Addressed through different panels, discussions about Russia focused on such topics as entrepreneurship, business growth overseas, innovating the Silicon-valley way, and of course, branding. Selected as one of the panelists for the discussion entitled Building Russian Brands, I shared my views on what would make Russian companies successful internationally.

RUSSIAN BRANDS GLOBALLY

According to one of the panel speakers, Tony Cowling from TNS, several agencies, including his own, frequently publish lists of brands which can be considered global. Most of the times, Russian brands are present there in a tiny minority.

Whereas a few Russian brand names, such as Lukoil , Standard Vodka and the girls pop group Tatu,¹ who may be known internationally, many others rarely make it to the brandscape of international consumers, unless they target a specific niche.  In order to get an idea of what of Russian brands my own non-Russian friends were familiar with, I posted a quick informal survey on my Facebook profile prior to the event.

My informal Facebook survey about Russian brands

What often comes to the mind of the Western European consumer in terms of Russian brands, within the limits of my very informal survey, is not always names of commercialized brands. Instead, it’s often a series of symbols and associations, related to the image of Russia. Think matryoshkas and even the Bear, with the latter playing the role of the unofficial “brand mascot” of Russia (Read more about brand mascots here).

But as soon as you begin to explore more niche brands, you might discover that more Russian brands get on the international brand horizon. Among them are, for example, Digital October, a startup incubator in Moscow, known by the international web and tech startup community. Or Garage, a contemporary art center in Moscow that many art lovers around the world have surely heard about.

BRAND STRATEGY IS THE ANSWER

But do Russian brands need to strive for international recognition? And if yes, what benefits can it give them? First of all, the more quality Russian products appear on international markets, the better it will benefit the overall image of Russia long term. Secondly, there’s a strong link between having a successful brand and a sizable market share, as mentioned by another panel speaker, Givi Topchishvili, CEO of New York based Global Advertising Strategies.  Third, the scarcity of Russian brands on the international brandscape presents a rare opportunity for them. By learning to think strategically in terms of their brand development, Russian brands would make the first important step towards market success.  Placed in the framework of a coherent strategy, which begins from a clear definition of value proposition, and ends with knowing how to capture the hearts and minds of the target consumer, Russian brands will begin to position themselves as competitive players on international markets.

And what about the necessary ingredients Russian brands would need to use in order to make their brand strategies successful? In this respect, two important elements come to mind: design (both product design and visual identity as a whole, including web design) as well as better use of the web. With Russian being my mother tongue, I often visit sites of Russian companies, only to find old-fashioned design and complex user interfaces. Better looking and better functioning products and web sites are the required ingredients of successful brands.

Some Russian brands have understood this, and involved international brand and marketing experts early on in their brand strategy development. Such was the case of Standard Vodka, which relied on international brand, marketing and advertising agencies to shape its identity, launch the product, and set a long-term brand strategy framework. Outstanding design was not an after-thought, but an important element of Standard’s brand strategy.

IMPORTANCE OF SUCCESS LOCALLY

Although very few Russian brands are enjoying international fame, there are a few success stories if we look at the local market. In fact, the measure of brand success of Russian companies may be related to how fast, and for how much money, they are acquired by large international corporations. And such cases abide. Think of Unilever acquiring Concern Kalina, a Russian producer of cosmetics. Or PepsiCo buying Wim-Bill-Dann, a Russian juice and dairy group. PepsiCo is now launching its Quaker cereals under the name Chudo (“Miracle”)- one of the existing successful brand names in Wim-Bill-Dann’s portfolio, and there are even some speculations that the multinational intends to sell some of the products in its Russian portfolio abroad. Maybe such a roundabout way — first becoming strong locally, then hitting overseas markets under the umbrella of PepsiCo, Danone or Unilever — is a way for Russian brands to expand abroad?

To summarize, success of Russian brands will depend on how quickly they realize that brand strategy cannot be an afterthought, but key to overall business development. Only by shaping and implementing a smart brand strategy framework will Russian brands set themselves on the path of market success internationally.

1. which gained mainstream recognition with their release of “All the Things She Said” several years ago

Front page of De Standaard Magazine

A weekly Belgian publication, De Standaard Magazine, published an extensive review of my Personal Branding workshop that I gave in Brussels back in February.

The article, Maak van uzelf een sterk merk (Create yourself a strong brand) is a detailed account written by journalist An Olaerts who was one of the workshop participants.

For Dutch-speakers, the article will provide a great insight into the dynamics of my Personal Branding workshops, as well as explain the benefits of building your personal brand. The full text of the article is available online.

De Standaard Magazine is a weekly lifestyle publication, and is part of De Standaard, a leading newspaper in Belgium.

The agenda of the conference includes presentations on the current investment climate in Russia, its challenges and opportunities,  case studies in the post-crisis economic environment, as well as discussions about the startup environment in Russia.

Image by Pink Sherbet Photograpy on Flickr

Brand endorsements by celebrities has been a recurring theme on this blog. I’ve written about business celebrities endorsing fine Swiss watches, and famous musicians endorsing sports shoes.

Pretty much in all of the cases I’ve written about, the pattern has been more or less the same: a famous celebrity endorses a famous brand. But is it common at all for celebrities to endorse emerging products and services, not yet known to large audiences?

Believe it or not, it actually happens quite often. Sometimes it’s a carefully planned strategy called co-branding. Startups reach out to celebrities, or bigger, already famous brands, and get their attention as endorsers or business partners. Read more on this in my article 6 things startups should consider when partnering with brands. Or, it can happen by pure chance, for instance, if your brand is discovered — and liked — by someone like Oprah Winfrey.  In the business world, Oprah is known for her generosity toward products and services she likes.  She doesn’t hesitate to mention them either in her shows, or in the O! magazine. This is what has happened to a Belgian brand of chocolate, Newtree ((disclaimer: Newtree is my former client)), when it was noticed by Oprah.  Needless to say, it was a pleasant surprise to the company.

Sometimes celebrity endorsements go beyond such generosity toward brands.  For example, Hollywood actors Leonardo di Caprio and Ashton Kutcher have actually invested in several startups.  With that, without actually acting as product spokesmen, or appearing in billboards next to the brands in question, they have de facto endorsed them, simply because they are so famous. Di Caprio has shared both his cash –  and his fame — with a company called Mobli. Kutcher has invested in a range of startups, such as Foursquare, Hipmunk and Airbnb.¹

Generally speaking, if a celebrity talks about your little-known brand, it is a very positive development likely to boost your product sales. And by “talks” I mean tweeting, facebooking or mentioning your product in the open domain.  Which means that celebrity endorsements can actually take place spontaneously, without you hiring the celebrity in question.

However, if you have enough cash to pay to somebody famous, then you enter into a  more official co-branding partnership. In this case, be sure that it makes perfect sense for your brand, as celebrity endorsement are likely to have  long-lasting effects on your brand in the long term. More on this can be found in my article 3 co-branding rules for bigger profits.

Also read:

Co-branding: Desigual and Cirque du Soleil

Another co-branding example: Missoni and Target

8 examples of co-branding and brand partnerships

Brand partnerships

Can laptops and nail polish complement each other? 

Naked Wines and Naked Chef

A  new kind of brand ambassadors: famous bloggers

A new kind of brand ambassadors: famous entrepreneurs

1. The latter, by the way, has recently acquired Crashpadder, previously featured in the series of Funky Brand Interviews

 

Most social media aficionados like myself have probably heard about the recent successful rise of Pinterest — a “pinboard-style social photo sharing website” (source: Wikipedia). If you google the term “Pinterest”, and “Pinterest for marketing”, you’ll get an endless stream of press articles, and blog posts describing the benefits of this new platform.  I’ve even seen many marketing consultancies popping up here and there — with the sole purpose of advising their clients on how to market their businesses on Pinterest.

A lot has been already analyzed in terms of the advantages of Pinterest, as well as factors which made it successful. And here’s Schmoozy Fox’s two cents:

1) Pinterest understands that most people are “visual learners.”

Most people on planet Earth are the so called “visual learners” — as opposed to “verbal” and “experiential” learners. I wrote about this in my article Is Your Web Site Sticky Enough? Whereas the main point I was making was related to video content, which is a great visual way to communicate about your brand, the same goes to images and photos. The fact that Pinterest is built around visuals – which appeal to most of us, visual learners – is certainly responsible for Pinterest’s successful rise.

2) Pinterest is all about playing games

Pulling images from across the web and “pinning” them to your board made me think of gamification, “the use of game design techniques, game thinking and game mechanics to enhance non-game contexts.” (source: Wikipedia) If you want to dig more into the benefits of games and what game dynamics can do to your business, I suggest you check the site of Jane McGonigal, who’s a game designer (whom I saw at the Creativity Forum in Antwerp), as well as the blog of Gabe Zichermann, a gamification guy whom I once heard speak at the BetaGroup in Brussels.

Pinning does feel like playing a game, so I am also on Pinterest now, and I am having fun with it. Check out my two boards there: 1) Funky Brand Interviews™, which has images of all of the interviews published to date, as well as 2) Funky Brands™, which is a collection of brands I’d like to interview — or work with — to make them even more funky.

Back in October 2011, Entrepreneur.com published an article by Mikal Belikove, Why Content Marketing is King (you can see my comment underneath the article).  According to Mikal, content marketing has surpassed “search engine marketing and public relations”. I fully agree that content marketing is one of the best cost-efficient tools available for those entrepreneurs who want to build their brands in the B2B environment (read more on how to build a brand for B2B here) and don’t have the budgets for placing expensive ads in specialized ad magazines.

Here’s how the author defines content marketing,

It’s the creation and publication of original content — including blog posts, case studies, white papers, videos and photos — for the purpose of generating leads, enhancing a brand’s visibility, and putting the company’s subject matter expertise on display.

My clients, as well as people who find me on on the web, sometimes ask me how often they need to produce content in order to have positive results. Many of them, especially solo entrepreneurs and small startups, fear venturing into online content creation just because they think that they will not manage to deliver blog posts, tweets and YouTube videos frequently enough.

But how important is the frequency of posts, Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and other updates for B2B brands? It all depends on your objectives. If you want a lot of traffic coming to your site, then you’d better deliver content frequently, and with predictable regularity. For big blogs like Mashable, TechCrunch, Trendhunter, this is crucial to their business model, which depends on the amount of of web visitors, which, in their turn, attract advertisers.

But for B2B entrepreneurs, it’s content quality, not quantity, that should matter most. If their prospects visit the blog, it’s mostly for the purpose of screening the level of expertise of the expert whose services they are looking for. If you are a lawyer, who blogs occasionally, bear in mind that your customers will want to see how convincing you are about your expertise. They want to trust you. And top content published on your blog can deliver just what they are looking for.

Here’s my branding advice for B2B companies: concentrate on making top-quality content. It won’t build your brand overnight, but it’s a sure strategy to stand out from the crowd and build your expertise.

Surely, products don’t have the kinds of intrinsic qualities that people do, but sometimes, the kind of thinking we, brand and marketing professionals, use to create and promote product (and services) brands, can come in handy in relation to people’s personal brands.

The print version of Tufts Magazine is published 4 times a year, and reaches 93 000 Tufts alumni worldwide. Amongst the Tufts famous alumni in business are Pierre Omidyar (founder of Ebay), Seth Godin (founder of Squidoo and author of several bestsellers about marketing), Peter Roth (CEO of Warner Brothers Television) and many others.

Flickr image by Cláudia*~Assad

Attractive packaging is very important in branding. This is a no-brainer, and if you’ve ever taken marketing 101, you might remember that lecture about the importance of packaging.

But did you know that, when buying food items, people are much more likely to chose shiny, attractive packaging over the actual taste? This phenomenon is referred to as visual saliency bias, and has been well described on the blog by Dan Ariely, in a post Why we really are distracted by shiny objects.

The visual saliency bias can be explained by how our brain processes information. It weighs different criteria (such as, color, taste, etc), and compares them to each other. Often, it seems, visual criteria weigh over others.  This goes back to my article Is your web site sticky enough? in which I showed the importance of visual brand communications, based on the fact that 65% of Earth’s population are the so called visual learners.

All pretty advanced branding stuff.

But once in a while, I feel it’s necessary to start anew, and go back to basics. I have done this on several occasions, for example in this short post about the difference between branding and marketing. 

Today,  let’s go back to basics once again, and define the brand of branding. I’ve had this on my to do list for a while, and I even launched a LinkedIn discussion on the subject a couple of months ago.   During my experience of working with clients on branding projects, as well as talking about branding during workshops and conferences, I’ve come to realize that overall, people have no difficulty defining the concept of “brand”.

There’s usually a lot of agreement that “brand” stands for “promise”, “trust”, “personality”, and other attributes that people can easily define.   However, when it comes to defining “branding”, or “brand strategy”, things start getting  a little bit more complex. I’ve often felt that, when people say, “Let’s do some branding”, they often mean, “Let’s create a logo, and brand name.” This is where the brand of “branding” gets really weak. Although logos and other visual identity attributes are very important,  and their creation IS certainly part of branding, they are not all there is to branding.  Moreover, logos should be put in place as a result of an in-depth brand strategy exercise, which centers around such elements as pricing and distribution strategy, brand positioning statement, and others.

It’s only when the value proposition of your product, or company, has been defined, that you should think of how to translate it into visual form.  It’s also much easier to work on your visual image if you know what your product, or company, stands for exactly.

Whereas branding is an excellent framework which can be used for overall business development, and creating excellence in organizations, its relatively weak brand positioning simply doesn’t play to its strengths. Why is branding mostly perceived as work on logos, and what would you do to reposition branding?

Trying to protect itself, our brain often switches off when it is presented with excessive information, especially related to brand promotions. And in fact, we are becoming increasingly inventive as to how to guard ourselves from information overload.

Information overload, image by michael_reuter on Flickr

However, some companies manage to get on our radar screen, and hide quietly in our heads until the right moment comes.

How do they do that? Maybe we remember some of the products we’ve seen advertised on TV. Or a company logo we’ve seen. But most of all, we store this information in the form of shapes, and images, especially if there’s an emotional charge associated with them.

Chances are, you remember a lot of brands by their brand mascots — cartoon-like characters which serve as a marketing communications tool that infuses brands with emotions and personality.

Ronald McDonald, the Michelin man, the Lacoste crocodile, Travelocity Roaming Gnome — these brand mascots have helped their “parent” companies become known and successful for many years and decades in a row. To replicate this successful marketing tool first introduced by some well-established companies in the 19th century (Michelin is believed to be one of the first companies to have adopted a mascot), now even start-ups increasingly use brand mascots to market their products. Brand mascots also exist in services, and the business-to-business context. For instance, an email marketing software company from NYC called MadMimi with an eccentric looking lady as its mascot.

Although many companies have tried to introduce mascots, not all of them have been as successful as the Michelin man. Most of them go unnoticed, and play absolutely no role in our purchasing decisions.

Why do some mascots end up on our brand radar screen, whereas others fail to do so? Besides rather apparent reasons (“I don’t like the product, so I don’t really care about how fantastic your mascot is”) — we often crowd out even good quality products promoted with fun brand mascots from our brains. The answer may lie in the kinds of mascots the companies choose.

It is not actually so easy to come up with a fun character that will be your brand’s ambassador. Whereas it may seem straightforward to do it for companies that already have a character as part of their company’s name, (such as a fox for my own company SCHMOOZY FOX, or a cucumber for Spicy Pickle, a chain of restaurants in Colorado), others often go through excruciating brainstorming sessions trying to come up with an attractive mascot. What we as consumers see as a result of this is often counterintuitive and at first sight doesn’t have anything to do with the business of the company in question. For instance, why is the French fashion brand Lacoste so strongly associated with the crocodile? And why exactly is it a gnome who does all the traveling on behalf of Travelocity.com?

Lindsay Gaskins, founder and CEO of Marbles – a chain of retail stores that sell games, puzzles and software to engage and develop the brain — says that given the nature of the business, “It was a no brainer to choose the brain as our mascot”. But within Marbles, there was a feeling that the Brain would be soulless without a name. To improve the situation, a Facebook campaign on the Marbles fan page generated customers’ competition for the best name, so now the mascot is called Albert the Brain (a clear allusion to Albert Einstein).

Many successful mascots are human-like characters. Travelocity PR Manager Joel Frey says, “The concept of the Roaming Gnome was pitched to us by ad agency McKinney in 2003. At the time, we felt an icon like Roaming Gnome would help us differentiate our brand from our competitors and it has. I believe that the idea borrows from the meme of a traveling gnome (OS: which involves stealing a gnome, traveling with it, taking photos of the gnome set against various locations, and then returning it to the owner along with the photos) that dates to the 80s in Australia.”

For Gary Levitt, founder and CEO of MadMimi, the process of choosing the right mascot was a matter of infusing his company with personality. He acknowledges that the mascot selection process was both planned, but also spontaneous, especially the “mad” part of the name. “I shared an office with a company called Madstone Productions, and because the mimi.com domain was already taken… I kinda just stuck “mad” at the beginning… making madmimi.com,” says Levitt. As a result, the graphic designer who created the personality of Mad Mimi, had to express this “madness” in Mimi’s eccentric look.

In all the examples above, the companies chose human-like characters as brand mascots. From the point of view of marketing, and psychology, this is an important observation.

A leading authority on brand mascots and anthropomorphic marketing, Stephen Brown, professor of marketing at the University of Ulster, says that the success of a brand mascot is related to how distant the mascot character is from the human. In his paper Where the wild brands are: some thoughts on anthropomorphic marketing,¹.

Brown concludes that fictional human characters are most popular brand mascots, followed by birds, domestic animals, and wild animals. Insects, aquatic creatures, vegetables and body parts (!) have much less popularity, although some insects such as bees and lady birds are often chosen as mascots. In these cases, they are made to look cute and friendly, with human-like faces.

Mascots are fascinating as they are present in our lives on so many levels. Although their main goal is to help sell products or services, they also entertain and inspire, and even motivate their parent companies to do something exemplary — for instance Lacoste committing to the protection of the crocodile.

So next time you see a friendly face peering out at you in a store, stop and think: what is it telling me about the product? And what is it telling me about me?

For more information on the topic of brand mascots, have a look at my previous articles:

Brand mascots

Beastly branding

Why meerkats help markets

Online brand mascots

Brand mascots in action: Travelocity Roaming Gnome (part of the Funky Brand Interview series™)

How Goodle keeps its Doodle funky

Kipling customizes its brand mascot

© 2012 SCHMOOZY FOX.  All material on this site may be freely cited provided the source is given. Please use the permalink of the article. If you would like to syndicate the full text of this article, please contact Olga Slavkina at olga (at) schmoozyfox (dot) com

1. Brown, Stephen., Marketing Review, Fall 2010, Vol. 10, issue 3, pp. 209-224

I’ve already touched upon the role of space in brand management. To summarize my articles on the subject (Funky brands need funky spaces, Innovative advertising spaces, and Funky ambient ads), space is extremely important for idea generation, creativity and brand-building. For instance, think about Googleplex that I talked about here – its main role is to reinforce Google’s company culture of innovation and sharing, trigger creativity and solidify Google’s brand vis-a-vis its employees, aka any company’s biggest brand ambassadors. All of this achieved by means of design.

If  you place your product or service into an astonishingly designed space, this will greatly reinforce the rest of your brand building activities. One of the main reasons for this is how the human brain perceives reality.

The majority of people are the so called visual learners — they constitute roughly 65% of the global population.  This is why a good business model, combined with clear positioning and superb customer service, also needs to look good. A good example of the role that design plays in brand building is nhow hotel in Berlin, previously featured in my series of Funky Brand Interviews. Needless to say, if you stay in such a hotel, you will most probably want to come back to experience the unusual, eye-catching design again. Which means, this hotel is likely to score pretty high on customer loyalty, an essential element of any good brand.

Image courtesy of nhow hotel

Another recent example of using design to create an extraordinary space is the work by Craig Redman and Karl Maier, known as Craig & Karl. What strikes me most here is a rather trivial starting point of the project — a car park.

“When it comes to interiors, nothing is as traditionally drab and cold as a parking garage. There’s a reason why it’s the default setting for film directors looking to convey foreboding: garages are where people get grabbed, shot at, or straight-out whacked.” (Source: fastcodesign.com)

I got in touch with Craig & Karl, asking them to share with my funky readers some of the background to their project, as well as the stunning images of the designed car park.

Image courtesy of Craig & Karl

This is what Craig wrote me,

“The objective of the project was to breathe new life into the space which, having been rendered in concrete with little inlet of natural light, felt quite dark and heavy. Working closely with the owners, who possess a keen design sensibility, it was decided that the mural would cover all surfaces in a blanket of bright colour. There was also a request that the larger wall surfaces be left blank with an eye towards potentially introducing additional, individually commissioned works at a future date. Nevertheless it was vital that the installation feel and function as a complete work in its own right. The resulting design is a dynamic mix of overlapping geometric forms that mirror and respond to the angularity of the architecture. The whole piece is tied together by a winding, ribbon-style device which, acting as a central axis, leads in from the driveway, through the space and out to the garden beyond.”

Kudos to Craig & Karl, as well as the design-conscious owners of the car park. They should certainly build upon the publicity this funky project has received to date, and think how to capture this value in the longer term.

Image courtesy of Craig & Karl

Image courtesy of Craig & Karl

About Craig & Karl
Craig Redman and Karl Maier live on opposite sides of the world but collaborate daily to create bold work that is thoughtful and often humorous. They specialise in illustration, installation, typography, as well as character, editorial and pattern design. Craig & Karl have exhibited across the world, most notably at the Musée de la Publicité, Louvre. They have worked on projects for clients like LVMH, Nike, Apple, Vogue, Microsoft, Converse, MTV and The New York Times.
www.craigandkarl.com

Photography credit:
Katherine Lu (www.katherinelu.com)

I discovered this video on the blog of Thomas Otter, VP for Research at Gartner. It summarizes a story of how Ikea went about hiring 280 staff for its new store in Australia, in a very original, and low-cost way.

Called “the social media maven”, the woman “who runs New York and social media” and “a force to be reckoned with” by the press , today Aliza Licht talks about her love for social media, PR , the glamor of New York, and of course, the funky brand essence of DKNY.

Olga Slavkina: Donna Karan and DKNY are two brands with different brand positioning and different types of customers. How do you manage to combine work for both brands?

Aliza Licht: I’m the SVP of Global Communications for the company which means I oversee Donna Karan New York, DKNY and DKNY Jeans including all product categories. Because the brand DNA is so rich, everything stems from Donna’s original inspiration which is New York. All the brands add up to the sum of the total which is the globally recognized “World of Donna Karan”. I love working on all the brands because it gives me a complete A-Z experience. Because we are an American brand, everything starts in New York, and it is amazing to see collections from inception to the final result in a magazine or on the red carpet.

Olga Slavkina: Today, let’s talk about DKNY. As you know, I’ve already written about the video about the DKNY PR girl which revealed the real person — you — behind the smart, funny and very engaging tweets coming from the @dkny account on Twitter. How long had you tweeted on behalf of DKNY prior to revealing your real name?

Aliza Licht: I started tweeting in May 2009 and didn’t reveal my identity until October 2011!

Olga Slavkina: Why and how was the decision taken to disclose the fact that it had been Aliza Licht tweeting on behalf of DKNY?

Aliza Licht: Originally, the idea was that DKNY PR GIRL was a “character”, hence the sketch. But as soon as I started tweeting, I realized that Twitter was a conversation and the voice needed to be consistent. Naturally, people started to realize DKNY PR GIRL was in fact, one girl, but yet it never really mattered “who” the person was- it was the personality and content that mattered.

As such, it made sense to keep the sketch as the visual. As time passed and the account became more popular, the anonymity became “a thing”.

Recently, I realized that people know me so well from the tweets alone that the anonymity isn’t really essential anymore.

My #PR101 blog posts and tweets are a passion of mine and “coming out” allows me to be more a part of the social community in real life. I recently spoke at Teen Vogue Fashion University to their student community. Being able to participate in those kinds of opportunities is what truly inspires me.

Olga Slavkina: What was the reaction from across the web (and maybe also traditional press) to the release of the video and how do you think it helped boost the brand of DKNY?

Aliza Licht: The reaction was everything I could have hoped for. The public welcomed me with open arms and in fact I think it even helped further foster the relationship I have with the social community. The press coverage on the “reveal” was shocking. I can’t think of a fashion press outlet that didn’t cover it.

But that said, our followers are the best judges of how DKNY PR GIRL has affected the brand. They are the ones who consistently share the joy that they experience from the brands, whether tweeting an image of a new purchase or joining me in obsessing over our cape dress. They communicate, support and inspire the conversation. People constantly talk about the ROI on Social Media and how to define it. For me, it’s brand evangelism. Whether we’re talking about our favorite candy or #PR101, I’m focused on building a community of enthusiasts.

Olga Slavkina: What is the brand of DKNY all about? What are the values that you want to share with your customers?

Aliza Licht: DKNY is the energy and spirit of New York. It’s classics with a modern twist. DKNY believes in individual style so it’s about taking the items you love most and making them your own. DKNY has always been about trend that can live on from season to season. It’s fun and feminine and doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Olga Slavkina: How is the brand of Donna Karan different from the brand of DKNY? 

Aliza Licht: Donna Karan was conceptualized as a luxury system of dressing for the modern woman. It’s sensual, empowering and entrance making. The fabrics and artisan hand that goes into designing collection is almost at a couture level. Most of our fabrics are milled exclusively for us and they really do set the collection apart in that way.

Olga Slavkina: How are the values of DKNY reflected in social media?

Aliza Licht: DKNY is friendly, eclectic and fun. It’s understandable yet statement making. That’s how I would like to think our social media is thought of.

Olga Slavkina: What would you recommend to other aspiring funky brands in terms of their presence in social media?

Aliza Licht: Keep the “social” in media.

All images in this article were provided courtesy of DKNY. © 2011 SCHMOOZY FOX. Funky Brand Interviews is a trademark of SCHMOOZY FOX. All material on this site may be freely cited provided the source is given. Please use the permalink of the article. If you would like to syndicate the full text of this article, please contact Olga Slavkina at olga (at) schmoozyfox (dot) com

Together with Jump Academy, I will run a half-a-day seminar on how to build your personal brand. It will be a high value event, full of interesting cases about the women who have built successful personal brands, and practical exercises that will help you make a big jump towards your desired professional goals.

The workshop will take place on February 2, 2012 in Brussels (hosted by the Belgian luxury bags and accessories brand, Delvaux), from 1.30 pm till 5.15 pm.

Sign up on the site of Jump Academy, and, using the lyrics of Katy Perry, “Come on, show ‘em what you’re worth”.

Olga Slavkina: Mattias, when I met you about a year ago during the launch of your book “How Cool Brands Stay Hot – Branding To Generation Y” , something interesting struck me in your presentation. It was the extent to which MTV goes when it works with advertisers. Unlike many other channels which simply show TV commercials, you actually work with your advertisers to make sure that they reach MTV’s audience in the most effective ways. Is this a correct summary?

Mattias Behrer, MTV

Mattias Behrer: Absolutely. At MTV we have more than a 100 researchers and analysts feeding all our teams across the world with the latest insights on youth culture, media habits and consumerism. We invest most probably more than any other media brand into the understanding of our target audience. In order to maximize the value for our advertisers and partners, we have specialized in using this knowledge while creating marketing solutions and communication concepts for them.

These client solutions are created and executed by our advertising unit called Brand Solutions. We pair our client’s marketing challenges and strategies with our youth insights and create communications that are relevant and engaging for the millennial generation. Essentially, we work like an advertising agency, adding our own TV, online and mobile platforms, 31 years of experience in communicating with young people, as well as creative heritage second to none. We are very proud to be able to work with ideas which travel across all media and always try to make the audience the main communicator of the message, leveraging the social aspect of all communication.

Olga Slavkina: How could you define a successful collaboration with an advertiser?

Mattias Behrer: Successful collaborations are always defined by meeting the objectives set by the advertiser. All concepts are created based on the advertiser’s goals, be it sales targets, brand positioning or engagement targets, number of entries for a competition, etc. We are always very conscious about breaking down the objectives defined by the clients, and we discuss unrealistic or poorly defined targets. I have to say that our brand solutions team has created a pretty impressive portfolio of successful cases by now, and I am proud to see that many clients keep coming back year after year. A good recent example is a campaign in Sweden, where Nike asked us to increase the sales of their running line by getting the attention and affection of a new target group – the young urban demographic.

Our concept, called Take Sthlm, was a real life running competition fueled by a 360 degrees integrated campaign with a multitude of social and viral elements. The inhabitants, opinion leaders and fans of each area of the city of Stockholm were encouraged to team up to defend the honor of their “hoods” and battle against each other using the Nike+ functionality to register miles covered. You could follow in real time online how the areas of the city were “taken over” by the respective teams.

It ended up being one of the most successful campaigns for Nike Sweden, boosting sales by 70% and their running line beat the football line for the first time ever. The fact that this campaign just won bronze in the Eurobest Awards last week was nice icing on the cake for us and our client.

Olga Slavkina: How do you make sure that your advertisers reach your audience with messages that are taken into account?

Mattias Behrer: The starting point is always to find the consumer’s “sweet spot” or proposition at the intersection of:

a) the client’s marketing challenge

b) the specific USP/ESP of the product or service

c) the client’s brand positioning

d) our applicable youth insights.

In relation to some concepts, we pre-test our material with the target audience, but generally it is about working with the most skilled researchers and planners we have in-house and sometimes with the client or their ad agency.

These analysts work with the audience every day, they know how to support our creative and marketing people with the insights needed to develop relevant communications which really move people emotionally. Our research is very much about understanding the fears, hopes and aspirations of Generation Y and advertising is always about engaging and incentivizing your audience to move closer to the desired state of mind. It is much easier today to know when you are doing the right thing. Most concepts carry an element of “social currency” brought to life through the combination of TV and digital media. Through the latter, we get instant feedback on how we are doing.

But in the end, it is about meeting the goals of the advertiser and sometimes short term sales targets are best met with ads that don’t necessarily get the highest liking in tests. We obviously need to tailor our concept development in order to always deliver on effectiveness and efficiency defined by our clients from one case to another.

Olga Slavkina: I’ve written quite a bit about the concept of so called meta-brands — overarching concepts which add positive associations to other brands which relate to them.  Can MTV be considered a meta-brand and why?

Mattias Behrer: MTV is very much a meta-brand. By staying true to our core mission and brand idea – empowering young amazing lives – and by always being guided by our core values, we can navigate in a credible way across the different interests and tribes of youth culture. We can engage with and build stories and values for a rocker, a skater, a rebel and an geek. As long as we stay true to ourselves and never pretend to be something else, we still have the breadth and depth of brand associations that can be selectively highlighted in different situations and appeal to different interests and aspirations from time to time.

In collaboration with MTV other brands can – without compromising their own brand identity – lend and benefit from some of the MTV associations (and of course our channels and platforms!) and be more daring in their communication. A couple of years ago we collaborated with the biggest bank in the Nordics and at the outset the perceived positioning of the two brands couldn’t be further apart. We managed to find a concept adopting a very creative and daring tone of voice and we helped to make the brand liking of this bank increase by double digits. Most importantly, the audience thought of the bank as one they would recommend to friends. We stayed true to our values and the audience by assuring that all activities gave something back to the audience – be it a laugh or an actual functional benefit.

The meta-brand relevance of MTV helped endorsing the relevance of the message. If the bank would have created the same communication on their own, they wouldn’t have been able to communicate with the audience in the same “relaxed” and credible manner – the audience would have held their guard up high.  We also asked the audience if they liked the collaboration between MTV and the bank and it scored very high on our test.

Olga Slavkina: how does MTV make sure that it knows its audience well?

Mattias Behrer:  In this dynamic, complex and rapidly changing media environment the starting point is to acknowledge the value of securing insights and make the effort to be constantly plugged into the values, attitudes and behaviors of our audience. We put research at the core of everything we do. We have people in our teams who know how to turn information into intelligence and inspiration for our daily actions across all areas of our business: creative, content, communication and commercial. We are increasingly creating a brand and research led company and this approach is encouraged from the very top.

Olga Slavkina: What issues, in your opinion, do young people in Europe care about today, and how does MTV reflect this in its programs?

Mattias Behrer: On average, the youngsters today are better educated, more connected, more positive about the future than any generation before them. They also have greater self-esteem, ambition and ability to make their voices heard, commercially and in general. They have grown up with parents encouraging and empowering them to believe in themselves and the fact that they can make a difference. Compared to previous generations, they have far fewer needs to rebel against parents, authorities or society at large; they typically don’t fight the system, they “game” it and try to make the best out of it.

They are ambitious optimists striving for both material and emotional success in life and they are willing to work hard to achieve it. At the same time they are conscious of and unwilling to sacrifice their work-life balance or spending time with friends and family, a sustainable environment or a humane society at large. Overall, we see that young people today have a very positive outlook at their world but they are at the same time aware of the issues around them. For MTV this means that we have to broaden our content stories in order to reflect some of the most relevant real time millennial issues such as bullying, aids, career and life enhancement, sexual health and even teen pregnancy and parenthood.

We do this through observational documentaries and scripted drama, but also by being even more involved in contemporary social activities beyond entertainment, and by being more authentic, emotional, warm and direct in the way we communicate. Two of the MTV  brand values say a lot about the mindset of Generation Y: for us Smart & Fun is the new Rock & Roll and Warm is the new Cool.

Olga Slavkina: Could you share some of MTV’s plans for the nearest future?

Mattias Behrer: I am very proud of our brand new international pro-social initiative MTV Voices, an online platform where we and other talented and passionate contributors from all around the world share and discuss interesting social issues, content, events and trends. You should check it out, in English at voices.mtv.co.uk and in German at voices.mtv.de.

All images in this article were provided courtesy of MTV. © 2011 SCHMOOZY FOX. Funky Brand Interviews is a trademark of SCHMOOZY FOX. All material on this site may be freely cited provided the source is given. Please use the permalink of the article. If you would like to syndicate the full text of this article, please contact Olga Slavkina at olga (at) schmoozyfox (dot) com

Follow SCHMOOZY FOX on Twitter: @schmoozyfox