keep consumers coming back for more: the quality of the content; user experience and functionality; customer engagement and community building; and lastly, brand narrative and messaging. Companies need to ensure that their brand’s personality, values and voice are “on-brand” and complement the host of experiences through which customers are already engaging with their brand – both online and off.

Design Thinking and its movement to the C-suite
While the concept of Design Thinking isn’t new, in 2015 we saw it become more fully embraced by the C-suite. No longer just revered by product and service designers, C-level executives are now applying the principles of design to better manage change and help solve some of their most pressing challenges. As Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo’s CEO aptly said in an interview with *Harvard Business Review*, “Design leads to innovation and innovation demands design.”

Nooyi stepped into her role as CEO in 2006 and in 2012 she hired Mauro Porcini, the company’s first-ever chief design officer, to oversee design-led innovation across all of PepsiCo’s brands. Porcini has been instrumental in launching the first output of Pepsi’s design-thinking approach, the Spire family of vending equipment that allows customers to customize their choice of beverage, adding flavors and suggesting new ones with every purchase.

Tech giant IBM is also on a mission to transform its corporate culture and service offerings by instilling a Design Thinking mentality throughout the entire organization. “There’s no longer any real distinction between business strategy and the design of the user experience,” said Bridget van Kralingen, the senior vice president of IBM Global Business Services, in a statement to the press. By the end of 2015, the company brought on nearly 1,110 new designers, recruiting from top schools including Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, the Rhode Island School of Design and Parsons School of Design and is continuing to train employees across functions on how to apply design thinking to business strategy.

Innovation by Collaboration – the growing importance of brand partnerships and its impact on business success
As Tenet Partners examined in its 2015 Top 100 Most Powerful Brands report, some of the fastest-rising brands invested heavily in R&D, strategic acquisitions and collaborative brand partnerships. As technology continues to blur industry lines, companies will increasingly turn to sectors and categories outside of their immediate category, not only seeking inspiration, but also to forge more meaningful connections with audiences by driving innovation to generate business results.

Take Google, for example. Before it announced a restructuring effort to become Alphabet, the company acquired smart home product manufacturer Nest. In March, Google announced plans to partner with Johnson & Johnson to create a robotic-assisted surgical platform. Both moves crossed category boundaries in an effort to generate new value. In another teaming of two very different organizations, IBM and the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE) teamed up and launched a cookbook, *Cognitive Cooking with Chef Watson*. It was the result of a three-year partnership that brought ICE chefs and IBM researchers together to explore data’s effect on creating the perfect recipe.

Collaborations such as these illustrate that in order to thrive, brands cannot go it alone. Strategic partnerships that reach new audiences and enter into new categories while unlocking value for businesses, customers and shareholders will serve brands well now and well into the future.

Brands responding to political and social events – finding support, not backlash
As brands continue to engage in the places where their customers are, most notably online, it’s become second nature for brands to respond in real time to the most hot-button political and social news stories of the day – a bold new idea for the brand marketers of yesteryear.

In June, when the Supreme Court announced a historic ruling legalizing gay marriage across the country, brands hailing from the technology sector, financial services, retail and consumer packaged goods industries were quick to voice their support, meeting the admiration and “liking” of their customer base. The tragic terrorist attacks in Paris last November also resulted in a quick response, with brands adopting the #peaceforparis hash tag and logo created by French graphic designer Jean Jullian along with other expressions of solidarity.

However, not all brands that jumped into political and cultural dialogues received positive reactions. Starbucks’ “Race Together” initiative was met with a wave a criticism when it was launched. The campaign – which aimed to spark a national conversation about race relations by having baristas write the phrase “Race Together” on Starbucks’ cup – was seen as an ill-conceived attempt at engagement, incapable of bringing about meaningful or lasting change.

As brands continue to take on political and socially charged issues, whether in the form of 140-character tweets or as a comprehensive corporate citizenship program, my predication is that they’ll be more attuned to incorporating their unique brand DNA and positioning into the experience. Execution will be everything and the right balance of authenticity, engagement, and responsiveness will go a long way in creating memorable engagements that win the hearts and minds of consumers, whether it’s through clever and emphatic alterations of their logo or homepage, or inviting consumers to participate in their effort through user-generated content.

Embarking on my daily walk of 15 blocks from Grand Central to West 27th Street, I stop in one of my usual Starbucks haunts on the corner of 31st and 6th. I get my typical order of a skimmed (or non-fat as these Americans like to call it) latte (I save the tastier full fat lattes for a weekend treat) and I leave with my usual faint twinge of guilt. Guilt? But you ordered the skimmed latte! Fortunately, that element of guilt I’ve managed to mitigate; this guilt comes in the form of a white paper cup.

Every time I buy a coffee I get it to go and every time I’m done enjoying my milky morning treat I put my used cup in one of the thousands of trashcans around the city. Each day I notice oodles of trash collectors picking up those coffee cups and each day I think of the thousands of landfill sites across the globe containing my – and every other New Yorker’s or Londoner’s or any major city in the world with a coffee shop on every corner – discarded coffee cups.

Awakened Brands

This morning I read a short eBook called Awakened Brands by Virginie Glaenzer. The book discusses the need for brands to be aware of the changing face of consumerism. Customers are becoming increasingly aware of what they buy and from whom they purchase; they are becoming more brand conscious. People are making choices about the brands they want to be associated with based on how they view the world; buying from particular brands holds meaning for them and, according to Virginie, companies are beginning to see the need to tap into the emotions of their buyers in a way they never have before.

It seems this morning I was awakened. I realized that my morning coffee is no longer just about coffee; it’s about what I stand for in this crazy world, and I’m not the only one who thinks this way.

Consumers are driving brand behavior

Consumers are demanding that brands get on the eco-friendly bandwagon and, thankfully, many corporations are sitting up and listening to their needs. Organizations are beginning to raise their level of brand consciousness when it comes to the environment. One example is the US cities that have banned one-use plastic bags in grocery stores. Whether you agree or don’t agree with the ban, it’s one example of how people are becoming more conscious of their carbon footprint.

Starbucks is one of those brands. It recycles and reduces waste, in part by its introduction of a reusable cup program. It drives and supports water and energy conservation, and it’s working to fight climate change.

There are many more who are leading the way in providing purpose driven products for customers. Ikea is aiming to ‘think within the capabilities of our planet’ by designing furnishings that meet the increasing environmentally friendly needs of consumers. Hilton is also pushing for environment preservation by being more energy efficient, reducing waste and using renewable energies. These are three of the many companies that are making strides towards becoming more sustainable brands.

We can all make a difference

With consciousness in mind, today I made a stand. No more disposable coffee cups. I bought a reusable cup, and I will carry it with pride. Although my change might be a small one, the more we make environmentally conscious choices, the more we will influence the brands we purchase goods from every day to protect our world and make for a greener future.

Disruption and innovation are the mantras of the day. This is not just a management fad. These have become cornerstones of competitiveness. Technology—in particular the digitization of the enterprise—is having a profound impact on today’s businesses. It is accelerating market shifts, enabling the creation of new business models.

That’s catching many companies off guard.

Increasingly, forward-thinking companies are redefining themselves to remain relevant. They’re focusing on their core, and shaking up the organization to allow it to evolve organically. That is what is enabling these companies to thrive in the face of rapid technological change. By breaking free of old paradigms, they gain clarity of purpose and can better understand their path to the future.

Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of GE, summed it up nicely in a recent interview, “A company like GE has to be all about change. It has to be all about picking what’s next, getting the company focused, making the company accountable.” Immelt goes on to elaborate on a critical point, “What we’ve tried to do is narrow our focus as a company, to be only those things that have significant core competency. Being only as broad as you are deep is the way that you have to think about running your company today.”

The journey that GE has signed up for is an uncomfortable one. Change is always messy and unpredictable, requiring new ways of thinking and doing. Distilling the company and all it represents down to core ideas is no small task.

How Can A Brand Enable Transformation?

Today’s companies need a ‘True North’ to guide them as they evolve—a platform to articulate a vision for the future, and a roadmap to achieve defined goals. For marketers, that means reaching more broadly across the company to help coordinate activities, and designing tools that can ready an organization for the changes that lie ahead.

The brand is one of the most powerful assets marketers have to help the company drive change, because it can enhance understanding of the company’s scope, differentiators, target demographic and core competencies. That insight allows a company’s leaders and employees to target challenges, discover new business opportunities introduced by disruptive technologies, and take more directed action to effect real and lasting change. To be effective in this role, however, the brand must have a clear definition and purpose.

The Link To Business Strategy

While brand clarity is crucial to success, it cannot exist in a vacuum. It is inextricably tied to business strategy and the environment. Before redefining the brand to reflect the company’s new focus, leaders must step back, study the world around it, and craft a solid business strategy on which an evolved brand can be built. By doing so, the company will be better equipped to make the critical business decisions that lie ahead.

Companies that fail to proactively develop their business strategy are more vulnerable to shifts in market dynamics and may find themselves blindsided by new competitors. Operating on outdated business strategies, they become irrelevant. A case in point is Kodak. Despite being the inventor of digital photography and driving most of the early innovations, Kodak failed to capitalize on new disruptive technology and lost relevance in the marketplace.

According to Tenet’s CoreBrand Index, Kodak still has a fairly solid brand, which is something of a surprise. On the other hand, it’s hard to erase such an iconic brand. In our collective consciousness, Kodak is forever tied to our most deeply held and emotional moments—photographs.

SEE ALSO: No Brand Is Safe in the “Age of Disruption”

While a strong brand like Kodak can insulate a company from a few bad decisions, it can only do so much to save a failed business strategy. In hindsight, it is easy to see that the film business had strategic control of the company and that everything else, including robust digital imaging assets, were ancillary activities that were not properly leveraged. Even with a late start, Kodak had the means to disrupt its own business and save itself. And, they had the brand foundation to do it. Unfortunately, Kodak did not have the leadership or the strategy needed to make the shift.

Read the full article on Branding Magazine.

There’s no doubt that for many marketers and decision makers, the allure of crafting a campaign for social media is the cost, or rather the lack thereof. Using social media to market for free is a natural draw for cost-conscious organizations looking to build online awareness for their brand. That said, social networks are businesses, and in looking to turn a profit they’ve built sophisticated ad platforms many advertisers have taken advantage of when crafting their social media strategies. But when does it make sense to consider paid social as an area of investment? Below you’ll find four situations I’ve encountered that help answer that question.

1. An alternative to expensive market research
One look at your Facebook feed will remind you that users on social media have no trouble expressing their opinions. What can seem to be a nuisance at times (doubly so in a heated political season) can also be a benefit to marketers searching for an unvarnished point of view. While you could directly ask questions to your organic social following, paid social comes with additional benefits.

First, a paid social campaign can be significantly cheaper, and less time consuming, than hiring a marketing research firm. By connecting a paid social campaign to an online survey or lead generation page, you can rapidly test whether an idea is worth pursuing, even providing a reason to follow-up with focus groups or one-on-one interviews

The other benefit of paid social comes by way of the mountains of information social networks collect on their users — the ability to target a specific audience. If you’re interested in testing a campaign message on a particular audience segment, such as age, gender or income level, then you can set up ads to specifically target that group in minutes. And as a bonus, you may increase your social circle.

SEE ALSO: Why B2B Brands Should Embrace Social Media

2. Advertising to a targeted location, demographic or interest
Building on the concept of audience targeting, paid social tools are a worthwhile investment for businesses looking to get their advertising in front of individuals in a specific location or demographic. In fact, social networks have become so sophisticated at knowing their users that they’re able to segment them into audience profiles, such as “affluent homeowner” or “people that donate to environmental causes.”

For example, Tenet’s digital marketing campaign for the Council for International Education Exchange focused on increasing the organization’s study abroad enrollment through paid social advertising. Ad buys were made on social networks that college students were likely to log onto, such as Facebook and LinkedIn, and made extensive use of those networks’ ad targeting capabilities. Students on the campuses of six universities in California — where the council’s programs were undersubscribed — were geotargeted for ad delivery. The result was a lead generation rate of more than 17%, giving CIEE confidence in rolling out the campaign nationwide.

Read the full article on Branding Magazine.