Best in Brand & Innovation for March
Every month we bring you the best articles we find in brand, innovation, and creativity.
March’s digest applies theory and philosophy to creativity and branding. And while one author pushes companies to embrace the third industrial revolution, another uses timeless principles for brands to put into action. We read about productivity as a science and creativity as an art. Read on.
How Brands Can Use Psychology to Improve Marketing Techniques – ADWEEK
Jennifer Lux writes about three timeless psychological principles brands can use to stand out in the ever-growing digital market. These neuropsychological principles include using emotion, creating associations, and cultivating consistency. In this article, Lux explains the brain’s responses to branding and the role it plays through purchase and beyond.
Jennifer Lux @JenniferLux11
Reach out to branding agencies and the world could be a better place – The Times
Brands are constantly rebranding and as a nation, we tend to adjust fairly quickly. However, argues author Santham Sanghera, rebranding goes wrong when “the name change signifies cringeworthy, bad or sinister behavior.” Sanghera explains the importance of keeping up with modern branding. In the ‘80s and ‘90s businesses used “deadening references” such as “English China Clays”. Now however, one word names are in vogue along with vague mission statements such as Facebook’s “connect the world”. Sanghera suggests that branding agencies may be a great way to come up with a timely and relevant name.
Sathnam Sanghera @Sathnam
Creativity is a distinct mental state that you can train – Big Think
As it turns out, winging creativity is not so effective, instead, “practice makes creativity more likely,” according to a new study . Studying pianists, researchers conclude that creativity is more abundant when focusing on a specific and devoted skill. The subjects of the study were broken into two groups: those with formal institutional training and those who were not formally trained but insead self-taught improvisational players. While tracking their brains, more electrical activity occurred when they were improvising. The same did not apply to untrained pianists. “Our results suggest that creativity can be characterized as a distinct mental state—one that can be nurtured through training, and that can reflect the quality of the finished product,” says researcher Joel Lopata.
Derek Beres @derekberes
The Psychology And Philosophy Of Branding, Marketing, Needs, And Actions – Forbes
Human psychology and how it affects consumer behavior is the foundation of brand building,” writes author Susan Gunelius. Gunelius applies Abraham Maslows’s Theory of Human Motivation to marketing to achieve needs for survival as well as emotional needs. She also utilizes Aristotle’s Seven Causes of Human Action to create a successful call to action, achieve the best results and maximize the brands return on investment.
Susan Gunelius @susangunelius
Global branding and the ‘third industrial revolution’ – The Irish Times
Recently, the Economist related digital manufacturing to a third industrial revolution. In this article, author Geoff Simmons pushes brands to adapt to this changing digital revolution. “Leaving behind what is familiar and known is not always easy,” he writes. He encourages brands to let go and lose control and leave behind mass production and mass marketing “based on transactional relationships with consumers”. Instead, brands will benefit from embracing permission-based relationships which means treating people with respect and involving them “with branding and product development as the best way to get their attention in a cluttered world.”
Geoff Simmons @southdowner123
Brands advertise more effectively with native – Trib Live
On average, 5,000 advertisements reach one person each day. But we are so accustomed to ignoring these messages that almost none of them are effective. Enter native advertising. Where traditional advertising tends to be nagging, native advertising doesn’t interrupt the reader’s experience and offers humor, information, and entertainment. And for the company, advertising can be fun because you don’t have to necessarily write about your brand to be successful, drawing attention to an aspect of your brand through video or story telling is equally successful.
535media @535media
Daniel Pink: How the science of timing can boost productivity – Conference Notebook
Daniel Pink, author of When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, recently spoke at the Gartner Data and Analytics Summit where he explained that “studying the data around timing can help us make better, smarter and shrewder decisions about when we do things. Pink offers three suggestions around timing, “pay attention to a day’s ‘hidden pattern’ (morning, afternoon & late day highs and lows), take breaks, and place emphasis on uplifting endings.
Brian Holak @bmholak
The Roots of Creativity – The Brooklyn Rail
Author Semir Zeki argues that the best evidence of creativity comes from the artistic and literary worlds, not from science. Pulling from works of literature and world renowned artists, Zeki makes her point. For example, Michelangelo was viewed as having too many commissions when it was found that he left three fifths of his sculptures unfinished. Zeki says Michelangelo would leave his work “non-finito until he gets guidance from the divine workshop in Heaven.” She goes on, “Such examples may be multiplied and leave us with the unavoidable conclusion that one of the fundamental driving forces, and principal root of, creativity lies in the incapacity to achieve in one or even many works of art the ever-changing concept that the brain of a creative person formulates.”
Semir Zeki @ProfZeki
