Issue One/2017

PATTERNS From Timeless to Trailblazing: 6 Marketing Strategies

PATTERNS IN BRIEFSometimes you win by perfecting a marketing practice that has stood the test of time. Sometimes you win by blazing a new path. The most successful brands do both while constantly evaluating results and fine-tuning methods. We kick off this issue of Patterns with thoughts on when to choose best versus “next” practices. Then we explore five timeless and trailblazing approaches to maximizing performance in a global landscape where the only constant is change.

BEYOND BEST PRACTICES: HOW TO WIN IN A DYNAMIC MARKET

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Best practices can be great for keeping your brand on track against the competition. But they can only take you so far. Throughout history, the advancements that have truly changed the marketplace have arisen from a vision that sees beyond conventional methods of success. That means taking calculated risks. Learn how to manage risk while putting your team in the best position to create the next big thing.

RETAIL IS THE ULTIMATE SOCIAL PLATFORM

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When internet shopping has taken over the choice-and-convenience model, what’s left for brick-and-mortar retailers to attract shoppers? For an answer, consider that for thousands of years town markets served as gathering places to exchange not only goods, but ideas and inspiration. Create ways for people to experience moving moments in person, and you’ve created the ultimate social platform. Here’s how.

5 INSIGHTS INTO MULTICULTURALISM AND TALENT MANAGEMENT

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As brands extend their reach globally, multicultural teams are becoming the norm. Creating a cohesive team that brings together widely divergent work styles and perspectives can be challenging. But multiculturalism can also be a source of creativity and strength, revealing new possibilities for your brand. Here are five insights for building a team that makes the most of each member’s cultural insights and talents.

4 INSIGHTS YOU CAN UNLOCK BY MAPPING THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY

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Brands must design customer interactions in a way that addresses their customers’ needs and wants. This process begins with a map of the customer journey, outlining the opportunities and difficulties along the way. By taking the time to uncover the path your customers follow when they engage with your brand, you’ll gain four valuable insights that can help you build a stronger, more beneficial relationship with them.

4 APPROACHES TO CREATIVE LEADERSHIP IN CPG COMPANIES

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Developing and maintaining a clear approach to managing brand design within CPG companies can be a tough but decisively productive way to elevate the brand. How you’re doing it now may ultimately not deliver the best results. Based on our experience with clients who represent many ways of managing brand design, we provide four emerging approaches from several large CPG companies.

THE FUTURE BELONGS TO MILLENNIALS. HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW THEM? 4 KEY TRENDS THAT DEFINE HOW MILLENNIALS INTERACT WITH BRANDS

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The millennial generation, born 1980–2000, represents the single largest generational group in history. In the next five years, millennials will determine what happens to your brand. So the question is: Do you know how to market to them? Brandimage Paris analyzed millennial interaction with brands to better understand what they care about and the impact their influence will have on successful marketing efforts.

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Beyond Best Practices: How to Win in a Dynamic MarketMichael Leeds, SVP Client Engagement, Americas, SGK

Market leaders and innovators have been talking about “next practices” for at least 10 years, but it can be difficult for many in their audience to know what steps to take or how to identify the results of successful next-practice campaigns. That’s because next practices, when they prove to be successful, are quickly and unconsciously redefined as best practices. What was once a deliberate exploration beyond the status quo (a next practice)becomes a recognized benchmark of the current state (a best practice). The “next” next practice is, by definition, hard to imagine.

The truth is, many of today’s best-practice-led innovations and processes could have been described as next practices when they were first proposed. Consider a few examples:

A PROTOTYPE OF THE FIRST SMARTPHONE, designed by IBM, made its public debut in 1992. The Simon Personal Communicator went on sale in 1994 but was pulled from the market six months later having sold only 50,000 units.1 Fifteen years after that prototype, Apple introduced the iPhone, now considered the best-practice example of what a smartphone should be.

CARRIAGES FOR HIRE PREDATE THE AUTOMOBILE, but for more than a century, hailing a taxi was only possible on the street or through a dispatcher. Then, Uber saw an opportunity to provide a better ride-hailing experience using mobile technology, leaving

traditional cab companies scrambling to compete with a next practice that is quickly becoming a best practice.

FOR THE RIO 2016 OLYMPIC GAMES, Kellogg departed from the traditional, highly polished TV-led campaign and instead launched with a campaign driven primarily by social media and PR. CGO Clive Sirkin remarked, “the reach and earned media was unprecedented and we're on track to have the most effective Olympic sponsorship that we’ve ever had.”2 Expect to see many brands incorporating this social-led marketing into their own campaigns, transforming a next practice into a best practice.

Next practices require a new vision and a leap of faith. If they succeed — and once we understand the cause-and-effect relationships underlying their success — they become best practices. But in a world of rapid, often unpredictable social and market transformations, brands can’t always afford to wait until a competitor has blazed the path.

While established best practices will always have a place, we all need to engage in next-practice thinking and planning in order to keep pushing our brands — even the most traditional and established brands — forward in a dynamic marketplace. The risks of next-practice marketing are high, but they can be controlled. The risks of sticking only with yesterday’s best practices and getting left behind are unacceptable.

Beyond Best Practices: How to Win in a Dynamic Market

“The risks of next-practice marketing are high, but they can be controlled. The risks of sticking only with yesterday’s best practices and getting left behind are unacceptable.”

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Best and next practices can and should coexist, but the two must be managed in different ways, which can be distilled into three paradigms.

1 — WHAT’S WORKED IN THE PAST VERSUS WHAT COULD WORK BETTER IN THE FUTURE

Best practices are inherently conservative, looking back in an attempt to re-create past successes. They follow well-established paths to help avoid potential issues and deliver relatively predictable results. But they are subject to diminishing returns as cultures, markets and technologies change.

Next practices acknowledge ongoing change, generating innovation and transformation by looking for new opportunities, identifying emerging needs and moving quickly to stake out a unique new position. The emphasis is on exploring new territories in real time to achieve a potentially profitable future state that best-practices management may be blind to.

Edwin Land, inventor of instant photography, said the camera should “go beyond amusement and record-making to become a continuous partner of most human beings.”3 For decades, Polaroid’s best practices focused on continuous improvement in chemicals and films. But now Instagram has fulfilled Land’s vision with a next-practices model that marries ubiquitous digital photography with social media, attracting more than half a billion users.

2 — CHANGE MANAGEMENT VERSUS ADOPTION ENGINEERING

Best practices manage change from the top down — instructing teams in their roles and goals, providing a rationale based on known past successes, and delivering performance metrics to gauge future success by comparison. This tends to channel teams into familiar pathways.

Adoption engineering reverses the familiar change-management model. Instead of mandating change, teams are given the autonomy, tools and support they need to collaborate and change organically. Adoption of change is motivated by innate social impulses, and the team is freed to respond to dynamic market and technology developments with unfettered agility and creativity.

Through Project Aristotle, Google has studied hundreds of its teams to learn how they function together socially. The most successful teams provide

Beyond Best Practices: How to Win in a Dynamic Market

“Identify your business need. Employ situational analysis. Create and

empower collaborative cross-functional teams. Be vigilant to the marketplace reception and agile in your response.”

1. Ira Sager, “Before iPhone and Android Came Simon, the First Smartphone,” Bloomberg, June 29, 2012. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-06-29/before-iphone-and-android-came-simon-the-first-smartphone2. “Barclays Global Consumer Staples Conference,” Bloomberg Transcript, September 7, 2016. http://investor.kelloggs.com/~/media/Files/K/Kellogg-IR/reports-and-presentations/2016/barclays-2016-global-consumer-staples-conference-transcript.pdf3. Andrea Nagy Smith, “What Was Polaroid Thinking,” Yale Insights, November 2009. http://nexus.som.yale.edu/qn/content/what-was-polaroid-thinking4. Leigh Buchanan, “The Most Productive Teams at Google Have These 5 Dynamics,” Inc., April 12, 2016. http://www.inc.com/leigh-buchanan/most-productive-teams-at-google.html5. Laura He, “Google’s Secrets of Innovation: Empowering Its Employees,” Forbes, March 29, 2013. http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurahe/2013/03/29/googles-secrets-of-innovation-empowering-its-employees

individuals with a sense of psychological safety, dependability, structure, personal meaning and group impact.4 Google is also famous for allowing engineers to spend much of their workday pursuing whatever project interests them.5 Is it any coincidence that the company is known, above all, for its total commitment to next practices?

3 — STRATEGY DEFINED BY THE CHALLENGE VERSUS THE CHALLENGE DEFINED BY THE STRATEGY

Traditional budgeting and planning revisits brand strategy on a yearly basis, fine-tunes the strategic direction for the coming year, and establishes goals and budgets accordingly. This long horizon is still an appropriate way to handle projects — such as a new product launch or package redesign — that require an extended development time, with results that will take months to evaluate.

But in the new worlds of digital marketing, social media, branded content and whatever may come next, the horizon is much shorter. You may be getting feedback within hours or even instantly. You need the ability to change direction on the fly. To update the old saying, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again — but do it right now!” As more of your marketing focus moves to these new channels, where everyday change is the norm, you need to do more budgeting and planning on a rolling basis.

The pathway to purchase used to be linear: See an ad on TV or in a magazine, then drive to the store. Now there are thousands of pathways, and they’re always evolving. Proctor & Gamble is one company that has been adept at opening these pathways, and marketers often turn to P&G to learn best practices. But remember, best practices begin as next practices, and a closer look reveals a company that’s always ready to take a calculated risk by trying something new — then trying again. Right now.

Identify your business need. Employ situational analysis. Create and empower collaborative cross-functional teams. Be vigilant to the marketplace reception and agile in your response.

In other words, free your people to imagine the future. What’s next for your brand?

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As a French native with a Moroccan background who has worked with multicultural teams in London, Amsterdam, Hong Kong, Singapore and now Shanghai, I’ve seen first-hand how company culture can bring diverse people together. Especially in Asia, weaving together a cohesive culture can be the key to growing and strengthening business. Here are five lessons I have learned from my experience working with diverse team members in contemporary China.

1 — THE TIME FOR CHANGE IS ALWAYS

Today’s China is evolving in far more organic and inventive ways than many Westerners realize. A generational change is underway. In decades past, China was far more insular and less willing to invest in educating its workforce. Now, a much more flexible and capable talent pool is available. The Chinese workforce is more connected. Many of them have returned home from an education overseas, and they’re joining multicultural teams to work alongside foreign talent from around the world.

These diverse and dynamic teams integrate foreign people, practices and technologies while also retaining the advantages of local insight and expertise. To foster their success, companies need to embrace change in their talent-management methods — continually seeking

5 Insights Into Multiculturalism and Talent Management

“If you want one year of prosperity, grow grain. If you want ten years of prosperity, grow trees. If you want one hundred years of prosperity, grow people.” — Chinese proverb

new ways to build team cohesion while allowing each member to contribute their unique cultural perspective toward a shared vision.

2 — LEADERS MUST EMPOWER THEIR TEAMS

The term “laoban,” Mandarin for “old boss,” characterizes the authoritarian style of leadership still practiced in China’s state-owned enterprises. The laoban decides on the plan of action, and the workers execute it. If the plan is ineffective, there’s no way for workers to help correct the course. Increasingly, this style is being supplanted by more progressive, relationship-driven management practices thanks to an influx of foreign companies and a younger generation of Chinese nationals leading non-state-owned enterprises.

When I first came to China, I needed to recalibrate my leadership style, providing the direction of a laoban while also empowering my team to freely contribute their opinions and solutions. Looking beyond the office walls, I studied how people from different cultures around the world interact and inspire the best in one another in everyday Chinese life. I found leaders and peers alike encouraging each other to flourish in their own identities, while still working cohesively toward a shared purpose.

Omar Hadoui, Director of Client Growth, APAC, SGK

5 Insights Into Multiculturalism and Talent Management5

Whatever the management structure, it’s important to foster an internal identification of brand meaning that crosses cultural divides, engages every team member and continually creates opportunities to increase brand performance.

5 — CONSIDER WHAT’S POSSIBLE

At the 2016 Olympic Games, a young swimmer named Fu Yuanhui shattered the image of the “robotic” state-sponsored Chinese athlete, showing an uninhibited exuberance that had the media calling her “adorkable” and “the most lovable athlete at the Rio Olympics.”

One memorable moment came during an interview after the 100m backstroke final. Fu spoke proudly of setting a new Asian record, “even though I did not win a medal” — only to be corrected, “But you got a medal. You finished third!” She hadn’t realized it, and the look of shock and joy upon unexpectedly learning she had won bronze was priceless.

Then, a few days later, she nonchalantly shattered a cultural taboo that had persisted for generations in China and many other nations worldwide.

After a difficult 4x100m medley relay race in which her team placed fourth, a reporter asked on-camera about the “stomach pain” she was experiencing. Fu explained that she was actually suffering from menstrual cramps. In a country where such matters are seldom discussed, a hugely popular athlete with millions of social media followers instantly banished shame in her spirited embrace of life.

Fu embodies the youthful cultural fluidity that can change old habits for good. Tampons are almost unheard of in China due to past reticence and misinformation. But now, brands see an opportunity to educate Chinese women and create a huge new market — including China’s first native tampon brand, Crimson Jade Cool, to be sold online and at sports centers.

Consider all the possibilities that open up when cultures drop their inhibitions, reach across old boundaries and empower one another to change. Look at how Fu Yuanhui instantly changed attitudes inside and outside her native country. Be inspired. What new places can you take your brand?

And I was surprised to discover many Chinese managers exhibiting a unique understanding of how cultural diversity and individual empowerment contribute to business vitality — and to nurturing the development of future Chinese leaders by Chinese leaders.

3 — GLASS CEILINGS AND WALLS MUST BE BROKEN

In the past, Chinese employers have encouraged nationalistic sentiments and pride in working for a Chinese company. These workers may regard employment with a foreign company as potentially imposing a glass ceiling on their careers. It’s a two-way glass ceiling as foreign nationals, faced with the challenge of learning Chinese and local customs, may find it difficult to fit into locally owned businesses.

Likewise, multinational corporations with a Western management style face challenges in entering the Chinese market, while Chinese companies often resist incorporating Western talent and ideas. Call it a “two-way glass wall.” These career and business barriers put a strain on Chinese and foreign companies alike as they seek to integrate Eastern and Western talents to deliver brand performance with multicultural relevance.

Breaking these barriers requires a strong program of on-site engagement — for example, structured immersion programs in Chinese language and customs for foreign workers, and programs on global cultures and collaborative teamwork for Chinese workers. Companies need to devote time and resources introducing people not just to their new offices, but to multicultural ways of interacting in shared support of the brand.

4 — BUILD CULTURE FROM WITHIN

An effective company culture can’t be created through a top-down programmatic agenda. It must be built on individual cultural perspectives coming together to achieve collective goals. Effective talent management creates the framework and inspiration for intercultural collaboration to flourish.

Some brands, such as L’Oreal, create a balance of Western management with Chinese mid-level management. Others, such as Henkel, take the opposite tack, with Chinese management and mid-level Western brand managers — often recruited from their own European offices and bringing a deep knowledge of brand standards.

5 Insights Into Multiculturalism and Talent Management

"Consider all the possibilities that open up when cultures drop their inhibitions, reach across old boundaries and empower one another to change."

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Alexis Vera, Executive Creative Director, IDL Worldwide

Retail Is the Ultimate Social PlatformThe bazaar, the souk, the forum: Wherever it emerges and whatever it’s called, the market is the center of society. It’s the wellspring of civilization and culture. When the invention of agriculture brought the need for trade, towns grew around the central gathering places where people could exchange not only goods, but ideas and inspiration. The market has always been where people connect.

The impulse to socialize at the market lives on — witness the late 20th century phenomenon of “hanging out at the mall,” or the 21st century rise of farmers markets and pop-up shops in the most densely urbanized settings. But as commerce has become more diversified and specialized, the social function of the market has largely retreated behind shelves of products promising unlimited choice and simple convenience.

Now, internet shopping has taken the choice-and-convenience model beyond physical limits. And social media allows people to share their likes with no need to be personally present in the store or even with one another. To succeed, brick-and-mortar retailers must embrace these new realities. They need to reach out online, yes. But they also need to renew the true spirit of the physical marketplace: Not just unlimited choice, but compelling, curated choices. Not just convenient social interactions, but deeply shared experiences.

So what can retailers do to bring back the social vibrancy that gets shoppers out of their private spaces to mingle and buy in the public square?

Remember that for thousands of years the most powerful social experiences have happened where people gather. Whether it’s a street fair or soccer game, a church or a coffee shop, people will always crave company. And what could provide a more engaging and social experience than shopping together? A show-stopping display, the big reveal as a friend emerges from the dressing room, an immersive installation — these occasions beg to be shared. The most compelling social media experiences begin with in-person social interactions.

Retailers don’t have to cede the social space to digital technology. In fact, they can be creatively applying technology while reclaiming the social role that, over the past half century, has largely been sacrificed to choice and convenience. Today, people can sort through endless selections, colors, sizes and price points online. What they can’t do there is experience true community, troll-free and unmediated by character limits or 5-inch screens.

Retail Is the Ultimate Social Platform7

Retail Is the Ultimate Social Platform

Or at least we thought technology would be the star. It turned out to be the community.

“Jordan Jump Truck” events evolved into full-blown block parties. Retailers offered sponsorships and brought shoes to sell. Neighbors rolled out their barbecue grills and music systems. News crews showed up to cover the festivities. Social media shares took off. And the overwhelming response was, “No one has ever come into our community and engaged us in a shared experience like this before.” It became more than a transaction, more than an experience — it became a moment. It became something worth sharing in a meaningful way.1

What are some other ways to make retail more social?

Why not eliminate the need to paw through every available size and color, instead providing space to experience the coolest product features within a meaningful context? That’s what IDL did in designing fixtures for The North Face’s Summit Series. With a few, select products on display, storytelling became more important than sheer selection. And social interactions came to the fore as consumers turned to sales associates to ask about specific features, colors and sizes.2

Why not transform the sales floor into a community gathering place? Brands like Lucy and Lululemon are moving products aside to host yoga nights, building a community of people who will feel right at home when they shop there for workout apparel.

Why not make vulnerability a strength — for example by providing a way for consumers to rate and review products in-store, just as they’re accustomed to doing online? Why not create ways for shoppers to share their stories while they shop, bringing a viral energy to tactile experiences?

It’s time to think deeper than “omnichannel” marketing — the literal translation of the physical brand into social, media and other avenues. It’s time to revive the power of moving moments at the market, creating space, vitality and surprise for authentic interaction. Because social connection is the true coin of commerce.

Physical retail can return to the true source of its strength by providing what’s worked for millennia — the space and structure to foster compelling social experiences. Instead of competing against digital social technology, retailers can put it to work to make in-real-life connections even more compelling — transforming retail into the ultimate social platform.

Look at what’s possible in the realm of sportswear and equipment merchandising, for example. Sports, for many, are as much about socializing as competing and staying fit. But traditional sports marketing often overlooks that social element.

Case in point. In recent years, Nike has done an incredible job communicating prestige and breadth across a wide variety of brands that encourage buyers to express their individual style. But with its Brand Jordan division, Nike also wanted to reclaim its appeal to performance-oriented athletes — especially younger athletes who didn’t grow up under the Michael Jordan mystique that drove the brand’s earlier growth. As it turned out, the key to understanding the young competitive athlete was understanding the social component of competition.

IDL created a campaign meant to get young basketball players into Jordans and provide a way for them to actively compare their performance wearing the new shoes. We turned to the model of the food truck, a mini-retail environment that comes to your neighborhood, offers a variety of choices, and lets you enjoy your selection on the spot.

An actual food truck was completely refabricated into a rolling shoe store, finished in stealth black and branded with the Jordan “Jumpman” logo. The #riseabovetruck brought retro basketball culture directly to a new generation of players in several urban neighborhoods across the U.S.

But while the styling of the truck and Jordan shoes provided the hook to attract attention, the real star was technology at the vanguard. The truck featured a digital vertical-leap machine that allowed participants to try on a new pair of high-performance shoes, prove for themselves the difference the shoes make, and track their results against other athletes locally and nationwide.

"What people can't do online is experience true community, troll-free and unmediated by character limits or 5-inch screens."

1. IDL Worldwide (Jump Truck) : http://idlww.com/Portfolio/Grassroots-Marketing2. IDL Worldwide (North Face Moving Mountains) : http://idlww.com/Portfolio/Retail-Fixture

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The millennial generation, born 1980–2000, represents the single largest generational group in history. In the coming years, they will make up over 50 percent of the workforce while earning more than any other generation. They are technologically advanced, globally connected and incredibly marketing-savvy. In their prime spending years, which are right around the corner, their buying power will be as impressive as their social influence. In the next five years, millennials will determine what happens to your brand. So the question is: Do you know how to market to them? Brandimage Paris analyzed millennial interaction with brands to better understand what they care about and the impact their influence will have on successful marketing efforts. We uncovered four key trends that define millennials and can guide us in designing meaningful branding.

1 — FUN CULTURE: JOKING IS THE NEW STATEMENT

Millennials have grown up in a culture that is radically different from past generations. A constantly changing global landscape, economic turbulence and lower employment levels have left them with sharply different priorities and expectations. As an antidote, millennials have embraced optimism over fatalism. They look for joyful experiences, humor and imaginative creativity as a way to escape. Marketing with a quirky hook resonates, where emotional campaigns fall flat.

Delphine Dauge, Agency Director, Brandimage ParisJean-Christophe Estrampes, Director of Strategic Planning, Brandimage Paris

The Future Belongs to Millennials. How Well Do You Know Them? 4 Key Trends That Define How Millennials Interact With Brands

The Future Belongs to Millennials. How Well Do You Know Them?4 Key Trends That Define How Millennials Interact With Brands

At the same time, millennials are the first generation of digital natives. Their hyper-connectivity makes them incredibly sensitive to the difference between a genuine conversation and being “advertised to.” This makes them more likely to engage with brands that get to know them as individuals rather than as a “marketing age group.”

Brands need to care about what millennials care about — and have a little fun. A recent Pepsi campaign targeting millennials featured a twist on the traditional soda fountain. The Pepsi Spire™ fountain put thousands of drink combinations at people’s fingertips with digital soda fountains featuring a captivating interactive interface. Minimal design and a sleek touchscreen empowered users to enjoy a uniquely personal, entertaining Pepsi experience.1

Similarly, Dolce & Gabbana set out to start a conversation with their social-savvy consumers in May 2016 with #DGFamily. The pavements of London, Paris, Milan and New York became the canvas for eco-friendly graffiti portraying the smiling faces of Domenico Dolce, Stefano Gabbana and their pets, along with a hashtag #DGFamily. Fans of the brand were invited to find the graffiti scattered around their city and share a tagged photograph through social media, making it easy for others to track down the images.2

2 — 100% CONNECTED: WELCOME TO THE SIXTH CONTINENT

Millennials have never known a world without 100 percent connectivity. For them being connected is not a choice; it’s simply how they interact with the things they care about. On-demand information and experiences are central to their ability to have an eye on everything.

But they are not content to simply surf the web. Millennials are always on the hunt for connections that can lead to quick, sometimes impulsive adventures in real life. Their adventures help them discover cultures they’ve learned about online that can be integrated into their daily lives. Highly educated, they consider themselves to be world citizens and are eager to leave a positive impact.

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"Ultimately the future success of your brand depends on understanding an incredibly large, powerful, marketing-savvy generation."

The social sharing company Snapchat, now Snap, introduced a product firmly planted at the crossroads between connectivity and adventure in September 2016. Spectacles (Specs, for short) are sunglasses that come with a small camera built into the upper corners of the frames. Tap a button near the camera and Specs records for 10 seconds at a time. Multiple snaps can be taken and then transferred to the Snapchat app where it’s shared or stored.3 Products that enable this social sharing through video are rapidly becoming a preferred communication vehicle for millennials because they tap into the desire for on-the-go interaction.

3 — iATTITUDE: BORN TO BE YOU

For millennials, self-expression is more important than aesthetic norms and good taste. Creativity reinforces their personality. In fact, they consider good taste an old-school value, seeking instead a do-it-yourself approach to style and “what’s cool,” without rules. What they wear and how they express themselves on social channels is a window into the beliefs and freedoms they value. It’s not enough to say what you believe. You have to live it out loud. It’s not uncommon for millennials to buy products from brands they love and embellish them or cut them up with the goal of making these products look more like “them.”

To that end, they are more interested in learning by doing than learning from books. Theories and abstraction aren’t enough. They gravitate towards experiential practice and learning from their own mistakes. And they want to do it in a way that combines their passions with their personal and professional lives. A recent study published by FutureCast found that 40 percent of millennials want to participate in co-creation of products and brands.4

Millennials are looking for marketing that integrates into their lives, rather than forcing them to adapt. NIKEiD allows consumers to design their own shoes, allowing them to express their personalities through active brand interaction. Millennials appreciate wearing brands that let them be themselves. As another example, Ecole 42 (ecole42.com5), a nonprofit computer programming school, embodies the value of learning through experience. Peer-to-peer evaluation and group projects are the norm, encouraging students to focus on how they can help each other learn, rather than what they have to hand in to a professor. In both of these examples, success came from “show” rather than “tell.”

1. PepsiCo Design & Innovation. "The Pepsi Spire™ Family,” Campaign May 14, 2014. http://design.pepsico.com/spire.php?v=63#section2

2. Dolce & Gabbana. "Very Fashionable Street Art,” Campaign May 16, 2016. http://www.dolcegabbana.com/discover/dolce-gabbana-dgfamily-graffiti-project

3. Barrett, Brian. "Snapchat’s Wild New Specs Won’t Share Google Glass’ Fate." Wired.com, September 24, 2016. https://www.wired.com/2016/09/snap-specs-snapchat

4. “Who Are Millennials,” Millennial Marketing, 2016. http://www.millennialmarketing.com/who-are-millennials

5. http://www.42.fr6. Trejos, Nancy. "Hilton Announces New Affordable Hotel Brand, Tru." USA Today. January 25, 2016.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/hotels/2016/01/25/hilton-tru-new-hotel-brand/79185810

4 — WE GENERATION: SHARING IS THE NEW WEALTH

While millennials look for opportunities for their proverbial “15 minutes of fame,” they are also philosophically drawn to the idea of being “stronger together,” defining success as an accumulation of shared interests and adventures. Collaboration and consideration are highly valued over hierarchy or social status. Connectivity and social sharing have allowed millennials from all over the world to find common ground, connect and mobilize for social change. Millennials place a high value on action. They believe that they can change the world. And, more importantly, that they will do it together. Millennial communities are larger because there are no boundaries for involvement: Everyone can participate, from any place.

Hilton Worldwide has recently tapped into this mindset, and hopefully the millennial market as a whole, with their new midscale, concept hotel: Tru by Hilton. Designed to be simple and intuitive, these hotels would be a “cost-conscious, cool-conscious” option for travelers looking for modern design, public spaces where they can work and socialize, and advanced technology such as mobile check-in.6 Hotels like this are helping to redefine the travel world in favor of smaller hotel rooms where millennials spend less time and have more “together” spaces, where collaboration and communication are encouraged.

NOW YOU KNOW

Ultimately the future success of your brand depends on understanding an incredibly large, powerful, marketing-savvy generation. In fact, studies suggest that millennials are already responsible for over a trillion dollars in direct buying power.4 This is a snapshot of what they care about. The rest is up to you.

The Future Belongs to Millennials. How Well Do You Know Them? 4 Key Trends That Define How Millennials Interact With Brands10

Wherever my day takes me, I’m always analyzing the customer journey.

Whether I’m in the deli line trying to understand why my local grocery store would allow me to wait so long for cheese, or I’m admiring the outstanding journey I experience when purchasing clothing at my favorite upscale clothing store, I never stop thinking about the paths customers follow throughout their daily interactions with brands. So I can’t help but to wonder why more companies don’t focus on the journeys their customers experience when interacting with their products or services.

By uncovering the path your customers follow when they engage with your brand, you’ll gain four valuable insights that can help you build a stronger, more loyal relationship with them.

WALKING A MILE IN THEIR SHOES

A customer journey is a series of interactions a customer experiences with a company or brand to complete a specific goal,

Rachelle Sokan,Customer Experience and Continuous Improvement Consultant, SGK

4 Insights You Can Unlock by Mapping the Customer Journey

4 Insights You Can Unlock by Mapping the Customer Journey

such as making a purchase or learning more about a product. But this journey doesn’t just take place in the store or on a website; it begins before customers interact with your brand, and it continues long afterward as they reflect on the experience they had. A customer journey map is a visual story board that allows us to document and experience this process as a customer might, empathizing with them by “walking in their shoes.” The map lays out the interactions and moments of truth they have with a brand.

Ideally, this map is constructed using a journey-mapping workshop — a collaborative event involving a diverse group of marketing experts and their customers. The process begins by defining specific archetypal users, known as personas. Your brand may have several different personas, each with different backgrounds and motivations; it’s important to keep each of them and their varying needs in mind. The next step is to determine each persona’s goals and how they go about attaining them. Finally, the workshop members map each possible step of the experience and the personas’ emotional responses to these steps.

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1. “How Dunkin' Brands Brought One-to-One Marketing From Hype to Reality” http://searchsalesforce.techtarget.com/news/450402129/How-Dunkin-Brands-brought-one-to-one-marketing-from-hype-to-reality

2. “3 Customer Service Lessons From Starbucks” http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/article/3-lessons-starbuck-s-customer-service/

3. “Starbucks Experience Map” http://theoperationsblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/experiencemap1.pdf

4 Insights You Can Unlock by Mapping the Customer Journey

1 — REFINE YOUR STRATEGY FOR ENGAGING CUSTOMERS IN A MORE RELEVANT WAY

First analyze how customers come into contact with your brand in the first place. Examining this crucial step can uncover opportunities for growth, as well as making your brand easier to discover for new customers. Learning how customers enter the sales funnel can also help you determine whether your resources are being allocated properly and what improvements could be made to attract more potential customers in the future.

Dunkin’ Brands had decades of success reaching customers through traditional methods, but had to update their advertising for modern customers who expect a more customized experience. Through journey mapping, they identified opportunities to reach more customers through focused, tailored communications.1

2 — LEARN WHAT BRAND TOUCHPOINTS THEY INTERACT WITH ALONG THEIR JOURNEY AND HOW THE EXPERIENCE CAN BE IMPROVED

Are there moments in your customers’ journeys that you’ve taken for granted? Are there interactions you weren’t even aware of? The process of mapping can highlight touchpoints that haven’t been given sufficient consideration. In addition to helping identify missed opportunities, it can also draw attention to moments in the journey that could be made smoother and more intuitive, improving the experience for your customers. This can also uncover points in the path where customers encounter obstacles that may encourage them to end their journey prematurely.

Because Starbucks learned that their customers are avid users of social platforms, they invested a great deal of attention in their social presence, earning enormous followings on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.2 This gives them a reliable source of feedback from customers, ensuring that their needs are consistently met, as well as a great way of engaging directly with them.

3 — CAPITALIZE ON THE EMOTIONAL AND BUSINESS CONSEQUENCES OF EACH OF THESE INTERACTIONS

For every touchpoint, there’s an emotional response from the customer with a corresponding implication for your business. Points in the journey that leave customers satisfied and pleased with their interactions are clearly a good sign. But moments that present confusion or frustration must be addressed. The journey can only try a customer’s patience for so long before you’ll lose that customer. Make sure that every interaction with your brand makes it clear to customers that you’ve designed the entire experience with their needs and emotions in mind.

Starbucks’ efforts to map their customers’ journey show how much importance they place on the emotional responses of their customers both during and after their interactions.3 It’s no coincidence that Starbucks locations are customized based on region, or that baristas call out customers’ orders by first name.2

4 — USE A VISUAL STORYBOARD TO BRING AWARENESS TO CUSTOMER TOUCHPOINTS THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE INTERACTION AND DRIVE IMPROVEMENTS

This visual representation of the path your customers take offers an essential tool for measuring the experience and critical steps along their journey — especially aspects of the journey that typically fall outside of your focus. This storyboard is a great resource for discussing, planning and analyzing steps in the customer journey, as well as acting as an aid to help you develop an improved roadmap for your customers.

The most valuable insights that come from mapping the customers’ journeys are revealed when you apply your customer's lens and map their experience with your brand. Every shortcoming and difficulty your customers experience is an opportunity for them to look for another brand that understands what they care about in terms of choosing a product or service.

WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO LOSE?

The benefits of better understanding the customer journey are evident. What may be less obvious are the risks a brand runs by neglecting to do so. Failing to give ample thought to your customers’ experiences might make it more difficult to empathize with them and understand any difficulties they may be having with your service or product. This can lead to frustrated and even lost customers. Consumers have come to expect brands to offer an experience that is tailored to their specific needs, and failing to provide this can mean lost market share. Anticipating the needs and potential frustrations of your customers is essential to maintaining their happiness and loyalty to your brand.

IT’S TIME TO START MAPPING

The case for mapping and seeking to understand your customers’ journeys is clear. Are you ready to optimize your brand’s customer experience and ensure that you remain relevant to your customers? Contact SGK today to put our unmatched expertise to work for your brand.

"Every shortcoming and difficulty your customers uncover is an opportunity for an improved experience."

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Developing and maintaining a clear approach to managing brand design within a CPG company can be a tough but decisively productive way to make brand design more efficient. How you’re doing it now may ultimately not deliver the best results. Something that appears to work for other brands may not be the best approach for your brand model. When the grass always appears greener on the other side of the fence, you must decide whether or not to jump over.

Just to give some context, approaches to managing brand design have changed drastically over the last 10 years. Historically, Agency of Record (AOR) relationships were typical, with large external agencies responsible for the bulk of brand work. At the time, this made a lot of sense because channels of communication between consumers and brands were traditional — print, radio and TV. However, as the internet changed the way brands interact with consumers, communication touchpoints exploded. There were simply more ways to communicate as a brand — and it became important to find and work with agencies that excelled in these channels as well. In essence, driving down the prevalence of one AOR relationship and driving up the need for multiple-agency relationships, with design playing a much larger role internally through creative leadership and design management.

Based on our experience with clients who represent many ways of managing brand design, we have provided four approaches from several large CPG companies to understand emerging approaches.

Scott Lucas, Managing Director, BrandimageJen Bethke, Account Director, Brandimage

4 Approaches to Creative Leadership in CPG Companies

4 Approaches to Creative Leadership in CPG Companies

A NEW WAY TO LOOK AT MANAGING DESIGN: COMMON ARCHETYPES

There are 12 common archetypes that describe basic human motivations. Each type has its own set of values, meaning and personality types. These markers for human motivations can also be used to illuminate the motivations of brands. Both for consumers and brands, archetypes build trust and authenticity by communicating core values consistently. To better define, evaluate and understand each design approach, we have aligned each to an archetype. This helps clients and agencies understand motivations, recognize fears, communicate and interact more effectively, and build more effective and efficient teams both internally and externally.

1 — GLOBAL CREATIVE LEADERSHIP: ONE LEADER CAN CHANGE EVERYTHING

Archetype: Knowledgeable Sage The expert, scholar, detective, advisor, thinker, planner archetype. Think Yoda or the brand Dyson.

This approach is largely characterized by a single leader, partnered closely with a C-suite level operator like a CMO. Global Creative Leadership elevates managing brand design from the top down and expands its role in the business, as the head of design creates the vision for all facets, from strategy to execution. This approach sets

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a bar for consistency across projects, brands teams and regions. It often vaults design, process (and budgets) while guarding brand equity. However, it can also represent the potential for stagnant design. When disconnected at the brand or project level, access from a single leader can be time-consuming. The question to ask yourself when considering this approach for your own company is: While vision is important at the top, how well will it trickle down?

2 — DESIGN MANAGEMENT: ONE DESIGN MANAGER PER BRAND DRIVES EFFICIENCY

Archetype: Helpful Caregiver Can be most closely compared to Mary Poppins or the brand Toms. A nurturing, helpful best friend.

Design managers become the go-between for agencies, internal clients or marketing teams. They are responsible for bringing to life the needs of the brand while delivering on the needs of the business. The benefits are quite simple: The design management approach represents a dedicated, expert resource for design and collaboration. While 10 years ago this role was very tactical, today it can be characterized by a stable and trusted brand stewardship, responsible for overseeing not only design but also brand identity and voice in several channels. This approach presents some challenges. Finding qualified design managers can be difficult, determining their ROI even more so. Establishing a consistent process and benchmarks while juggling different, often opposing agendas, desires and fears can also be a challenge. This matters because if the design management team isn’t critical to different agendas, the gaps in design leadership will be amplified and create risk. At every level your organization will need to get on the same page.

3 — BRAND MANAGEMENT: WITH NO DESIGN LEADERSHIP, LIFE IS EASIER, CHEAPER AND BETTER.

Archetype: Confident Ruler Consider this archetype to be closer to a ruler or stable boss, confident leader or role model, like Warren Buffet or Microsoft.

Where there is little to no management of brand design leadership internally, CPG agencies work directly with brands and marketing teams. The marketing organization is tasked with building the business, managing design and maintaining brand equities both with and without global creative leadership. This approach allows business needs to inform design directly. Teams share brand

4 Approaches to Creative Leadership in CPG Companies

goals and collaborate effectively as a team. On the agency side, the approach is great for combining the design marketing team with the external brand management team. The agency defines and owns the process, outcomes and benchmarks. On the other hand, high turnover or account rotation on the part of the brand team can leave gaps in leadership. Agencies with minimal design background are challenged with leading brand management teams, and it can be difficult to get design to be viewed as higher in importance within the organization at the C-suite level. When considering this approach, remember the brand team may be consistent in their design role, but success depends on strong leadership from the agency side to keep the collaboration together — this means time and money.

4 — AGENCY OF RECORD (AOR): FOR THE AGENCY, BEING IN CONTROL DOESN’T ALWAYS MEAN FREEDOM.

Archetype: Innovative Creator Independent, inventive and creative, similar to Steve Jobs or the brand Lego.

An AOR relationship typically consists of a brand choosing an agency they can trust to be the ongoing brand steward for all creative work — allowing the brand to seek out an agency that suits their taste, rather than hire creatives internally. Even with an AOR relationship, work can be project-based. But this approach has the potential for creative solutions to become “expected,” and defining the relationship between brand and agency as a vendor rather than a partner is a “watch out” from a creativity standpoint. For the agency, it’s easier to predict workload and create a staffing plan that benefits from the strategic relationships formed with the senior management, marketing teams and potentially other outside agencies. When considering, ask yourself: Can I find a permanent partner that can adapt as quickly as my brand?

WILL THE GRASS ALWAYS BE GREENER ON THE OTHER SIDE?

Yes, and no. Ultimately, it depends on what you’re working with right now. Getting an entire design management department to try a new approach is an undertaking with a lot of risk, but a study of these approaches can help you identify the benefits and pitfalls of each. That way, you have an idea of what the future will look like and whether or not you wish to adapt. In the constantly evolving world of CPG brand design, knowledge is key.

Both for consumers and brands, archetypes build trust and authenticity by communicating core values consistently.

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WANT TO KNOW MORE?

Talk to us.

Call: Barbara Glass at 203.918.4052 Visit: http://www.sgkinc.com/about-us/contact-us

SGK is a leading global brand development, activation and deployment provider that drives brand performance. By creating, activating and protecting brands, we help our clients achieve higher brand performance. For more information visit: sgkinc.com

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