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I’ve been a long time user of the Lose It App, which helps you track your calories and exercising. One of the ways they have “gamified” their product (in addition to social competition features) is through their badges, which include milestones like losing 10 pounds, exercising 5 days in a row, keeping things reasonable during thanksgiving, etc. Lately, they’ve gotten a little more creative with their badges and the cross promotional possibilities. Here is a screen shot from an email I just received from them:

As you can see, I’ve been eating my veggies. Ma, aren’t you proud? But look who this badge is brought to me by: Green Giant! The link from the email takes you to this “Giant Difference” landing page, where I can watch some well done Youtube videos, see what 100 calories of vegetables look like vs. 100 calories of chips and get some delicious looking recipes that include vegetables. I think it’s a really smart move by Green Giant to partner with a Lose It to reach a health consensus audience. Bravo.

2011 Boy: “Please Please Please Let me Get What I want”

2012 Snowman (the Journey):

This ad is from back in 2008. This is one of my favorites because it does such a great job of telling a story. The stork (a metaphor for the creator) has gone through so much effort to bring us into this world, yet most of us aren’t accomplishing what we could be. I think many people aspire to something more in their career (and life, for that matter), so it’s very relatable and positions Monster as a company that helps you reach your potential. As their tagline states, “Your calling is calling.”

I recently discovered this article about the evolution of the Starbucks Logo over at Brand Autopsy. It’s interesting to me how Starbucks has been able to take the iconic mermaid symbol and distill it down to it’s essential elements; to the point of eliminating the need for their name to be included with the logo. Very few brands are able achieve the level recognition necessary to warrant a removal of their name (Nike, Apple and McDonald’s immediately come to mind) but when they do, it’s a sign that their branding is working.

Last week, I attended an event held by the Utah Chapter of the AMA where the topic was co-branding. I wanted to share the project I heard about and some of my takeaways.

The presenter was a Utah company called Instructure, who has an educational platform software called Canvas (It’s along the lines of Blackboard but cleaner and easier to use. I used it at the University of Utah). They are only a couple years old but they have over 200 employees and serve over 500 college and high school campuses.

To help create brand awareness and recognition, they are involved in a hot trend right now called M.O.O.C. (Massive Open Online Courses), which are typically developed by a university but are free and open to the public. (https://www.canvas.net/).

To get more people excited about the idea, they researched what they could do to latch on to something in pop culture and came up with the idea to build a course around the zombie apocalypse tv show, The Walking Dead, which is the #1 show on cable right now (16 million viewers for this season’s premier).

AMC was immediately onboard. They went through challenges with a few different schools developing the curriculum until finally settling with UC Irvine. The course is a collaboration of professors from multiple disciplines – Sociology, Physics, Public Health and Math – and takes lessons from the plot of the show including wilderness survival, nutrition, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, infectious diseases, handling stress, etc. (https://www.canvas.net/courses/the-walking-dead).

They announced the program right after labor day and it was a huge PR success, with over 600 stories. They currently have over 60,000 people enrolled in the course.

Takeaways

• Align the interests – The reason that this worked so well is that it was a win-win for all parties involved. AMC got to engage fans of the show and bring in some new ones without having to front any money. The university got name recognition and introduced people to its course offerings. Instructure got more people using their platform and name recognition in this space. No money exchanged hands. When they tried partnering with other schools, they had problems with the school wanting money or the professors they were working with missing deliverables and wanting creative control. They had to work with the right people where everyone bought in and was on board.
• Timing – It’s taken them several months to launch the campaign/course (with all the parties involved and the challenges they encountered), but they were able to time the announcement of the course a few weeks before the new season and take advantage of the anticipation and excitement around the premier. There were even a few news outlets who ran the story early and they had to contact them to have them pull the story down so they could have the timing be perfect.
• Be Brave and Attempt Something Big – When they were first brainstorming the idea, it was more of a joke – like “Wouldn’t it be funny if we did this?” But when they started actually pursuing it, AMC was surprisingly easy to get a hold of and was immediately onboard. The rest of process was not without its challenges but eventually they were able to pull it together and have some great outcomes.

Have you ever noticed the “A to Z” in Amazon’s logo, implying that they have everything?

Or the arrow between the E and X in the Fed Ex logo, implying direction and speed?

A great logo has depth and meaning. In these cases, it literally symbolizes the companies’ missions. Head over to Web Design Ledger to see more examples.

A few years ago when Netflix raised their prices and split the mail/instant services, they became everyone’s favorite company to hate. They’ve since improved their image by expanding their content, including resurrecting Arrested Development and cutting deals with Disney and other networks.

Another more subtle thing they’ve done is put some fun and personality into the way they interact with their customers. Buzzfeed has posted a series of great Netflix responses to tweets from customers, including the one above. Also floating around the internet is this conversation between a customer and tech support. It begins:

• Customer: I have a problem to report.
• Netflix: This is Cpt. Mike of the good ship Netflix. Which member of the crew am I speaking with today?
• Customer: Greetings. Lt. Norm here. Engineering has a problem to report.
• Netflix: Lt., What seems to be the problem?….

What a great way to engage their customer in a potentially tense situation! It goes on like this for several minute and ends with the customer saying they wish they had another problem because the conversation was so fun! This is a good lesson other companies would do well to learn: corporate communications doesn’t have to be stiff and professional; it can be fun and full of personality. It’s the little touches that make an impact.

This is a great emotional ad by Extra Gum. The visual tells the story of a father who makes origami cranes out of gum wrappers for his daughters on occasions through out her life. As he is packing up her car to send her off the college, a box falls with all the origami cranes that his daughter has kept throughout the years, indicating how special and meaningful the small gestures were to her experience growing up. The least few seconds end with the phrase: “Sometimes the little things last the longest. Give Extra, get extra.” It’s an interesting twist for a gum ad, which typically talks about the taste or long lasting flavor. This ignores the product itself and instead emphasizes the social experience surrounding sharing a stick of gum. I think it’s brilliant.

I recently read Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, “David and Goliath.” If you aren’t familiar with Gladwell’s work, he has written four other books: the Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, and What the Dog Saw. He also writes for the New Yorker.

“David and Goliath” is full of great stories and examples of how the concepts of strengths and weaknesses or advantages and disadvantages are often the opposite of what they seem. For example, we think of David and Goliath as the classic underdog story but the reality of the situation is that Goliath was slow and expecting to fit hand to hand giving David, an experienced sling shooter, every advantage in the fight (watch the TED Talk below to hear Malcolm tell the story). He goes on in the books to talk about how people with dyslexia often become great listeners and negotiators – not in spite of but because of their lack of reading ability: their weakness becomes in advantage.

Here is a great article discussing what business or marketing insights are to be gained from the book: Malcolm Gladwell’s New Book: 5 Critical Business Lessons. It’s a great read and I highly recommend it, along with all of his other books.