Jaw-dropping Company Headquarters

Company benefits are reaching beyond insurance and vacation time and are moving into a revolution of the actual workspace. Everyone has the image of Google and Amazon’s headquarters in their mind; with dog parks, rainforests and nap pods galore, but that isn’t the only innovative space in the business world. From themed rooms to sustainability, these companies have some of the most exciting office spaces around.

Warby Parker

Glasses brand Warby Parker not only has a love for fashionable glasses but for books as well. Their Manhattan headquarters offers employees access to a library, a reading room, and of course, reading glasses. Read about the space and how employees like it here.

Dropbox

Cloud storage solution company Dropbox has worldwide offices, but their San Francisco headquarters, designed by Rapt Studio is an innovative space that allows for collaboration, quiet individual work, and a “neighborhood” set up to cater to the needs of each team. See a photo compilation of the office here.

Casper

New York City-based mattress company Casper was recently renovated and redesigned by FLOAT Studio, to create a workplace that fit in with the brand identity. The office includes sustainable construction, flexible meeting spaces and even nap pods. See the space here.

Sonos

Sonos’ Seattle headquarters bills itself as the “greenest commercial building in the world”, and based off of this GeekWire feature, it may be the most musical as well.  This modern and sleek office space make using the word headquarters the wrong descriptor though, as the company has a slew of conference rooms to meet with other Sonos “headquarters” around the world.

Squarespace

If you’ve built a website using Squarespace you know that the platform is simple but modern, and the company’s New York City offices follow the same formula. Built to be the most functional space for both collaborative and individual work, all without sacrificing design and comfort. See the office here and here.

Epic Systems Corporation

Medical software company Epic is aptly named, and the word epic can be used to describe almost everything about the company, especially when it comes to their headquarters. The Verona, Wisconsin campus is a grand adventure, with themed rooms, individual offices for every employee, a gorgeous view of the surrounding farmland, and an Indiana Jones styled hallway. See the campus here, and check out this video tour for a more in-depth look.

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Event Profile: SXSW 2018

South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas has become a cultural mecca for music and film buffs, as well as a place for hosting interactive events that cover a range of topics from everything new in technology, to entertainment and advertising. There is always a huge amount of news coming from this week-long event, so here is a breakdown of what we’ve seen so far.

SXSW Trust Barometer

Every year, festival attendees are polled for the Trust Barometer, which measures the general feelings those attending have towards technology, business, and media. The results of this year’s poll brought up interesting discussions, as there is a very low amount of trust in emerging technology, one of SXSW’s biggest draws.

Most of the distrust comes from a shift towards a need for more human elements in technological interactions, and a distrust in blockchain technology, virtual reality, and autonomous vehicles. Discussions about smaller, more personal social media platforms were held, as well as conversations about the widespread use of bots and voice assistants and how the reactions to these technologies have become more and more personal, with users sometimes treating bots as though they were chatting with another human being. There is without a doubt a need to shift to more personal communication methods and develop an understanding of how emotional attachments can tie into interacting with these responsive communication technologies.

Experiential Exhibitions: ‘Westworld’ and ‘Ready Player One’

HBO hit-show Westworld and Steven Spielberg’s ‘Ready Player One’ both partnered with creative agency Giant Spoon to bring the worlds of the screen to life for festival attendees. These immersive exhibits allow you to step into the ‘Westworld’ town of Sweetwater and the Oasis of  ‘Ready Player One’ interacting with environments, actors in character, and becoming a character yourself. Read a review of the ‘Westworld’ exhibit on Forbes and Business Insider and see a walkthrough of Sweetwater here and the ‘Ready Player One’ exhibit here.

Speeches

SXSW is focused on cultivating the creative and entrepreneurial spirit throughout the world, and each day speakers from convergence, music, technology, and film focused paths present their take on various topics. The hope is to generate meaningful conversations about the state of the world in each of SXSW’s featured verticals. Notable speakers this year include Elon Musk, Melinda Gates, Darren Aronofsky, Sadiq Khan, and Esther Perel.

SXSW ends this Saturday, so there is bound to be more excitement in the last few days of the festival. For more SXSW news and live streams of keynotes and other events, visit sxsw.com.

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Essential Guide to Instagram for Business

Instagram is a valuable marketing tool for any business, which many marketers have known since the app was released. We’ve seen brands leverage the community to build their influence and brand awareness as well as increasing sales. But in early 2016, a new feature was released just for these businesses. Instagram for business allows marketers to leverage real data and account insights as well as create ads and targeted posts.These tips and tricks will help you leverage your Instagram business page today.

Get creative

Show off what your business does by creating content that isn’t expected. Focus on the solutions your products can provide for your customers, not just the products themselves. Sharing insider views of how your business functions on a day to day basis, and keeping up with what’s going on in the world and relating it back to what you’re doing is key, as well as keeping in mind that Instagram is a primarily visual platform. That means you need to keep your posts clean and well composed.  

Instagram Stories

If you aren’t already using Instagram Stories to further your content, you need to re-evaluate and work them into your marketing strategy. Stories are a great way to share things that are going on in your company that may not be worth creating a full post for but are also great for showcasing events, going more in-depth about what your posts are about.

Create consistent and authentic content

The content you create can and should be beautiful on its own, but it also needs to be consistent. Consistency means making sure you’re posting on regular basis or on a pre-set schedule, but also that each individual post fits in with the rest of your content. Paying close attention to your color palette is key to this, as well as posting content that is consistent with your brand’s image and communication style.

Respond to your followers

Customer service is a huge part of owning a business. You wouldn’t leave a customer to sit with an unanswered question in person, so making sure you’re engaging with your followers and people commenting on your posts or sending you direct messages. Communicating outside of just the posts you make is huge for projecting a good public image of your business to the outside world. Let your followers know that you are invested in them, so they feel they should invest their time caring about you.

Targeting Ads

If you’re familiar with Facebook ads and targeting through the Facebook ad management platform, you’re in luck. Instagram ads (specifically for business accounts) are managed in the same place and are set up in the same way. This includes location, demographics, and interests targeting, which ensures that your ads are being seen by exactly who you want.  

User-generated content or contests

Engage with your customers by hosting contests, giveaways or other incentive-based “events”. If you have customers post photos with your specific contest hashtags, you can easily track engagement and participation. Another great way to include your user base is to post user-generated content, either by reposting (and crediting) others’ posts or by having a channel “takeover” where an influencer or other user is able to post on your profile as themselves as sponsored by you.

Instagram is a valuable tool for marketers, and it’s easy to get started today. See how this always expanding social media platform can help you grow your business.

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Conferences For Entrepreneurs, Marketers & More in 2018

One of the best ways to learn and get involved in a community built around your work is to attend a conference, summit or keynote.  Whether your work is marketing, content creation, entrepreneurship or technology focused, there will be an event that fits your list of needs. Check some of these events out to get started exploring the world of conferences.

No Longer Virtual– Denver, February 22-23

This conference focused on improving your personal communication, sales, and leadership skills is one of the most exclusive events this year, as there is a registration limit of 50 people. NLV is being called a “can’t miss” by Forbes. Because attendance is limited, those who participate are able to work more one on one with other attendees, make more meaningful connections, and attendees contribute to sessions rather than keynote speakers being the main focus.

Forbes Under 30 Summit– Boston, October TBD

The 30 Under 30 Summit is Forbes showcase event of their “Under 30” listmakers. With over 6,000 in attendance and participants that work in fields that range from tech to content marketing, this event is heralded as “the greatest gathering of world changers and entrepreneurs ever.” Complete with musical performances and a food festival, this summit is more than just inspiring speakers. Listmakers are always welcome, but if you haven’t found your name on one just yet, you can request a premium pass to attend this event.

GrowthHackers– San Diego, February 6

For those looking to grow their businesses, a great way to “Kickstart your growth” is to attend the GrowthHackers Conference, hosted by Sean Ellis and Dani Hart of GrowthHackers. With speakers from LinkedIn to ClassPass and everything in between, GrowthHackers can help push your business to the next level. Past speakers have included Larry Kim of Wordstream, Eleana Verna of Survey Monkey, and Chris More of Mozilla, to name a few.

Social Media Marketing World– San Diego, February 28- March 2

Social Media Examiner is presenting a three-day conference this year that will help you to master social media for your business this year. With over 120 training sessions from some of the world’s leaders in social media and content creation, you can learn everything you need to succeed with social media while connecting with influencers, customers, and other marketers. Join speakers Mari Smith, Gary Vaynerchuk, Jay Baer and more in sessions tailored to the needs of both marketers and content creators.

This is only a handful of the great events that you can take advantage of this year, and there are more that are yet to be announced. Keep your eyes open for more conferences that suit the needs of your business.

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Holiday Ads of 2017

The holidays are right around the corner and the commercials that are airing right now are becoming more festive, heartwarming and gift focused. So far, these are some of the best ads from around the world this holiday season.  

Waitrose: “#ChristmasTogether”

John Lewis “Moz the Monster”

Marks and Spencer “Paddington & The Christmas Visitor #LoveTheBear”

Cost Plus World Market “The Performance”

Heathrow Airport “#HeathrowBears”

Apple “Sway”

Audi USA “Parking Lot”

Amazon “Give”

Old Spice “Ye Olde Exploding Yule Log”

Spanish Lottery “#DANIELLE”

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5 Rebranding Fails

Rebranding any company can be tricky business, and there is no guarantee you will always get it right. These five companies are proof of that. Check out some of the most hated, most ridiculously expensive, and most cringe-worthy rebranded and redesigned looks in recent branding history.

Tropicana Orange Juice- Underestimating brand loyalists

In 2009, Tropicana decided to change their look by offering what they thought was a sleek and sophisticated design ready for the modern market. After two months of the redesigned packaging being on shelves, sales had dropped 20%, meaning a loss of 30 million dollars. The design and campaign and the loss in sales cost the company more than 50 million dollars.  But why did it fail? Customers reported a deep emotional bond with the original packaging, and when the rebranding occurred, they found what they called the “ugly” design to be too close to generic brands or store brands and also worried that the product itself had changed, not just to look of the packaging. Read more about the Tropicana branding failure here.

Pepsi- $1 million for a complicated process

Pepsi Logo

Pepsi Logo (2009)

The logo itself released in 2009 wasn’t unsightly in the least, but the cost to end up with the final product seemed unjustifiable, especially if you look at the overly complicated design document for the project which talks about “Pepsi’s gravitational pull”, balanced energy fields and “numerical harmony”.  Pepsi’s logo has been changed about once every ten years, but their competitor Coca-Cola has hardly ever changed their logo.

Gap- the Gap in the gradient

Gap Logo

Gap Logo (failed redesign, 2010)

During the holiday season of 2010, a silent and disastrous event took place. Gap had launched a new, crowd-sourced logo (estimated to cost about $100 million)  to replace the original 20-plus year old one. The logo (bold black font to spell Gap with a blue gradient square) began to generate negative buzz in the design community and after only six days, Gap was back to using the tried and true original logo.

MasterCard- the color blob

Mastercard Logo (1996)

Mastercard Logo (2006)

MasterCard’s logo is one that is instantly recognizable, from the overlapping circles to their brand’s color scheme. There was, however, a time when the logo was not so attractive. In 2006, the two circles were marred with an off-center and out of focus third circle in between, with the name of the corporation “Mastercard Worldwide” (formerly Mastercard International) underneath it. From a design perspective, this short-lived logo looked rushed and sloppy, a far cry from the current iteration.  

BP- from green to black

BP logo prior to 2000 redesign

BP logo (2000)

In 2000, BP’s mission was to project their appearance of “green growth” which led the petroleum company to set forth and redesign their logo to reflect that. The green Helios sunburst which became the new face of the company had a rumored rollout cost of $211,000,000. When the logo was first released it was not well responded to, and it took time for the uproar and negative reviews to die down. Things stayed quiet for a while, but in 2010, the “green” company was responsible for what is considered the largest marine oil spill in industry history: Deepwater Horizon. For a company trying to promote themselves as “green” in an inherently not industry, this incident only furthered the outrage.

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The Best and Worst Ads of 2017

The Best

Fearless Girl, Agency: McCann New York

The winner of five Grand Clio awards was created by Kristen Visbal and commissioned by State Street Global Advisors. The award-winning and now iconic installation was placed in front of Wall Street’s Charging Bull to promote and celebrate International Women’s Day. The statue’s strength paved the way for McCann New York to win agency of the year, and for State Street to win advertiser of the year.

MailChimp “Did You Mean MailChimp?”, Agency: Droga5

MailChimp is already an established brand, but their first major campaign introduces them to a new audience in a way that subverts almost every expectation. By creating goofy and fun mispronunciations of their name MailChimp is able to prove that they are true to themselves and use creative ways to help their customer base.

Samsung “Ostrich”, Agency: Leo Burnett

Samsung’s tagline “do what can’t be done” refers to their virtual reality headsets and what you are able to experience when you put it on. This ad premiered during the product launch of the S8 and S8+ and used #DoWhatYouCan’t to further promote the new Samsung product lineup.

Audi “Daughter”, Agency: Venables Bell & Partners

Rated as one of the top commercials aired during the Super Bowl, ‘Daughter’ pushes for equal pay and employment opportunities for women, pushing for progress with #DriveProgress. Though not directly related to any specific Audi model, spokespeople for the company say that progress is at the core of the brand.

The Worst

Jennifer Aniston Smart Water campaign, Agency: AR New York

Bland print ads and unfunny attempts to go viral have plagued the bottled water company’s campaign with a very popular spokesperson. However, a bright spot in an otherwise unexciting campaign takes an aim at celebrity gossip: a video that shows Jennifer Aniston’s “leaked security tapes” revealing all of her secrets, from being pregnant to wearing a wig.

GoDaddy “The Internet Wants You”, Agency: Bullish

GoDaddy was once the king of scandalous ads, especially during the Super Bowl, but this year’s ad went in a different direction, poking fun at internet trends, from sneezing pandas and water bottle flipping, to “David After Dentist” and Rick Astley. The commercial itself was clever, but fell flat, with almost too much going on to effectively promote GoDaddy’s services.

T-Mobile #Unlimited Moves, Agency: Publicis Seattle

The Super Bowl commercial featuring Justin Bieber was in one word, underwhelming. Coming off of last year’s spot with Drake dancing to ‘Hotline Bling’, Bieber plays a “celebration expert” narrating touchdown celebrations throughout the years. Bieber is refreshingly down to earth, but his presence alone is not enough to give life to an otherwise unfunny commercial.

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Marketing Tool: Chatbots

80% of marketers are expected to be using chatbots by 2020. Personalized marketing is becoming an expectation for consumers, and chatbots are another tool to bring personalization to your audience. It is certainly fair to say that not every company will need a chatbot, and that some customers will not utilize or like the option of using a chatbot, but for ever-evolving times, it is important to understand this trend as it is, as it can be, and to fully acknowledge the pros and cons of using chatbots within a marketing strategy.

What is a Chatbot?

NBC defines a chatbot simply as: “simple artificial intelligence systems that you interact with via text. Those interactions can be straightforward, like asking a bot to give you a weather report, or more complex, like having one troubleshoot a problem with your internet service.”

How do Chatbots work?

A chatbot responds to a message just as a customer support employee would, but is available at all times. Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa are all examples of widely used chatbots. Chatbots are programmed with specifically coded responses to questions or can be built with AI and can, therefore, expand their knowledge base with machine learning.  When your customer asks a question or interacts with your bot, the responses that it gives are modeled to act like a real human response. Sometimes, a question will be impossible for the bot to answer, either because it has no prior experience with that question or because it is phrased in a way too complicated for the bot to understand. If that is holding you back, there are ways to program your bot to have prompts that might be able to get the bot and your customers back on track.

Why use a Chatbot for marketing?

Chatbots do more than just answering questions, they can also effectively drive engagement, make sales and nurture leads. Because chatbots built to use AI can learn, they can also remember details and have a more personalized and human interaction with your customers, something that is important as “nine out of ten consumers say personalization has an impact on their buying decisions, “ says research from LeadsCon. The evolution of social media and technology has played into the need to utilize big data in order to provide a more targeted and engaging approach to customer support and marketing.  Check out Hubspot’s list of seven brands using chatbots and get inspired!

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11 Herbs & Spices: Brands That Embrace Their Personalities on Twitter

Earlier this week, Twitter user Edge (@edgette22) noticed something funny about KFC’s Twitter page that made headlines for the brand.

The quiet execution of this comical marketing strategy isn’t the first time that a brand has used Twitter to subvert traditional marketing efforts for a more playful strategy. Think back to Wendy’s always sassy Twitter responses, like this one:

Fast food companies aren’t the only brands establishing themselves as Twitter masters, check out these examples of brands showing off their personality on social media!

Netflix (@netflix)

The streaming giant knows what it’s target audience is thinking.

Taco Bell (@tacobell)

Taking senior portraits at Taco Bell has been a trend this year, and the brand took notice.

Chipotle (@ChipotleTweets)

Promoting their online ordering capabilities while disrupting everyone’s Tinder game.

Totino’s Pizza Rolls (@totinos)

Starting with the name of the account (Pete Zaroll) and the anthropomorphic pizza roll that personifies the account, this General Mills brand really brings the sass, especially when it comes to brand recognition.

Hamburger Helper (@helper)

Another General Mill’s brand, Hamburger Helper’s Twitter account has been in the news lately due to its quick-witted responses like this one:

DiGiorno Pizza (@DiGiornoPizza)

With a tagline like “It’s not delivery. It’s DiGiorno”, would you expect anything less than sassy tweets?

Old Spice (@OldSpice)

Never one to shy away from unconventional marketing and commercials, Old Spice continues that trend with their Twitter feed.

Innocent Drinks (@innocent)

This healthy smoothie/juice company based out of the UK has a Twitter feed filled with gems like this one below. What more could you ask for from a brand’s social media?

Moosejaw Mountaineering (@MoosejawMadness)

Self-described as “the most fun outdoor retailer on the planet”, Moosejaw’s Twitter is filled with funny quips like this one:

Have some more examples? Share them in the comments section below.

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