Weber Shandwick stakes out content creation territory as its own

Jason Wellcome, EVP Digital
Weber Shandwick

PRNewser followed up on March 28 its previous reporting on PR firms grabbing hard and fast onto the content creation model for a reconfigured agency services biz model. Weber Shandwick's digital EVP, Jason Wellcome, makes the agency's own brand claim -- 'every agency client becomes a media company /publisher, and the new Weber Shandwick divison, Mediaco, has assembled the talent and skills to deliver the new model.'

AdAge positions it a bit differently: "Weber Shandwick Sets Up New Unit to  Capitalize on Content Creation Craze."

Branding + integrated communications business models at the big agencies

PRNewser reported today about how major agencies (McCann, WeberShandwick, Edelman) are adapting their business models to provide professional services that straddle the ad-PR divide and the traditional-digital media divides. The topic, of course, isn't new; it just gets reformulated as the technologies continue to reconfigure how consumers gain information, form opinion, and fulfill transactions.

These are the kinds of enterprises at which our future BIC graduates will build their careers.

2013 best retail brands

Interbrand has released its 2013 report on Best Retail Brands.  Biggest gains in reputation this year are shown by Macy's and Amazon -- each in its own way demonstrating it is "best in class" with consumers.  Perhaps significant, brands with more specific positioning -- in some ways more distinctive in product offering -- fared much worse: examples are Abercrombie & Fitch and Toys R Us.  Forbes magazine coverage, here.

Inside the FutureBrand - American Airline rebranding

PRNewser posted today an outline of the decision making process that led American Airlines and FutureBrand to the new logo and airplane design.

IBM: brand as -- only as -- corporate character

Jon Iwata, SVP Marketing and Communications (left)
with Harris Diamond, Chairman and CEO, McCann Worldgroup
at the 2012 Global PR Summit

Jon Iwata, IBM Senior Vice President, Marketing and Communications, narrates a new  2 1/2-minute video, "IBM on Brand."

Jon makes the assertion that IBM has never defined its brand -- and it certainly has never defined its brand by products it has made (otherwise, we would have our minds cluttered up with associations to IBM of things like punch-cards, Selectric typewriters and ThinkPads. Which they don't make anymore. Which are not IBM).

Jon says: "We do't try to manage the IBM brand, we try to manage our character as a business."  If we're not going to define our brand by what we make, what defines us? ... and it comes back to this notion of our corporate character, our belief system, and our purpose and our mission. And what makes us "Us."  If we take care of that, the brand takes care of itself."

CCNY MCA's new Master's program featured in Ad Age

Belle Frank, EVP-Global Director
Young & Rubicam
and BIC Adviser

A new Ad Age feature on the necessity for aspiring advertising professionals to hone their data analytic skills cites the creation of CCNY MCA's new Branding + Integrated Communications Master's program, and quotes our adviser, Belle Frank, EVP-Global Director, Strategy & Research, at Y&R.

What's that advertising professional of the future going to be like? "The next-generation advertising exec will be a data geek with the soul of an artist, the business acumen of Warren Buffet and the storytelling skills of Don Draper "

News on the hipster branding front

Just in case you're not following it -- PRNewser is keeping us posted on developments in hipster branding.

Harris Poll 2013 Reputation Quotient puts Amazon on top

Online pollster Harris Interactive released in February  its 2013 Harris Poll Reputation Quotient for corporate America in February showing the public taking a more pragmatic and positive view of corporate reputation -- generally rating corporate America more positively. The top five companies in America are Amazon, Apple, Disney, Google, and J&J.  The bottom of the list?  Financial services giants, Halliburton, and American Airlines.

Tech companies have an edge in getting the good reputation scores from Harris.  The research company also asserts that to "play a valuable social role" is a key driver of reputation -- a theme reported widely, such as here by PRMediaBlog.

Google discusses Art, Copy & Code -- a partnership with brands to develop state-of-the-art digital ads

Google, one of the most powerful channels for advertising today, is also maneuvering its way into creating ads. Last week, the Google | Official Blog posted about its new project, Art, Copy & Code -- "a program to partner with advertisers and agencies to re-imagine how brands tell stories in a connected world. . . . a series of projects and experiments to show how creativity and technology can work hand in hand . . . through a whole range of digital tools."

The project (wouldn't you know) even has its own trademarked slogan: Advertising Re-imagined.

The post goes on to give a preview into its first project for Volkswagen.

Art, Copy & Code was presented at SXSW yesterday by a panel consisting of Aman Govil, Product Marketing Manager, and Ben Malbon, Managing Director of the Creative Lab at Google, along with Kevin Mayer, VP Marketing from Volkswagen and Winston Binch, Chief Digital Officer at Deutsch Advertising.  Engadget, among many others, announced over the past few days.

You can subscribe for updates on Art, Copy & Code, here.  Facebook page, here.

Bad news for Detroit brands

Consumer Reports' auto top picks for 2013 have the Japanese brands leaving Detroit in the dust.

This, from Automotive News, says it all: "For the first time in several years, Detroit automakers did not claim the top spot in any vehicle segment, continuing their longstanding struggles in the magazine's rankings.

"Consumer Reports, an influential shopping guide with 8 million magazine subscribers, said the six lowest-rated brands were Buick, Chrysler, Ford, Lincoln, Jeep and Dodge."

GfK on tech trends of 2013

Global market research firm, GfK, has published "Tech Trends 2013" which explores several ways in which technology is helping brands know consumers (and vice versa) in more powerful ways. A PDF can be downloaded here, and a short video on "The brand of me" provides an intro.

GfK has a suite of brand research offerings packaged as Brand Value Optimization.

Supply chain and waste stream as fashion brand attributes

Do you know where your leather comes from?

Lucy Siegle reports in The Observer about how Gucci and other fashion brands are beginning to acknowledge their responsibility and influence over the whole supply chain -- in her example, particularly, about how quality leathers and other materials are sourced and processed sustainably and safely. On their own initiatives and in cooperation with NGOs such as the Green Carpet Challenge (GCC), brands are working "to raise the profile of ethics in the global fashion industry."

Willie Nelson and Emmy Rossum help launch
H&M's global recycling program
at Global Green's 10th annual Pre-Oscar party.
Photo: EnergyDigital

In a related story, H&M announced on February 21 a new garment recycling program which includes in-store discounts for consumers who bring in a bag of garments to be recycled.

So God made a designer

David Brier,
Chief Gravity Defyer, DBD International

Fun -- and insightful -- video, ripping off the Dodge Ram Superbowl ad. DBD International's brand identity specialist, David Brier, produced the video and blogged about it at Fast Company.

Latest dispatch from the cola war

Marc Jacobs-designed Coke cans

brandchannel provides a report on the latest dueling videos from Coca-Cola and Pepsi, as well as previews the new Marc Jacobs-designed Coke cans.

(Historical note: CCNY alum David Finn and his partner, Bill Ruder, created the their first company, Art and Industry, Inc., (later to become Ruder Finn, Inc.)  to provide a link between well-known artists and designers with commercial product manufacturers to -- well, to do what Coke and Marc Jacobs are doing 60+ years later.)

Best practices for branded content

Rob Norman, Chief Digital Officer, GroupM

Rob Norman, GroupM Chief Digital Officer and long-time friend and supporter of CCNY Media & Communication Arts (Tumbler: On Demand), recently provided some great, succinct insights in an interview on Beet.TV about "best practices for branded content."   (Full disclosure: The American Miniature Schnauzer Club is not a client.)

BIC Summit BIG success

On January 23, 2013, The City College of New York new Master's program in Branding + Integrated Communications was launched with a Curriculum Summit that was attended by over 70 guests from Manhattan advertising, branding, digital, PR, and research firms along with academics.

It wasn't just great to see new faces and good friends, but to hear the buzz of exciting ideas. After getting caffeinated and hearing a brief presentation on the BIC launch, working groups got together in ten tables of six to explore the big challenges facing the communications industry today and what types of leaders will shape the future. 

Also check out the BIC Summit Gallery on the navigation bar, above.

L to R: Eric Weitz, Dean of Humanities & the Arts, CCNY;
Nancy R. Tag, Chair, Media & Communication Arts, CCNY;
Donna Rennella, President, ABW Solutions, Inc.

Belle Frank, EVP, Global Director
of Strategy and Research, Young & Rubicam
welcomed guests at the BIC Curriculum Summit

Barri Rafferty, CEO North America, Ketchum;
Bill Murray, COO, Public Relations Society of America

Rob Norman, Chief Digital Officer, GroupM Global (center)

Janice Rotchstein, Chief Quality Officer, Edelman PR;
Prof. Lynn Appelbaum, Director, Advertising/PR Program, CCNY

Hayes Roth (center), Chief Marketing Office of Landor,
leads a BIC curriculum discussion.

CCNY Media and Communication Arts faculty members,
Gerardo Blumenkrantz (center) and
Lynne Scott Jackson (right)

Social Media Week begins -- globally -- today

Social Media Week, February 2013, begins Monday, February 18 -- from Copenhagen, Hamburg, Lagos, Miami, Milan, New York, Paris, Singapore, Tokyo, Washington DC and . . .

Check out the schedules, get the mobile app, watch live streaming from around the world, get the hashtags and FB pages, etc. all at the SMW website "How to Follow & Share SMW13" page.

Follow the New York news feed / blog here.

The case for a "fluid brand"

Jose Martinez-Salmeron
Executive Creative Director
social@Ogilvy

Jose Martinez Salmeron, Executive Creative Director at Social@Ogilvy, blogs at SmashingMagazine.com about "the practice of branding . . . undergoing a deep transformation."

Salmeron makes the case -- perhaps counter-intuitively for the some -- against brand consistency. He quotes from a 2012 HBR blog by Grant McCracken: "'The consumer now appears to believe that the brand should earn its public attention the way all of us must. Say boring, repetitive stuff and you suffer the punishment that every bad conversationalist faces. First, we ignore you. Then, we exclude you.'"

Salmeron makes the case, variously, for "fluid brands," "dynamic rebranding," and, in general, a bit of playfulness -- or "the brand as an ecosystem of interactions . . . brand identity definition is no longer a one-way street."  He shows with several recent re-branding efforts that "Beyond formal considerations, a brand is also defined by experiential parameters (and now more than ever): how and where do customers interact with a given brand, online and offline."

Challenges of a mobile-only audience

Cory Bergman, General Manager,
Breaking News

Cory Bergman, GM of Breaking News, a mobile-first start-up owned by NBC News Digital, last week posted on Poynter.org about the business -- and, by extension, branding -- concerns of news organizations facing an increasingly mobile user. Check out the full post, here.

A few of Bergman's insights:

"There’s a huge gap in advertising yield between desktop and mobile experiences: $3.50 versus $0.75 in average CPMs, according to Kleiner Perkins’ Mary Meeker. Mobile is growing so quickly, the explosion in available inventory is depressing advertising rates. Ad agencies typically lag demand, which means this gap won’t be bridged anytime soon.

"As audiences shift, the industry will be faced with more revenue pressure unless news organizations can create new mobile revenue streams to compensate. In many ways, this is similar to the shift from print to the Web. Just porting one business model to the other isn’t the solution. Traditional display advertising on mobile devices makes up a very small, declining fraction of total revenue

" . . . simply extending a news organizations’ current coverage into mobile isn’t enough. We need to solve information problems for our users and drive measurable revenue for our advertisers. Mobile is not merely another form factor, but an entirely new ecosystem that rewards utility. Flipboard is a classic example of solving a problem (tablet-based content discovery) while The Daily is an example of a product that did not.

"'When the Web was new, many of us went online with creativity and energy,” says Regina McCombs, who teaches mobile at Poynter. “Now, faced with even bigger potential and pitfalls for developing — or losing — our audience, most of us are getting by with as little investment as we can. That’s scary.'"

The consequences of inventing "frappuccino"

Fast Company looks this week at how brands manage new terminology into existence -- and thereby dominate the mindspace for whole product categories. Mark Quinn, VP of Marketing with Leggett & Platt, blogs about how brands can create hybrid language and terminology to own a concept and hold market share.

"The new American could be a dream come true if it chooses to take the actions that'll make it real."

American Airlines CEO Tom Horton (L) and
US Airways CEO Doug Parker
at the airline merger announcement
at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport
(Photo: Los Angeles Times)

Forbes contributor Jonathan Salem Baskin jumps on the American Airlines - US Airways merger story and its branding challenges.  We presume (?) that Futurebrand's recently unveiled work for American will stay on track.  (Nice review of Futurebrand's "reboot" of American at FastCompany Design by Mark Wilson, here.)  Baskin at Forbes asserts, "The creative opportunity is immense, almost bordering on a dream," but goes on to provide a wish list of behaviors that it would like to see in the new merged airline to "operationalize the new American brand."

Baskin concludes with this: "Past experience is that big mergers end up being nightmares for most everyone involved, except those profiting from their implementation."  Some of us have a long memory: the Ciba-Geigy and Sandoz in 1996 to create Novartis was not only a success corporate merger, fairly universally recognized as good for everyone, but also spurred an industry re-branding away from drug or pharmaceutical companies to a "healthcare" industry.  Exxon-Mobil in 1999 didn't do badly for itself either. Even, for all the mishegas of the recession, the JPMorganChase merger of 2005 still looks pretty good -- as a brand as well as an enterprise. The question of what makes a big-merger brand success needs a bit more exploration and evidence.

Blogging at New York Fashion Week

Emily Weiss
Into the Gloss fashion / beauty blogger

Nice New York Times video clip about Emily Weiss,  young blogger writing about fashion since 2010. A great example of a new integrated communications enterprise -- age 27, running a five-person operation, posting 4 times per week and getting 6 million page views per month.

Want to advance your career in the new world of integrated communications? Help is on the way.

City College of New York hosted a hard launch luncheon on January 23, 2013 for its new Master’s degree in Branding + Integrated Communications (BIC). The event attracted over 70 guests from Manhattan advertising, branding, digital, PR, and research firms along with academics. The biggest, established agencies were well represented – Y&R, McCann, Grey, GroupM, Landor, R/GA, Edelman, Ketchum, among others, but so were several emerging media services entrepreneurs who are thriving in the New Tech City.

This widely diverse (expertise, age, gender, ethnicity) group was not shy about offering advice – and warnings – to young professionals working in the shifting environment of integrated communications.

First of all, the discussion acknowledged some old, evolving conversations.

• The old fuddy-duddies in the room were not the people harping on basic skills, perseverance, resilience, and discipline. It was the 30-something professionals who were making that pitch. The “basics” are as important as they ever were, as the pros not ten years into a career testified.

• The great land-grab among agencies (particularly between advertising and PR agencies fighting for the social-media or the content-creation dollar) has been going on now for over a decade. It is still part of the landscape, but it is no longer the most interesting conversation. Marketing communications just is, already, integrated – the market/consumers integrated it for us by their behavior and media use. Those agencies and professionals who are spending much time preening about how social or integrated they are may be “thus protesting too much”: if you have to assert those creds too strenuously now in 2013, maybe it is a sign that you’ve already missed that boat.

• Saul Steinberg’s view of America haunts marketing communications pros. That famous 1976 New Yorker cover could be re-drawn today; the only change would be that the Manhattanites in the foreground would be tweeting. The CCNY luncheon participants repeatedly warned young New York marketing communications professionals: “You are not America.” New media rules, but traditional communications and marketing channels have not gone away. If you really want to succeed, the work is not about out-with-the-old, in-with-the-new; the challenge is doing-the-right-thing for places that are not creative-class enclaves.

Top line advice for the young integrated communications professional:

• Prepare for the long game. Too many young communications professionals are finding their careers peaking before they turn thirty, because they enter the profession on the basis of their demographic and not on refined skills and examined thought and creative process. You might get a first job on being the social media whiz kid, but that is a formula with a blindingly fast built-in obsolescence. 

• Understand the whole marketing communications mix. You may not be an expert, today, in all the marketing services silos, but you need to know how they work and what they can contribute. Know where your skills and contributions fit in. The traditional channels of advertising, PR, social, IR, etc. all persist – but are evolved to be more interpenetrated and interdependent than ever.

• One way or another, your career will be data driven, so decide whether you want to do some driving, too – or be left in the back seat. If you are more comfortable calling it “listening,” that is OK. If you are drawn to the Big Data approach to this conversation, all the better. In any case, the successful marketing communications professionals of all variations will have access to amazing and inspiring new levels of insight – but only for those who have gotten over their numeracy phobias. Not all marketing communications professionals have to be Nate Silver, but we need to work with the Nate Silvers on our team, and leaders will make sound decisions based on all that good, new data.

• To be creative is to be strategic, to be informed, and to be useful. A typical comment: “’Kids’ come into the agency and do graphic and video work on their laptops that are way beyond what experienced pros could do just a few years ago. That’s great. And if you can’t do that stuff – you’re definitely at a disadvantage. But too often, there’s no strategy.” The best creative people have always been strategic. In the future, all the surviving creatives will have to be.

Such advice and insights – condensed from a couple of hours of enthusiasm and tuna salad wraps – are, of course, the reason City College created its new graduate degree in Branding + Integrated Communications. Such thinking has also been behind the wide range of new, and newly re-configured, integrated communications graduate programs from Syracuse to Medill, to online programs from USC to West Virginia, to international programs such as at the American University of Paris and the London School of Business.

The Master’s degree may or may not be the “new Bachelor’s,” but clearly the traditional configuration of the undergrad degree in advertising or public relations or even mass communications is not doing justice to the current practice in this industry. While the industry welcomes the English or sociology major to entry level jobs, that liberal arts ideal of “learning how to think,” while necessary, may not be sufficient if there is not also a bit of “learning how to do.”

One unanticipated consequence of the emerging world of integrated communications, big data, and new media technologies is that reflections on our work are coalescing around a robust, cross-disciplinary intellectual enterprise that embraces human relations, behavioral and political economics, statistics, psychology, neuroscience, and aesthetics. Our work now has methodological rigor, historical precedents, and predictive power. The new graduate academic programs demonstrate that integrated communications has become the profession to which the twentieth-century practices of advertising and public relations once aspired.

This post  by BIC faculty member,
Professor Frank Walton, appeared at CommPRO.biz
January 28, 2013

Who owns content creation?

Richard Edelman's 6 A.M. blog has sparked renewed dialogue about how "the previously sharp distinction between paid and earned media has become blurred. Sponsored content, native advertising and long-term aggregation deals are all being discussed." Richard looks at it from the PR man's angle, but he appreciates how the "content" of the brand in the future is going to evolve from a variety of sources -- including the consumers themselves.