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Dear reader:

The year has flown past. As we put this issue to bed, we look ahead to a new year filled with both excitement and uncertainty for brands across the globe. With Europe stalling, China slowing & US at status quo, brand owners will be put to the test in the times to come. Anyway, will cross that bridge once we come to it. In the meanwhile I urge you to soak in as much as you can from this issue- be it data trends as we look ahead to 2015, how Prankvertising is making a solid mark for brands (when used appropriately) and some very good tips for brand placement in films. There is also the piece on what we can learn in design from Bruce Lee and why Taco Bell is considered the savviest brand on Social Media. FIFA continues to be plagued with boycotts and walkouts as more brands are exiting the sponsorship bandwagon for both the 2018 (Russia) and 2022 (Qatar) World Cups, this time no less than Coke. The keep it simple stupid mantra is best exemplified in our list of the Top 20 Simple Brands in the World. There is lots more as we wind down the year and look ahead to the challenges of the New. Here’s wishing you & yours the very best for the coming year!

Best always

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@sureshdinakaran

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suresh@groupisd.com

Managing Editor: Suresh DinakaranCreative Head/Director Operations: Pravin AhirMagazine Concept & Design/ New Media Specialist: Mufaddal JoherCountry Head, UK: Sagar PatilCountry Head, India: Rohit UnniDigital/Social Media Marketing: Loknath Swain, Vishnu NathAssociate: Brand Success: Andre Van HelsdingenWeb Specialist: Prasanta Kumar SahuOnline Support: Mahendra Kumar Behera

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CONTENTS

Book, Line & Sinker

Mobile advertising: Why blending in is the new standing out

Seven Skills Marketers Need to Succeed [Infographic]

Is Taco Bell the savviest brand on social media?

In Defense Of Banner Ads

How To Master Copywriting

What are luxury brands expanding for?

What Bruce Lee Can Teach You About Design

Five Tips for Effective ‘Emotional Branding’

The rise of data cooperation and other 2015 predictions

Brand Partners are giving FIFA the Boot!!

The 20 Most ‘Simple’ Brands in the World

Where To Find Great Designers

Brands Make Prankvertising Positive: A safer way to take advantage of the popularity of stunt ads

Product Placement as Effective Marketing Tool: 10 Tips for Successful Placement in TV or Film

Product Placement as Effective Marketing Tool: 10 Tips for Successful Placement in TV or FilmJessica Cohen

Product Placement Tip No. 1: “The Secret of My Success.” Join in the game.

Could there be anything headier than seeing your designs or products adorning stars like Scarlett Johansson, Amy Adams, or Angelina Jolie? Until you’ve scored a great placement, you can’t know the crazy and myriad ways it can help your brand. The cost-benefit ratio makes it a no brainer. But, like the lottery, you have to be in it to win it.

Product Placement Tip No. 2: “Bend It Like Beckham.” Be flexible.

Being flexible can score you big points with a production. Your product might be almost perfect for their needs. But if you can offer to change the color, size, logo, or dimensions, doing so could win you the placement.

Product Placement Tip No. 3: “Beat the Clock.” Timing is critical.

Filming deadlines are tight. When costume or set designers ask for something, they usually need it yesterday. No matter how stellar your product, if you can’t deliver it on time you’ll be blacklisted. Make triple-sure you can fulfill a request before you say yes.

Product Placement Tip No. 4: “Show Me The Money.” Be patient, and the rewards will come.

If you want instant gratification, then product placement may not be for you. The lead-time for seeing your products in a show can be one month to one year, depending on the production schedule. However, the payoff is that millions of consumers may see your product associated with their favorite show or character.

Product Placement Tip No. 5: “The More the Merrier.” Be prepared for productions to request multiple items.

Duplicate items are requested in case the product gets lost or damaged, or the character has a stunt double who is shooting at the same time. Productions are not willing to take the risk of holding up a day of shooting to find that missing sweater that was already established as the one the lead actress wears every day.

Product Placement Tip No. 6: “It’s a Mad Mad World.” Show respect for the professionals on set; shooting a scene can be a very busy and crazy time.

You may be dying to know if they’re going to use your product, but take a deep breath and be respectful. Production schedules are usually hectic, and you don’t want to be a nuisance. Give your new contacts time to respond; don’t flood their inboxes with “checking in” emails.

Product Placement Tip No. 7: “Catch Me If You Can.” Understand that your product may not make it on screen, or it may appear just for a fleeting moment.

Even though your product may have been used in the shooting, there are many reasons it may not end up on screen. The scene may be cut from the movie, it may only appear for a split second, or the actress may be wearing your watch but they show her only from the shoulders up.

Product Placement Tip No. 8: “The GIFT.” Also give to those who do the work.

Costume designers and prop masters are just as influential off the clock as they are on set. Giving them your product as a gift could mean it ends up in a trailer where your favorite cast member goes for hair and makeup. Or if your contact uses your iPad case or wears your necklace, it might end up on their personal Instagram or Pinterest stream. They are influencers on and OFF the set.

Product Placement Tip No. 9: “Thank You...” Two simple words go a long way.

After a successful placement, make sure to send a personal and heartfelt thank-you. It’s the right thing to do and they’ll be more likely to come back for more.

Product Placement Tip No. 10: “As Good as It Gets.” Congratulations. You scored a successful placement!

Did you spot your product on TV or in a movie? Congrats! Share your placement on your social media accounts. Even old placements get a big response on Social Media on Throwback Thursday. It’s the gift that keeps on giving. But beware, networks will not share photos or stills of scenes for commercial use. That added benefit is usually saved for sponsors who pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for those opportunities.

Product Placement 101: Who are these people?

Ever wonder about the difference between a costume designer, production designer, a set decorator, and prop master?

• The costume designer chooses clothing, shoes, and jewelry to express the characters’ personalities. He or she coordinates closely with the hair and makeup stylist and set designer to make sure the clothes and accessories work in each scene, and with the director to ensure they mesh with the overall vision. They help tell the story and define the character through wardrobe and accessories.

• The production designer is responsible for setting the scene and the overall vision for the sets. Permanent furniture, backdrops, and color schemes are the production designer’s domain. He or she designs and creates the set.

• Thesetdecorator is responsible for everything that is placed on a set. Furniture, bedspreads, pillows, vases, table settings, flowers, artwork, lamps, televisions—anything on set that is not moving or held is put there by a set decorator.

• Thepropmaster is responsible for property—everything from cell phones to water bottles, sunglasses to cameras, computers to food. If an actor is holding it, the prop master is responsible for it.

Jessica Cohen is an Emmy-Award-winning set decorator and production specialist, and the founder of product placement company LupRocks.com, “the Place for Product Placement.”

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Brands Make Prankvertising Positive: A safer way to take

advantage of the popularity of stunt ads

Michelle Castillo

In March, Defy Media’s Prank It Fwd series surprised a waitress named Chelsea by giving her the “Best Shift Ever.” Instead of receiving tips, Chelsea got a bevy of bonuses including a vacation and a car. She wasn’t the only winner: The video has been viewed upward of 8.3 million times, leading the digital media company to renew the series. Season 2 will debut in mid-November with a new spin, essentially morphing each show into a prankvertising stunt with sponsor Barefoot Wine.

“Not only will Barefoot Wine get a lot of media exposure and the broad distribution that we’re going to bring to the table with the Prank It Fwd promotion, but also they’re going to get positive media attention that’s going to benefit their brand,” Barry Blumberg, evp of Defy Media, explained.

In a similar vein to Prank It Fwd, Marriott Rewards’ Year of Surprises, a new monthly series launching later this month, will honor unsuspecting community do-gooders. First up is a basketball coach who works with at-risk youth.

Pranks shows aren’t new of course—Candid Camera debuted on TV in 1948 and other shows like MTV’s Jackass followed. But it’s the melding of pranks and advertising online that started with TNT promoting its 2012 launch in Belgium with a wild shoot-out in a Flemish town square (scoring 51 million views) that really got marketers salivating. Not only does the genre benefit from viral proliferation, but pranks also connect with the millennial male audience, the notoriously hardest group to reach, noted Collective Digital Studio CEO Reza Izad.

While it makes sense for horror films like The Exorcist to drum up attention using scare tactics, UM Studios svp Rochelle Deckelbaum said it can backfire when sentiment isn’t in line with brand messaging. She cited the 2011 case where a woman sued Toyota and Saatchi & Saatchi for $10 million after their cyberstalking prank allegedly left her in emotional distress.

Pranks with feel-good outcomes are less risky. “Positive pranks open up the genre to brands that normally wouldn’t sponsor a prank,” said Erin McPherson, Maker Studios chief content officer, citing that CPG brands and philanthropy groups are now using this method to reach younger audiences.

Even a bank can earn big love in social media, as proven by TD Canada Trust’s joy-dispensing ATM. That stunt has been viewed more than 12 million times on YouTube.

Still, it’s hard to deny that marketers want to be in front of the massive audience that shock value can deliver. Despite being known for his polarizing “gold digger” pranks, CDS’ VitalyzdTv was able to land branded content deals with Verizon and Clearasil—albeit the stunts were toned down, Izad admitted. But, Deckelbaum believes there are too many people creating shock gags, so it’s hard to stand out without doing something dangerous or, in her words, using “a cheap shot in place of a good idea.”

Those who can create prank content with a upbeat spin shine brighter, she argued. Case in point: Maker Studios’ prankster Magic of Rahat got one-fourth of his 2014 year-to-date views from two of his 152 videos: one where he helps a homeless man by giving him lottery winnings and a follow-up where he gives him a house. And CDS’ channel Give Back Films, which features random acts of kindness, was sponsored by Udi’s Gluten Free Bread, even though it only has 455,580 YouTube subscribers compared to VitalyzdTv’s 7.3 million. “You want a positive, exciting, happy moment. As a brand, it makes a lot more sense to associate with that,” Deckelbaum commented.

Michelle Castillo is a staff writer for Adweek.

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Five Tips for Effective ‘Emotional Branding’Jeannette de Beauvoir

What we’re now calling emotional branding isn’t new. Dale Carnegie developed famous courses in self-improvement, salesmanship, corporate training, public speaking, and interpersonal skills.

In case you’re inclined to sneer at the self-help philosophy, consider that this stuff works. And sells. How to Win Friends and Influence People has sold over 30 million copies since its first printing in 1936.

And what is it that worked so well? Carnegie advised

businesspeople to appeal to their customers’ emotions.

Yet, even with the explosion of inbound marketing, the typical salesperson is still armed with facts and figures and stock responses to questions and objections. Salespeople are generally well prepared to sell a product or service. But the truth is, products and services aren’t what you’re selling anymore. You’re selling a way to improve people’s lives; and to do that effectively you have to make them feel—not just think—that you’re the right answer to their problem.

Feeling is what emotional branding is about. And the feeling doesn’t even need to be directly connected to the brand. In this Coca-Cola commercial and this longer, even more heart-touching mobile telephone commercial, you see the product only at the very end of the video. The marketing makes a connection that isn’t actually there, with the hope that the emotional connection stays in the audience’s collective mind.

Manipulative? Sure it is. It’s also brilliant. Because it works.

So what do you need to do to launch an emotional branding campaign for your company or product? Here are five tips to get you started.

Shift your focusThink about people, rather than consumers. Think about experience, rather than products. Think about dialogue, rather than information delivery.

Emotional branding works best when you’re approaching your audience as individual people who live and work and think and dream—and when you engage them with all of that in mind.

If you really know your customers, then this is easy. Studying who they are and what they want will help you with your emotional branding.

Create material so emotionally compelling that it’s eminently shareableSharing is the best advertising out there, because it’s both heartfelt and free. You

couldn’t pay for the kind of sharing that happens when a video or meme goes viral. So examine what is working in the media you select—videos, ads, even memes—and tailor your message to that tone and approach.

Learn about the emotional hot buttons that get people to purchaseVeteran marketer Barry Feig has carved out 16 hot buttons in Hot Button Marketing: Push the

Emotional Buttons That Get People to Buy: desire for control, I’m better than you, excitement of discovery, revaluing, family values, desire to belong, fun is its own reward, poverty of

time, desire to get the best, self-achievement, sex/love/romance, nurturing response, reinventing oneself, make me smarter, power/dominance/influence, and wish fulfillment.

It’s a great list. But not everything on it will work for you. Think about your ideal customers (remember, we’re talking people here, not products), pick out three or four of those hot buttons that will appeal to those people, and focus your branding efforts around them.

Tell a storyIt really is all about the story. Storytelling is how we have for centuries—even millennia—made emotional connections. Who didn’t cry at Bambi? Stories aren’t about facts. Everyone

knows that the best stories are the ones that stay with us long after the book is closed or we’ve left the theater. The same goes for business storytelling: You want your customer to keep thinking of you, so make sure you use your story to make them feel what you want them to feel.

Leave them with a strong feeling, happy or sadIt’s not about what information about your brand you want to leave your audience with. It’s what feeling you want to leave them with.

As William McEwen in the Gallup Management Journal notes, “Emotional connections are not merely warm and fuzzy, nor are they simply interesting to contemplate and debate. They have powerful financial consequences, ranging from share-of-wallet to frequency and amount of repeat business. ‘Fully engaged’ retail customers spend more and return more frequently than those who are disengaged.”

You don’t have to make a direct link between your product and the feeling you want associated with it. You only have to link them in your prospects’ and customers’ minds. This is the best way for you to stand out from your competition: by going in a completely different direction, seizing a new demographic, and making people smile or cry.

It doesn’t really even matter which.

Jeannette de Beauvoir is a principal at Harbor Marketing Associates, a marketing company engaging clients with digital strategies and tools for brand success.

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The luxury space is becoming overcrowded and brands incapable of adapting to emergent market forces will falter, according to a new report by the Luxury Institute.

The report outlines seven key trends that will dominant the luxury industry in the year ahead. For instance, the report argues that all the copycats striving to gain luxury credibility will succumb to slowing demand.

“The knowledge of best practices is there but there is lack of execution in the luxury industry,” said Milton Pedraza, CEO of Luxury Institute, New York.

“There’s also a lot of ‘me-tooism,’” he said. “When you have so many brands and so many copy cats, so much less originality, you’re going to get a race to the bottom and heavy discounting.

“The market is slowing down and there’s too much of a lot out there. A reality check is coming to the luxury industry: What are we expanding for?”

Less room

Luxury consumers are exasperated by all the “me-too” brands that have emerged in the past several years, according to the report, and many of these brands teetering on the edge of luxury will be washed away by dwindling demand.

To contend with shrinking growth, many brands will stop opening up stores. Instead, brands will focus on getting the most out of existing channels, which means placing a greater emphasize on CRM programs and cross-channel metric systems.

Similarly, companies will take all of their knowledge of best practices and implement them more effectively. For instance, many data collection programs collect dirty data and if associates were better trained and equipped to gather information, CRM programs would improve.

Part of this push will come from store managers who will have to rise to the level of “luxury entrepreneurs.”

The report also notes that brands are finally beginning to treat human relationships as critical to brand equity. The Luxury Institute advocates for customer-centric brands that

empower associates to cultivate relationships with clients.

Another trend identified is an increase of CEO transitions.

For instance, luxury conglomerate Kering recently gave the reins of three brands over to new CEOs.

Italian fashion labels Brioni, Bottega Veneta and Scottish fashion brand Christopher Kane will all have new leaders going forward. The move comes as Kering tries to tighten up its organizations and propel its luxury division.

Social building

The final trend that the report highlights is a focus on image-heavy social platforms such as Instagram.

Brands across sectors have been innovating on Instagram lately.

For instance, U.S. fashion label Marc Jacobs is simplifying the path to purchase for its beauty collection with a new Instagram effort.

Brands have struggled to generate conversions through Instagram because the platform does not allow for active hyperlinks to be embedded in the captions of shared photos. Marc Jacobs is looking to give consumers straightforward access to ecommerce through Instagram by linking its shared images to product emails for purchasing ease.

Ultimately, however, the luxury industry is entering a period of slower growth that will test the competence of younger brands.

“Luxury is not built in a day,” Mr. Pedraza said. “Big brands like Chanel and Hermès have been built over many, many decades.

“It takes less time these days to build a luxury brand, but it takes time and credibility for profitability and sustainability,” he said.

“We need to get our creative juices flowing again.”

Joe McCarthy

Joe McCarthy, staff writer on Luxury Daily, New York

What are luxury brands expanding for?

Brand Partners are giving FIFA the Boot!!Mark J. Miller

Brands like to be where the eyeballs are, but FIFA—organizers of the planet’s most-watched sporting event, the World Cup—has just lost a major sponsor and is in danger of losing other brand sponsors in the wake of mishandling of recent events and allegations of corruption within the bidding process for World Cup hosting, Business Insider reports.

Emirates, FIFA’s official airline partner, has pulled its sponsorship through the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, and Sony is considering the same, according to the Guardian. The loss of one and possible two FIFA partners hurts as there are only six sponsors in total at the FIFA Partner level, vs. sponsors specifically tied to the World Cup.

In a statement, the airline said, “this decision was made following an evaluation of FIFA’s contract proposal which did not meet Emirates’ expectations.” In addition, Emirates is based in Dubai, not too far from Qatar—and the two countries don’t share an easy relationship.

The sponsor troubles come as the announcement that the 2022 World Cup in Qatar will not be played in the summer, which means there will be some serious negotiations going on between FIFA and the European football leagues. It also could make a big difference in advertising dollars and interest in North America, since there isn’t as much competition in the summer for World Cup broadcasts as there is throughout the winter.

The Qatar World Cup bid has been problematic from the outset, with issues including overwhelming heat during the period of the World Cup that prompted the 2022 event’s date change; virtually no soccer legacy; and the country’s prohibition on alcohol—a major source of revenue, including by World Cup beer sponsor Budweiser—which would hurt stadium revenue during the event.

There is also the broader human rights issues issues of Qatar’s alleged abuse of workers, with reports swirling of the many deaths and mistreatment of the migrant workers brought in to build up the infrastructure. Business Insider estimates that 900 workers have died (so far) in the nation’s construction push to get ready for the World Cup

There are also concerns about how Qatar’s predominantly Muslim culture (and differences in treating men and women) could impact the number of women who would travel to attend the event.

Adding to sponsors’ concerns, Qatar has decreased the number of stadiums it’s constructing from 12 to eight, as Bloomberg notes.

It’s no surprise that Sony is considering a pullout, too, in the wake of FIFA’s 2014 World Cup move this summer that banned players from wearing Beats by Dre gear since it didn’t want the hip brand to upstage or “ambush” official electronics partner Sony.

As Business Insider points out, other big brands that will likely step in as sponsors, with Qatar Airways and Samsung seen as contenders to replace Emirates and Sony on the FIFA sponsors roster. But those who have been working to expose the rampant corruption within FIFA for so long see the Emirates pullout of a sign that, finally, pressure from brands might help change the culture of the organization.

Coca-Cola, a FIFA Partner since 1978, is lobbying the troubled sports organization “to increase transparency amid a probe into how hosting rights to the 2018 and 2022 tournaments were granted,” Bloomberg Businessweek reports.

“When sponsors start to become wary, that is where FIFA will start to hurt—it’s an organization set up to make as much money as possible out of football. That’s something they will take notice of,” British parliament member Damian Collins said, according to the Guardian.

In order to be more transparent, FIFA has been asked to

release a report created by U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia that looked into the allegations of corruption dealing with the events planned for Russia and Qatar. So far, FIFA hasn’t published anything.

With Hyundai, Visa and adidas still sitting on the sidelines, Michael Hershman, a former member of FIFA’s independent governance committee and co-founder of Transparency International, told Bloomberg Businessweek that not enough sponsors “have not come to the table” to demand transparency.

“They have simply paid lip service,” he told the paper. “Saying in press releases ‘oh yes, the sport needs a greater degree of integrity and transparency.’ But they haven’t put their money where their mouth is.”

The ethics allegations against FIFA, meanwhile, continue. Bloomberg reports that the president of the All Nepal Football Association is barred from any involvement with soccer for 120 days while the FIFA ethics committee looks into charges that he embezzled money.

Below, the current roster of FIFA’s Partner and World Cup-only sponsors:

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The rise of data cooperation and other 2015 predictions Dave Reed

Cross-device targeting

Cross-device marketing will continue to rise in 2015. As the number of smartphone users in the UK approaches 40 million (37.8m), there will be an emphasis on reaching the right audience with the right message, regardless of device.

This will result in a shift away from traditionally siloed marketing strategies towards a more holistic approach to media buying, where optimised ads are served seamlessly across devices from a single point of creation. Advances in attribution will also allow the impact of ads to be measured on all screens, providing shared data that can be used to inform marketing strategies.

Data cooperation

Given the speed of industry evolution, 2015 could be the first year we see a rise in data cooperation within the EU. The current reliance on third-party data results in brands paying for ads that are served but not necessarily viewed.

It’s a simple idea, but leveraging first-party data will allow brands to exchange wasted impressions for wider audiences and apply more precise targeting, which will create positive brand equity.

While activation of their own first-party data should remain a high priority for brands, cooperating with other companies to acquire first-party data would be a strong approach to

expanding marketing budgets.

Social recommendation

As social networks continue to expand their advertising capabilities, the line between earned and paid media – along

with the definitions of content and marketing – will become ever more blurred.

Driving social recommendation will be a high priority and brands will invest more in social media, with European social media marketing spend expected to increase from Euro 2.6 billion in 2014 to Euro 4.3 billion by 2019.

Marketers will increasingly rely on technology partners to develop robust and differentiating social strategies with great speed and agility, and there will be a focus on well-defined goals, specific audience targeting, and campaign tracking via social management tools.

This will enable marketers to gain a more complete view of their digital advertising, maximising scale and efficiency across all channels.

Evolution of programmatic in holding companies

Programmatic media buying is recognised as the future of digital advertising and is set to push UK ad spend to over £20bn in 2015.

Programmatic’s place used to be out of sight within the engine room, but as holding companies increasingly use trading desks to capitalise on the growth of automated media buying, their endorsement of the programmatic model will push it into the mainstream.

This will result in an increase of brand acceptance and investment in this advertising method.

Dave Reed, managing director EMEA, MediaMath

How To Master Copywriting

John Zeratsky

After publishing an essay on five principles for great interface copywriting, I heard from hundreds of entrepreneurs, designers, and product managers who wanted to learn more about copywriting.

The most common questions were about how writing fits into the design process. When do you focus on writing? How do you write while sketching? How do you test and iterate on copy?

I didn’t have any simple answers prepared. But we do design work with startups all the time, so over the past six

months, I made an effort to examine how writing fits into

that work. Every time we did a design sprint with a Google Ventures portfolio company, I focused on copywriting, and looked for successful patterns and approaches. Here’s what I learned.

1. SKETCH: NOUNS, VERBS, AND HEADLINES

Your earliest sketches should contain real text—not “lorem ipsum,” and not squiggly “text-goes-here” lines. Take the time to write realistic copy in your sketches, because the screens you are sketching are probably 75% text. A good rule of thumb when sketching is to spend as much time on copy as you spend on layout or visuals.

A lot of sketches look like this: But this is much more useful:

GOOGLE VENTURES PARTNER JOHN ZERATSKY OFFERS FOUR TIPS FOR SEAMLESSLY INTEGRATING TEXT INTO YOUR DESIGN PROCESS.

SPEND AS MUCH TIME ON COPY AS YOU SPEND ON VISUALS.

“But!” you might be saying, “I don’t know what the copy is supposed to say yet!” This is the perfect time to start figuring that out.

It’s best to accept that writing is part of the design process and empower your team to “design” the text content alongside the visuals.

When you work this way, your team can generate and test different competing solutions—and that includes different competing copy. You wouldn’t settle on one layout without exploring a few alternatives,

so make sure you try different text solutions before deciding which direction is best.

Clearly, it’s not practical to write an entire company story or FAQ page in a sketch. Which copywriting challenges should you tackle in the sketching phase?

Nouns and verbs

Start to work on your nouns and verbs. What are the objects in your system and what are the actions? As a general rule, you should try to minimize the number of nouns and verbs, but you also don’t want to overuse words. For example, if you are designing an email app, don’t call the messages “mail” and also use the word “mail” to mean send.

It can be tempting to use the name of your company or product as a noun or verb in your app, but it’s tricky business. Company names have a big job to do in identifying the company—when you overload them with additional meaning, they can be confusing. Clarity beats cleverness every time.

Headlines

If you’re working on a marketing site (where the goal is to describe something), start working on your headlines. What are the main points you’ll use to explain your product or company? A pithy headline (“Simple.”) might sound great in theory, but once you start sketching it will become clear that you need more than one word. (You’ll also see that a 20-

word headline, which looks okay in 11-point type, is too big for the top of your homepage.)

2. CRITIQUE: DECIDE WHAT TO PROTOTYPE

Once you have several sketches, you need to decide which one (or which parts) to prototype. At Google Ventures, we like to use dot voting to select the overall concepts and components we think are best.

During critique, try grabbing a highlighter and tagging the bits of copy you really like. Even if your favorite text is spread across three or four sketches, you may be able to stitch it together in a coherent way (e.g. the headline from one sketch and the feature list from another).

When your favorite components (text or visual) don’t fit together into a coherent concept, make a note of those conflicts. If you have two or more strong, but conflicting, approaches, it might make sense to create multiple prototypes and stage a battle royale.

3. PROTOTYPE: DETAILED, REALISTIC TEXT

A true prototype helps you learn something important about what you’re building. With copywriting, you’ll probably want to answer questions like “do people understand?” and “can people do what they want to do?”

To do this, you’ll need a prototype that has detailed, complete text—just say no to “lorem ipsum”—so people will react as if it’s a real product or website. As you move from sketch to prototype, bring your copy to the next level of detail. In your prototype, make sure to:

• Combine copy elements from your sketches that work well, and make sure everything makes sense together.

• Replace squiggly lines or “text goes here” from sketches with the real thing. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it does have to look real.

• Drop in real-sounding names, titles, etc. For example, if you’re prototyping a homepage with customer testimonials, don’t attribute every quote to “John Doe.”

It’s best to write copy in the context of a page layout, whenever possible. You’ll get immediate feedback on how long your text should be, and you can start creating a visual style and hierarchy that supports the content.

Since I usually prototype in Keynote, I’ll spend a bunch of time working on copy in my Keynote prototype. I don’t write copy in a separate document unless I need to write a lot of templatized copy (like team bios) or need to collect text from a group.

ACCEPT THAT WRITING IS PART OF THE DESIGN PROCESS.

WRITE REALISTIC COPY IN YOUR

SKETCHES, BECAUSE THE SCREENS YOU

ARE SKETCHING ARE PROBABLY 75% TEXT.

CLARITY BEATS CLEVERNESS EVERY

TIME.

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And don’t forget: you’ll need a real-looking prototype to house your copy if you hope to show it to customers and learn from their reactions (which you totally should!). Copywriting is important, but a visually detailed prototype is essential for productive user testing.

4. USER RESEARCH: LISTEN FOR WHAT WORKS

User research is your opportunity to put your prototypes in front of customers and get their real reactions. Your research participants will read and react to the copy you wrote (as long as it’s real!) and help you understand which of your ideas are best.

During research, you’ll want to not only watch what people do, but listen to what they say as well. It’s a good sign when test participants start to lift phrases from your copy and use them to describe what they are doing and seeing.

We recently did a design sprint with Cluster, a startup that allows you to create private spaces with friends and family, then share photos, videos, and messages with that group. We created two prototypes, each containing a different set of ideas for how the product should work. While the user interface from the first prototype worked best, it was clear that the copy from the second was the winner—the users we interviewed were using taglines and terminology from that

prototype to describe the app.

For our next design sprint, we combined the best UI with the best copy in a single “greatest hits” prototype and it performed very well in research.

When you write down your observations and insights from each interview, don’t forget to capture specific bits of copy that worked well and didn’t work so well. You can write these on the whiteboard as exact quotes, and color-code them green or red to indicate whether they were successful.

And when you’re done, make sure that important copy (e.g. headlines, button labels, and so on) make it into your summary of what worked well in the study. This is your chance to resolve conflicts and decide between two competing versions.

Of course, it’s possible you didn’t come up with effective copy in this iteration—that’s okay, at least now you know. In your next iteration, take what you’ve learned and come up with some new ideas you can test.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Regardless of details, it’s important to make copywriting an integral part of your design process. Don’t leave it until the end. Don’t do it all upfront. Don’t offload responsibility to a separate person or team who’s not involved in design.

Software products have become more visual over the years, but they’re still mostly text. The words on the screen are essential for helping users understand your product, find what they are looking for, and actually use your product as intended. This is especially true on small screens!

In our work with startups, we’ve seen how effective it is to bake copywriting into every step of the design process. Give it a try on your team, and let us know how it goes! Tweet us at @GVDesignTeam or @jazer.

COPYWRITING IS IMPORTANT, BUT A VISUALLY DETAILED

PROTOTYPE IS ESSENTIAL.

John Zeratsky is a design partner at Google Ventures, where he helps startups use design to reach business goals.

The 20 Most ‘Simple’ Brands in the WorldAyaz Nanji

Global consumers ranked ALDI, the German discount supermarket and owner of Trader Joe’s in the United States, as the most ‘simple’ brand in the world for the second year in a row, according to a recent report from Siegel+Gale.

The report was based on data from a survey of 12,318 consumers in eight countries (the US, the UK, Germany, Sweden, China, India, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia). Respondents were asked to rate brands on the simplicity/complexity of their products and pricing relative to industry peers as well as the quality of interactions/communications (i.e., whether the company is trustworthy/easy to deal with).

ALDI topped the list because of its “clear pricing and a clear

offer”—high quality at low prices with a basic, but rewarding, shopping experience.

Google ranked second thanks to its search engine, which consumers view as being “peerless” and “reliable.”

Starbucks dropped 26 spots to #43 on the 2014 list, due to its complicated menu and competition from niche coffee shops.

Wal-Mart also tumbled in the rankings, dropping 28 spots to #42.

Below, the 20 most simple brands as ranked by global survey respondents.

About the research: The report was based on data from a survey of 12,318 consumers in eight countries (the US, the UK, Germany, Sweden, China, India, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia).

Ayaz Nanji is an independent digital strategist and the co-founder of Inbound ContentWorks, a marketing agency that specializes in content creation for businesses and brands. He is also a research writer for MarketingProfs.

Seven Skills Marketers Need to Succeed [Infographic]Verónica Maria Jarski

What are the most important skills that a marketer needs?

The following infographic by Formstack highlights seven skills that companies expect from their marketers.

The ability to understand data ranks high on the list. “Research predicts a shortfall of up to 1.5 million data-savvy managers by 2018,” Formstack states.

Technical skills, such as basic coding or video production,

also make a job applicant more desirable. “Two of four new marketing hires will require technical skills,” according to Formstack.

Knowing how to get along with others (“soft skills”) also can help a job applicant get hired. Being able to communicate well and to be flexible is crucial to being an excellent colleague.

Want to know more about what companies want in marketers? Check out the infographic:

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What Bruce Lee Can Teach You About Design

Sarah Kessler

“What people don’t know about Bruce Lee is that he was an amazing philosopher,” D’Wayne Edwards, the founder of footwear design school Pensole, explained on stage at Fast Company’s Innovation By Design conference.

At 30, Edwards was one of the youngest design directors at Nike, designing shoes for the likes of Michael Jordan, Carmelo Anthony, Derek Jeter, and Roy Jones Jr. What people don’t know about him is that his design style and career have been inspired by Bruce Lee.

Pay attention to the philosophy behind Lee’s martial art form, Jeet Kune Do, Edwards said, and you’ll see several guiding principles that you can easily apply to your work. Here are just a handful:

1. Be “in tune with yourself and environment.”

“Sometimes we get confused and think this is our company, and it’s not,” Edwards says.

2. Have “style without a style.”

When Lee wrote this, he was talking about allowing his opponent’s fighting style to influence the way he fought. Edwards uses the idea to think about projects. “We shouldn’t

go to any project with a conceived notion,” he says. “We should let the project dictate.”

3. “In order to taste my cup of water, you must first empty your cup.”

Again, Edwards applies this nugget of Bruce Lee wisdom to discarding preconceived notions of what a design project will entail. When he designed a new riding boot for the 2008 USA Equestrian Team, he was working with a style that had been more or less consistent for decades. By emptying his cup, he was able to see how changing the inside material from leather to rubber would give the rider more control over the horse and build a screw system to adjust the height of the spurs.

4. “Absorb what is useful, discard what is not, and add what is uniquely your own.”

Edwards recalled this advice when New York Knicks forward Carmelo Anthony asked him to design a shoe that could make him quicker and more agile (“imagine having that as your design brief,” Edwards says.) He ended up designing a shoe based on a jaguar, which, more or less has dimensions like Anthony, only horizontal.

5. “Success flows from dedication and self-knowledge.”

The first job Edwards had in a design firm was as a file clerk. But the company had a suggestion box, and every day, Edward submitted the same suggestion—to hire him as a shoe designer. His persistence paid off when he was hired as a designer at the age of 19. “A simple pencil and some things I learned from Mr. Bruce Lee helped me have a pretty successful career in this industry,” he says.

FORMER NIKE DESIGNER D’WAYNE EDWARDS SAYS

BRUCE LEE HAS IMPACTED HIS CAREER AND DESIGN.

Sarah Kessler is a reporter at Fast Company, where she writes about technology companies and the people they impact.

Mobile advertising: Why blending in is the new standing outPatrick Hourihan

Changing content consumption habits, driven by the proliferation of devices means brands are having to innovate the way in which they communicate with consumers, particularly on mobile devices. At Yahoo, we looked at how consumers are reacting to brands’ new efforts to engage with them, what they like already and what they want in future.

Our study looked specifically at mobile native advertising and reveals that, when consuming a stream of content on mobile, users don’t filter ads specifically from the stream – in the way that they do through ‘banner blindness’.

The study used eye-tracking and showed that 85% of users visually engaged with Yahoo Gemini native ads, meaning their eyes were drawn to ads within a stream of content. This is 21% higher than visual engagement levels with other types of mobile display ad.

According to our research, smartphone users are 2.2 times more likely to agree that ‘If content is engaging then I don’t care it is an advert’. This is great news for brands, because it shows a real willingness from consumers to want to engage with brand content within their mobile feeds.

Speaking at Yahoo’s IAB Digital Upfront session last week, neuroscientist Dr Jack Lewis told us “the brain has several important roles to help us get on in life, including how we process sensory information and deem content worth our time.”

The human brain adapts to the environment it is immersed in and mobile has opened up a new way of processing information. On mobile, the optimum way to digest information is through a stream of content.

So we know a stream is the ideal from a user perspective but it’s also good news for brands. In a stream of information it is possible to serve advertising in a contextually relevant

experience – both by matching the quality, tone and style of the editorial but also the format.

While, it’s important to provide an intuitive, seamless experience, tailoring the content to your target audience is also vital. In addition, content needs to be eye-catching. The old adage that a picture is worth 1,000 words could not be truer when advertising on mobile. Research found that imagery was important when capturing the attention of the consumer in a stream environment, with 63% looking at images before words when browsing on a mobile device.

However, while brands want to stand out in a stream of content, it’s also important to strike the balance with blending in to ensure a positive experience. The key here is providing quality content in a relevant format, in the right context.

This is where content marketing is coming into its own right now. It’s driving users to click, and think differently about a brand – something which we are seeing through our powerful content marketing solution which combines Yahoo and Tumblr.

There is a clear alignment between content marketing and native advertising and our research showed that content marketing mobile native ads deliver 72% more emotional response than other types of ‘in-stream’ ad.

The research has clearly underlined the significance of these two ways of getting your message in front of consumers – content marketing and native. With mobile advertising growth only set to head in one direction, it’s likely we’ll see a real upsurge in these types of digital advertising in the coming months.

Patrick Hourihan, research director EMEA at Yahoo

Is Taco Bell the savviest brand on social media?Vishal Mehra

On my commute back from office last night, I noticed few odd and alarming tweets. Allow me to quickly present my case:

Bridget Carey, from CNET was tweeting in ALL CAPS! And Nilay Patel had this to say. Taco Bell story? Some die-hards were flipping out.

Like any self-respecting digital marketer, I figured I had to be on top of this recent development. So I went to Taco Bell’s twitter. Then to its Instagram feed. Then to its Facebook page. And finally to its Google+ page as well. This is a collection of what I saw.

As it turned out, Taco Bell launched a new mobile app but rather than going on a social media frenzy, and buying up all possible hashtags, the digitally savvy brand did the exact opposite. It blacked out and went silent across all of its social presence channels. Even the website, which had products and corporate/brand information, wasn’t spared either to promote the new app.

Content on the company’s Facebook was deleted and all images blacked out. On Instagram, Taco Bell released a series of black and white text-based images with the hashtag #onlyintheapp. For a brand that has over 10 million fans on Facebook, this move can clearly be described as ballsy, one which most marketers will lose weeks of sleep over.

The silence was urging fans to download the app directly. Normally, a brand would go all out on its social and web channels to promote a new launch. For something like an app, the focus clearly would have been more on mobile marketing, and a typical brand would have done one, two or all the three below:

1) Running a CPD campaign to promote downloads on mobile ad networks. Of late, this has been a very popular form of promotion on Facebook and Twitter native apps as well;

2) Buying display and text inventory across major networks, trying to push app functionality;

3) Bid for related keywords on search engines and then hope for CPC traffic.

Taco Bell, to the best of my knowledge, has done nothing of the above. This is obviously not to indicate that the above-mentioned methods are not effective. Thousands of apps employ those strategies every day, and do it with great success.

Taco Bell has done things differently while creating enormous amount of buzz and earned impressions. The App Annie chart below looks at the Taco Bell “Live Mas” app’s rank history over the past month, for Apple iOS. Notice the spike in the end. The chart shows that for the Food & Drink category, the app moved from its usual spot from around 60 to become number one for that category, in the US. Amazingly, It also became 24th most popular app in the US on the launch day. Next day, it climbed up to rank #22.

Taco Bell App – iOS Rank History

The hour-by-hour report is even more incredible. It starts with the app ranked 1,379 overall in the US as of 2am PT, October 28. By 1pm — it had shot to become the 24th most popular app. The app is not yet listed on the iTunes most popular free apps chart as it is updated on a weekly basis.

Taco Bell App – iOS Hourly Rank History

Besides the number of downloads, the post-download behaviour/interaction is vital. Everybody in the business knows that its easy to make users download apps, its far more tougher to make them use it everyday, every week, once every month or heck, even once after the first trial.

It won’t be the brilliant promotion strategy that would make users come back, but the app itself, and the UX it offers. Taco Bell covered that with the option of ordering mobile app only products on the app. It is also offering mobile payment, which is apparently the first for the industry. Moreover, in stores, there will be a separate pick-up line for app orders.

Taco Bell is known for its progressive and clever social media strategy, including being an early mover on Instagram, Snapchat, Vine, Tumblr, Pinterest, Hyperlapse among others. While it initially seemed like Taco Bell had completely wiped out its Twitter history, the account is actually hiding at @totallynothere during the blackout — with all followers (1.4 million) and tweets (39.9K) in place.

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Taco Bell’s alternative twitter account

It is also interesting to note how quickly Twitter acted to make the “new” Taco Bell account verified. Usually, when a verified account is renamed (which is exactly what Taco Bell’s agency Digitas did), it loses the verified status. Clearly twitter and Digitas were planning and working on this stunt together. For now, the experiment seems to be continuing though it may not be long before Taco Bell resets and retakes its old avatar. I, for one, miss the witty one-liners. See below for an epic example.

Taco Bell vs. Old Spice – Tweet Wars

It is heartening to see Taco Bell embrace technology like no one else, and at the same time, add emotions in the mix. Even the press invites sent for the announcement looked like something you wouldn’t expect from a fast food retailer.

Taco Bell Invitation

And that’s the trick. Taco Bell wanted to make sure its message broke through, without breaking its budgets.

As a pioneer marketer, Taco Bell prefers to do things that have never been done before, which fits perfectly with its

brand as well as the demographic they cater to.

Social media has been tightly entrenched in Taco Bell’s broad marketing play as well, with key personnel from PR, operations, product, and marketing playing a part in influencing the brand’s social movement. And for those, who believe social media leads to zero ROI, one look at Taco Bell would absolve that myth. AdAge recently wrote about the role of social media in year-on-year sales growth outpacing its competitors.

Brands have done clever social media and RTM earlier but this easily surpasses all dark dunks and funny tweet fights. What do you think?

Where To Find Great Designers Irene Au

Where do you find designers to hire?

Twenty-five years ago, you might’ve mined the halls of the Rhode Island School of Design or the cubicles at big, traditional

design agencies. Today, with designers employed across the working world, from tech startups to banks, the smartest employers are casting a wide net. Design schools aren’t a

bad place to look. But they’re just a start. Here, 10 tips for finding your next great designer:

TARGETED OUTREACH

Targeted outreach is among the most effective ways to find someone to hire, especially if the team has prior experience working with good designers and has a large network.

With your team and everyone you know who might have worked with a good designer, brainstorm a list of all the great people they’ve worked with, reach out to them, or ask them to refer other people.

LARGE IN-HOUSE DESIGN TEAMS

Companies like Google, Yahoo!, LinkedIn, eBay, Apple, Adobe, Intuit, Twitter, and Facebook can employ hundreds of designers and are fertile ground for designers who can work

with cross-functional teams to ship products. Because they have large teams, junior designers get mentored by more senior designers and are exposed to good design leadership and management practices. Oracle, Salesforce, Citrix, and SAP are enterprise

companies that also employ many designers. Be willing to also consider some non-obvious places that aren’t top of mind; for example, I’ve hired some terrific people from Walmart.com and Bank of America.

For early-stage startups looking to hire a mid-level to senior designer who can eventually lead, grow, and manage a design team, a designer from a large in-house team who has

worked there for two to four years makes a great candidate.

STARTUPS AND SMALLER COMPANIES

Startups and smaller companies are a viable source of designers, particularly if they have been with the company for two to four years, and the future of the company is uncertain.

Be aware that some designers who only have experience in startups may lack a mature design process and the ability to lead or scale a design team as it grows. If a designer’s experience is mostly composed of a series of short stints (fewer than 18 months) at startups, take time to understand what happened, not just from the candidate’s perspective but also from founders, coworkers, and investors.

DESIGN AGENCIES

Design agencies are often filled with young designers who have been mentored by strong design leaders, and some of them are eager to work in an in-house team and have a chance to be part of the shipping team and own equity. Many agencies also pay less than large companies can afford to pay, in exchange for a work environment that values and understands design and gives designers the chance to work on a wide range of projects. Agencies like Ideo, Frog, Method, and Adaptive Path (now owned by Capital One) hire well and train well, but don’t overlook small boutique firms that are less well-known.

Be aware that some designers who only have agency experience may not have sufficient experience with seeing a design through to launch. Make sure you probe on their past collaborations with engineers.

ONLINE SITES WHERE DESIGNERS CONGREGATE

Increasingly, designers are posting work samples online to build their reputation and get discovered. Some startups have successfully recruited terrific designers by browsing through online sites for designers and searching relentlessly for portfolios that suit their design sensibilities. Dribbble, Behance, Coroflot, Carbonmade, and Cargo are all good sites for finding visual designers.

IRENE AU, A PARTNER AT KHOSLA VENTURES AND FORMER DESIGN LEAD AT GOOGLE, OFFERS 10 TIPS FOR FINDING THE BEST DESIGN TALENT.

I’VE HIRED SOME TERRIFIC PEOPLE FROM

WALMART.COM AND BANK OF AMERICA.

IF YOUR PRODUCT OR WEBSITE LOOKS TERRIBLE, YOU WILL

HAVE A MUCH HARDER TIME ATTRACTING

DESIGNERS.

The emphasis is on visual designers. The sites are not necessarily great for finding user researchers or interaction designers. The product might look great but not work that well. The hardest design work is what comes before the surface layer: the strategy, the vision, the principles, the interaction, the architecture, and these online sites don’t allow you to see beyond the surface.

UX JOB BOARDS

If you’re looking explicitly for a user experience (UX) designer, consider posting on these sites:• www.uxjobsboard.com• www.uxjobs247.com• ww w.uxswitch.com• ww w.uxdesignjobs.net

DESIGN RECRUITERS

Many recruiters who specialize in design talent work on a contingency basis or on a retainer. I prefer to work with recruiters who specialize in UX because they understand how to screen candidates and have a good nose for whether people will fit into the work culture.

NEW COLLEGE GRADUATES AND INTERNS

New college graduates are challenging for startups because they often lack real-world, hands-on experience, and even if they’ve had internships, they are too early in their careers to work effectively as the sole designer in a company and provide leadership necessary to do good design work.

If you have a team and at least a few senior designers who can serve as mentors, consider hiring interns and college grads to help build out your team.

Different programs specialize in different design areas. Here is a (not comprehensive) list of (mostly U.S.-based) programs and schools that have produced graduates with skills sought after by employers.

Interaction design:• Carnegie Mellon Human-Computer Interaction Institute• Stanford University (Symbolic Systems program, d.School,

Product Design program, Persuasive Tech Lab)• University of Michigan’s School of Information• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Engineering

Psychology, Computer Science, Industrial Engineering, Library Science)

• University of Washington, Human-Centered Design and Engineering

• New York University’s ITP program• UC Berkeley iSchool• MIT Media Lab• UC San Diego (UCSD) Cognitive Science program• Carnegie Mellon Master of Professional Studies• School of Visual Arts (SVA)’s MFA in Interaction Design• California College of the Arts (CCA) Interaction Design

Program

Visual design:• Rhode Island School of Design

• Ohio State (Department of Design)• University of Cincinnati (DAAP program)• Carnegie Mellon School of Design• UCLA Design Media Arts• Institute of Design Chicago• California College of the Arts (CCA) Graphic Design

Program• Art Center College of Design• Otis College of Art and Design• Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)• TU Delft• Royal College of Art London• Goldsmiths London

User research:• Carnegie Mellon Human-Computer Interaction Institute• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign• Cornell University Human Factors program• University of California at San Diego (UCSD) Cognitive

Science program• Tufts University• Georgia Tech Human Factors program

A note on bootcamps: While there are many short programs and bootcamps that claim to train people to become designers, they are still relatively new and unproven so I did not include them here.

CONSIDER RELOCATION

Don’t rule out people who are not local. There are good designers who live outside your area, and there are good designers who are eager to relocate. One of the best designers I’ve met at a KV portfolio company relocated from Europe after being “discovered” by the CEO online. The CEO determined it was worth waiting for the visa and relocation to get a great designer of a caliber that would otherwise be difficult to find and hire in the San Francisco Bay Area.

GOOD DESIGN ATTRACTS DESIGNERS

A final thought on sourcing candidates: designers want to work in companies where they feel the company values what they do. If your product or website looks terrible or if someone coming to your site can’t determine the value proposition for your product from looking at the product, you will have a much harder time attracting designers. This is a paradox: the companies with lousy designs are the ones who need designers the most, yet most designers interpret bad design as a sign that the company does not value design, or that the company doesn’t understand its raison d’etre—which will make the designers’ jobs that much harder. It is crucial for these companies to 1) represent themselves well, and 2) build a design team with the right attitude: optimistic, proactive, takes responsibility and does not adopt a victim mindset.

Irene Au is an operating partner at Khosla Ventures, focusing on design for its portfolio companies. She formerly led design at Google, Yahoo!, Udacity, and Netscape, where she built teams from scratch, delivered design at scale, and elevated design’s strategic value.

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In Defense Of Banner AdsDimitry Ioffe

IN THE RIGHT HANDS, THE BANNER AD IS DOWNRIGHT ART, ARGUES DIMITRY IOFFE, CEO OF THE DIGITAL MARKETING AGENCY TVGLA.

The 20-year anniversary of the banner has given all the haters out there an opportunity to heartily proclaim death to the banner ad. We saw it here on Co.Design and even on the front page of the New York Times. It seems I may be one of the sole voices in the crowd to proclaim my love for banners.

Don’t get me wrong, some banner ads are bad. Like many of us out there I inadvertently twitch every time I get served an ad that has followed my cookie crumbs and suggests that I might

be interested in the lounge chair or sisal rug that I might have looked at or might have actually bought. The automation of thoughtless and intrusive ads now proclaimed the Holy Grail by data freaks everywhere makes my teeth hurt.

But to suggest that banner ads are emblematic of all that is bad and evil in the advertising space—and a killer of great design—shows a basic misunderstanding of the format. Dare I say it, but in the right hands, the banner ad is downright art.

A MEDIUM FOR INVENTIVENESS

Display ads allow designers to experiment in ways they can’t with print and television ads. Take this 300x250 banner for Ikea. Some brilliant web designer was able to conceive of and create the smallest Ikea store in the world and put it in a web banner. All in service of demonstrating how attentive the store and its designers are to saving space. What’s really cool is how you can play with the mini symbols—check out the baby products—to reveal a whole department of offerings in one corner of the space.

Or consider this engaging banner ad for the Apple Mac in 2009 that brings the famous “I’m a Mac and I’m a PC” campaign to the front page of the New York Times with a conversation that begins with PC Nerd John Hodgeman on the right side of the page, carrying on a conversation with the “before” and “after” hair growth academy guys on the left:

A BRANDING TOOL

A common critique of banner ads is that they aren’t particularly effective: just 0.08% of all banner ads shown get clicked on. But there are other ways, besides click-through rate, to gauge success of online advertising, like an increase in search volume for your product or service while an ad is in rotation or an increase in web traffic to your site. I don’t expect someone to drop what they are doing and click on ads, but I do think they might be reminded of them later and that might influence behavior. That is how all ads work. Online shouldn’t be held to a different standard.

The Apple ad shows how important it is to see the banner as one piece of the marketing mix. The online element supports the television, print, and other components of what was a highly effective—and talked about—campaign for Apple. Display ads are not some kind of miracle cure, but can be a piece of the marketing plan. A report (PDF) from the Interactive Advertising Bureau in 2010 suggests that banners influence brand awareness, brand favorability, and sales.

AN EASY FORMAT TO CORRECT

Banner ads are easier to correct compared with any other form of traditional ad. Last year, when Shaun White dropped out of the slope style competition at the Winter Olympics right before he was going to compete, the takeover banner ad we created calling out his appearance was able to be quickly adjusted with another companion unit. Try doing that with a print ad.

BREAKING THROUGH THE CLUTTER

Advertising is about breaking through the clutter to design a good ad that people notice. When I read a magazine, I flip past lots of ads without looking. When I drive down the freeway there are plenty of billboards I don’t see. Watching TV I fast-forward through plenty of commercials. Online isn’t different. If you point to poorly executed examples of banner ads you can call them annoying. But when they’re good, they perform on multiple levels.

As brands continue to better integrate their marketing across channels and sites better monetize the value of their real estate, there will be more opportunities to create banner ads that elevate creativity and design elements in service of brand building. Vive la banner!

Dimitry Ioffe is CEO of TVGla, a 7-year old digital marketing agency in Los Angeles.

IT’S IMPORTANT TO SEE THE BANNER AS ONE PIECE OF THE MARKETING MIX.

ONLINE ADS SHOULDN’T BE HELD

TO A DIFFERENT STANDARD.

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Damn Good Advice (For People With Talent!) is a look into the mind of one of America’s most legendary creative thinkers, George Lois. Offering indispensle lessons, practical advice, facts, anecdotes and inspiration, this book is a timeless creative bible for all those...

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Damn Good Advice (For People with Talent!): How To Unleash Your Creative Potential by America’s Master Communicator, George Lois

By Austin Kleon

By David Sherwin

By Twyla Tharp, Mark Reiter

By Todd Henry

By George Lois

The principles of creativity in stunningly simple words and pictures by the man behind the world’s most successful advertising agencyHow did two wheels emancipate women? How can a pie save thousands of lives? How can a useless piece of fabric determine social status? How can you make night day?Simplicity looks easy. It’s not. It’s easier to complicate than simplify. This book presents deceptively simple examples of...

Brutal Simplicity of Thought: How It Changed the World By M&C Saatchi, Maurice Saatchi

You want to leave a mark, not a blemish. Be a hero, not a spectator. You want to be interesting. (Who doesn’t?) But sometimes it takes a nudge, a wake-up call, an intervention!—and a little help. This is where Jessica Hagy comes in. A writer and illustrator of great economy, charm, and insight, she’s created How to Be Interesting, a uniquely inspirational how-to that combines fresh and pithy lessons with deceptively simple diagrams and charts.

How to Be Interesting: (In 10 Simple Steps) By Jessica Hagy

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