Branding Workshops

Posted: 19th January 2012 by admin in Uncategorized
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I have two decades of experience creating and crafting brand positionings and strategies that have benefited numerous companies, both small and large, from established multinationals to startups. I use a straightforward approach (see my section on brand strategies) that starts with an understanding of the market, the company and the consumers and ends with a brand positioning and strategies that are relevant and motivating. Now I have a created a condensed version of the process in the form of a one-day workshop. Through a series of structured sessions during the course of the day together we will:

  • Define your target audience.
  • Create a positioning, a vision and a mission for your brand.
  • Develop a series of actionable creative strategies to communicate your brand to the world.

In addition I will help you find ways to unleash the full potential of your brand. Using creativity tools developed for my book ‘The Business Playground’ we will identify:

  • New markets and market segments to stretch your brand.
  • New usage occasions for customers to use your brand.
  • New venues for your brand.

Every workshop is a high-energy experience uniquely designed around your specific branding needs and can either be held at your offices or hosted offsite.  If you’re interested in hearing more, I’d love to talk about how a workshop might work for you so please email me at markjcsimmons@gmail.com.

Thanks!

Mark

Walmart will tell you what you want, what you really, really want

Posted: 28th December 2011 by admin in big data, retail, social media
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Walmart is using Big Data gleaned from social media to target consumers with highly relevant suggestions for products. Last year it bought a startup focused on social media, Kosmix, and formed WalmartLabs. It uses Kosmix’s vast knowledge base, called ‘Social Genome’  to capture information and relationships about entities such as people, events, topics, products, locations and organizations. In Information Week, Anand Rajaraman, SVP of Walmart Global eCommerce and Head of WalmartLabs, is quoted as saying: “There is an unprecedented amount of data about people, places, products, companies, brands, and pretty much anything we can think of. Companies that can mine this treasure trove of data and glean insights to gain a huge competitive advantage.” Walmart can track social media mentions on locations, people or products and use this intelligence to better tailor its product offerings. “The deeper the understanding we have about our customers and our products, the better we can connect with them. Our technology platform, which we call the Social Genome, tracks connections between people, products, brands and other relevant entities. We can use the Social Genome to make product recommendations to customers, whether they are in the store or shopping online,” explains Rajaraman.

Forget You: How Cee Lo Green Makes a Fortune Without Depending on Music Sales

Posted: 27th December 2011 by admin in creativity, innovation, marketing
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Pop star Cee Lo Green will make about $20 million this year. His hit single “Forget You” (actually it’s not “Forget”, but another shorter word beginning with the same letter) became the 12th most downloaded track of all time. But his music sales represent only a small proportion of his earnings. The New York Times calculates “F*** You” earned him about $700,000. The other $19 million or so come from a variety of projects and deals.  Cee Lo’s management company, Primary Wave Music, has come up with some very creative ways to make money for Cee Lo without relying on music sales. Not so long ago sales of recorded music were the mainstay of any musician’s earnings as a hit single would lead to big album sales and plenty of cash, but now with the demise of the album artists like Cee Lo have had to look elsewhere. Primary Wave’s CEO Larry Mestel says album sales represent the smallest slice of the revenue pie. A stream of TV appearances, endorsement deals, TV commercials have traded on and built Cee Lo’s brand. He’s been a judge on TV talent show “The Voice”, has his own shown on cable network Fuse, appeared on Saturday Night Live and been in TV commercials for 7-Up, Absolut Vodka and M&M’s. Next year he will have his own show, “Loberace”, in Las Vegas and will star in a Mark Burnett produced TV show in the UK called “Cee Lo Takes the UK.” What Primary Wave is doing for Cee Lo is the model for the future of the music industry, and is a good lesson in creativity and innovation for many other industries that are seeing their worlds changing through technology. Necessity breeds invention, and without invention we might find ourselves being forgotten.

The thinking that led to Toyota’s Swagger Wagon viral hit

Posted: 21st December 2011 by admin in big data, creativity, marketing, results, social media, Youtube
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Toyota’s “Swagger Wagon” online video ad was a viral hit. Released on May 2, 2010 the film for the Toyota Siena minivan was soon getting 10,000 views every hour and now total views on YouTube top 10 million. But “viral” shouldn’t be read as meaning “random”. The idea behind the video and the way  it was seeded in social media was carefully planned and is a good example of how Big Data can be used creatively to develop highly effective social marketing that gets results. Uwe Gutschow, the digital and social strategy director at Saatchi, the agency that created it, notes that the term “swagger wagon” was a recurring theme in conversations on social media about other Sienna videos the agency had posted. He says: “It made sense that our next video would focus on what people were already talking about….The Swagger Wagon music video was very carefully planned to tip it over the edge. Just the right mix of media drive to get it going and seeding in the right places.” Data mined from social media led to insights that led to a creative solution.

Big Data is Big News

Posted: 18th December 2011 by admin in big data, marketing, results, Uncategorized
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You know Big Data is a Big Deal when NPR runs a story, or in this case a mini-series, on it. Big Data refers to the huge amount of data collected through numerous sources that can be captured, processed and analyzed to guide science and marketing, and everything in between, and the rate of growth of the data collected is staggering (90% of all data was collected in just the last 2 years). We consumers leave data trails wherever we go – from using our cellphones, our purchases using credit cards, from our interactions online and from myriad other sources – and marketers are starting to wake up to the huge potential big data that offers to mine information about consumer behavior and target them with exactly the right message, at exactly the right time, in exactly the right place. The results of a marketing campaign in the digital space can be measured almost immediately, and so its effectiveness in driving awareness, sales, engagement (or whatever else the metrics of succes are) can be judged and the campaign course corrected in real time. Big Data is only going to get bigger and marketers have to come to grips with how to harness its power and not be overwhelmed by the bigness of it. More to come in future posts.

Publicity for ‘Creativity’ app

Posted: 19th November 2011 by admin in creativity
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By: Tom Lanham | 11/11/11 3:34 PM

Dave Stewart calls it “an eye-opener into the world of possibilities where new technologies marry the printed page.”

And basically, it’s a new iPad app that he and branding expert Mark Simmons are offering called “Creativity,” based on their 2010 book “The Business Playground: Where Creativity And Commerce Collide.”

Like the book, it includes a foreword by Sir Richard Branson, interviews with creative thinkers like Mick Jagger and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, and tools like Idea Spaghetti and The Wheel of Distraction.

The app also includes a revolutionary new tool called F*, which allows users to highlight any word or phrase to access related media, news and products, providing a depth of information never before seen on the printed page.

It also features an RSS feed of new ideas and info curated by Stewart and Simmons, and 13 fully interactive games designed to enhance the player’s creativity.

“I’m excited to use F* because it means this is the first business book ever written that literally is a business within itself,” Stewart says.

It’s available at the Apple app store for the nominal price of $9.99.

Read more at the San Francisco Examiner: http://www.sfexaminer.com/blogs/backstage-pass/2011/11/dave-stewart-mark-simmons-release-ipad-app-called-creativity#ixzz1e6qbGRjT

my ipad app is out today

Posted: 10th November 2011 by admin in creativity
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My iPad app ‘CREATIVITY’ has just been released so please download it and review it.http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pounce/id477075451?mt=8

You can find it by searching ‘Creativity.’ Here are some things to look out for on the app so you can quickly get a sense of what it includes:

  • It includes a full-color book with loads of graphics ad pictures.
  • There’s an audio version of the book that can be switched on and off at any time.
  • There are 13 original interactive games designed to help unleash your creative powers.
  • Every piece of text in the book can be highlighted to reveal a load more information about whatever the subject is. It uses a technology called F* to do this and it’s the first time it’s ever been used in an app.
  • You can open up the app’s blog directly from the app to get frequently updated ideas and info on creativity.

It will cost a whopping $9.99 to download, but seeing as most audiobooks on their own cost over $16.00, this is a bargain!

Thanks for your help.

 

Launching my iPad app

Posted: 6th November 2011 by admin in creativity, innovation
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I’m launching my iPad app ‘CREATIVITY’ on Thursday Nov 10 and would love some volunteers to download and review it. If you’re interested I can give you the details.

Lessons from Lady Gaga

Posted: 23rd September 2011 by admin in branding, marketing, social media
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A case study written up in today’s Financial Times shows how Lady Gaga and her team used social media to go against the music industry trends to create a huge brand around her that translated into music sales.

 

 

Business Playground released on Audible.com today

Posted: 14th September 2011 by admin in creativity
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‘The Business Playground: Where Creativity and Commerce Collide’, the book on creativity and business I wrote with Dave Stewart, is now out as a digital audiobook on Audible. It’s narrated by British actress Linda Gallagher and sounds great. Take a listen when you get a chance.

 

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