The truth of the matter is we’ve needed a high-design, spot-on depiction of the Brand Strategy practice for quite some time, now. Not quite an infographic, this work nevertheless conveys some of the key elements and outputs that the process involves.

More about our brand strategy services, plus some sample work → More

Note to mobile users: Just swipe the slides to advance.

An Arch digitals DPA is a great way to get the conversation started – both internally and externally – about the opportunities, challenges, and potential directions for growing your business online.

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This one from Smart Insights in the U.K. is a happy balance – a great-looking visual (well, after some desaturation, but that’s just personal preference) of some very well organized information. It’s difficult, even for those of us who are involved in it all the time, to visualize the entire inbound marketing process. Smart Insights has not only made the process succinct and comprehensible, they have depicted the flows, sequences, and interdependencies very clearly and with great style. Kudos!

I think the reason retro design sometimes suffers from a bad rap is because it can so easily tip over into kitsch if it’s not done with enough sophistication. Great retro design is a very delicate balancing act because it marries an expressive, maximal design approach with a streamlined, ultimately minimalist aesthetic. That is one tough combination to pull off successfully.

Mark Weaver does it with enormous intelligence and style. Check out Mark’s website here.

Over the past several years video has become the number-one format choice for web users. It’s an important content component for virtually any online marketing program.

Two high-profile videos do not a zeitgeist make, so let’s call it a mini-trend. Both current spots take culturally iconic images and animate them – quite successfully, both – to achieve a fresh expression of the deeply familiar. The right combination of fresh and familiar is media gold. When we talk about making emotional connections in marketing communications we are mining the territory of the familiar, tapping into primal triggers located deep within the limbic system of the brain.

Familiar visual and auditory cues – images or music that we’ve made associations with over the course of a lifetime – serve as shortcuts to these triggers. They can be extremely powerful. The high price for licensing such cues is a reflection both of the value of that power and the need for preserving that value through some inscrutable formula of exposure and exclusivity. I dare say that allowing Michael Jackson’s Thriller to be used for Party City advertising was probably not a wise application of this formula.

These two spots succeed in preserving the delicate balance of value in familiar cultural cues, and do it in an entirely captivating way. Good stuff.

Brilliantly executed, the videos show what a company with a good deal of advertising and media dollars can aspire to and how they can formulate a comprehensive plan for engaging customers.  But even the rest of us, without those mega media dollars, can adopt some key concepts from this strategy into our own social media interactions.

Here are some key take-aways from Part 1.

• Tell a story that relates to your brand or concept – storytelling engages the reader and helps to develop deeper emotional connections between you (your brand) and your customer
• Encourage dynamic storytelling from customers by engaging in conversations around your stories and the stories of your customers – invite their stories to become a part of yours
• Adopt the “live positively” principle whereby you strive to make each encounter one that has a positive influence – you may not be able to change the world, but you can change the experience of those you interact with

As collaborative and open as the strategy sounds, there is also a great deal of “directing” built into the plan. Should the definition of dynamic storytelling really include the words “systematic” and “coordinated?” Maybe, but customers can and will spontaneously change the direction of the conversation and you need to be able to “go with the flow” without feeling like your grand plan has been hijacked.

Stay tuned for insights from Coca Cola Content 2020 – Part 2.

A key difference between a blogger and a columnist is that the latter doesn’t traditionally involve reader commentary – at least not in real-time, devoid of editorial filters, and appended for all to see. Blogging proliferated as the first large-scale instance of user-generated content online because self-publication and distribution was suddenly easy and immediate. Three cheers for instant gratification. But the medium is also interactive. Readers can publish just as easily as the blogger.

It is perhaps ironic, then, that the blogger with the largest reported readership, Andrew Sullivan, disabled reader comment capability years ago. Andrew ticks off a lot of blogging boxes, including being something of a provocateur, but without the addition of reader commentary to amplify, deconstruct, cheer and ridicule, I would argue that Andrew is not really a blogger at all. Despite his swagger and self-proclamation as a blogging trailblazer, Andrew is in reality a columnist who publishes at a hyper-blogging pace.

But I digress. The example I wanted to highlight is the great Olivier Blanchard, author of “Social Media R.O.I.” and a prolific blogger in his own right, who yesterday published a post proclaiming “the death of the personal brand” (or at least his fervent hope for its demise). Olivier’s premise is that the recent emergence of a cottage industry devoted to “personal branding,” fueled mainly by the demands of social media, is, in his words, bullshit.

“Don’t be a fake,” he advises. “Drop the personal branding BS. You don’t need it.”

This may not be good advice, but it’s great blogging.

And the nearly 100 comments appended to this article in less than 24 hours is clear proof of that.

For the record, I agree with much of what Olivier advises when he gets down to brass tacks; the article is a very worthy read, but more because it aptly defines what personal branding ought to be, rather than debunking the very notion of personal braining in the first place.

If I were to take his premise seriously, I would argue that the “personal brand” is not an analogue of the corporate brand oriented toward the individual (his central proposition), but a convenient way to describe how individual professionals need to carefully and effectively construct virtual versions of themselves in a digital world. The question of whether this effort is phony depends entirely on how it’s done – not on whether it’s done at all.

In our own work at Arch Digitals we see again and again capable, accomplished, authentic people – people who would cringe at the idea of promoting artificial or exaggerated versions of themselves – who haven’t the first clue of how, for example, to produce an accurate, professional, well-crafted series of online profiles. To those of us like Olivier Blanchard who tend to play on the bleeding edge of the emerging virtual world, these prosaic concerns may seem sophomoric or trivial. But they are in fact precisely what make up the category of personal branding for most business people.

Undoubtedly, Olivier well understands this. What he is doing here is using semantic gymnastics to attract attention, incite controversy, and create discussion and sharing – otherwise known as buzz.

I’d argue that as much can be learned from Olivier’s shrewd blogging technique as from his thoughtful analysis of personal branding.

One of the perennial challenges of the luxury brand is how to maintain an impression of quality and exclusivity while encouraging consumers to broaden their purchase considerations beyond special occasions.

Accordingly, email marketing metrics for luxury brands tend to be notoriously low.

In partnership with the technology development firm engaged to build and manage Waterford’s database marketing programs,we developed a comprehensive direct mail strategy designed to exceed industry metrics and substantially increase digital channel revenue for Waterford.

• Continue to heighten awareness of, interest in and demand for the Waterford Crystal product line among their current customer base.
• Design and execute a comprehensive online email marketing campaign to the existing list of Waterford Crystal database.
• Begin a testing strategy implementation
• Re-launch the society newsletter
• Maintain and increase open, read and click levels above industry standards

Using a highly innovative segmentation approach along with campaign optimization, we were able to raise Waterford’s open and click-through rates to where they matched or exceeded general consumer product averages.

The Challenge

After their various international divisions had developed distinct regional web sites, the world’s leading luggage manufacturer found itself in a global brand identity crisis. Like so many multinational companies before them, the Internet forced Samsonite to embrace the idea of a truly global brand for the very first time.

The Solution

The inherent conflicts presented by such an unprecedented corporate integration of business, brand, and technology issues demanded a highly organized and well-structured team of business strategy, customer experience, and technology personnel. We interviewed stakeholders in six countries, conducted brand workshops in various regions of the world, and developed a comprehensive approach to online branding and customer experience.

Numerous visual design approaches were reviewed until an elegant, photo-centric approach was universally adopted. The most significant functional design solution was an innovative Product Selector console that gave the user successive and simultaneous levels of browse and search functionality.

After agreement was reached on business rules, product lines, shopping features, technology infrastructure, and the foundations of a global brand, the European and American divisions became locked in a battle for dominance over the development phase of the project. Our job suddenly evolved into one of savvy diplomacy, encouraging momentum on work that could easily stall amidst a lack of consensus.

Client Quote - “Russell was indispensable as the creative strategy lead for this large, complex, multinational project.” –Mike Zucker, VP Marketing & Merchandising, Samsonite Corporation

The new Website received rave reviews across the board, including a veritable love letter from Brandchannel.com.