Few marketers require performance guarantees for branded content

Less than a third of marketers and agencies are requiring performance guarantees for the branded-content campaigns they purchase from publishers, even as the tactic becomes an increasingly significant part of marketers’ strategies.

Of the client and agency marketing executives surveyed at the Digiday Content Marketing Summit in August earlier this year, just 31 percent said they currently ask for campaign performance guarantees from publishers. Such guarantees can be used to ensure campaigns deliver on a range of requirements, such as content views, click-throughs, time spent on page or email signups.

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‘The future of online advertising’: Instagram Stories has become a ‘box to check’ in all Facebook campaigns, buyers say

All Brands Are Personal

Just a few decades ago, the business world believed that as much as 95% of a company’s value consisted of tangible assets. Fast-forward to today, a company’s value may be more than 75% intangible. When we define brand as the perception held in a customer’s mind that is the sum of the experiences and associations they have, the value of a brand having a favorable reputation are every bit as important as business relationships and unique intellectual property assets.

If a brand is worth building, it’s certainly worth defending.

Only an ironclad commitment to your values will suffice in defending your brand’s reputation in a polarized world, where purchase decisions are driven by emotion and are deeply personal. To build successful brands under these conditions you need to know not just what you stand for but what you stand against.

Here’s three real world examples of how brands are taking a stand and defending their most valuable asset.

Just recently, a former NFL player, Ray Carruth, was released from prison after serving nearly 20 years for conspiring in the murder of his wife, who was 8 months pregnant at the time. To protect their brand image, the NFL has blocked fans from ordering customized Carruth jerseys on NFLShop.com — continuing the policy of banning controversial names on licensed merchandise. Carruth joins other banned athletes such as O.J. Simpson and Aaron Hernandez on the NFL’s blacklist. These steps draw a line in the sand that prevent customers and fans from abusing the capability of getting closer to the brand.

Also recently, ABC debuted their Roseanne show spinoff called “The Conners” in which Roseanne Barr has been killed off. Earlier this year, Roseanne Barr dropped a racist tweet about a former Obama official which she called “a thoughtless joke.” As a network that is known for family-oriented shows, the swift decision to cancel her show, even in light of stellar ratings was dramatic. Channing Dungey, who made history in 2016 as the first African-American to run the entertainment division of a major broadcast television network, said, “Roseanne’s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show.” Quickly following that decision was a comment from Bob Iger, chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company (which owns ABC) saying, “There was only one thing to do here, and that was the right thing.” And streaming networks and cable channels, supporting ABC’s decision, pulled her original show off the air as well.

In the wake of an epidemic of gun violence in the US, many brands decided to end their working relationship with the National Rifle Association (NRA). Delta Airlines CEO Ed Bastian issued a company-wide memo telling employees that they were not trying to take sides in an ongoing gun control debate, even as lawmakers in Delta’s home state voted in retaliation to kill tax exemptions on jet fuel used by the airline. Bastian wrote in the memo, “Our decision was not made for economic gain and our values are not for sale. We are in the process of a review to end group discounts for any group of a politically divisive nature.”

Given that reputation and association are every bit as valuable (maybe more so) than a brand’s products and services, it’s important to treat this value as you would any other property.

Here’s a few steps:

1. Invest for the long-game: Determine a few areas in which investment will bolster your brand’s reputation. Right now, as we have noted in previous articles, there is a hunger for real leadership as trust in civic and media leaders is in significant decline. Jamie Dimon, Satya Nadella, Mark Benioff (pictured), Howard Schultz offer examples of how brands can rally behind transformational and empathetic visionaries. Take a look at your leadership team and provide ways for them to show off your brand’s vision and values.
2. Insure against individual idiocy: Today’s 24-hour social media news cycle means every day can be an eternity, and it only takes one idiot to cause massive amounts of damage. Smart brands are guarding against this with transparent communication infrastructure and swift action. Don’t let cultural failings hide or tolerate poor behavior. It will come back to hurt you as Google is now realizing after CEO Larry Page revealed the number of senior managers who have been fired this year for misconduct.
3. Vendors and partners must reflect your brand values: The same expectations your brand has for compliance and policies must extend outward to those vendors and partners that are a part of your brand. Just recently, Microsoft announced that all vendors and subcontractors would have to receive guaranteed paid parental leave. Microsoft General Counsel Dev Stahlkopf says, “Companies like us are in a unique position to create positive impact within our broader ecosystem. We’d like to focus our resources on companies that share our values.”

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The Future Belongs To Brands That Connect Ideas

Steve Jobs was creative precisely because he opened himself up to new experiences— studying calligraphy and Zen Buddhism, visiting an ashram in India, strolling the kitchen appliance section at Macy’s (the Apple II was modeled after a Cuisinart), or copying the Ritz-Carlton’s steps of service in the Apple Store (though the Genius Bar dispenses advice, not alcohol). Jobs experienced the world and built on those experiences to improve upon what has been done. Creativity, said Jobs, “comes down to exposing yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things in to what you’re doing.”

When Jobs said he was “shameless about stealing great ideas,” he meant it in the Picasso context. Anyone can copy a competitor. True innovation occurs when you build on the ideas that came before you.

New Connections = New Value

“Steve Jobs taught me about ‘zooming,’ looking beyond the boundaries of the industry you’re in,” says former Apple CEO John Sculley. “Steve was a designer at heart. He loved calligraphy. It made a huge impression on him. Then he went to Xerox to see what they were working on. He saw experimental work-stations that used the first graphical user interface and connected the dots.”

Sculley calls it “zooming” or “connecting the dots.” You might know it as an “epiphany” or a “shower moment.” Your best ideas don’t always show up when you want them to. They don’t always arrive on your schedule or while you’re staring at a computer screen. Fortunately, we know how original ideas are formed, where they come from, and when they’re delivered in our mental mailbox.

One of the most talked-about slides in corporate history first appeared in 2011 during Steve Jobs’s launch of the iPad 2. The slide (pictured above) showed the intersection of two street signs. One sign read “Technology.” The other sign read “Liberal Arts.” Jobs said that technology alone was not enough to build great products. It’s the intersection— the marriage—of technology and liberal arts that made his “heart sing.” Jobs’s biographer, Walter Isaacson brought up the slide in his book about another creative genius, Leonardo da Vinci.

“Today we live in a world that encourages specialization, whether we are students, scholars, workers or professionals. We also tend to exalt training in technology and engineering, believing that the jobs of the future will go to those who can code and build rather than those who can be creative,” Isaacson writes. The innovators of the future, argues Isaacson, are those who, like Leonardo and Jobs, study the art of science and the science of art.

More than 7,000 pages of Leonardo’s extensive notes still exist. They teach us that Leonardo was relentlessly curious about the world. He let his mind wander across arts, sciences, engineering, and the humanities. He didn’t distinguish between science and art. History’s most creative genius became a genius because he saw that everything connects. And so Leonardo saw himself as a scientist, engineer, artist, inventor, anatomist, philosopher, painter, and storyteller.

Leonardo studied math and developed a system to measure size, space, and perspective. He studied the scientific properties of light. In Florence, he studied the art of painting under the masters of his day. He connected these ideas to create the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. Leonardo is considered history’s greatest genius because he connected different fields to arrive at novel ideas. When Andrew Stanton connected several ideas from his personal experiences to create Finding Nemo, he was simply following in the footsteps of the ancient artists. And you can, too.

What Threatens Our Creativity

In 2015, a group of researchers in Austria and Denmark performed a remarkable experiment. They discovered that when people were too familiar with a specific domain, it blocked their creativity, because they stopped looking outside of their area of expertise for ideas. The researchers interviewed hundreds of roofers, carpenters, and inline skaters. The three categories were chosen because— while they are completely different fields— they share an analogous problem: encouraging the use of safety gear to prevent injuries. Roofers use safety belts, carpenters use safety masks, and in-line skaters use knee and elbow protectors.

The researchers conducted 306 interviews. The participants were asked for their best ideas on the following topic: improving safety gear for the market they are experts in and for the other two categories. A panel of safety gear experts evaluated the responses. The findings were extraordinary: the more distant the field, the more novel the solution the participants came up with. In other words, members of each group were better at coming up with an innovative solution for a field other than their own. The experiment gives us insight into the minds of creative geniuses.

They’re not geniuses because they are smarter; they are geniuses because they’re open to connecting ideas from different fields. When asked what made the Macintosh a revolutionary computer, Steve Jobs answered: “Part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, poets, and artists, and zoologists and historians.” They also happened to know computer science, Jobs added. Jobs’s goal wasn’t to be average. His goal was to be great. And greatness, he said, comes from connecting ideas.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Carmine Gallo, adapted from his new book Five Stars. Copyright © 2018 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Press.

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Copyrights: The Protected And Unprotected

Most people realize that copyright protects works of art like poems and short stories, photographs, paintings and drawings, and musical compositions. It may be less obvious that copyright also protects more mundane forms of expression, including such diverse materials as advertising copy, instruction manuals, brochures, logo designs, computer programs, term papers, home movies, cartoon strips, and advertising jingles.

Artistic merit has nothing to do with whether a work is protectable by copyright; in fact, the most routine business letter and the most inexpertly executed child’s drawing are just as entitled to protection under our copyright statute as bestselling novels, hit songs, and blockbuster movies.

However, copyright does not protect every product of the imagination, no matter how many brain cells were expended in its creation. In fact, any discussion of copyright protection must be premised on an understanding of what copyright does not protect.

Idea Versus Expression

It is such an important principle of copyright law that it bears repeating: copyright protects only particular expressions of ideas, not the ideas them­selves. This means, of course, that if the guy sitting behind you on the bus looks over your shoulder and sees, comprehends, and remembers your sketches for a necklace formed of links cast in the shape of sunflowers, he is legally free to create his own sunflower necklace so long as it isn’t a copy of yours. It may be unethical for him to steal your idea, but it’s neither illegal nor actionable in court. Although this may seem unjust, if you think about it, it’s logical. The United States Constitution empowered Congress to pass a copyright statute granting the creators among us property rights in the products of their imaginations so that American society could gain the benefit of their creations. Because ideas are the building blocks for creations of any sort, and because one idea may lead to thousands of expressions of that idea, grant­ing control over an idea to any one person would have the effect of severely limiting creative expression; no one else would be able to use that idea as the basis for a new creation.

Therefore, copyright protects only your particular expression of an idea, not the idea itself. Similarly, copyright protection is denied to procedures, processes, systems, methods of operation, concepts, principles, or discoveries because these products of the imagination are really all particular varieties of ideas.

This means that your idea of printing grocery coupons right on the brown paper bags used in your supermarket can be copied by anyone, even a com­peting grocery store, although the particular expression of your idea—your copy and artwork for the bags and the advertisements publicizing the promo­tion—may not.

And your system of giving your customers double the face-value discount of any coupon if they use it to buy two product items at the same time is not protectable by your copyright in your coupon-promotion materials and can be employed at any time by anyone, without your permission.

Further, if you print recipes on your grocery bags in addition to discount coupons, you cannot, of course, stop anyone from using the method outlined in the Low-Fat Meatloaf recipe to create a low-fat meatloaf. Nor can you stop anyone, even a competitor, from employing your concept of using a low-fat meatloaf recipe to sell the food products used in the recipe or from employing the marketing principle behind your promotion—that food shoppers are likely to purchase particular brands of food products that are specified by name in an interesting recipe. And even if you were the first person in the universe to come up with a technique for diminishing the fat content of the finished dish, once you disclose your discovery to the public, you can’t stop anyone from recounting it to anyone else. You can’t even stop anyone from using the information outlined in your meatloaf recipe to create his or her own recipe for low-fat meatloaf.

Unprotectable Elements

There are a few categories of products of the imagination that are too close to being mere unembellished ideas for copyright protection to apply. In other words, these categories of “creations” lack sufficient expression to be granted copyright protection. There are several commonly occurring, unprotectable elements of various sorts of works from which the copyright statute or courts have withheld protection, including the following:

• Literary plots, situations, locales, or settings;
• Scènes à faire, which are stock literary themes that dictate the incidents used by an author to express them;
• Literary characters, to the extent that they are “types” rather than original expressions of an author;1
• Titles of books, stories, poems, songs, movies, etc., which have been uniformly held by courts not to be protected by copyright;
• Short phrases and slogans, to the extent that they lack ex­pressive content;
• The rhythm or structure of musical works;
• Themes expressed by song lyrics;
• Short musical phrases;
• Arrangements of musical compositions, unless an arrange­ment of a musical composition really amounts to an alter­nate version of the composition;
• Social dance steps and simple routines, which are not copy­rightable as choreographic works because they are the com­mon property of the culture that enjoys them;
• Uses of color, perspective, geometric shapes, and standard works of the visual arts;
• Jewelry designs and other creations that merely mimic the structures of nature (such as a jeweled pin that accurately replicates the form of a honeybee), since the natural forms on which such “creations” are based are in the public do­main, the property of all humankind;
• Names of products, services, or businesses;
• Pseudonyms or professional or stage names;
• Mere variations on familiar symbols, emblems, or designs, such as typefaces (this includes typefonts, letterforms, and the like), numerals or punctuation marks, and religious emblems or national symbols

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Lee Wilson, Attorney-At-Law. Excerpted from his new book The Copyright Guide, How You Can Protect And Profit From Copyrights, Allworth Press.

The Blake Project Can Help: The Brand Licensing Audit

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