Alan M. Siegel's Blog, page 18

Simplicity and Work: Summer 2022 intern edition

Each summer, Siegel+Gale takes on a class of interns comprised of undergraduate and graduate students to test the waters of what it means to be a simplifier. This summer, students joined the New York and West Coast offices, where they learned from and worked alongside seasoned brand experts. For many, this in-person experience was a first after semesters of remote learning and working. Over the past eight weeks, our interns collaborated face-to-face, built relationships with their teams and had hands-on exposure to projects. Most importantly, they learned how to integrate simplicity into their work. Below our interns share what simplicity means to them:

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“Simplicity is ease. Simplicity is comfort. It is about clarity without sacrificing impact. It is about efficiency; the simplest things still retain a level of quality. It is not vapid, trivial or vain. Simplicity is the foundation for all things good—in branding and in life.” —Ibukun Babatunde, Naming Intern

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“To me, simplicity is getting to the core of an idea and communicating it effectively. This means everyone can understand the message no matter their background. It helps not only in minimizing the clutter around us, but also helps to create a more equitable world.” —Brooke Baker, Brand Communication Intern

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“Simplicity in my work means communicating in the most concise, crisp, and efficient way possible. It means removing unnecessary words or restructuring statements to express ideas more effectively. I think simplicity can also be the act of not overthinking or overworking. Looking at the end goal from a high level is essential to working simply.” —Megan Beeh, Brand Communication Intern

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“Simplicity is easy yet thoughtful. Being simple is not normally a compliment, but it should be. Making things simple is often more difficult than adding complexity and takes more thought. In an era of excess, people feel overwhelmed by the ever-increasing volume of choices and endless consumption is destroying our planet. Therefore, I want to help consumers make easy choices by thoughtfully creating simple brands that cut through the chaos of today.”—Jason Cai, Strategy Intern

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“Simplicity is at the core of my work process. In the world of big data, the influx of information is powerful but also overwhelming. The most effective way to tell a compelling story with your data is to establish clarity with simplicity and accuracy.” —Shivani Dahiya, Research & Insights Intern

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“For me, simplicity in the workplace means allocating the appropriate amount of focus and time to the most important tasks at hand to achieve clarity and efficient productivity. It involves streamlined collaboration among coworkers at every level to create coherent, clear goals and direction.” —Sam Falcon, Creative Services Intern

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“Simplicity means free and classy to me in the work, that I can expand my creativity in the most straightforward and clear way. It helps me to get rid of the overwhelming place, and to focus on the most important design elements that have both clients and me understand the beauty and meaning at the same time. Through the process, I realized that all we need is the small minimal things that inspires and immerse people with great power.” —Silei Fu, Design Intern

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“Simplicity, to me, means applying an essential filter to information to distill it into the most meaningful and impactful insights for an organization. Finding the place where a brand lives within that organization and being able to clear a path for it to be lived every day. It guides situations with too much information or noise and allows me to think clearly.” —Julia Gehringer, Brand-Led Change Intern

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“Simplicity is cutting through the noise and finding what truly matters in a brand. To me, it’s not about making empty promises or overselling yourself but reaching the true essence of the brand, something that withstands time and is the core of what makes them special.” —Hannah Gordon, Brand Communication Intern

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“Simplicity is the ability to convey complex ideas in the most accessible and understandable way while capturing attention through visual design. Such simplicity is essential as it bolsters the relationship between audience and brand with strong, clear ideas that help forge the brand identity. Hence, my creative process always focuses on the most efficient, simple, and meaningful creation methods to create the biggest impact.” —Anmol Govinda-Rao, Design Intern

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“Simplicity is about understanding the essence of something. Surprisingly, simple answers can solve some of life’s most complicated challenges.”
—Hamin Jeon, Design Intern

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“Whether professionally or in your daily life, simplicity is about being efficient. Because efficiency is doing something at the highest level in the easiest way possible.” —Isabella Jonna, Account Management Intern

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“Simplicity is efficiency. Making it easier for people to process, connect, and relate to. Simplicity gives back time to other people and makes for a fuller life. I am drawn to simplicity in my work because I know that it will lead to positive changes in lives. Simplicity is not only a work value, but a way of life that I want to share.” —Kevin Le, Business Development Intern

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“Simplicity is understanding a problem so well that it can be solved and communicated in the most straightforward way. Taking a complex issue, condensing it, and conveying it in a manner clear of distractions and extraneous information is how to make experiences accessible to all audiences.”
—Thien Le, Brand Experience Intern

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“Simplicity is about making ideas easy to understand and reproducible for others. It creates a framework that lets everyone get involved even if they come from different backgrounds. Building smart and simple processes frees up time from busy work, so that I can spend more time collaborating with my team.” —Jay Lee, Research & Insights Intern

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“Simplicity means getting to the point, cutting through all the noise and getting to the good stuff. Finding the happy medium by filtering out the right amount–but not overdoing it. In a world where we are surrounded by abundance and chaos, simplicity means making life easier for everyone.” —Margot Lopez-Silvero, Marketing Intern

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“Work that comes from a place of simplicity comes from a place of strength. I believe the simplest ideas have the strongest creative momentum, which translates to how ideas are communicated internally and externally. Whenever I’m unsatisfied with a creative idea, I ask myself, “is it simple enough?” If it’s not simple enough for me, it’s not simple enough for anyone.” —Wayne Luan, Brand Experience Intern

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To me, simplicity is crucial in all areas of our lives, but especially in our work. Delivering the highest quality work means fine tuning it until it can be understood from every angle and perspective. Looking at my own work through a lens of simplicity allowed me to understand how it is received in the world and how to communicate at the clearest and most efficient level possible. —Madeline McEvoy, Marketing Intern

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“Simplicity involves stripping excess layers to unveil and celebrate the truest form. We can identify the essential with simplicity and deliver the most fundamental and meaningful foundation upon which to build everything. This ambition enables us to communicate the core values with intention, clarity and confidence.” —Victoria Mora, Account Management Intern

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“Simplicity is achieving more by doing less across all domains of life. For example, whether it is communication, day-to-day work or cultural shift at an organization (kudos to my Brand-led change team!) simplicity aims at high efficacy with low complexity allowing people to work better alone and with each other while still leaving room for creativity.” —Blazej Mosinski, Brand-Led Change Intern

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“Simplicity is communicating a message in a way that a 5-year-old child or any outside observer would understand.” —Valentina Palacios, Strategy Intern

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“Simplicity in the workplace means more than it may seem. Simplicity, to me, is something that is attainable but takes practice using trial and error. A mindset focused on simplicity is the best way to go about business, as it provides an intuitive experience packed with clarity, purpose, and efficiency.”
—Sophia Prager, Account Management Intern

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“To me, simplicity in the workplace means that everything is straightforward and planned to the best of our ability to deliver high-quality ideas to our clients. With the way the world is moving, you never know what your day may bring you, so there’s no doubt that Siegel+Gale offers the best solution to all of this with their principle of simplicity. It means the day will go by easier than you expected.” —Tashfia Raisa, Creative Services Intern

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“We live in a constantly moving and ever-evolving world surrounded by information; to succeed in this world, we must learn how to create simplicity from complexity. Working at Siegel+Gale not only teaches you about the true meaning of simplicity but how to embody it in everything we do.” —Jonathan Ziebarth, Strategy Intern

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Healthcare brands: Moving beyond the pandemic

This article originally appeared in MediaPost.

Healthcare brands and providers know it’s important to have a good bedside manner, but it can take a backseat to science and strong medical acumen. During COVID, however, everything changed. Providers were no longer just experts—they became patients, facing the same uncertainties as everyone else. In a way, the pandemic was democratizing.

Earlier this year, we surveyed 11 international CMOs and brand leaders in B2B and B2C healthcare not only about how the pandemic impacted the industry, but about which new strategies would stick now that the sector is no longer singularly focused on COVID.

Of all the lessons learned, perhaps the most important is that empathy, simplicity, and clarity are paramount to success.

More visible than ever, brands must lead with purpose

The uncertainty of the pandemic motivated the general population to become amateur medical experts. This meant that healthcare brands both big and small received unprecedented attention. “The pandemic has changed perception for the whole industry in a positive way, creating opportunities to connect on a deeper level with stakeholders,” says Maria Jobin, head of global corporate brand management at Novartis International AG. “Brand purpose has become more relevant than ever.”

“We observed a rapid acceleration and broader understanding of the work we do in biopharmaceuticals, the good work for the health and wellness of society,” said Pfizer’s Deborah Scarano, vice president, senior launch manager. And even though the well-known company has been around for 150 years, “It brought the general population closer into what we do every day, our purpose as a company, and how we can deliver for them.”

Elekta CMO Grégory Trausch also noted the necessity of incorporating purpose into messaging. “An important question for us has been, ‘Can we articulate better how we contribute to society?’ Of course, we’re running a business, and we generate revenues, but that’s the nature of any business. It’s not what matters here. What really matters is for people to understand why we’re here and what we do.”

Purpose or a good mission statement can’t be empty words written to fill empty space. Companies must live it to maintain credibility.

Embrace efficient, easier ecosystems

When social distancing policies were first imposed, healthcare brands needed to create digital solutions to meet patient and consumer needs. And while telehealth may not remain the default option for doctor appointments, companies will continue to use technology to increase efficiency, innovation, and the patient’s overall ease.

Furthermore, as patients take ownership of their health journeys, brands are creating more opportunities for the collection of user-generated data.

“The pandemic has accelerated the trend of people looking after their own health and well-being, whether it’s mental or physical well-being,” said Kerry O’Callaghan, GSK’s former vice president corporate, reputation and brand. “This is coupled with the use of big data and AI, and how you can look at trends and use that data to help accelerate drug or medicines discovery in the future with clinical trials.”

Keep the human component in mind

Although the pandemic isn’t over, the world has begun to open up again. People are paying more attention to healthcare options that are entirely unrelated to COVID. But that doesn’t mean they’ll no longer expect open sharing of information and end-to-end individualized healthcare processes. And if brands forget to lead with that human component and willingness to educate, they’ll be left behind.

 

Ben Osborne is Head of Insights, EMEA

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Driving sustainable business growth for brands

This article originally appeared in Branders Magazine. 

The pandemic has shown us the intersectionality of our lives, our health and our planet. As companies look to build their brands, leading with purpose and embedding ESG into your company’s DNA is key to driving growth, consumer and employee engagement and navigating the transition to net-zero.

The most successful brands combine dynamic customer experiences with an ESG focus that’s simple and clear to engage customers and employees, manage risk, maximize opportunity and drive long-term value.

In our increasingly complex world—dealing with a pandemic, climate change, hyper-partisanship and tragic war, customers look for brands that are consumer-centric, authentic and focused on more than their bottom line. Developing and telling your ESG story with transparency and simplicity is a powerful differentiator.

The importance of ESG is increasing due to new global regulatory requirements, an evolving ESG reporting landscape and shifting stakeholder expectations, including pressure from investors looking for ESG disclosures to guide their investment decisions.

In 2020, a KPMG survey of sustainability reporting found that, of the top 100 companies across 52 countries, 40% of firms acknowledged climate change in financial disclosures, a 15% increase since 2017.

The pressure’s now on to increase the pace. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently proposed a set of new rules that would require most U.S. public companies to disclose climate-related information.

These climate disclosure requirements incentivize companies to focus on ESG reporting to control risk. But forward-thinking leaders know reporting should be viewed as more than a compliance exercise. Brands focusing on strong ESG practices drive innovation, value and brand loyalty. They also build employee recruitment and retention.

Investment firms are increasingly using ESG metrics to screen stocks and bonds issued by companies, building an impetus for strong ESG practices and reporting. Currently, $40 trillion in ESG assets are held worldwide. Bloomberg Intelligence estimates that, by 2025, this could increase to $53 trillion, or one-third of global investments. ESG funds grew by $285 billion in 2020 alone, a 96% increase over 2019.

From Siegel+Gale’s work advising global corporations on branding and ESG, we’ve developed ten important tips to integrate ESG practices into business strategy.

10 Tips to Drive Sustainable Brand Growth: Integrate purpose and ESG into your core business strategy to make a positive impact on your employees, community, society-at-large and our planet. An integrated ESG strategy requires a “top down – bottom up – trickle out” approach with CEO, Board and C-suite engagement combined with grass-roots employee engagement and collaboration across supply chains. Achieve measurable goals and transparently report on progress, by developing best practices in data collection and creating a comprehensive report, based on clear metrics that tells your story in a simple, compelling way. Harness the power of purpose to innovate and create strong brand experiences to drive sustainable growth. Leverage ESG to drive disruptive innovation—enhancing sustainable operations and caring for employees and the communities in which you do business. Customers want to buy from brands that lead with purpose. Employees want to work for companies they believe in. It’s a virtuous cycle. Develop strong ESG policies and practices and embed sustainability, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) into your corporation’s DNA. Walk the talk—live your values by linking employees’ day-to-day work to a larger, shared purpose and encouraging employee engagement around climate and social issues. All your initiatives–whether training your teams, program development, letters from your CEO or community initiatives — should be transparent, authentic and impactful—not merely a check-the-box exercise. Your company must walk the talk.Engage and mobilize stakeholders across the entire value chain around collective action, including suppliers, distributors, employees, consumers, investors and communities in which you operate. Take a stand with policymakers—lend your voice for human rights stewardship and environmental sustainability and use your proxy power as an investor to drive positive change. Leverage technology and innovation and foster creativity and an intrapreneurial mindset to lower your carbon footprint, recycle materials, increase the efficiency of manufacturing processes and reduce waste and consumption of energy and water. Collaborate across companies, stakeholders and industry sectors to make a difference and drive positive change. Strong brands recognize they need to work together to drive innovation and maximize impact. Collaboration across businesses and industry sectors is key to accomplishing ESG goals. Create circular business models, including circular supply chains, circular products and circular customer journeys. Moving towards a more circular economy reduces waste, protects resources, increases competitiveness, stimulates innovation and boosts economic growth.

Integrating strong ESG practices into your company’s DNA is key to driving innovation and creating positive impact. Focusing on people and planet, as well as profit, to engage diverse stakeholders with transparency and simplicity is a powerful differentiator to build your brand, long-term value and your impact on the world.

 

Wendy Gerber is Executive Director of Strategy and Head of ESG Advisory, Siegel+Gale

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Future of Branding: Pride + Inclusive Storytelling

There is palpable joy with the return of many in-person Pride celebrations that were canceled due to Covid. But at this year’s “CMO Panel: Pride and Inclusive Storytelling,” we were convening at a time of heightened political and cultural polarization. Given this backdrop, ourannual celebration was possibly more important than ever. In the U.S., for example, we are witnessing an unprecedented number of bills before lawmakers targeting LGBTQ+ people.

As we explored this landscape and the experiences and perspectives of our seven LGBTQ+ marketing and communications leaders, we discussed such questions as, “What is the role of brands during Pride Month? Should brands express allyship with the community? And, if so, how?”

In closing, I asked our panelists, “What is your commitment to inclusive storytelling, and how will you measure success?” Here’s what they had to say.

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Our commitment to inclusive storytelling is to always thread it through the lens of mission, and make sure that we’re inclusive—particularly in the places where there’s a big intersectionality with homelessness, which is at the heart of what we do. In terms of how we measure success, what we look at quite closely is the awareness people have of our mission. And if we’re doing a good job talking about issues that intersect with our mission, the awareness of our mission will continue to increase.

—Kate Huyett (she/her), CMO, Bombas

 

We are inherently focused on telling diverse stories across the LGBTQIA+ alphabet. It’s crucial for us to not stop there and to focus on making sure we’re telling stories across racial lines, across class lines, across national lines. We’re a global brand. And things look very different in India versus Indonesia versus Brazil versus the U.S. So, thinking as holistically and inclusively as we possibly can, it’s not only a commitment—it’s the core to who we are and an absolute business necessity. The way we’re going to know we’re doing well is to see our numbers continue to grow and users continue to come to us and feel increasingly safer, secure, and able to connect with the people that they are trying to connect with via Grindr.

—Patrick Lenihan (he/him), VP, Head of Communications, Grindr

 

This isn’t just an issue an LGBTQ+ issue, it’s something that we think about across all diverse underrepresented groups. And I talked a little bit earlier about how good storytelling yields identification. And if people identify with your story, they’re going to give you feedback. So, I don’t have a good metric to throw out there. But what really shows that you did a good job is if you get feedback from people internally, and you get feedback from people externally as well.

—Maeve DuVally (she/her), Managing Director, Corporate Communications, Goldman Sachs

 

For me, there’s an internal and an external component. Internally, I would say continue to be a loud and supportive voice for the LGBTQIA+ community at the executive table of Avon. How I would measure success is, if you have good representation, you have true equity, equality, and inclusivity. As for the external components from a brand perspective, we will continue to challenge our 70+ markets to take a stand on LGBTQIA+ topics. There are still a few markets that haven’t joined us yet on this journey. So, my commitment and my success metric are to make sure that, wherever it’s legal, we can do more for the community and be a louder voice for the community.

—Kristof Neirynck (he/him), CMO, Avon

 

You can put out a great marketing campaign, and you can look at different impressions and metrics for success. But for us, it’s really important to have people from your company be front and center who are authentic and visible and have the courage to be public about it. For instance, I posted about my recent marriage on LinkedIn. It went viral. I was not intending for it to go viral. I tagged the company, because I know how important is to be our authentic selves at work and at home. Overwhelmingly, there were positive responses. However, I did get some hateful comments. But I think a great measurement of success was how many people were advocating on behalf of Marriott, because they saw how proud and out and visible I was. And I think that is the authenticity that brands need to convey.

—Bruce Rohr (he/him), VP & Global Brand Leader, JW Marriott, Marriott International

 

I would encourage those who are listening to us today, who are marketers, to really push their creative teams to drive the right message, but also their media-buying teams to drive the message to the right places. And that means beyond media, right? It’s sponsorship, it’s what we’ve talked about here: year-round engagement with the community. Because so often it’s dots and spots. And, sometimes—most of the time—you’re not going to have an LGBTQ out leader in your marketing team. So you’re depending on your creative agencies and your media-buying agency. So really push hard on them and make sure you’re really reaching the people you want to reach.

—Chiqui Cartagena (she/her), Sr. Advisor, Comms. Strategy & Outreach, Bureau of Latin America and the Caribbean, USAID

 

For brands, understand that tapestry of the woven fabric that you’re trying to build through the diversity of the people that you’re trying to reach. Bring that internally, and it’s about leading with authenticity, integrity, and intersectionality. Can you weave it together and then push the narrative? The measure for me is the people who I don’t know—who I was never aware of, who have voiced or emailed or texted or tweeted me with their thanks for being visible—that’s the individual measure. From a company measure, we continue to grow through our brands that we support on our e-commerce platform. As long as we can continue to grow, I’m happy with that.

—Meghan Stabler (she/her), Senior Vice President, BigCommerce

 

In hosting this panel, I was reminded of the words of the writer Janet Mock. She asserts, “I believe that telling our stories, first to ourselves and then to one another and the world, is a revolutionary act.” I offer that this power of storytelling applies equally at a human level and at a brand level. Storytelling is transformative, and it has the capacity to evoke emotions and effect change.

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3 questions research should answer in a merger or acquisition

A version of this article originally appeared on Quirk’s Media.

A merger or acquisition is one of the largest shifts a business can undergo. It is a pivotal cultural, operational and financial inflection point that redefines a company’s business as well as its brand.

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) hit a record high in 2021, reaching $5.9 trillion in revenue. That spending spree persists today, with 2022 predicted to be another strong year: 89% of executives expect their deals to stay level or increase. Since January alone, there have been such powerhouse deals as Amazon’s purchase of MGM Studios for $8.5 billion and Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion.

With deals reaching 10 figures or more, you’d expect that all elements of the unification would be given their due diligence. Yet the value of thorough research to better understand the equity of all brands involved – both externally and internally – is more often than not low on the list of priorities when it should be taken into greater consideration.

Your brand is the face of your company. It serves as a guide for making key business decisions and represents how end-customers will form an opinion about your company. With M&As being such a critical, sensitive moment in a company’s history, it is vital to have a thorough understanding of how your brand, as well as any acquired brands, are viewed by both employees and target customers.

Brand research

Research provides a tangible evaluation of the intangible: your brand. Well-executed fact-based research—primary or secondary; qualitative or quantitative—is one simple strategy to better understand your brand and acquired brand(s) that can help in the decision-making process and put a new entity on the right path. Because research is void of preconceived notions and internal biases, it presents a fact base to guide all other decisions.

During the M&A process, brand research should seek to resolve three key questions:

Why does your brand matter to customers?Does your brand need to change?How does your brand impact employees?

Let’s take a deeper dive to get to the core of what these considerations entail.

Why does your brand matter to customers?

The values, principles and core strengths that lay the foundation of your brand keep you grounded and honest, helping to illuminate the road ahead. Your brand should serve as a gut check for all actions and decisions your company makes, motivating both employees and customers.

So how do you go about organizing the established brand assets in order to create a clear and simple brand message? The key is to align your brand with customer drivers of preference and purchase. Rigorous quantitative research approaches can identify what truly motivates customers to choose some brands over others. At Siegel & Gale we’ve had the greatest success using our EyeOpener methodology for this purpose. EyeOpener utilizes statistical modeling through a derived approach to better understand the subconscious scorecard customers use when deciding between brands. Much like the name implies, it often reveals surprising results of what most influences your customers’ brand preference.

Establishing fact-based preference drivers will highlight the strategic steps your company needs to take and enable your company to deliver on what matters most to the target audience.

Does your brand need to change?

Understanding drivers of brand preference for your customers naturally leads to the next question: does your brand need to change? In order to answer this, it’s important to have a full evaluation of your brand’s perceptions and associations. In-depth research will inform their level of familiarity in the marketplace; their perceived strengths and weaknesses; and the products and services customers expect and want from each. Regardless of methodology, all of these key metrics should be captured.

The analysis gleaned from this perception research can tell you if each brand is excelling or lacking in the same area. Perhaps the acquired brand shares many similar traits to the acquiree. Or perhaps the two brands have diverging traits and associations. Each of these findings can lead to dramatically different brand positioning and architecture solutions.

Research takes the guesswork out of adapting your brand to try and communicate this new value and how it impacts your key audiences. Brand positioning, architecture, communication, and even design will be informed by the right research approach. It is only once this information is collected and analyzed that you can align on shared strengths, what to highlight and what to walk away from. It is what guides you on how to best tell your newly formed story.

How does your brand impact employees?

A common pitfall when evaluating the potential success of M&A is omitting what is arguably the most important audience: your employees. Since employees can either be your biggest brand advocates or your biggest roadblock, it is essential to understand their level of engagement and how they feel about such a significant change.

At a base level, simply communicating how decisions are validated by research will have positive effects during times of change, helping to give employees a sense of stability and understanding. Facts, evidence, and reason can also help unite senior-level employees struggling with this new relationship, thus mitigating an issue which can threaten the process’s success.

As an added step, taking the time to research your own employee base ensures every stakeholder feels heard and can yield entirely new insights. Different brands bring different cultures along with them; being able to pre-identify any potential pain points ensures that a culture clash is minimized as two separate companies transition to a single unified entity. In order to do so, you must identify where the real brand champions lie in your workforce, and how best to leverage their drive and passion to get all employees on board.

Lastly, it is worthwhile to measure brand perceptions internally. We often find that perceptions of a brand externally do not match up to perceptions held by a brand’s own workforce. At Siegel & Gale we frequently recommend taking the time to ask employees about many of the same attributes we capture in our EyeOpener research. This give us and our clients the capability to measure alignment (or misalignment) of the brand internally vs externally.

Harnessing Insights

Well-executed research is a looking glass that reflects your brand and company’s true essence off of your target audience’s perceptions. It can also serve as a highly personal listening tool, with customers and employees opening up about their hopes, needs and potential concerns for your organization and its peers. Research taps into and harnesses these insights in a way that best positions a newly unified entity for ongoing success and market dominance.

 

Marc Desmond is Director, Analytics & Insights, Siegel+Gale

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Five minutes with Amanda Bowers Wong

This article originally appeared in Transform magazine.

How important is typography in branding? What role does it play in creating cohesive brand identities?

Amanda Bowers Wong: Typography is an extremely important component that not only incorporates a variety of creative aspects but glues all those elements together. A visual identity, including a logo, colour palette, and photography, expresses the spirit of a brand. But it is typography—with its thoughtful and purposeful design—that makes those pieces legible. That means you can understand a visual identity and, chiefly, the brand’s spirit.

A great example of typography helping to create a cohesive program comes from a source that is not often associated with branding: Medieval manuscripts. As an art history major at Stanford, I wrote my honours thesis on the Lorsch Gospels, a set of seven biblical manuscripts created for Charlemagne’s court. I find the use of coded language in Medieval art so intriguing—every detail included is meant to be read in such a specific way. In the Lorsch Gospels, for instance, the incipit pages paint Charlemagne as the natural heir to the Holy Roman Empire. This propaganda pervades the gospels, using both illustration and text to link Jesus and Charlemagne. No detail is negligible and so the reader takes in the material in a highly curated way. The same is true in branding: the details work together to tell a unified story that informs and engages consumers.

Why is typography often overlooked compared to other aspects of brand design and why should it be given greater emphasis?

ABW: Typography becomes a supporting cast member that doesn’t get top billing but subtly holds up the show. That’s because, when typography works well, you absorb only the information that you read—the typography essentially becomes invisible. You’re not trying to distinguish between an “i” and a “j” or wondering why a cupcake shop chose a typeface reminiscent of Russian Constructivism. Considered typography eliminates distraction and confusion.

Because typography educates and engages, it has the power to contribute significantly and strategically to a visual identity. As designers, we have the great honour—and responsibility—of ensuring that typography is not overlooked. We must be thoughtful and aware of larger historical contexts. We must develop criteria when sifting through font options. And we must consciously choose what to lean into and what to stay away from.

What is typography’s main purpose within visual identities?

ABW: The main purpose of typography is to spell out a word or words and to then visually support the communication of those words. Designers can harness the beauty and strategy of typography to either enhance or contrast with other brand elements. Take the visual identity of a bank: the name of a stately bank is not likely to be expressed in, say, a typeface made of cat silhouettes. Instead, a traditional serif typeface that evokes ideas of heritage and stability is a safer choice. Serif forms originate from carving stone, so it suggests that the bank is well established and successful, qualities that target consumer trust. Conversely, a new, digitally forward bank might choose a more modern sans serif to play up ideas of technology and innovation.

Siegel+Gale’s work with Bristol Myers Squibb is another good example of typography reflecting brand identity. The company strives to balance the rigour of science with the humanity of a patient-centric approach. The typeface for the logo is very precise. It’s upright, freestanding, and strong. But the subtle curves give it softness, so it doesn’t feel cold or aggressive. The wordmark of the logo mirrors Bristol Myers Squibb’s ethos.

What brand(s)/product(s) have the strongest use of typography and why?

ABW: The new mark for the Brooklyn restaurant Gage & Tollner stands out. The wordmark speaks so clearly to the strategy of the visual identity. The letterforms are derived from a historic mark and are so evocative of a time and style—they signal the nearly-150-year history of Gage & Tollner. The ornate letterforms set expectations for the experience. This isn’t a dive bar, this is a high-end, white-tablecloth meal with martinis and flattering lighting.

Another favourite of mine is an earlier version of the logo for Hiny Hiders, a bathroom-partition vendor. I noticed this mark a few years ago and I just think it is so weirdly fabulous. It reminds me of my work with manuscript marginalia, where bored scribes took to the edges of the page, adding intriguing—and oftentimes cheeky—illustrations.

 

Amanda Bowers Wong is Associate Creative Director

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Future of Branding: AAPI Leadership + Inclusive Storytelling

As an immigrant to the United States, I’m curious about all diasporas—the origin stories, journeys, accomplishments and complex intersectional relationships with our heritage and the U.S. And as a modern brand builder, I’m equally fascinated by how brands engage authentically with people—customers, employees, partners, investors and the community. The theme of inclusive storytelling is central to both contexts.

Continuing Siegel+Gale’s Inclusive Storytelling series, we honored Asian American + Pacific Islander (AAPI) Month with a Future of Branding panel on AAPI Leadership + Inclusive Storytelling. The panel featured six marketing leaders from across industries: Carbon, Discord, LendingTree, Terminix, BNY Mellon, and GoodRx.

For context, twenty-two million Asian Americans comprise 7% of the U.S. population. Tracing their roots to more than two dozen countries, all with distinct cultures, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are the fastest-growing minority in the U.S. and have an expected purchasing power of $1.3 trillion by 2023.

AAPI business creation is also remarkable. In 2016, Asian-owned businesses employed more than 5 million workers in the U.S. In 2017, there were almost one million AAPI entrepreneurs across the U.S.—most of them born abroad.

While the conversation was a source of pride for the panelists, it was also profoundly human and deeply emotional. From a commercial, cultural and human lens, there was much to unpack. Together we explored the importance of dispelling the myth of the model minority, why marketers need to understand nuance and not view the AAPI community as homogenous and in light of the increase in hate crimes and racist rhetoric, why brands have an obligation not only to speak out but to take action.

In closing, I asked our panelists, “What is your commitment to inclusive storytelling, and how will you measure success?” Here are some actionable takeaways they shared:

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I am very fortunate to be in a position where the commitment to diverse storytelling has started from the top; it began with our CEO and is part of our culture and mission. That makes it so much easier to get buy-in as a marketer, and that’s the first piece.

My biggest challenge is finding those stories because I operate in such a technical area. We probably lack representation in certain areas. It’s not just for APPI—it’s also Hispanic heritage, African Americans and Women’s History Month. Our industry is largely underrepresented in those areas. That’s probably the biggest obstacle we face, both internally and even among our customers. But I still realize it’s part of my job to go out there and ensure that when we do find those stories, we elevate them as much as we can. It’s all about everybody doing their part. My company can only move it so far. But collectively, when we all put an emphasis and a spotlight on it, that’s where we see the larger traction. And that’s where I’ll see the measurement of success.

—Rich Narasaki, VP, Brand Marketing, Carbon

 

Inclusive storytelling is a core part of Discord’s mission: to create a place of belonging for everyone. So, it’s about how we show up in three ways, the makeup of our workforce, our company culture and the communities we serve. So, in terms of our people, it’s about having an equitable and inclusive hiring process. For example, ensuring that we have a balanced candidate slate for every open role and diversity across the company at the leadership level.

On the culture side, it’s leaning on our ERGs and the programming efforts to drive employee engagement. We also developed a number of allyship and DEI training workshops to help foster that culture of inclusivity and belonging.

And on the community front, we partnered with several nonprofits and social justice organizations that align with our company values to create employing giving opportunities and volunteering opportunities.

Success is not just about hitting a set of numbers, which of course, we have goals against, but that there is an unwavering commitment and a mindset to learning and evolving that approach as we go.

—Kelly Liang, SVP, Partnerships, Discord

 

I think about inclusive storytelling and what we need to do on several levels. First, as we tell our brand’s story and seek to persuade consumers to take specific actions, we want to do it increasingly with richer, more inclusive stories. But the exciting challenge is to do it in a way where it doesn’t just resonate with one community but embodies deep human truths that are universally relatable. That’s incredibly difficult, but that’s very much a goal. The measures are all the usual marketing, brand building, acquisition and eventual business financial measures.

But we live in challenging times; we are in a culture war. And the latest example in the corporate world is what Disney’s dealing with in Florida. As marketing leaders, we need to keep unpacking how we can thread that needle in terms of our personal, professional and corporate responsibility to society to move the country in the right direction. And to do it in a way that takes everyone along and doesn’t create more division. That’s tough, but it’s something that we must challenge ourselves with and keep moving forward in that direction.

Lastly, I would say that it’s all about learning from each other, sharing our stories and developing a more profound sense of different perspectives. And just recognizing how much we don’t know and asking the questions.

—Shiv Singh, Chief Marketing & Customer Experience Officer, LendingTree

 

If your target audience happens to be AAPI—or any other segment—understanding and authenticity are key. If you’re not authentic in your marketing, you’re likely not engaging and appealing to your audience. To be authentic in marketing, you need diversity within your marketing team. It’s important to have voices in the room as you develop campaigns, insights, core product or service offerings. Structure teams so that you eliminate as many blind spots as possible. Then use the insights to ensure that you are connecting and being respectful and mindful of the community in which you’re essentially trying to persuade and ask for something.

Terminix is a business that’s conducted for people by people. So, the stories that we need to tell are every one of those small and large customer interactions. Shining a light and showcasing how our people are performing this product and generating trust and loyalty among customers is job one. And we measure that through standard feedback loops, whether it’s survey NPS or, increasingly, online reviews. If you look at a positive Google review, typically, a person says, “John N. Did this.” They name them by name. So, it’s a human-to-human, one-to-one interaction. And those are the stories that matter.

—Alex Ho, Chief Marketing Officer, Terminix

 

When we think of inclusive storytelling, we think about our employees, clients and communities. One of the things that attracted me to BNY Mellon was its strength in diversity pillar; 44% of new hires from 2021 were from underrepresented ethnic-racial backgrounds. As far as my commitments, I want to continue that; I want to hire diversely and insert equal representation in our advertising and marketing collateral because it matters to see other people similar to you around in marketing.

And then to actively participate in these community discussions of the ERGs and advocate for the underrepresented. Success will be measured when others look at our company. They can say that we stand for diversity and inclusion, and others can talk about the impact our inclusive storytelling has led to—that’s what all companies and brands want in the end.

—Amy Leung, Global Head of Digital & Demand Generation, BNY Mellon

 

GoodRx is the most mission-driven company I’ve worked for, without a doubt. And making healthcare affordable for all Americans is something that this company lives and breathes every single day, regardless of where you’re from. Our company does an outstanding job of showing the stories of different people experiencing the healthcare journey, normalizing it and making people feel like not only can they visit their provider or specialist and receive affordable medicine but bringing people back to their doctor. So many people have ignored healthcare over the past couple of years. We’re trying to focus and emphasize getting people back to interact with our healthcare system, which can help them with potential diseases or life-threatening ailments.

I grew up in demand gen, so I think of everything as being measurable in marketing. But I strongly feel that we should not measure inclusive storytelling. What I mean by that is storytelling, and inclusive storytelling is part of the day-to-day fabric of who we are.

—Sunil Rajaraman, VP Marketing, B2B, GoodRx

 

When we render invisible, reduce to tropes or otherwise stereotype AAPI—or any community—we rob people of their uniqueness and humanity. Conversely, connection happens when we represent people and a community accurately and expansively. Because nuance matters.

In today’s culturally polarized America, the tension for all brand leaders is to relate to people as human beings; to transcend division to tell stories that connect to universal aspirations; to unite, not alienate; and do so while achieving business goals. For brand builders, inclusive storytelling may be our generation’s strategic marketing challenge and responsibility. The ultimate endeavor is to profitably build enduring brands that reflect and shape a more inclusive society.

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The new Jacobs.com: An extension of its people

In SMPL Q+A, we interview our practitioners on all things relevant to branding, design and simplicity. Here, we speak with Jenna Isken, Group Director, Experience; Katie Conway, General Manager; Kristen Berry-Owen, Senior Director, Research + Insights; James Allen, Associate Creative Director; Sean Carney, Associate Director, Experience Production; and Maria Magnani, Senior User Experience Strategist, Media.Monks about creating a new website that provides an opportunity to amplify Jacobs’ story and digitally express its brand through the power of people-focused storytelling.

Why did Jacobs engage Siegel+Gale?  

Jenna Isken: Jacobs recognized the potential of their website. When it came to building relationships with everyone, from employees to potential clients, the website had the potential to turn from a destination for information into a tool for the business that stood for the brand. 

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Strategy  

Can you speak to how we ensured brand continuation and representation within the strategy for the new website?  

Katie Conway: Delivering on Jacobs’ brand promise of “Challenging today. Reinventing tomorrow.” was at the heart of our project goal. From day one, we set out to challenge the conventions and assumptions of websites today and design a purposeful digital experience that reinvents tomorrow. We began every work session and review with a reminder of this objective.  

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Experience

How is the website an extension of Jacobs’ people and culture? 

JI: One thing we repeatedly heard throughout our discovery was the incredible impact Jacobs’ employees have on whomever they’re working with. Whether they are helping to solve problems or bringing new ideas to the table, despite the organization’s size and vastness, people feel very heard and supported throughout their interactions. We knew that sense of listening and support needed to come through the website experience. Instead of trying to assume we knew everything about our users based on their digital footprint, we set out to create a conversation.  

Things like the ability to customize your experience without logging in, to personal boards and creating moments of customization through those personalized boards to leveraging platform intelligence that could help the site feel responsive and smart instead of over-indexing on being predictive. 

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How is Jacobs’ site state of the art?  

Sean Carney: The new Jacobs.com is the first website of its kind to utilize Artificial Intelligence (AI) search to its fullest capacity; this is brand new for this vertical. This website learns as more people use it, and our AI search engine applies this accumulated knowledge and serves content back in a bespoke way for each user.  

To facilitate this cutting-edge experience, we dissolved the usual content hierarchies. Now vital content of all types—case studies, podcasts, employee spotlights, news—sit next to each other as equals. Utility, relevance and delight are the only criteria.  

And the bespoke content, the personal boards, can be saved and shared, transforming Jacobs.com into a powerful marketing and educational hub for the Jacobs team to extend the dialog to new clients and employees alike. 

Accessibility is an important consideration for the site, with on/off toggles for Reading Masks and Animation Stoppage included as the first steps for planned accessibility updates in respect of one of Jacobs’ core values: inclusion.

 

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Research 

What role did research play in this partnership? 

Kristen Berry-Owen: Working hand-in-hand with Jacobs and our Strategy and Experience teams, we identified five internal and external audience segments to ground and guide us throughout the process. Through global focus groups with each audience, we listened to users describe their current behaviors, pain points and unmet needs. We explored preferences, such as level of personalization, which informed the current-state user journeys that our Experience team could challenge and reimagine for the future. 

As we developed that vision, we tested ideas in the low-res journey maps with our five audience segments and recalibrated them based on user feedback. Later, working closely with the Design team, we conducted UX testing on several design concepts and navigation to recommend a digital experience that would be relevant and intuitive to end-users, solve known pain points (such as the search function) and deliver something truly unexpected. 

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Web Development

How did you apply the design strategy to the website experience? 

Maria Magnani: We took the time to deeply understand the different personas that will interact with the new Jacobs website. We prioritized thinking of Jacobs as a company and as a brand in order to create a strong brief to guide our design explorations. What we achieved, as a result, is an experience that challenges the perceptions of a B2B website and that truly becomes Jacobs’ digital space.

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“The site provides yet another opportunity to amplify Jacobs’ story and digitally express our brand—Challenging today. Reinventing tomorrow.—through the power of people-focused storytelling. We listened and learned from insights and inputs of nearly 600 employees, clients, investors, future talent and community partners to create a unique and customizable experience personalized to the individual user. We’re calling it our ‘digital twin.’ Jacobs.com will continually evolve and grow with us and play a bigger role for both clients and potential talent, truly reflecting what we do and where we’re going. This is especially important for those we hope will join our team after learning a bit more about what it’s like to work here.”
—Marietta Hannigan, EVP, Chief Strategy, Corporate Development & Communications Officer, Jacobs

 

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Brilliant brands have little in common

This article originally appeared in The Drum.

Isn’t ‘brilliant’ the most overused word? Like ‘legend.’ Or ‘genius.’ Hear it and eyes roll. Sighs ensue. Tutting begins. The thing is, not everyone has it. In just the same way that there aren’t that many brilliant people – if brilliance in people is the top half of the top 1% – there can’t be that many brilliant brands.

Brilliant brands are made of different stuff, but what?

Truth and ice cream

The first thing they are made of is the truth. They never try to be something that they’re not. It’s one of those endless quotes perhaps apocryphally attributed to Oscar Wilde: “Just be yourself, everyone else is already taken.” Brilliant brands know themselves and know only to be themselves, and always make a virtue out of that.

In a world where we’re constantly being encouraged (sometimes, it feels, force-fed) to eat healthily, it’s refreshing to see a brand such as Vice Cream differentiate itself with honesty about its unhealthy product. Full fat and proud. Unapologetically indulgent. Perfectly named. It’s a true contrarian success story. It’s selling by the bucket-load in the US.

Founded by Dan Schorr after he beat lymphoma cancer, he decided that not only would he live life to the fullest; he would live indulgently without guilt. And so Schorr launched a super-premium-priced ice-cream that shows people’s desire for truthful brands, in contrast to the health-obsessed society of yoga-bunnies that we’re purported to be. Brilliant. As they say at Vice Cream: “Life’s short. Eat fucking ice cream.”

Truth works. If an inveterate fibber decides one day to start only telling the truth, they will discover that their life becomes immeasurably easier – because they don’t have to remember anything ever again. It’s the same for brands.

A recent piece in the Harvard Business Review shone light on the fact that many startups and their founders are apt to stretch the truth when courting investors and other important stakeholders, going well beyond Steve Jobs’s ‘reality distortion field.’ This is not advisable for those selling brands to consumers. Some investors buy hope. But consumers don’t buy from liars.

What makes Vice Cream so compelling is that it deploys its compulsive truthfulness with large servings of irreverence to make it memorable. It shows a marvelously healthy lack of respect for things that are generally taken very seriously. Flavors are given amusing names including Choc of Shame or Breakfast in Bed, each with their ‘take my top off’ lids.

Depth of commitment

Irreverent positioning cannot just be for a season, or a campaign. It must be core to a brand, or it risks being shallow; hollow; tinny.

Gambling site Paddy Power has managed the experience of its brand with a delightful, anarchic irreverence that plays perfectly to its consumers. Year after year, it has kept up the same brand idea of irreverence that attracts and compels.

Conversely, the Brit Awards always presented itself with much irreverence, often coming across as shambolic and unpredictable, with guest appearances from politicians eager to connect with their ‘youth demographic’ getting routinely humiliated. Brilliant. But over the last few years it has evolved into a more polished and sanitized affair, and viewing figures have dropped every year from 9.5m in 2000 to just over 2.5m in 2022. Its lack of irreverence has lost it its relevance.

Another kind of irreverence

Maybe stamina is another ingredient of a brilliant brand – being able to stay the course with an idea based on truth, simplicity and (perhaps) irreverence. It’ll be interesting to see how Vice Cream stays the course. Like Volvo, a brand that always had a healthy lack of respect for things that are generally taken as sector norms. Years ago, when car brands were selling themselves on design or comfort or efficiency or pure image, Volvo was featuring safety.

Probably the best car commercial ever made was Volvo’s multi-award-winning ‘Twister,’ which said “we’ve made a car so safe you can drive in the most dangerous conditions possible (a massive Colorado twister) and be safe.” Volvo has owned this simple idea of safety for decades, and today its ‘Aiming for Zero’ vision shows what makes them who they are.

Truth, irreverence and simplicity are all that brilliant brands have in common. Put these key three ingredients together and you move from a brand that just presents and promotes itself to a brand that persuades consumers why it’s right for them. That’s brilliant.

 

Philip Davies is President, EMEA.

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Unlocking Brand: Purpose for an Essential Service

Dalia and Souad shared Tabreed’s transformation into a driven brand that is Essential to Progress and its transformation from a utility into an essential services brand.
We also discussed how we partnered with Tabreed to help them evolve and build brand awareness on a global scale, and amplify their brand purpose of being Essential to Progress.

 

Join the Future of Branding community. Listen to the podcast via Apple Podcasts and Spotify

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